Jean-Jacques Rousseau: The Division of Labour, the Politics of the Imagination and the Concept of Federal Government by Michael Sonenscher

Another feature of African Founders is the effective use Fischer makes of biography. A gifted storyteller, he unearths countless examples of Black people who emerged from slavery to fashion impactful lives for themselves and for those around them. These stories are compelling but context here is everything. For every Frederick Douglass or Harriet Tubman, there were countless others who remain unnamed, helpless victims of a system over which they had very little control. There were also dissenting voices, those for whom the American ideals of liberty and equality rang hollow, chief among them early Black nationalists. If anything, Fischer is inclined to downplay the significance of such voices. It is telling, for instance, that in his discussion of Paul Cuffe, an important figure in Black Massachusetts history, he makes no mention of Cuffe’s growing interest in Pan-Africanism, or, indeed, his brief flirtation with the American Colonization Society, a blatantly racist organization that sought to repatriate Black people to Africa.