Black Tudors: The Untold Story

by Miranda Kaufmann Narrated by Corrie James

Overview

A black porter publicly whips a white English gentleman in a Gloucestershire manor house. A heavily pregnant African woman is abandoned on an Indonesian island by Sir Francis Drake. A Mauritanian diver is despatched to salvage lost treasures from the Mary Rose . . . Miranda Kaufmann reveals the absorbing stories of some of the Africans who lived free in Tudor England.

From long-forgotten records, remarkable characters emerge. They were baptised, married, and buried by the Church of England. They were paid wages like any other Tudors. Their stories, brought viscerally to life by Kaufmann, provide unprecedented insights into how Africans came to be in Tudor England, what they did there and how they were treated. A ground-breaking, seminal work, Black Tudors challenges the accepted narrative that racial slavery was all but inevitable and forces us to re-examine the seventeenth century to determine what caused perceptions to change so radically.

Editorial Reviews

David Olusoga

‘This is history on the cutting edge of archival research, but accessibly written and alive with human details and warmth. Black Tudors is a critical book that allows us to better understand an era that fascinates us like no other.’

The Times Leanda de Lisle

‘An absolute joy.’

John Guy

‘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.’

Times Literary Supplement

‘[The] audience will find itself in the hands of a historian of excellent investigative skills, who shows attention to detail, uses evidence with appropriate caution, and has the sensibility of a scholar.’

Sunday Telegraph

‘Fascinating.’

Sunday Times Dan Jones

‘Splendid... that rare thing – a work of history about the Tudors that actually says something fresh and new... a cracking contribution to the field.’

Daily Mail

‘Consistently fascinating, historically invaluable... the narrative is pacy... Anyone reading it will never look at Tudor England in the same light again.'

Books of the Year Evening Standard

‘That rare thing: a book about the 16th century that said something new.’

Observer

‘Meticulous research draws on sources from letters to legal papers... The detail [Kaufmann] unearths brings to life those absent from the pages of history.’

Catherine Fletcher

‘Miranda Kaufmann has written a superb antidote both to the cliches of Tudor history and to the assumption that Black migration to Britain began with the Windrush. Her vivid portrait of Black Tudor lives sweeps readers around the world in the company of Diego, manservant to Sir Francis Drake, and back to the life of single woman Cattelena in the Gloucestershire countryside. Grounded in precise and detailed historical research, Black Tudors promises to change perceptions of a period at the heart of Britain’s national identity.’

Financial Times Jessie Childs

‘Enlightening and constantly surprising... Far too many popular studies of the Tudors return the same faces. To its great credit, Black Tudors presents fresh figures and challenges the way we look at them.’

Daily Telegraph

‘The industry and skill with which Miranda Kaufmann has hunted for these sources and teased out their meanings are exemplary... Kaufmann’s greatest skill is her ability to fill in the background on every topic that arises, from piracy to silk-weaving to brothels to Anglo-Moroccan diplomacy... In the hands of a lesser writer this would be mere padding with secondary material, but she investigates every subject in the same depth... a fascinating book, which brings a sadly neglected part of our history to life, and grinds no ideological axes in the process’.

Foreword Reviews

‘Tudor England’s legendary history is a rich locus in the popular imagination. Full of pageantry and larger-than-life personalities, the period is a favorite of the Anglophilic world. But what if that seemingly monolithic world was also black?... For a modern audience acculturated to thinking of Africans in the West as either enslaved or altogether absent, the picture that emerges challenges the centrality of whiteness and slavery in the Tudor period. Kaufmann takes pains to situate Great Britain on the national stage as a minor nation emerging from civil war and fighting to be acknowledged at the international level... Black Tudors concentrates on individuals who are enmeshed in the historical narrative and effectively places them right back where they’ve always belonged.’

Dorset Magazine

‘This meticulously researched book... it’s remarkable that she’s created a book that so vividly paints a broad picture of Tudor life, making it both entirely readable and utterly fascinating.’

