Black and British: A Forgotten History

Winner of the 2017 PEN Hessell-Tiltman PrizeWinner of the Longman History Today Trustees' AwardLonglisted for the Orwell PrizeShortlisted for the inaugural Jhalak PrizeA Waterstones History Book of the YearAn updated edition with new material of the acclaimed re-examination of a shared history, telling the rich and revealing story of the long relationship between the British Isles and the people of Africa and the Caribbean. This edition, fully revised and updated, features a new chapter encompassing the Windrush scandal and the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, events which put black British history at the centre of urgent national debate. Black and British is vivid confirmation that Black history can no longer be kept separate and marginalised.

It is woven into the cultural and economic histories of the nation and it belongs to us all. Drawing on new genealogical research, original records, and expert testimony, Black and British reaches back to Roman Britain, the medieval imagination, Elizabethan 'blackamoors' and the global slave-trading empire. It shows that the great industrial boom of the nineteenth century was built on American slavery, and that Black Britons fought at Trafalgar and in the trenches of both World Wars.

Black British history is woven into the cultural and economic histories of the nation. It is not a singular history, but one that belongs to us all. Unflinching, confronting taboos, and revealing hitherto unknown scandals, historian and broadcaster David Olusoga describes how the lives of Black and White Britons have been entwined for centuries.