The New Age of Empire: How Racism and Colonialism Still Rule the World

A damning exploration of the many ways in which the effects and logic of anti-black colonialism continue to inform our modern world written by the authoritative Dr. Kehinde Andrews - an Associate Professor in Sociology at the School of Social Sciences at Birmingham City University and developed the Europe's first Black Studies undergraduate degree. 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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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. This is a fascinating, accessible and eye-opening exploration of a hard truth: we have not progressed as much as we would like to believe. Seamlessly and skilfully weaving history, economics and politics in order to back up his points and debunk the false narratives, this is a thorough and provocative, sharp-sighted and masterful dismantling of the social narratives that we continue to perpetuate without question or challenge. It's time for the world to wake up to some wholly uncomfortable truths as then, and only then, can we try to change that truth. Highly recommended.

An interesting read to say the least. I do admire Kehinde Andrews for not shying away from controversy. His writings are very sharp and provocative, and often come with a truth which is difficult to swallow.<br /><br />He details the racist origins of the West, arguing that a lot of the economic benefits we have today rest on colonialism and slavery. The entire system of Capitalism is built on 'White Supremely' according to Andrews. He also details scepticism about the IMF and World Bank as examples of how Capitalism keeps Africa in its place. Furthermore, he discusses how China are likely to continue in this supremacist logic inherited from 'Whiteness'. He hints that Black people must revolt without the help of White people against this terrible system. He doesn't say what the alternative is, nor how the revolution should take place. But nonetheless, a passionate revolution is needed.<br /><br />I personally learnt a lot from this book, there is a lot that I appreciate about Andrews. He doesn't settle for superficiality. He is passionate about real issues affecting real people, not just slogans and a guilt-tripping Instagram post. I think it's easy to brush over Britain's past deeds when they are unpleasant, so found it helpful glancing into the mirror, as it were. Kehinde rightly shows the damage done by slavery and colonialism, and how more action is needed to make the world a fairer place. I think it's important that it is brought to attention that racism has led to such poverty across the globe. Also, the racism on an individual level has been symptomatic from past superiority-complexes. It is important we have an awareness of this history as we continue to tackle racism. I think it's almost undeniable that more creative international economic solutions need pursuing to relieve the poverty in various nations be relieved, considering the West are at fault for this. <br /><br />Although there is much to be appreciative of, the book is lacking in certain ways. Western philosophy is effectively discarded by Andrews as inseparable from the racism held by philosophers. This displays absolutely appalling logic. The idea that we can't appreciate Kant's categorical imperative because of other racist opinions doesn't make sense at all! Kant and other Enlightenment thinkers have been incredibly helpful in developing an array of wonderful ideas. Much like I can appreciate Andrews even though he's wrong on a lot, I'm sure he can learn to do the same with Kant. <br /><br />Perhaps if he respected the Enlightenment philosophers slightly more, he may have encountered Hume's dictum that one can't deride an 'ought' from an 'is'. Andrews recognises present racism and awful historical examples of it. But then jumps extremely quickly to the idea that we ought to get rid of the entire system! Nothing short of revolution is an acceptable argument to Andrews as the System is irredeemable. I'm just not convinced by this enormous jump to conclusions. I did find it very ideologically charged, and there is of course a different perspective to most of what he's written. Alas, that is to be with any book arguing a specific point of view.<br /><br />It is nonetheless worth a read. No one will agree with every word, but I'm pretty sure he wouldn't want them to. Andrews is great at making people think, and I was challenged by this book.

An extremely powerful book. Disturbing, but absolutely necessary during these times. Highly recommended. <br /><br />

5 stars. Standing ovation. Emmy, Grammy, Golden Globe!

4.25|5<br /><br />? My 600th read ?

Absolutely incredible, a jaw-dropping walk through the history of genocide and slavery that led to the current western systems we have today. Very much an eye-opening read about how white supremacy is built into everyday lives and just how much white people benefit from the exploitation of African and Asian lives to the modern day. My 'favourite' part was learning about how loans from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund underdeveloped countries and keep them reliant on the West, like a modern form of a colony.

