It's here! Browse the 2024 Penguin Christmas gift guide
The New Age of Empire

The New Age of Empire

How Racism and Colonialism Still Rule the World

Summary

"Kehinde Andrews is a crucial voice walking in a proud tradition of Black radical criticism and action" Akala

"An uncompromising account of the roots of racism today" Kimberlé Crenshaw

"This clear-eyed analysis insists upon the revolutionary acts of freedom we will need to break out of these systems of violence" Ibram X. Kendi



The New Age of Empire
takes us back to the beginning of the European Empires, outlining the deliberate terror and suffering wrought during every stage of the expansion, and destroys the self-congratulatory myth that the West was founded on the three great revolutions of science, industry and politics. Instead, genocide, slavery and colonialism are the key foundation stones upon which the West was built, and we are still living under this system today: America is now at the helm, perpetuating global inequality through business, government, and institutions like the UN, the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO.

The West is rich because the Rest is poor. Capitalism is racism. The West congratulations itself on raising poverty by increments in the developing world while ignoring the fact that it created these conditions in the first place, and continues to perpetuate them. The Enlightenment, which underlies every part of our foundational philosophy today, was and is profoundly racist. This colonial logic was and is used to justify the ransacking of Black and brown bodies and their land. The fashionable solutions offered by the white Left in recent years fall far short of even beginning to tackle the West's place at the helm of a racist global order.

Offering no easy answers, The New Age of Empire is essential reading to understand our profoundly corrupt global system. A work of essential clarity, The New Age of Empire is a groundbreaking new blueprint for taking Black Radical thought into the twenty-first century and beyond.

Reviews

  • Kehinde Andrews shines a light on the truth of our past and in doing so lights the way forward. Essential reading
    Owen Jones

About the author

Kehinde Andrews

Kehinde Andrews is the UK's first professor of Black Studies, at Birmingham City University where he led the establishment of the first Black Studies programme in Europe, the Chair of the Harambee Organisation of Black Unity and editor in chief of Make It Plain. He is the author of The Psychosis of Whiteness, The New Age of Empire: How Racism and Colonialism Still Rule the World, and Back to Black: Retelling Black Radicalism for the 21st Century.
Learn More

Sign up to the Penguin Newsletter

For the latest books, recommendations, author interviews and more