The Dawning of the Apocalypse: The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy, Settler Colonialism, and Capitalism in the Long Sixteenth Century
The Dawning of the Apocalypse: The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy, Settler Colonialism, and Capitalism in the Long Sixteenth Century book cover

The Dawning of the Apocalypse: The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy, Settler Colonialism, and Capitalism in the Long Sixteenth Century

Paperback – June 30, 2020

Price
$26.73
Format
Paperback
Pages
304
Publisher
Monthly Review Press
Publication Date
ISBN-13
978-1583678725
Dimensions
5.5 x 0.68 x 8.25 inches
Weight
12.8 ounces

Description

"Gerald Horne is one of the great historians of our time. His scholarly erudition is impeccable and his revolutionary fervor is undeniable." ― Cornel West, public intellectual; author, Race Matters "Just ordered for summer reading." ― Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism Gerald Horne is John J. and Rebecca Moores Professor of African American History at the University of Houston. He has published more than three dozen books, including The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism and Jazz and Justice , both by Monthly Review Press.

Features & Highlights

  • Acclaimed historian Gerald Horne troubles America's settler colonialism's "creation myth"
  • August 2019 saw numerous commemorations of the year 1619, when what was said to be the first arrival of enslaved Africans occurred in North America. Yet in the 1520s, the Spanish, from their imperial perch in Santo Domingo, had already brought enslaved Africans to what was to become South Carolina. The enslaved people here quickly defected to local Indigenous populations, and compelled their captors to flee. Deploying such illuminating research,
  • The Dawning of the Apocalypse
  • is a riveting revision of the “creation myth” of settler colonialism and how the United States was formed. Here, Gerald Horne argues forcefully that, in order to understand the arrival of colonists from the British Isles in the early seventeenth century, one must first understand the “long sixteenth century”– from 1492 until the arrival of settlers in Virginia in 1607.During this prolonged century, Horne contends, “whiteness” morphed into “white supremacy,” and allowed England to co-opt not only religious minorities but also various nationalities throughout Europe, thus forging a muscular bloc that was needed to confront rambunctious Indigenes and Africans. In retelling the bloodthirsty story of the invasion of the Americas, Horne recounts how the fierce resistance by Africans and their Indigenous allies weakened Spain and enabled London to dispatch settlers to Virginia in 1607. These settlers laid the groundwork for the British Empire and its revolting spawn that became the United States of America.

Customer Reviews

Rating Breakdown

★★★★★
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Most Helpful Reviews

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A "Must Have" for the personal library.

Horne's account of the development of "whiteness" is deep and engaging. His qualitative examination of slavery as an institution practiced by the Ottomans, Spain, Portugal, England, and the U.S. provides the reader with an insight that few other academics discussing the matter provide. I can not help but recall Sakai's "Settlers" and Allen's "The Invention of the White Race" while engaging with Horne's work. There is also more than a passing similarity with Losurdoin terms of prose and critical assessment of European whiteness and/as religious radicalism.

If there is a complaint it involves Horne's non-sequential use of the temporal context to make his points. This may be more of a comprehension failure on my part, but sentences or paragraphs jumping from say the 15th century, then to the 12th, then to the 14th or some other were tough to follow; though grasping the points being made is worth the work.

I really cannot recommend this work more.
10 people found this helpful
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FINALLY ANSWERED

For years I wondered why the ancients anticipated with such horror the idea of a person’s dead body lying unburied a prey to birds and beasts. Since they’re dead anyway what’s the difference I thought. Then I read in Gerald Horne’s breezy history of the long sixteenth century, The Dawning of the Apocalypse, that after the Spanish in Florida massacred the French Huguenots, the beard and skin of the Huguenot leader, Jean Ribaut, was “ sent to His Catholic Majesty, and his [Jean’s] head split into quarters.” (p.111). Now since a human instinctively regards its body as a unity, anticipating a piece of it flying south in the gut of a gull, a piece winding north in the stomach of a snake, and especially, if only out of habit, trying to keep track of four pieces of a head would probably give anyone, ancient or modern, an instant headache.
5 people found this helpful
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Roots of Slavery

How it is being said for ALL to overstand how and why
4 people found this helpful
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Best author on the true historical nature of this world

Good author he is a author that gets his information from real documents. Diaries, maps etc. he doesn’t base is research on hyperbole.
2 people found this helpful