Black and British: A Forgotten History - Hardcover

Olusoga, David

4.61

3,874 ratings by Goodreads

9781447299738: Black and British: A Forgotten History

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1447299736 ISBN 13: 9781447299738

Publisher: Macmillan, 2016

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Winner of the 2017 PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize
A Waterstones.com History Book of the Year
Longlisted for the Orwell Prize
Shortlisted for the inaugural Jhalak Prize

In Black and British, award-winning historian and broadcaster David Olusoga offers readers a rich and revealing exploration of the extraordinarily long relationship between the British Isles and the people of Africa. Drawing on new genetic and genealogical research, original records, expert testimony and contemporary interviews, Black and British reaches back to Roman Britain, the medieval imagination and Shakespeare's Othello.

It reveals that behind the South Sea Bubble was Britain's global slave-trading empire and that much of the great industrial boom of the nineteenth century was built on American slavery. It shows that Black Britons fought at Trafalgar and in the trenches of the First World War. Black British history can be read in stately homes, street names, statues and memorials across Britain and is woven into the cultural and economic histories of the nation.

Unflinching, confronting taboos and revealing hitherto unknown scandals, Olusoga describes how black and white Britons have been intimately entwined for centuries. Black and British is a vital re-examination of a shared history, published to accompany the landmark BBC Two series.

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Review:

You could not ask for a more judicious, comprehensive and highly readable survey of a part of British history that has been so long overlooked or denied. David Olusoga, in keeping with the high standards of his earlier books, is a superb guide. (Adam Hochschild)

Groundbreaking. (Observer)

[A] comprehensive and important history of black Britain . . . Written with a wonderful clarity of style and with great force and passion. It is thoroughly researched and there are many interesting anecdotes. (Kwasi Kwarteng The Sunday Times)

A radical reappraisal of the parameters of history, exposing lacunae in the nation’s version of its past. (Arifa Akbar Guardian)

A thrilling tale of excavation (Colin Grant Guardian)

Lucid and accessible. (Herald Scotland)

An insightful, inclusive history of black people in Britain . . . Rich in detail and packed with strong personalities, this is an important contribution to our understanding of life in the UK. (History Revealed)

Olusoga's account challenges narrow visions of Britain's past. By tracing the triangulated connections between Britain, America and Africa, he presents black British history in global terms [...] His subjects, even those who barely figure in the historical record, appear as individuals who matter, both in their own right and as historical exemplars. (The London Review of Books)

Ambitious . . . Long overdue (Hakim Adi Spectator)

Book Description:

A vital re-examination of a shared history, published to accompany the landmark BBC Two series

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