What are the origins of inequality? World history is here seen through the lens of production: before agriculture, agriculture without and then with cities, after agriculture, each phase marked by revolutions. How does Africa relate to this scheme?

V. Gordon Childe What Happened in History (1942)

Michael E Smith ‘V Gordon Childe and the urban revolution’ (2009 pdf)

Why these lectures are improvised. World history seen from an African perspective. Why this is needed. African critiques of European capitalist imperialism from the viewpoints of nationalism and socialism.

Cheikh Anta Diop The African Origins of Civilisation (1974)

Walter Rodney How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972)

Bernal’s critique of Eurocentric history as a racist project of social exclusion. The Eastern Mediterranean distorted by regional specialization. The urban revolution seen in wider comparative perspective. Jack Goody’s application of Childe to Africa is rooted in production and population.

Martin Bernal Black Athena: The Afro-asiatic roots of classical civilization (1987)

http://thememorybank.co.uk/2012/01/10/jack-goodys-vision-of-history-and-african-development-today/

What are the origins of inequality? World history is here seen through the lens of production: before agriculture, agriculture without and then with cities, after agriculture, each phase marked by revolutions. How does Africa relate to this scheme?

V. Gordon Childe What Happened in History (1942)

Michael E Smith ‘V Gordon Childe and the urban revolution’ (2009 pdf)

Why these lectures are improvised. World history seen from an African perspective. Why this is needed. African critiques of European capitalist imperialism from the viewpoints of nationalism and socialism.

Cheikh Anta Diop The African Origins of Civilisation (1974)

Walter Rodney How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972)

Dubois’ great assemblage aims to touch hearts and not just minds. The issue of the 20th century is the ‘colour line’. The meaning of ‘soul’, ‘veil’ and ‘double consciousness’. Dubois’ later history takes him from integration to separation. Reflections on the history of the abolition movement and Panafricanism.

W E B Dubois The Souls of Black Folk (1903)

Diversion on method: scaling up the self, scaling down the world (Shakespeare, Gandhi). The Lewis model is traced to theories of development that hinge on the rural-urban division of labour. A racist world society divided between rich and poor countries was formed c.1900, not by centuries of European colonialism.

W Arthur Lewis The Evolution of the International Economic Order (1978)

Recording curtailed (see unpublished essays above). C L R James synthesizes Western Marxism and postcolonial theory. His history of the Haitian revolution brought it back into world history and inspired his own vision of the anti-colonial and world revolutions. (Recording curtailed)

C L R James The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo revolution (second edition 1963)

http://thememorybank.co.uk/2010/03/20/waiting-for-emancipation-slavery-and-freedom-in-west-africa/

http://thememorybank.co.uk/2011/02/07/clr-james-and-the-idea-of-an-african-revolution/

Diversion on method: scaling up the self, scaling down the world (Shakespeare, Gandhi). The Lewis model is traced to theories of development that hinge on the rural-urban division of labour. A racist world society divided between rich and poor countries was formed c.1900, not by centuries of European colonialism.

W Arthur Lewis The Evolution of the International Economic Order (1978)

Dubois’ great assemblage aims to touch hearts and not just minds. The issue of the 20th century is the ‘colour line’. The meaning of ‘soul’, ‘veil’ and ‘double consciousness’. Dubois’ later history takes him from integration to separation. Reflections on the history of the abolition movement and Panafricanism.

W E B Dubois The Souls of Black Folk (1903)