Times Higher Education

‘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.’

Press Association

‘A powerful and perceptive reassessment of a time that has too long been sidelined by popular historical storytelling.’

Dr John Cooper

‘Who knew that a diver from West Africa worked to salvage Henry VIII’s flagship the Mary Rose? Based on a wealth of original research, Miranda Kaufmann’s Black Tudors restores the black presence to sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England in all its lively detail. Africans lived and worked not as slaves but as independent agents, from mariners to silk weavers, women and men, prince and prostitute. Black Tudors challenges assumptions about ethnic identity and racism in Tudor England. It will be required reading for anyone interested in new directions in Tudor history.’

Clive Holmes

‘The book is based on impeccable research in a rich array of sources. But Dr Kaufmann wears her learning lightly and she tells a series of fascinating stories with an elegance and wit that should appeal to many readers.’

The Riveter Magazine

‘Black Tudors demonstrates the way understanding of history is constantly changing based on changing contemporary values and perspectives. For someone dedicated to an awareness of oppression throughout history, Black Tudors is an important but difficult read, inspiring a desire for more information.’

Paul Kaplan

‘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.’

Christian Science Monitor

‘Thought-provoking... [Kaufmann] takes readers on fascinating excursions through Moroccan history, the European exploration of South America, and the seedier side of London.’

Sorted

‘Both an eye-opener and a good read.’

CHOICE

‘Miranda Kaufmann writes engagingly as she reveals the untold stories of Africans who lived free, worked for wages, married and died in 16th and 17th century England.’

Diplomat

‘Impressively detailed and persuasively argued.’

Sunday Telegraph

‘Fascinating.’

Daily Mail

‘Consistently fascinating, historically invaluable...the narrative is pacy, the research sympathetically thorough.. Anyone reading it will never look at Tudor England in the same light again'.

—The New Yorker

"Seeking to overturn the common assumption that there were no black communities in Britain before Caribbean immigration after the Second World War, Kaufmann presents characters such as John Blanke, a trumpeter at the court of Henry VIII, and Reasonable Blackman, a London silk weaver who lost two children in the plague of 1592. Many slaves fled Spanish or Portuguese territories in the New World, boarding ships bound for England after hearing rumors that all men there were free; one helped Sir Francis Drake recruit Africans for attacks on the Spanish. Kaufmann speculates about cultural aspects: three decades after Drake’s ship abandoned a pregnant African woman on an island, Shakespeare created Sycorax, the mother of Caliban."

- Foreword Reviews

Tudor England’s legendary history is a rich locus in the popular imagination. Full of pageantry and larger-than-life personalities, the period is a favorite of the Anglophilic world. But what if that seemingly monolithic world was also black? Miranda Kaufmann’s THE BLACK TUDORS: The Untold Story combs historical records and reveals that, in fact, it was.

Kaufmann looks at surviving documentation and reveals the African men and women who were present in England as full members of society, filling a variety of roles, collecting wages, and functioning autonomously. Over ten chapters, Kaufmann’s vignettes interpret individuals’ lives within their historical moments. Yet, the historical record is not limited to Kaufmann’s ten; appearing alongside the chapters’ main characters are others whose presence is no less fascinating for only appearing scantly in historical records. For a modern audience acculturated to thinking of Africans in the West as either enslaved or altogether absent, the picture that emerges challenges the centrality of whiteness and slavery in the Tudor period. Kaufmann takes pains to situate England on the national stage as a minor nation emerging from civil war and fighting to be acknowledged at the international level.

Tudors were fascinated with North Africa and heavily invested in trading alliances and cultural exchange with African sovereigns, she reveals. Although hierarchical and heavily dependent on servants, Tudor society didn’t have slaves, a precedent so well known that slaves of several nations schemed their way to England in a bid for freedom.

