The New Age of Empire
How Racism and Colonialism Still Rule the World
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3.0 • 1 Rating
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- $17.99
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
A damning exploration of the many ways in which the effects and logic of anti-black colonialism continue to inform our modern world.
Colonialism and imperialism are often thought to be distant memories, whether they're glorified in Britain's collective nostalgia or taught as a sin of the past in history classes. This idea is bolstered by the emergence of India, China, Argentina and other non-western nations as leading world powers. Multiculturalism, immigration and globalization have led traditionalists to fear that the west is in decline and that white people are rapidly being left behind; progressives and reactionaries alike espouse the belief that we live in a post-racial society.
But imperialism, as Kehinde Andrews argues, is alive and well. It's just taken a new form: one in which the U.S. and not Europe is at the center of Western dominion, and imperial power looks more like racial capitalism than the expansion of colonial holdings. The International Monetary Fund, World Bank, World Trade Organization and even the United Nations are only some of these modern mechanisms of Western imperialism. Yet these imperialist logics and tactics are not limited to just the west or to white people, as in the neocolonial relationship between China and Africa. Diving deep into the concepts of racial capitalism and racial patriarchy, Andrews adds nuance and context to these often over-simplified narratives, challenging the right and the left in equal measure.
Andrews takes the reader from genocide to slavery to colonialism, deftly explaining the histories of these phenomena, how their justifications are linked, and how they continue to shape our world to this day. The New Age of Empire is a damning indictment of white-centered ideologies from Marxism to neoliberalism, and a reminder that our histories are never really over.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Andrews (Back to Black), a professor of Black studies at Birmingham City University, examines in this wide-ranging and scholarly account how the legacies of "genocide, slavery and colonialism" shape the modern world. He blames Enlightenment thinkers such as Immanuel Kant and John Locke for "justifying White supremacy through scientific rationality," and argues that non-European cultures have contributed significantly more to human knowledge than most Westerners realize. The contemporary wealth of the U.S. and England were made possible by the genocide of Indigenous peoples in the Americas and the Caribbean and by the transatlantic slave trade, Andrews contends, and he sees China's financing of infrastructure projects in Angola, Congo, and Zambia in exchange for "almost monopolistic control" of those countries' natural resources as an update on the old system of imperial exploitation. Meanwhile, neoliberalism ("the most advanced stage of development of the new age of empire") and the gutting of social welfare in the 1980s has subjected citizens of the U.S. and U.K. to rising inequality and substandard health care, inflamed racial tensions, and contributed to both countries' mismanagement of the Covid-19 pandemic. Skillfully interweaving economics, politics, and history to debunk popular narratives of social progress, this searing takedown hits home.
Customer Reviews
Racism is everything
An engaging, hard hitting book full of a lot of perceptive truths, yet ultimately frustrating with Kehinde Andrews’ nihilistic and grim vision of the world - one he accepts and totally embraces.
Andrews gives short shrift to all development in the world prior to the colonial era. He instead focuses on a detailed and scathing historical assessment of economic development with some smattering on Western thought with the ‘conquest’ of the Americas and Africa then followed by the economic ‘freedom’ unleashed by the Industrial Revolution. Most of Andrews’ ire is directed at the UK and the US as the main perpetrator, beneficiaries and proponents of Whiteness. And those two nations and the rest of the West can attribute all of their success to being built on genocide, slavery and colonial exploitation that is still present today.
Overall, while the book makes a number of accurate points on the sheer pervasiveness of racism, it is just a litany of that one note. And, unfortunately, as such it is very much a stereotype of the criticism of Critical Race Theory - when only and everything is seen through the prism of race and racism, then one wind up with a distorted vision of the world with blinders on. That may be Andrews ‘truth’ yet it is far from being shared by many, many people.