Black and British

LoveReading Says

Accompanied by a four-part BBC documentary that aired in 2016, Black and British seeks to reorient our view of Black British history towards a more global perspective. Currently, Black history is still heavily marginalised, sidelined and diminished as some niche historical category that only concerns Black people and has no interconnected global significance to other more prominent periods of time. For example, during the first American Revolution of the late 18th century, countless African slaves fought on the side of the British to quell rebellions that were arising in the colonies, a fact that has been wholly removed from record.

It’s evident that Olusoga and everyone else who contributed towards this book have made immense efforts to compile a sharply rendered account of Black British history. The book admits where the evidence left behind concerning certain individual figures is regrettably sparse. For example, in the case of James Somerset, the ‘Negro of Virginia’ who was directly involved in the momentous ‘Somerset case’ of Georgian London. We know little about Somerset’s life beyond court documents and the words written about him in the diary of Abolitionist Granville Sharp, who also represented him in court. 

Despite this however, the book presents a vast and wide-ranging genealogy of historical evidence; archaeological, written or otherwise, that has survived antiquity, to document Black British history. It’s too much to list all the noteworthy events covered, but broadly speaking, we read about archaic periods such as the Roman occupation during the 1st and 2nd centuries and the existence of ‘Afro-Romans' who lived in England as a result. It also covers attitudes towards Black people in Shakespearse’s day to the gradual rise of the Atlantic slave trade during the 17th and 18th centuries, which helped Britian become one of the most powerful Empires in the world. 

It documents the lives of the many Black Georgians living in England, both free and enslaved, the fervent rise of Abolitionism during the 1820s and 30s, circling back to renewed feelings of hostility in the early Victiorian period. Into the World Wars, a time when the British struggled with this new reality of larger and larger numbers of Black people coming to settle on their shores. It looks at the time when American GIs were deployed to Britain in 1942 and the White Brits who stood in opposition to White Americans over their treatment of Black American servicemen. And finally more modern periods; the arrival of the Empire Windrush in Essex in 1948 (which many erroneously consider to be the starting point of Black British history), the prominence of racist apathy and riots during the 1950s and 60s, “Powellism”, riots and over-policing in the 1980s and into our current day.

Though titled Black and British, the book mainly spotlights England when discussing Black history and appears to use the terms ‘English’ and ‘British’ interchangeably on some occasions. However there are a few fleeting mentions of the Black experience in other British nations (Wales and Scotland in particular). Additionally, Olusoga exposes the very male-centered nature of Black British history where the voices, experiences and resistance efforts of Black women, in support of Abolitionist causes and slave rebellions form only a reductive part of our history.

Black and British was a huge undertaking, a book it took me over 2 months to read! But in the end, I’m so glad I committed to finishing it and I believe it to be successful in its aim of reinforcing the narrative that Black British history is a significant part of our national heritage and it is a history that concerns all of us.

Lois Cudjoe

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