Whether with Edward Swarthye, a black porter, delivering Tudor justice when he whips a white servant, or the suggestion that Anne Cobbie, the “tawny moor with soft skin,” might have been a literary inspiration, Kaufmann’s THE BLACK TUDORS concentrates on individuals who are enmeshed in the historical narrative and effectively places them right back where they’ve always belonged.

author of The Black Prince of Florence - Catherine Fletcher

"Miranda Kaufmann has written a superb antidote both to the clichés of Tudor history and to the assumption that Black migration to Britain began with the Windrush. Her vivid portrait of Black Tudor lives sweeps readers around the world in the company of Diego, manservant to Sir Francis Drake, and back to the life of single woman Cattelena in the Gloucestershire countryside. Grounded in precise and detailed historical research, Black Tudors promises to change perceptions of a period at the heart of Britain’s national identity."

- John Thornton

"The presence of Africans and their descendants in Europe is a subject that has recently received a lot of attention from scholars who are discovering much more diversity in the Middle Ages than was once believed. Miranda Kaufmann’s book is a splendid addition to this literature, meticulously researched and well written. She has managed to recover the stories of a remarkably large number of medieval people of African descent, and in surprising places, not just as servants or slaves, but also as skilled tradespeople and even people of substance. Kaufmann’s lively prose rests on a solid base of painstaking and far reaching documentation, enough for any historian to admire."

—Paul Kaplan

"Miranda Kaufman’s The Black Tudors, grounded in extensive and impeccable archival research, presents an evocative and convincing picture of the lives of real men and women of black African descent in Renaissance England. Concentrating on ten strikingly varied individuals – from a royal trumpeter to a silk-weaver – Kaufman persuasively argues that Africans who came to England this era were able to find a meaningful place in English society, not only in London, Southampton, and Bristol but also in rural areas. Drawing on parish records, legal cases, letters, visual images, and her broad knowledge of Tudor-era economic history and global mercantile expansion, Kaufman dispels the myth that the black Britons of this era existed only at the very upper or lower margins of society. Each of her ten individuals, who are cleverly linked to the records of many others, is vividly brought to life through a discussion of their goals, their labor, and their vicissitudes, and set within the complex social, political, economic, and religious history of the period. The book is 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."

— Sunday Times (UK)

"The industry and skill with which Miranda Kaufmann has hunted for these sources and teased out their meanings are exemplary… Kaufmann’s greatest skill is her ability to fill in the background on every topic that arises, from piracy to silk-weaving to brothels to Anglo-Moroccan diplomacy…In the hands of a lesser writer this would be mere padding with secondary material, but she investigates every subject in the same depth… a fascinating book, which brings a sadly neglected part of our history to life, and grinds no ideological axes in the process. Five Stars."

- Dr John Cooper

"Who knew that a diver from West Africa worked to salvage Henry VIII’s flagship the Mary Rose? Based on a wealth of original research, Miranda Kaufmann’s Black Tudors restores the black presence to sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England in all its lively detail. Africans lived and worked not as slaves but as independent agents, from mariners to silk weavers, women and men, prince and prostitute. Black Tudors challenges assumptions about ethnic identity and racism in Tudor England. It will be required reading for anyone interested in new directions in Tudor history."

author of Black and British: A Forgotten Histo —David Olusoga

"Miranda Kaufmann’s intricately researched and brilliantly written new book pieces together fragments from the archives to reconstruct the lives of ten black Tudors. And what lives they are: a sailor, a silk weaver and a salvage diver who swam to the wreck of the Mary Rose. Then there is John Blanke, a trumpeter to the Tudor court who was witness to the coronation of Henry VIII. Through these biographies Kaufmann paints a wider panorama of a Renaissance England that was globally aware and in contact with Africa and her people. This is history on the cutting edge of archival research, but accessibly written and alive with human details and warmth. Black Tudors is a critical book that allows us to better understand an era of our national past that fascinates us like no other."

- Times Literary Supplement

"[The] audience will find itself in the hands of a historian of excellent investigative skills, who shows attention to detail, uses evidence with appropriate caution, and has the sensibility of a scholar."

