Black Tudors
Not Just the Tudors
History Hit
4.8 • 3.4K Ratings
🗓️ 2 December 2021
⏱️ 50 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Our image of the Tudor era remains overwhelmingly white. But the black presence in England was much greater than has previously been recognised, and Tudor conceptions of race were far more complex than we have been led to believe.
In this edition of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb talks to Dr. Onyeka Nubia whose original research shows that Tudors from many walks of life regularly interacted with people of African descent, both at home and abroad - findings that cast a new light on the Tudor age and our own attitudes towards race relations in history.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb. |
| 0:02.6 | If you'd like not just the Tudors ad-free to get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. |
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| 0:16.0 | including my own recent two-part series, A World Torn Apart, The Dissolution of the Monastries, and enjoy a new release every week. |
| 0:25.2 | Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. |
| 0:33.0 | If we imagine that ethnic diversity in England started with the arrival of the windrush in 1948, |
| 0:40.7 | we would be sorely mistaken. |
| 0:43.8 | Not only do we know that there were Africans and people of African heritage in Tudor and Stuart England, |
| 0:50.4 | but the significance of their presence in terms of numbers, impact and status |
| 0:56.7 | will probably come as a surprise to all but the most enlightened. |
| 1:00.9 | So to explore this important topic and to consider evidence of integration, |
| 1:05.7 | the sort of records that help us identify Africans in Judah, England, |
| 1:09.7 | and the influence of colonialism on all our thoughts. |
| 1:13.5 | I'm joined by one of the foremost scholars in the field, Dr. O'Neika Nubia. |
| 1:18.4 | Dr. Nubia is based at the University of Nottingham and his pioneering research over the last 30 years |
| 1:23.7 | has recontextualized popular perceptions of British ethnicity. |
| 1:30.0 | His latest book is England's other countrymen, Black Tudor Society, published by Zed Books in 2019, and he's also the |
| 1:35.6 | presenter of Walking Victorian Britain, currently showing on Five Select and My Five. |
| 1:46.5 | Dr Nuvia, I am very excited to talk to you again and to have a chance to think together |
| 1:53.2 | about the African presence in Tudor England, in Stuart England, perhaps a bit as well. |
| 1:59.3 | Your work has encouraged us towards a more diverse, |
| 2:02.9 | a more inclusive history of England. So what could we say about the African presence in |
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