Black Tudors
The Untold Story
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Get 3 months for £0.99/mo
Black Tudors
Buy Now for £12.99
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Narrated by:
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Corrie James
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By:
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Miranda Kaufmann
About this listen
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 dispatched 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 baptized, 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 groundbreaking, seminal work, Black Tudors challenges the accepted narrative that racial slavery was all but inevitable and forces us to reexamine the 17th century to determine what caused perceptions to change so radically.
©2017 Miranda Kaufmann (P)2017 HighBridge, a division of Recorded BooksListeners also enjoyed...
Aside from its main subject matter, the book is also full of great little facts (e.g., the exact % of cows bequeather in wills, who are mentioned by name)
Fascinating and beautifully written
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Also, chapter titles are labeled wrong on here. End credits appear as 2hr+ but are actually 2 chapters, an authors note and the end credits.
interesting but long winded at times
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Kaufmann takes 10 people of African origin who we know were in Tudor England and uses them to riff about various aspects of life, including music and politics in the court, religion and belonging, trade across the emerging world, and day-to-day life of a rural dairymaid.
Whilst it is a book about different races in 16-century England (the main point being that people were much less bothered about skin colour than they were about religion), it also opens a realistic window on life at that time.
However, the narrator had some annoying pronunciation habits (according to her, 'coif' = 'quiff' and 'Mainwaring' ≠ 'Mannering'), which was surprising from someone with an otherwise RP and clear voice. I also found her rather slow, but this was easily sorted by listening to it at x1.1 speed.
A fantastic book; so much unknown history
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I didn’t enjoy the narration which made me feel I was in a boring lecture.
The stories had the potential of being so interesting but the individuals got lost in all the dealings going on around them. I understand that there is scant information about some of them but I felt they became secondary to other characters and events.
Disappointing
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Excellent scholarship and accessible writing produced an interesting and enlightening story of the lives of several black men and women who led successful lives in an England where slavery did not exist. Some had lowly and perhaps despised lives as sex workers but others ran their own businesses and learned trades. Many led respectable married lives and produced children. Some were associated with the gentry or aristocracy and some were called upon to serve royalty. All of them were unique and talented in their own way and many led adventurous lives.
The book left me with many questions such as why it was not possible for England to continue in this enlightened fashion; perhaps if it had there would not be the societal problems in today's troubled world.
I thoroughly recommend this book which was well narrated and kept my attention all the way through.
Excellent in every way.
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