ABSTRACT
If one considers the current and increasing Afro-Asian economic vitality, development, political and diplomatic interfaces all together it seems Europe no longer is the object of reference, as Africa and Asia want to recover the civilizational advantage they had over Europe in the past. Given the technical, cultural, ethnical and historical contributions of Africa and Asia to the formation of the world, this Handbook aims at providing insights into the nature of interactions between Africa and Asia in historical and contemporary terms. How did Africa and Asia interactions evolve through time? How should we conceptualize Africa and Asia? How does scholarship interpret these interactions? How do Africa and Asia interact in today’s globalized world? The discussion in this Handbook includes diplomatic and political exchanges, economic and development connections, societal-level interactions, security and governance dynamics, academic insights and research networks over which African–Asian relations are played out. This introductory chapter questions whether it is too early for a non-Western Afro-Asian perspective of the world as opposed to the Western/Eurocentric–Orientalist view of history. However, to answer properly the above question, first one needs to conceptualize Africa and Asia’s interactions and place them within European capitalist ascendency. In this process, the first section of the chapter criticizes the Eurocentric view of history and analyzes why and how Africa and Asia lost their preeminence to Europe. The second section examines Asia and Africa counteractions (though failed) to Eurocentrism through Pan-Afro-Asianism. The third section examines the obstacles for an Afro-Asian view of the world through an analysis of the lack of education, in particular tertiary, which ultimately affects African and Asian studies as a discipline. Here, the focus is on the revitalization of public universities as a means to economic and social development and a necessary step towards building research networks. The fourth section analyzes the linkage of knowledge, agency in Africa and Asia for a desirable worldview, followed by an outline of the structure of the Handbook and summary of the chapters, and then concludes.
