Africa in the world: capitalism, empire, nation-state

At the Second World War's end, it was clear that business as usual in colonized Africa would not resume.

W.E.B. Du Bois's 'The World and Africa' (1946) recognized the depth of the crisis that the war had brought to Europe, and to Europe's domination over much of the globe.

Du Bois believed that Africa's past provided lessons for its future, for international statecraft, and for humanity's mastery of social relations and commerce.

Cooper revisits a history in which Africans were both empire-builders and the objects of colonization, and participants in events that gave rise to global capitalism.