BLACK TUDORS: The Untold Story (Oneworld, 2017)
My first book, Black Tudors: The Untold Story, was published by Oneworld in October 2017, to critical acclaim, named a Book of the Year by both the Evening Standard and the Observer . The TV rights were optioned in 2017 by Silverprint Pictures, who are developing it into an epic TV drama, and the book was shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize and the Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize in 2018.
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‘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. 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.’ - DAVID OLUSOGA Think you know the Tudors? Think again… We know what they wore. We know what they ate. We know the details of their monarchs’ sex lives, and how they caused seismic changes in our country’s religious and political history. But what about Black Tudors? Until now, the story of the Africans who lived and died in sixteenth-century England has remained untold... |
BLACK TUDORS tells the stories of ten Africans. 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. She reveals how John Blanke came to be the royal trumpeter to Henry VII and Henry VIII: the trouble Jacques Francis got himself into while working as a salvage diver on the wreck of the Mary Rose; what prompted Diego to sail the world with Drake, and she pieces together the stories of a porter, a prince, a sailor, a prostitute and a silk weaver.
They came to England from Africa, from Europe and from the Spanish Caribbean. They came with privateers, pirates, merchants, aristocrats, even kings and queens, and were accepted into Tudor society. They were baptised, married and buried by the Church of England and paid wages like other Tudors.
Yet their experience was extraordinary because, unlike the majority of Africans across the rest of the Atlantic world, in England they were free. They lived in a world where skin colour was less important than religion, class or talent: before the English became heavily involved in the slave trade, and before they founded their first surviving colony in the Americas. Their stories challenge the traditional narrative that racial slavery was inevitable and that it was imported to colonial Virginia from Tudor England. They force us to re-examine the 17th century to find out what had caused perceptions to change so radically.
Introducing Black Tudors means a reassessment of our national story and what it means to be British today. They are just one piece in the diverse jigsaw of migrations that make up our island’s multicultural heritage. The knowledge that Africans lived free in one of the most formative periods of our national history can move us beyond the invidious legacies of the slavery and racism that blighted later periods in our history. BLACK TUDORS challenges the accepted narrative that racial slavery was all but inevitable and forces us to re-evaluate our shared history.
Here's a short film of me explaining more about the book, and why I wanted to write it:
They came to England from Africa, from Europe and from the Spanish Caribbean. They came with privateers, pirates, merchants, aristocrats, even kings and queens, and were accepted into Tudor society. They were baptised, married and buried by the Church of England and paid wages like other Tudors.
Yet their experience was extraordinary because, unlike the majority of Africans across the rest of the Atlantic world, in England they were free. They lived in a world where skin colour was less important than religion, class or talent: before the English became heavily involved in the slave trade, and before they founded their first surviving colony in the Americas. Their stories challenge the traditional narrative that racial slavery was inevitable and that it was imported to colonial Virginia from Tudor England. They force us to re-examine the 17th century to find out what had caused perceptions to change so radically.
Introducing Black Tudors means a reassessment of our national story and what it means to be British today. They are just one piece in the diverse jigsaw of migrations that make up our island’s multicultural heritage. The knowledge that Africans lived free in one of the most formative periods of our national history can move us beyond the invidious legacies of the slavery and racism that blighted later periods in our history. BLACK TUDORS challenges the accepted narrative that racial slavery was all but inevitable and forces us to re-evaluate our shared history.
Here's a short film of me explaining more about the book, and why I wanted to write it:
Reviews of Black Tudors: The Untold Story
'rich and emblematic stories... Kaufmann brings her subjects to life [with] empathy tethered to fact and context... Black Tudors is light as a feather, yet well informed and informative: an absolute joy.'
Leanda de Lisle in The Times
'a splendid book... it is that rare thing: a work of history about the Tudors that actually says something fresh and new... a cracking contribution to the field [which] bears all the marks of meticulous research... yet she wears her learning lightly.'
Dan Jones in The Sunday Times
'The industry and skill with which Miranda Kaufmann has hunted for these sources and teased out their meanings are exemplary. But it gets even better than that. Just telling us what is in the documents would not have made a book. 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... a fascinating book, which brings a sadly neglected part of our history to life, and grinds no ideological axes in the process.'
Noel Malcolm in The Telegraph
'an enlightening and constantly surprising book...The book’s best chapters have the force of a short story... Black Tudors presents fresh figures and challenges the way we look at them.'
