Africa in/and Geographies of the Enlightenment.

The article focuses on Rebekah Mitsein's book, *African Impressions: How African Worldviews Shaped the British Geographical Imagination across the Early Enlightenment*, which explores the representation of Africa in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century British literature. Mitsein argues that British perceptions of Africa were significantly influenced by African self-representations, particularly from the political and economic elite, challenging the notion that these representations were merely fanciful. The book examines how narratives and images from Africa shaped British literature and geographical understanding, particularly through the analysis of texts by authors such as William Shakespeare, Aphra Behn, and Daniel Defoe. Mitsein's work emphasizes the importance of African contributions to European cultural and intellectual history, revealing a complex interplay between African and European narratives. [Extracted from the article]