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A review by siria
Black Tudors: The Untold Story by
4.0
For most people, Black British history beings with the Windrush. Miranda Kaufmann's book shows that it extends much further back into history—not just into the earlier twentieth century, or even into the nineteenth, but into the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. There was a small but detectable population of people of African descent in Britain: west African royalty travelling to England for education, trumpeters at Scottish courts, divers and seamstresses and servants and sailors. They weren't slaves, but rather free people, who worked for others or owned their own small businesses; they were baptised into the Church of England and intermarried with English people. In both the big picture and the fine details, Kaufmann presents a history sure to undermine many assumptions about what the distant past looked like.
Black Tudors is not a set of conventional biographies. The book is as much about the contexts, the moment in history, within which these people lived as it is about them. As with the case with the vast majority of the inhabitants of early modern Britain, we have only scraps of knowledge about them and their lives. This may frustrate some readers, as may the fact that Kaufmann sometimes roams quite far from the subjects of her book. Despite that, however, this is still a fine, well-written book which adds appreciably to our knowledge of Britain's past.
Black Tudors is not a set of conventional biographies. The book is as much about the contexts, the moment in history, within which these people lived as it is about them. As with the case with the vast majority of the inhabitants of early modern Britain, we have only scraps of knowledge about them and their lives. This may frustrate some readers, as may the fact that Kaufmann sometimes roams quite far from the subjects of her book. Despite that, however, this is still a fine, well-written book which adds appreciably to our knowledge of Britain's past.