Jessie Childs in The Financial Times
' [a] consistently fascinating, historically invaluable book...The narrative is pacey, the research scrupulously thorough and the tone mercifully free of sermonising. Anyone reading it will never look at Tudor England in quite the same light again.'
John Preston in the Daily Mail
'Miranda Kaufmann perceptively probes [questions] ... overturns misconceptions... Meticulous research... The detail she unearths brings to life those absent from the pages of history.'
Anita Sethi in The Observer
'a historian of excellent investigative skills, who shows attention to detail, uses evidence with appropriate caution and has the sensibility of a scholar.’
Suzannah Lipscomb in the Times Literary Supplement
'she makes her case carefully..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.'
Lucy Wooding in Times Higher Education
'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. For anyone interested in the Tudor period Black Tudors is a must.'
Elizabeth Freemantle on The History Girls blog
'The subject couldn’t be in safer hands. Dr Kaufmann’s research is impeccable... She treats each of her subjects as individuals in their own right... exploring each life with a delicate warmth and respect that endears those individuals to the reader. We are gripped by their story.'
Nathen Amin on the Henry Tudor Society blog
'a fascinating look at a time before England’s involvement in the transatlantic slave trade made the dehumanization of African people the norm. 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.'
The Irregular Reader blog
‘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. 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.’
David Olusoga, author of Black and British: A Forgotten History
‘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.’
Catherine Fletcher, author of The Black Prince of Florence
‘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 Guy, author of Elizabeth: The Forgotten Years
‘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 Tudorsrestores 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.'
John Cooper, Senior Lecturer in History, University of York, and author of The Queen’s Agent
‘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.'
Clive Holmes, Emeritus Fellow and Lecturer in History, University of Oxford
‘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.'
Paul Kaplan, Professor of Art History, State University of New York, Purchase
‘The very concept of black Tudors may sound unlikely, but in this highly readable yet intensively researched book, Kaufmann…makes clear that people of African descent were residing in England centuries before the postwar Windrush generation and were not necessarily enslaved. By examining in detail the lives of 10 previously obscure men and women, Kaufmann depicts the great diversity of their experiences in 16th- and early-17th-century England… Kaufmann also persuasively argues that the enslavement of Africans emerged as a response to the socioeconomic conditions of England’s Caribbean and North American colonies, rather than as an inevitable result of a supposedly inherent racism within early modern English culture. Kaufmann’s crucial contention, in conjunction with her lively prose and fascinating microhistories, should draw some well-deserved attention.’
Publishers Weekly, starred review
An intriguing history of Africans in Tudor England.Kaufmann (Senior Research Fellow/Institute for Commonwealth Studies, Univ. of London) presents the stories of 10 African men and women engaged in a variety of occupations, from trumpeter to trader. 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. "Despite the insatiable appetite for all things Tudor, from raunchy television series to bath ducks modelled as Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn," she writes, "the existence of the Black Tudors is little known." Through meticulous archival research, Kaufmann creates compelling portraits of her subjects, including a trumpet player at Henry VIII's court, a salvage diver, a circumnavigator, a porter, a silk weaver, a Moroccan convert, a prince involved in trade negotiations, a mariner, a woman involved in sex work, and an independent single woman. 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. Each story is anchored in the social and political history of the time. Thus, readers learn much about Henry VIII's courtiers; West African deep-sea divers, who used no diving equipment but could reach sunken ships to retrieve goods; Francis Drake and his treacherous ways; prostitution in Tudor and Stuart England; and the processes of silk weaving and dairy farming. The narrative is engaging, and the author's argument about how Africans were generally accepted in Tudor England is persuasive. She provides a wealth of detail and only occasionally gets lost in minutiae, making the book a highly instructive history of an understudied part of Tudor society An eminently readable book that offers contemporary readers valuable insights into racial relations of centuries past.
www.kirkusreviews.com
‘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.’
Foreword Reviews
'rich and emblematic stories... Kaufmann brings her subjects to life [with] empathy tethered to fact and context... Black Tudors is light as a feather, yet well informed and informative: an absolute joy.'
Leanda de Lisle in The Times
'a splendid book... it is that rare thing: a work of history about the Tudors that actually says something fresh and new... a cracking contribution to the field [which] bears all the marks of meticulous research... yet she wears her learning lightly.'
