The Second Emancipation (eBook)

Nkrumah, Pan-Africanism, and Global Blackness at High Tide

Howard W. French (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025
512 Seiten
Liveright (Verlag)
9781324092469 (ISBN)

Infos

Named one of the Most Anticipated Books of 2025 by Foreign PolicyHoward Frenchs The Second Emancipation stands the second half of the last century on its geopolitical head. David Levering Lewis, winner of the Pulitzer PrizeFrom the acclaimed author of Born in Blackness comes an extraordinary account of Africas liberation from colonial oppression, a work that fundamentally reshapes our understanding of modern history.The Second Emancipation, the second work in a trilogy from best-selling author Howard W. French about Africas pivotal role in shaping world history, underscores Adam Hochschilds contention that French is a modern-day Copernicus. The titlereferring to a brief period beginning in 1957 when dozens of African colonies gained their freedompositions this liberation at the center of a movement of global Blackness, with one charismatic leader, Kwame Nkrumah (19091972), at its head.That so few people today know about Nkrumah is an omission that French demonstrates is typical of our deliberate neglect of Africas enormous role in the birth of the modern world. Determined to re-create Nkrumahs life as an epic twentieth-century story, The Second Emancipation begins with his impoverished, unheralded birth in the far-western region of Ghanas Gold Coast. But blessed with a deep curiosity, a young Nkrumah pursued an overseas education in the United States. Nowhere is Frenchs consummate style more vivid than in Nkrumahs early years in Depression-era America, especially in his mesmerizing portrait of a culturally effervescent Harlem that Nkrumah encountered in 1935 before heading to college. During his student years in Pennsylvania and later as an activist in London, Nkrumah became steeped in a renowned international Black intellectual milieuincluding Du Bois, Garvey, Fanon, Padmore, and C.L.R. James, who called him one of the greatest political leaders of our centuryand formed an ideology that readied him for an extraordinarily swift and peaceful rise to power upon his return to Ghana in 1947.Four years later, in a political landslide he engineered while imprisoned, Nkrumah stunned Britain by winning the first general election under universal franchise in Africa, becoming Ghanas first independent prime minister in 1957. As leader of a sovereign nation, Nkrumah wielded his influence to promote the liberation of the entire continent, pushing unity as the only pathway to recover from the damages of enslavement and subjugation. By the time national military and police forces, aided by the CIA, overthrew him in 1966, Nkrumahs radical belief in pan-African liberation had both galvanized dozens of nascent African states and fired a global agenda of Black power.In its dramatic recasting of the American civil rights story and in its tragic depiction of a continent that once exuded all the promise of a newly won freedom, The Second Emancipation becomes a generational work that positions Africa at the forefront of modern-day history.

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 26.8.2025
• Zusatzinfo: 16 pages of illustrations; 3 maps
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Biografien / Erfahrungsberichte
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Geschichte / Politik
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Ethnologie
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Pädagogik ► Sozialpädagogik
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie
• Schlagworte: Africa • african colony • African nationalism • authoritarianism • CIA • Colonization • Coup • freedom • Ghana • Gold Coast • Harlem • Independent • Kwame Nkrumah • liberation • pan-Africanism • Revolution • Socialism • World War I
• ISBN-13: 9781324092469 / 9781324092469