Europeans and Africans: Mutual Discoveries and First Encounters

In Europeans and Africans Michal Tymowski analyses the first contacts between the Portuguese and other Europeans and Western Africans in the 15th and early 16th centuries, the cultural and psychological as well as the organizational aspects of contacts. The territorial scope of the research encompasses the West African coast. Michal Tymowski describes and analyses the feelings and emotions which accompanied the contacts, of both Africans and Europeans, analyses the methods in which both parties communicated and organized the first encounters as well as the influence of these contacts on the cultures of both sides. The work is based on a variety of source material, written sources and works of African art, in which Africans’ opinions and emotions are reflected.

Michal Tymowski, born in 1941, is now a retired professor from the University of Warsaw. He was professor at the Université Paris IV-Sorbonne (1989-1993). He has published among others The Origins and Structures of Political Organizations in Pre-Colonial Black Africa (Mellen, 2009).