Global Christianity and the Black Atlantic

Many Europeans saw Africa's colonization as an exhibition of European racial ascendancy. African Christians saw Africa's subjugation as a demonstration of European technological superiority. If the latter was the case, then the path to Africa's liberation ran through the development of a competitive African technology. In Global Christianity and the Black Atlantic , Andrew E. Barnes chronicles African Christians' turn to American-style industrial educationâparticularly the model that had been developed by Booker T. Washington at Alabama's Tuskegee Instituteâas a vehicle for Christian regeneration in Africa. Over the period 1880â1920, African Christians, motivated by Ethiopianism and itsconviction that Africans should be saved by other Africans, proposed and founded schools based upon the Tuskegee model. Barnes follows the tides of the Black Atlantic back to Africa when African Christians embraced the new education initiatives of African American Christians and Tuskegee as the most potent example of technological ingenuity. Building on previously unused African sources, the book traces the movements to establish industrial education institutes in cities along the West African coast and in South Africa, Cape Province, and Natal.As Tuskegee and African schools modeled in its image proved, peoples of African descent couldâand didâdevelop competitive technology. Thoughthe attempts by African Christians to create industrial education schools ultimatelyfailed, Global Christianity and the Black Atlantic demonstrates the ultimate success of transatlantic black identity andChristian resurgence in Africaat the turn of the twentieth century. Barnes' study documents how African Christians sought to maintain indigenous identity and agency in the face ofcolonial domination by the stateand even theEuropean Christian missions of the church.

...Barnes's exploration of Ethiopianism to tell a different story about industrialism, civilization, and modernity is noteworthy. His work challenges the field of religious history to highlight a cadre of African educators and leaders who traveled from Africa to the United States and back, a tale that will surely inspire more conversations. -- Jamil Drake -- Journal of Religion in Africa

Andrew E. Barnes is Associate Professor of History at Arizona State University.