Born in Blackness, Howard W. French

Born in Blackness: Africa, Africans, and the Making of the Modern World, 1471 to the Second World War (2021)

A sweeping analysis of six centuries in which Africa played a crucial part in the creation of the modern world. It shows the rise and fall of mighty empires that are studied too little in the West, and it redraws the economic geography of the modern era in a way that is difficult to unsee.

Read it asking: If the wealth that funded European institutional development came substantially from elsewhere, what does that do to the story those institutions tell about their own origins?