— Sunday Telegraph (UK)

"Fascinating."

- Sunday Times (UK)

"‘Splendid…an excellent study of this hitherto silent minority."

From the Publisher

"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."

— Times Higher Education (UK)

The New Yorker

Black Tudors, by Miranda Kaufmann (Oneworld). Seeking to overturn the common assumption that there were no black communities in Britain before Caribbean immigration after the Second World War, Kaufmann presents characters such as John Blanke, a trumpeter at the court of Henry VIII, and Reasonable Blackman, a London silk weaver who lost two children in the plague of 1592. Many slaves fled Spanish or Portuguese territories in the New World, boarding ships bound for England after hearing rumors that all men there were free; one helped Sir Francis Drake recruit Africans for attacks on the Spanish. Kaufmann speculates about cultural aspects: three decades after Drake’s ship abandoned a pregnant African woman on an island, Shakespeare created Sycorax, the mother of Caliban.

-- Sunday Telegraph (UK)

"Fascinating."

-- Sunday Times (UK)

"The industry and skill with which Miranda Kaufmann has hunted for these sources and teased out their meanings are exemplary… Kaufmann’s greatest skill is her ability to fill in the background on every topic that arises, from piracy to silk-weaving to brothels to Anglo-Moroccan diplomacy…In the hands of a lesser writer this would be mere padding with secondary material, but she investigates every subject in the same depth… a fascinating book, which brings a sadly neglected part of our history to life, and grinds no ideological axes in the process. Five Stars."

--The New Yorker

"Seeking to overturn the common assumption that there were no black communities in Britain before Caribbean immigration after the Second World War, Kaufmann presents characters such as John Blanke, a trumpeter at the court of Henry VIII, and Reasonable Blackman, a London silk weaver who lost two children in the plague of 1592. Many slaves fled Spanish or Portuguese territories in the New World, boarding ships bound for England after hearing rumors that all men there were free; one helped Sir Francis Drake recruit Africans for attacks on the Spanish. Kaufmann speculates about cultural aspects: three decades after Drake’s ship abandoned a pregnant African woman on an island, Shakespeare created Sycorax, the mother of Caliban."

Library Journal - Audio

02/15/2018
A senior research fellow at the University of London's Institute of Commonwealth Studies, Kaufmann has spent hours combing records to identify Africans in Tudor England in the late 15th and 16th centuries. The result is new insight into early European race relations. A number of Africans were present in England and they were, for the most part, treated the same as other citizens. Kaufmann relates stories of Africans who worked for wages in the court of Henry VIII, as free divers working on shipwrecks, as seamstresses, craftsmen, and merchants—Africans who married, were baptized, presented testimony in court, and were buried in churchyards. Narrator Corrie James reads capably. VERDICT This book touches on a wide array of subjects and will appeal to listeners interested in race relations or the Tudor period. ["Providing a compelling take on a rarely written about element of Tudor history, this volume is highly recommended for readers interested in a scholarly work on race and African history": LJ 11/1/17 review of the Oneworld hc.]—Cheryl Youse, Norman Park, GA

MAY 2018 - AudioFile

Corrie James narrates Miranda Kaufmann’s well-researched history of a little-known aspect of England in the Tudor Age. Kaufmann, a senior research fellow at the University of London’s Institute of Commonwealth Studies, delves into Tudor England and the position of blacks in that society. James matter-of-factly delivers the detailed individual accounts and anecdotes of the challenges and wide range of experiences faced by England’s black population in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Listeners learn that while there were slaves, there were also black men and women who were considered citizens, who lived lives as ordinary as their white counterparts. James’s top-notch narration emphasizes that the cause of African and Caribbean enslavement was largely socioeconomic and not the result of inherent racism. Enlightening, intelligent listening. S.J.H. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

Product Details

BN ID:	2940171388645
Publisher:	HighBridge Company
Publication date:	11/14/2017
Edition description:	Unabridged

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