A review by poorlywordedbookreviews
Black Tudors: The Untold Story by

hopeful informative reflective slow-paced

3.0

Extensively researched, and pretty clear on what’s fact and what’s assumption / current best working theory - this book is the result of the authors PHD thesis, and it shows. There are some really interesting stories in here, but the depth of evidence is limited (hence why it’s been previously very easy for people to dismiss looking at black history in Britain pre the 17th century). So in trying to build an accessible history book, not a thesis, it’s been bulked out with a lot of general information about the Tudor period. If it’s all new to you, this might be fascinating, but for me I found it all a bit dry and unnecessary. 

   

It’s a shame this book wasn’t significantly shorter, focusing on the actual black tudors, and then more discussion on things such as; the opportunities to explore this history the on going digitisation of historical records is facilitating, the      challenges in interpretation of historical records and the influence of dominant narratives at the time of analysis, and more details on how these discoveries impact our evolving understanding of the development of the slave trade, racial politics over time, and current day repercussions. 

   

Read it is you didn’t realise there were black Africans and their descendants living non slave lives in Britain in the 1500s and / or know little of the periods culture and economics - but dip in and out to mitigate the dryness.