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A new, transformative history – in Tudor times there were Black people living and working in Britain, and they were free ‘This is history on the cutting edge of archival research, but accessibly written and alive with human details and warmth.’ David Olusoga, author of Black and British: A Forgotten History A black porter publicly whips a white Englishman in the hall of a Gloucestershire manor house. A Moroccan woman is baptised in a London church. Henry VIII dispatches a Mauritanian diver to salvage lost treasures from the Mary Rose. From long-forgotten records emerge the remarkable stories of Africans who lived free in Tudor England… They were present at some of the defining moment...
A transformative history - in Tudor times there were Africans living and working in Britain, and they were free
Shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize 2018 A Book of the Year for the Evening Standard and the Observer A black porter publicly whips a white Englishman in the hall of a Gloucestershire manor house. A Moroccan woman is baptised in a London church. Henry VIII dispatches a Mauritanian diver to salvage lost treasures from the Mary Rose. From long-forgotten records emerge the remarkable stories of Africans who lived free in Tudor England… They were present at some of the defining moments of the age. They were christened, married and buried by the Church. They were paid wages like any other Tudors. The untold stories of the Black Tudors, dazzlingly brought to life by Kaufmann, will transform how we see this most intriguing period of history.
Just over a century ago, Our Island Story entranced a nation's children by telling their history in stories. Short, simply written chapters, packed with living characters and thrilling action - and illustrated with vivid colour pictures - illuminate all the main events from Britain's earliest days to the end of Victoria's reign. And its glorious fusion of myth and legend with sober fact - Canute and King Arthur with Cromwell and the Indian Mutiny - is as seductive now as it ever was. 'I was given H.E. Marshall's Our Island Story at Christmas 1936 and I've still got that copy. It was a direct inspiration for me in my career as a historian' Antonia Fraser 'It is written in a way that really captured my imagination and which nurtured my interest in the history of our great nation' David Cameron 'One of the most influential works of history of the 20th century' Times Educational Supplement
Expanding upon the 2017 Radio 4 series ‘Britain’s Black Past’, this book presents those stories and analyses through the lens of a recovered past. Even those who may be familiar with some of the materials will find much that they had not previously known, and will be introduced to people, places, and stories brought to light by new research. In a time of international racial unrest and migration, it is important not to lose sight of similar situations that took place in an earlier time. In chapters written by scholars, artists, and independent researchers, readers will learn of an early musician, the sales of slaves in Scotland, the grave—now a shrine—of a black enslaved boy left to die in Morecombe Bay, of a country estate owned by a mixed-race slave owner, and of the two strikingly different people who lived in a Bristol house that is now a museum. Black sailors, political activists, memoirists, appear in these pages, but the book also re-examines living history, in the form of modern plays, television programmes, and genealogical sleuthing. Through them, Britain’s Black Past is not only presented anew, but shown to be very much alive in our own time.
LONGLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE 'An incredible work of scholarship' Sathnam Sanghera Through the story of his own family’s history as slave and plantation owners, Alex Renton looks at how we owe it to the present to understand the legacy of the past. When British Caribbean slavery was abolished across most of the British Empire in 1833, it was not the newly liberated who received compensation, but the tens of thousands of enslavers who were paid millions of pounds in government money. The descendants of some of those slave owners are among the wealthiest and most powerful people in Britain today. Blood Legacy explores what inheritance – political, economic, moral and spiritual – has been passed to the descendants of the slave owners and the descendants of the enslaved. He also asks, crucially, how the former – himself among them – can begin to make reparations for the past.
In Black London, Gretchen Gerzina shows how by the eighteenth century the work of all kinds of artists - Hogarth, Reynolds, Gillray, Rowlandson - as well as work by poets, playwrights and novelists, reveals to sharp eyes that not everyone in that elegant, vigorous, earthy world was white. In fact there were black pubs and clubs, balls for blacks only, black churches, and organizations for helping blacks out of work or in trouble. Many blacks were prosperous and respected: George Bridgtower was a concert violinist who knew Beethoven; Ignatius Sancho corresponded with Laurence Sterne; Francis Williams studied at Cambridge. Others, like Jack Beef, were successful stewards or men of business. Bu...
Family tree -- Glossary of names -- Timeline -- Map -- A note on money -- Prologue -- Book one: The bastard son -- Book two: The obedient nephew -- Book three: The prince alone -- Afterword: Alessandro's ethnicity.
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The British country house has long been regarded as the jewel in the nation's heritage crown. But the country house is also an expression of wealth and power, and as scholars reconsider the nation's colonial past, new questions are being posed about these great houses and their links to Atlantic slavery.This book, authored by a range of academics and heritage professionals, grew out of a 2009 conference on 'Slavery and the British Country house: mapping the current research' organised by English Heritage in partnership with the University of the West of England, the National Trust and the Economic History Society. It asks what links might be established between the wealth derived from slavery and the British country house and what implications such links should have for the way such properties are represented to the public today.Lavishly illustrated and based on the latest scholarship, this wide-ranging and innovative volume provides in-depth examinations of individual houses, regional studies and critical reconsiderations of existing heritage sites, including two studies specially commissioned by English Heritage and one sponsored by the National Trust.