Black Tudors
Not Just the Tudors
History Hit
4.8 • 3.4K Ratings
🗓️ 26 October 2023
⏱️ 50 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The most famous Black African in Tudor England is John Blanke, a musician in the courts of Henry VII and Henry VIII. The discovery of Blanke, originally by Professor Sydney Anglo, was made famous by Dr. Miranda Kaufmann’s 2017 book Black Tudors, The Untold Story. A year earlier Michael Ohajuru started the John Blanke Project, an art and archive venture inviting historians and artists to respond to this evidence of the first person of African descent in British history for whom we have both an image and a record.
In this episode of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb talks to them both about the evidence for Africans in early modern Britain, whether John Blanke was exceptional, what new things we're learning about him, and why it's important to tell stories like his.
This episode was edited by Joseph Knight and produced by Rob Weinberg.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | If we imagine that ethnic diversity in England started with the arrival of the Windrush, |
| 0:09.5 | in 1948, we would be sorely mistaken. |
| 0:14.3 | Not only do we know that there were Africans and people of African heritage in Tudor and |
| 0:19.2 | Stuart England, but the significance of their presence in terms of numbers, impact and status |
| 0:27.2 | will probably come as a surprise to all but the most enlightened. |
| 0:31.3 | So to explore this important topic and to consider evidence of integration, the sort of |
| 0:36.3 | records that help us identify Africans in Tudor, England and the influence of colonialism |
| 0:42.0 | on all our thoughts. |
| 0:43.7 | I'm joined by one of the foremost scholars in the field, Dr. Onyek Anubia. |
| 0:48.8 | Dr Anubia is based at the University of Nottingham and his pioneering research over |
| 0:52.8 | the last 30 years has recontextualised popular perceptions of British ethnicity. |
| 0:58.7 | His latest book is England's other countrymen, Black Tudor Society, published by Zed Books |
| 1:03.7 | in 2019 and he's also the presenter of Walking Victorian Britain, currently showing on |
| 1:09.5 | 5 Select and My 5. |
| 1:17.1 | Dr Onyek Anubia, I am very excited to talk to you again and to have a chance to think |
| 1:23.0 | together about the African presence in Tudor, England, in Stuart, England, perhaps a bit |
| 1:28.2 | as well. |
| 1:29.7 | Your work has encouraged us towards a more diverse and more inclusive history of England. |
| 1:35.5 | So what could we say about the African presence in England at this time? |
| 1:40.3 | There is an idea and certainly when I used to read on the Tudor period and Stuart period |
| 1:46.1 | when I was very young, that England was monorethically white before 1948 in the Empire |
| 1:51.1 | Windrush and suddenly the Empire Windrush happened and suddenly multicultural Britain was |
... |
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