What were their lives like? 5.0 out of 5 stars This is a MUST for a History Buff!! Each story is anchored in the social and political history of the time. of London) presents the stories of 10 African men and women engaged in a variety of occupations, from trumpeter to trader. After viewing product detail pages, look here to find an easy way to navigate back to pages that interest you. An intriguing history of Africans in Tudor England.Kaufmann (Senior Research Fellow/Institute for Commonwealth Studies, Univ. This (along with many other works being produced at the moment) is a much needed corrective to the UK's mistaken belief that people of colour did not exist in this country until the mid-20th century. The author argues that the common perception that all Africans were enslaved by the British is erroneous and that Renaissance England had many free Africans who were part of the social fabric. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. This is an excellent book. I even went to see the recovered wreck of Mary Rose. It is a history that has been largely overlooked. She concentrates on 10 individuals, ranging widely in social class and location, from cities to the countryside, including a royal trumpeter, a porter, a silk weaver, and an independent single woman.
Full of pageantry and larger-than-life personalities, the period is a favorite of the Anglophilic world. There was far too much surmise and imagining of events that 'might have' taken place. An excellent recovery of a forgotten history, Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 9, 2018.
But the fact that they were present in numbers large enough to be noticed, means that British history needs to be viewed in a different light.
I think anyone would benefit from this book, I just purchased it in Kindle form and I will now pick it up as a hardcover as well. ', a thought-provoking account of 10 remarkable people, and a valuable corrective to some unthinking assumptions about both Tudor society and the role of racial minorities in English history. All we were taught was the lives of Kings and Queens. She found over 360 individuals of African origin living in England and Scotland in the years between 1500 and 1640 and uses the stories of some of them to expand on the world they lived in, using themes of navigation and piracy, colonisation, the slave trade, social hierarchy to paint a picture of Tudor life. This is history on the cutting edge of archival research but accessibly written and alive with human details and warmth. It was laid out in a way that non historians can easily read. ', 'Kaufmann's book is not only a fascinating and erudite exploration of race in Tudor England but also a vibrant, eminently readable and tender portrayal of individual lives. All rights reserved. It is largely padded out with historical detail about other people and events - largely the sort of stuff we get on those 'light' historical programmes on TV. Create your own unique website with customizable templates. Disabling it will result in some disabled or missing features. This account of people of African descent in Renaissance England overturns misconceptions, showing that “it is vital to understand that the British Isles have always been peopled with immigrants”. Twice! Read honest and unbiased product reviews from our users. 'rich and emblematic stories... Kaufmann brings her subjects to life [with] empathy tethered to fact and context... ' [a] consistently fascinating, historically invaluable book...The narrative is pacey, the research scrupulously thorough and the tone mercifully free of sermonising. • Black Tudors by Miranda Kaufmann is published by Oneworld (£18.99). We are gripped by their story. Black Tudors: Tudor England’s legendary history is a rich locus in the popular imagination. ', 'a fascinating look at a time before England’s involvement in the transatlantic slave trade made the dehumanization of African people the norm. These Africans had the same freedoms and constraints as everyone else in the kingdom, dependant not on their colour but on their skills, position in society and wealth. Black Tudors by Dr Miranda Kaufmann is an ambitious book loaded with little-known Tudor trivia that has long been overdue in the study of 16th century England, and fortunately for the future of this little-explored topic, the result is a fascinating production of the utmost quality that takes a close look at ten individuals who could, quite accurately, be considered Black Tudors. Reviewed in the United States on November 16, 2017 This is the first time I have real actual information pertaining to Blacks in England during the Tudor dynasty. ', ‘In a work of brilliant sleuthing, engagingly written, Kaufmann reclaims long-forgotten lives and fundamentally challenges our preconceptions of Tudor and Jacobean attitudes to race and slavery.’, John Cooper, Senior Lecturer in History, University of York, and author of, ‘A brilliant example of how to use the most detailed kind of archival data to present a broadly accessible picture of the past, and one which has enormous relevance to the present controversies about immigration and diversity.'. Since they left few documents behind, Kaufmann pieces together their histories from church records, references in various documents by influential Englishmen, literary works, paintings, and other sources.
Miranda Kaufmann traces their tumultuous paths in the Tudor and Stuart eras, uncovering a rich array of detail about their daily lives and how they were treated.
Her work will appeal to historians and anthropologists alike, and is a must read for anyone seeking more information on the role of minorities in history. Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 28, 2018. It is largely padded out with historical detail about other people and events - largely the sort of stuff we get on those 'light' historical programmes on TV. Prime members enjoy Free Two-Day Shipping, Free Same-Day or One-Day Delivery to select areas, Prime Video, Prime Music, Prime Reading, and more. One review of the Black Bay places it side by side with the Rolex classic—referring to them as a Splurge or Steal.
With a few exceptions, we know little about their lives since just their names and ethnicity is all that has been recorded about them. It also analyzes reviews to verify trustworthiness.
"Black Tudors: The Untold Story" by Miranda Kaufmann does an excellent job of highlighting the African presence in Britain during Tudor times. I learned very little from it and was surprised that the reviews printed on the cover and inside the book - praised the detailed research of the writer. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 28, 2019, Basically a collection of stories of black tudors -- interesting from a historical point of view but I didn't find the structure or storytelling element of the writing very engaging. © 2008-2020, Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates, See all details for Black Tudors: The Untold Story. Advance reviews of Black Tudors: The Untold Story ‘Intricately researched and brilliantly written…Through these biographies Kaufmann paints a wider panorama of a Renaissance England that was globally aware and in contact with Africa and her people.
How were they treated? The detail she unearths brings to life those absent from the pages of history.
Menu. the wonderfully named Reasonable Blackman, Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 22, 2018. Meticulous research draws on sources from letters to legal papers, and Kaufmann also reflects on the challenges: “Fleshing out these biographies from the meagre documentation that remains is not easy, but it is a mission that must be undertaken if we are to reclaim their stories”. Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 28, 2017. ', a fascinating book, which brings a sadly neglected part of our history to life, and grinds no ideological axes in the process.'. Fast, FREE delivery, video streaming, music, and much more. © 2020 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies.
These are the questions that Miranda Kaufmann perceptively probes in Black Tudors. Why and how did they come to England?
There were hundreds of Africans in Tudor England – and none of them slaves: Black Tudors, Miranda Kaufmann, review 5. The book was extremely disappointing on historical detail about black Tudors though the book purports to be about that very topic. We didn’t hear about any commoners, so this book is a blessed relief – it is an in-depth look at ordinary people in Tudor Britain who were Black.