Black and British: A short, essential history

Product Information

I was a bit iffy about the discussion about Haitian independence without any mention of the fact Haiti then had to pay France compensation for being so kind as to surrender in a war they were losing, crippling the Haitian economy in the process, but then again, it was a British history book so perhaps Olusoga didn't want to get bogged down. My only criticism would be that when talking about events of the past, the author doesn’t talk enough about the general knowledge of the population at various points in history. Join our community to get personalised book suggestions, extracts straight to your inbox, 10% off RRPs, and to change children’s lives. I can't imagine a world where a country just claims a bit of land for itself, it is like a real-life game of risk, crazy! Did you know that it was only during the time of James I that the term ‘white’ was used as a description of racial identity, or that long after the abolition of slavery, the Victorians were propagating their own racist theories to justify profiting from slave-powered commerce?

Also auch super für Erwachsene geeignet, die einen Einblick in eine wichtige Geschichte haben wollen. IF YOU need an introduction to David Olusoga, it’s time to come out from the rock you’ve been living under. I believe this book should be made available in schools and that Black history should be taught as part of the curriculum.Either way, I really enjoyed it and felt I learnt a lot - there's really nothing more I could ask from it. Even 10 years ago, if such a mainstream work as Olusoga’s had been proposed it might well have been rejected at publishers’ acquisition meetings with the note: “no commercial prospects”. This book was written as a way for younger readers to access Black British history and it introduces them to exactly that. It also provides the reader with a good starting point to look further and wider into the topics and events discussed in this book. Setting aside my bias in having written a book about him, Garvey, who led a mass movement of millions of black people, from his London headquarters between 1935 and 1940, is without doubt one of the most significant black men in Britain ever, but he doesn’t even merit a footnote.

In non fiction, David Olusoga's authoritative text has been condensed for children in Black and British: A Short, Essential History (Macmillan). Maps, bite-sized facts, photos and paintings illustrate each rich and varied period of history, and we’re introduced to incredible figures such Olaudah Equiano and Ottobah Cugoano, who formed the Sons of Africa and were early Black abolitionists; Henry ‘Box’ Brown, an African-American speaker who in the mid-1800s mailed himself in a box to Philadelphia, where slavery was illegal; and Sam King MBE, who came to Britain on the Windrush and later became the first Black mayor of the London borough of Southwark.Black Curriculum is a social enterprise set up to address the lack of black British history in the UK curriculum. Olusoga excels at putting the human story back into hiSTORY, bringing to life the stories of some of the extraordinary people who made and continue to share our culture and history.

His previous books include Black and British, which won the PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize and the Longman-History Today Trustees Award, The Kaiser’s Holocaust and The World’s War. The author has a wonderful storytelling voice which you can hear coming out of the pages -- It's all about Stories Blog Black history is all but absent from the British curriculum, making David Olusoga's Black and British: A Short, Essential History ( Macmillan) all the more vital.I certainly feel that everyone can learn from this book, and should do more to learn our FULL history, not just the one that they want us to learn. The Voice Newspaper is committed to celebrating black excellence, campaigning for positive change and informing the black community on important issues. Freedom Bird by Jerdine Nolan (Y5 planning sequence in the Literary Curriculum) would be an ideal text to teach this alongside.