Chapter 1,7 and 8 were a bit too long, his points could have been made in a paragraph. I HATED how many times he said „the chickens coming home to roost“ in the final chapter. The rest and the ideas therein are fantastic!!<br /><br />* racialised patriarchy<br />* higher child mortality = women need to reproduce more to guarantee some survival. Lowering child mortality = freeing women from reproduction and allowing autonomy<br />* Kant was super racist in his reasons for moral existence. The enlightenment arose during the time of peak slave trade, thus the enlightenment has racism at its core.<br />* chapter 2 on genocide<br />* king leopold of germany and killings in the congo deeply remind me of Colonisers and Colonised<br />* “The Nazis did not undermine the governing principles of the west, but took them to their extreme” the western system was the problem all along not the solution<br />* Western powers also created hierarchies of race within black africa. Ex.Rwanda (Genocide) and Burundi stirred up rivalries and wars. Racialisation and instiutionalisation of tribal diffrrence by Europeans are the ground work for current violence between: Tutsi, Bantu, Hamit and Hudu<br />* The west was founded by genocide in the americas and carribean and sustained with colonial slaughter around the world. <br />* The roots of genocide in Nazi Germany and the Rwandan Genocide are a product of the west which could only have happend in the house built upon the violence of enligtenment thought.<br />* Christmas rebellion in Haiti in 1804 = fear = abandon trade in africa due to fear if carribean revolt. <br />* Rebellion and revolution (heightend risk) and lowering price of sugar (lower cost, competition from india) = in danger of collapse and west depends on welath from slavery and that welath stays with us till today.<br />* Finance cut its teeth on the slave trade, for example Lloyd Bank became rich by ensuring slaves. Sugar &amp; Slave Labour<br />* immaculate conception story of british industry. many sectors of industry only had a market because of slavery = produce wealth, power and markets needed to fuel the industrial revolution<br />* End slave trade = british saw they had enough slaves to go on forever, but french did not = opportunity to gain market supremacy<br />* salvery not started by west, but transported to new heights. Arab slave markets inspired Europeans, Tunisian man from 15th century origin of inferiority of black man = west took racial ideas from arab world and built into political and economic system in order to exploit the globe and build the modern world<br />* Wealth from the colonialisation of africa allowed the west to have the capital to move into asia and created our current cheap labour force in asian markets<br />* the same commodities (drops) that drove colonialism fuel the global economy today. ex: sugar, rubber, oil palm<br />* Robbing India via taxation of colonies<br />* when african countries gained independence they were left with insufficient infrastructure such as hospitals and trains for their populations, as their former colonisers were not interested in this development<br />* Under British Rule, India went from being one of the richest countries in the world to one of the most underdeveloped in the world<br />

While the book clearly shows the crimes committed by Western nations in terms of racism, genocide, slavery and colonialism, it progressively loses its objectivity in becoming racist in reverse only looking at racism shown by the great names of the Enlightenment but denying their contribution. Same comment regarding the Industrial revolution. It is a pity as it could have been a good book with a strong message if it had stayed objective.<br />A small additional remark (though it didn’t affect my rating) the author refers repeatedly to oil palm while the correct term is palm oil.

Shockingly racist ranting. Factually incorrect and confused in the extreme.<br /><br />A terrible piece of scholarship promoting the racial essentialist ideas of the far right.<br /><br />Shameful rubbish.

