Africans and Asians: Historiography and the Long View of Global Interaction

The view of globalization as the purview of a modern and Western hegemony is under challenge. Even among the most progressive of world historians, however, is to be found the oversight that precludes global agency by and interaction among certain peoples. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the treatments of Africa with the world and Africa within the world. In a move to decenter the dynamics of the dominant discourses, a consideration of agency and interaction among and between Africans and Asians is warranted. Here an interrogation of various primary sources and secondary works suggests new paths of inquiry that dispel Western and modern notions concerning the construction of the world and the roles of African and Asian interaction in that construction over the longue durée.