This paper investigates the relationship between West Africa social and political movements in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth centuries, especially the Sudanese jihad, and the processes of Western global transformation during the same period. It opens a dialogue with the work of Eric Hobsbawn and Eugene Genovese, critically analyzing their approach of the influence of Western Africa's societies on the events taking place in the Atlantic world through the so-called "age of revolutions." The article also questions the perspective adopted in studies of slave rebellions in the Americas, which barely consider the African context, and highlight only the influence of Western Europe's revolutionary changes. In that sense, the paper also questions the historiography of the "Black Atlantic" emergence, which does not attribute due importance to determining factors originating within Africa, crucial in that process.
jihad; slavery; resistance; Western Africa; age of revolutions.