One of the consequences of the growing profile of ‘race’ as site of political and socio-cultural struggle has been an increasing awareness that recognises the historical bases of that struggle and an admission, in some circles at least, that there is a structural and systemic issue here, <i>not</i> just the retrograde views of unenlightened individuals. There’s still a long way to go, and one of the major problems with the current approach is a general failure to recognise the links between historical and current circumstances. Part of the problem here has been the power of the ‘post-race’ fantasy that got its biggest boost with Obama’s election, but across much of Europe plays into a post-Imperial nostalgia sustained in some settings by myths of republican citizenship. This is in addition to the kinds of White Supremicist and neo-fascist politics we see associated in different balances with Trump, Modi, Bolsanaro, Johnson and others of their ilk.<br /><br />It is in this context that we have seen the growing profile of new critical voices, including in the UK the sociologist Kehinde Andrews, whose <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39105982-back-to-black" rel="nofollow noopener">previous book</a> explored the currency and space for the Black radical tradition in contemporary politics, whereas here he turns, in a more internationalist shift, to the contemporary political dynamics of ‘race’. These two texts are very much part of an attempt, it seems, to rethink and reassert to place of race in contemporary theory and practice. It does so by weaving together the intellectual bases of ‘race’ with the structures and practices of oppression. <br /><br />There is a widely recognised truth in studies of imperialism and colonialism as well as of racialized thinking that notions of race hierarchies as structural and inherent did not bring about colonialism, slavery and genocide, but that ideas of ‘race’ were systematised and made scientific to justify those practices. So while we look at the 16th century debates between Bartolomé de las Casas and Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, the Valladolid debate of 1550, over whether Indigenous Americans had souls and therefore should not be enslaved, we see that they became a justification for the enslavement of people from Africa who were deemed not to have souls – that is, to be less than human (to his credit, later in his life it seems that de las Casas shifted position to oppose enslavement of Africans also). We’re not so good in this literature at identifying how those views became systematised, so it a welcome move to see Andrews engage with both the historical literature pointing to the long-standing existence of racialized hierarchies before systemic enslavement, while also exploring the analyses of philosophical thought that highlight the adherence to racist outlooks among Enlightenment thinkers. That is to say, those views of hierarches of race were woven into the conventions of European thought: while this does not necessarily invalidate many of the insights of Kant and Hume and Herder and their ilk, it does rather undermine their universalism of them all and the legitimacy of many. <br /><br />Focusing on this issue is important to the argument Andrews is making because it allows him, correctly, to argue that these racialized outlooks are woven into the fundamentals of European philosophy and consequently into wider social and political thinking. It is this move that gives his compelling case for systemic and structural continuities between the genocide (as the basis of settler colonialism), slavery (as essential to the formation of capitalism) and colonialism of the era of high empire to the new Imperialism that sees not only many of the players of that era across the Euro-American nexus still acting as key players but also the emergence of new forces whose outlooks are linked to those Enlightenment hierarchies, including many in the BRICS grouping. <br /><br />It is a powerful, revisionist, analysis in that there is little in the way of new source material; rather he does as many of us in scholarly work do – he goes back to what we know and asks new questions of it. This approach leaves him, as many of the rest of us who also work in this manner, open to the criticism of having made errors, when new questions lead to new and different answers that might appear to be erroneous. There are however some turns of phrase that did seem to have problematic implications – so for instance in reference to the New Zealand government’s settlements with Māori over breaches of a Treaty between Māori and the Crown (p82) it seems that that that settlements date back only to 1863, not 1840 when the Treaty was signed – but that is because of the phrasing as it relates to the <i>specific</i> settlement Andrews is citing. A good editor and fact checker should have picked this up.<br /><br />Despite the argument’s power there are two aspects that continue to unsettle me. The first is one of emphasis and tone, where the rigour of his focus on questions of race risks, in places, becoming reductive – that is, race becomes a monolithic explanation to the exclusion of all else. This is, as noted, an issue of tone rather than the structure or form of the argument, but it has the effect of weakening a powerful case. The second aspect is related and is one of structure. The introduction includes a valuable discussion of racial patriarchy alongside one of racial capitalism and notes the importance of both capitalism and patriarchy to regimes of global and localised power. However, this discussion seems to reduce intersectionality to a question of gender, and there almost exclusively to an issue for women, and then marginalises patriarchal dynamics by noting “I have not specifically engaged I how the application of empire is gendered” (p xxvi). This seems to be a poor presentation of intersectional thinking (his discussion of patriarchy is good, it’s the apparent limitation of the intersectional <i>only</i> to gender that is the problem) and suggests that the reductive tone has a structural element – akin to the problem of some Marxist thinking that prioritises class over all else and leave race and gender to be dealt with after the revolution. <br /><br />So, as powerful, coherent (as in with well integrated components) and consistent the argument is, it remains partial and his case needs to be considered alongside other work such as Alexander Anievas and Kerem Nişancioğlu’s <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23679563-how-the-west-came-to-rule" rel="nofollow noopener"> <i>How the West Came to Rule</i> </a>, Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin’s <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17262744-the-making-of-global-capitalism!" rel="nofollow noopener"> <i>The Making of Global Capitalism</i> </a>, Brenna Bhandar and Rafeef Ziadah’s edited collection <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/48588167-revolutionary-feminisms" rel="nofollow noopener"> <i>Revolutionary Feminisms</i> </a>, Lola Olufemi’s <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/48856308-feminism-interrupted" rel="nofollow noopener"> <i>Feminism Interrupted: Disrupting Power</i> </a> and Françoise Vergés <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54784246-a-decolonial-feminism" rel="nofollow noopener"> <i>A Decolonial Feminism</i> </a>. There is much to do in rethinking empire: this is an important contribution.