Will I love Black Tudors?

This is a well-written book with a strong sense of history’s human stories. It is painstakingly researched—but beautifully narrated—and based on archival evidence to explore the lives of Africans in Britain during the Tudor period.

It tells so many diverse stories about Black divers, servants, circumnavigators, and so much more. Teachers have since used this book to update their school lessons about the Tudor period.

If there is any one book that has changed the way I view early modern British history, Kaufman has written that book.

Kaufman has written a series of mini-biographies here of Black residents of Britain during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries that predate Britain’s involvement in the slave trade and demonstrate just how wide-ranging the Black British experience was during this period. The book challenges many preconceptions, especially the association of Blacks with slavery that really only emerged in England after the Tudor period.

The stories of the individuals featured in this book have much to teach us, not… show more.