Africa and the Making of the Modern World, now published in German by Klett-Cotta, is to be seen as an important contribution in the reinterpretation of historical facts and contexts. The striking thing is not only the many facts that French presents. It becomes clear relatively early in the reading that it is above all the concealment or negation of facts and contexts that have made possible a revelation of one of the darkest chapters of Western history. A central thesis of the book is that Africa with its resources of gold and forced laborers, over twelve million slaves and the market for textiles, made an unheard-of rise of the European seafaring nations such as Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands,…