Blackamoores: Africans in Tudor England, their presence, status and origins

Nubia, Onyeka (2016) Blackamoores: Africans in Tudor England, their presence, status and origins. Doctoral thesis, University of East Anglia.

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Abstract

The book Blackamoores Africans in Tudor England: Their Presence Status and Origins is now the leading book on this subject. It kick-started a campaign to include Black Tudors in the curriculum and has now gained over five thousand signatures. This book in conjunction with the Blackamoores International Book Tour helped Narrative Eye win the Haringey Diversity Award for 2014. This book is now used as a teaching and reference tool worldwide in a range of Universities and teaching institutions and its finding have been referenced by historians and other academics internationally.

The article contained in this document supports the findings of this book and is about whether Englishmen believed that Africans in Tudor England were cursed black as a result of the Curse of Ham.

Blackamoores contains original research conducted over twenty-three years. Some of that period was spent doing research at Middlesex University. This book is revised and different from that initial research as this was mostly concerned with an African presence in Tudor England. Blackamoores is about the status and origins of Africans in Tudor England and for the first time draws on evidence from an African presence in Stuart England. This evidence has not been made available to the public before and it is the first time that it has been used to examine the status and origins of Africans in Tudor England.

I have found Africans in cities and towns such a Hertford, London, Plymouth, Bristol and Northampton, Norwich. I have proved in this book that Africans did not automatically occupy the lowest positions in Tudor society. This book shows that Africans in Tudor England were not all slaves, or transient immigrants who were considered as dangerous strangers and the epitome of otherness. Blackamoores also reveals that some Africans in England had important occupations in Tudor society, and were employed by powerful people because of the skills they possessed. These people inherited some of their skills from the multicultural societies that they came from. I show that some Africans in England were born in other countries. This is the first time that this kind of tracing has been done in a systematic and detailed way on this population. I also prove that Africans were not all foreign and that most were integrated members of their local parishes.

The arguments in the book Blackamoores and this article are supported by evidence from a variety of sources both manuscript and printed, most of which has never been seen before whilst other evidence is discussed within a new context.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Publication
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > School of History
Depositing User:	Jackie Webb
Date Deposited:	23 Nov 2016 12:28
Last Modified:	30 Nov 2019 01:38
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/61484
DOI:

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