Hobson, with whom he attended the “First Universal Races Congress” held at the University of London in 1911, Du Bois described this catastrophe as “the new imperialism.” While Pliny’s proclamation has been historically verified through any number of events, including, the essay argues, the first welding of iron and the emergence of Christianity as a world religion, Du Bois’s interest is the comparatively recent event of Europe’s colonial expansion into Africa, a “prime cause” of the World War and a world-historical catastrophe of “lying treaties, rivers of rum, murder, assassination, mutilation, rape, and torture have marked the progress of Englishman, German, Frenchman, and Belgian on the dark continent.” Like J.A. Quoting Pliny the Elder’s pronouncement that out of Africa there is always something new-“Semper novi quid ex Africa”-Du Bois opens “The African Roots of War” by remarking that “the Roman proconsul…voiced the verdict of forty centuries.” Published in the May 1915 issue of Atlantic Monthly, Du Bois’s essay makes the case that the cause of the then ongoing World War was to be sought in Africa-and, indeed, in the advent of something new in Africa. Democratic Despotism and The New Imperialism In my remarks on Thursday, I will develop this last point a bit further and spell out my interpretation of Du Bois’s notion of abolition democracy. They bear on our forthcoming 13/13 discussion, because Du Bois understands democratic despotism to have been the world-historical successor to the shipwreck of abolition democracy. They focus on Du Bois’s conception of democratic despotism. Note to Reader: I have excerpted the following remarks from a manuscript-in-progress on Du Bois’s Political Aesthetics.
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