Dan Jones in The Sunday Times
'The industry and skill with which Miranda Kaufmann has hunted for these sources and teased out their meanings are exemplary. But it gets even better than that. Just telling us what is in the documents would not have made a book. 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... a fascinating book, which brings a sadly neglected part of our history to life, and grinds no ideological axes in the process.'
Noel Malcolm in The Telegraph
'an enlightening and constantly surprising book...The book’s best chapters have the force of a short story... Black Tudors presents fresh figures and challenges the way we look at them.'
Jessie Childs in The Financial Times
' [a] consistently fascinating, historically invaluable book...The narrative is pacey, the research scrupulously thorough and the tone mercifully free of sermonising. Anyone reading it will never look at Tudor England in quite the same light again.'
John Preston in the Daily Mail
'Miranda Kaufmann perceptively probes [questions] ... overturns misconceptions... Meticulous research... The detail she unearths brings to life those absent from the pages of history.'
Anita Sethi in The Observer
'a historian of excellent investigative skills, who shows attention to detail, uses evidence with appropriate caution and has the sensibility of a scholar.’
Suzannah Lipscomb in the Times Literary Supplement
'she makes her case carefully..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.'
Lucy Wooding in Times Higher Education
'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. For anyone interested in the Tudor period Black Tudors is a must.'
Elizabeth Freemantle on The History Girls blog
'The subject couldn’t be in safer hands. Dr Kaufmann’s research is impeccable... She treats each of her subjects as individuals in their own right... exploring each life with a delicate warmth and respect that endears those individuals to the reader. We are gripped by their story.'
Nathen Amin on the Henry Tudor Society blog
'a fascinating look at a time before England’s involvement in the transatlantic slave trade made the dehumanization of African people the norm. 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.'
The Irregular Reader blog
‘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. 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.’
David Olusoga, author of Black and British: A Forgotten History
‘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.’
Catherine Fletcher, author of The Black Prince of Florence
‘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 Guy, author of Elizabeth: The Forgotten Years
‘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 Tudorsrestores 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.'
John Cooper, Senior Lecturer in History, University of York, and author of The Queen’s Agent
‘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.'
Clive Holmes, Emeritus Fellow and Lecturer in History, University of Oxford
‘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.'
Paul Kaplan, Professor of Art History, State University of New York, Purchase
‘The very concept of black Tudors may sound unlikely, but in this highly readable yet intensively researched book, Kaufmann…makes clear that people of African descent were residing in England centuries before the postwar Windrush generation and were not necessarily enslaved. By examining in detail the lives of 10 previously obscure men and women, Kaufmann depicts the great diversity of their experiences in 16th- and early-17th-century England… Kaufmann also persuasively argues that the enslavement of Africans emerged as a response to the socioeconomic conditions of England’s Caribbean and North American colonies, rather than as an inevitable result of a supposedly inherent racism within early modern English culture. Kaufmann’s crucial contention, in conjunction with her lively prose and fascinating microhistories, should draw some well-deserved attention.’
Publishers Weekly, starred review
An intriguing history of Africans in Tudor England.Kaufmann (Senior Research Fellow/Institute for Commonwealth Studies, Univ. of London) presents the stories of 10 African men and women engaged in a variety of occupations, from trumpeter to trader. 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. "Despite the insatiable appetite for all things Tudor, from raunchy television series to bath ducks modelled as Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn," she writes, "the existence of the Black Tudors is little known." Through meticulous archival research, Kaufmann creates compelling portraits of her subjects, including a trumpet player at Henry VIII's court, a salvage diver, a circumnavigator, a porter, a silk weaver, a Moroccan convert, a prince involved in trade negotiations, a mariner, a woman involved in sex work, and an independent single woman. 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. Each story is anchored in the social and political history of the time. Thus, readers learn much about Henry VIII's courtiers; West African deep-sea divers, who used no diving equipment but could reach sunken ships to retrieve goods; Francis Drake and his treacherous ways; prostitution in Tudor and Stuart England; and the processes of silk weaving and dairy farming. The narrative is engaging, and the author's argument about how Africans were generally accepted in Tudor England is persuasive. She provides a wealth of detail and only occasionally gets lost in minutiae, making the book a highly instructive history of an understudied part of Tudor society An eminently readable book that offers contemporary readers valuable insights into racial relations of centuries past.
www.kirkusreviews.com
‘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.’
Foreword Reviews
