Bringing Empire In: Reading Black Reconstruction through the lens of Darkwater

• In Event: Rethinking Theories of Gender, Race, and Sexuality from Anti-, De-, and Postcolonial Perspectives

Abstract

Scholars recognize Black Reconstruction for its critique of racial capitalism (Burawoy
2022; Hammer & Itzigsohn 2025; Henry & Danns 2020; Levenson and Paret 2023;
Singh 2022). Furthermore, other scholars call for a more nuanced analysis of the
epistemological history of critiques of racial capitalism; arguing this history must be put
in conversation with global anti-colonial political movements (Levenson & Paret 2023).
In this piece, Du Bois’ critique of racial capitalism, and more specifically his criticism of
Northern industrialists’ role in U.S. reconstruction, will be put in dialogue with his
rebuttal of those same industrialists’ role in supporting the move to indirect rule in British
Africa following WWI. An analysis of archival sources of the Phelps Stokes Fund, as
well as the text of Dark Water (1920) and Black Reconstruction (1935), reveals Du Bois
developed his analysis of the outcome of black reconstruction in the United States from
what he witnessed in the British West African colonies following WWI.

Author

• Julia Bates, Sacred Heart University