The Africans: A Triple Heritage
Ali A. Mazrui
Africa as the meeting ground of three civilizations.
Written to accompany a BBC and PBS television series, the Kenyan political scientist argued that modern Africa is shaped by three overlapping legacies: indigenous tradition, Islam, and Western Christianity and capitalism. Wide-ranging and personal, the work drew strong reactions, including a public dispute in the United States over its critical view of the West. It brought African history and identity to a broad global audience.
Its legacy. Popularized a framework for understanding African identity.
- Author
- Ali A. Mazrui
- First published
- 1986
- Genre
- History
- Theme
- Pan-Africanism, Race and the Diaspora
More from Pan-Africanism, Race and the Diaspora
- The Souls of Black Folk — W.E.B. Du Bois
"The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line."
- The Black Jacobins — C.L.R. James
The Haitian Revolution told as the only slave revolt to build a nation.
- The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality — Cheikh Anta Diop
A claim that the pharaohs were Black, and that Greece borrowed from Africa.
- The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness — Paul Gilroy
Black identity as a ship in motion, not a flag over one homeland.