African and Caribbean People in Brita..., Hakim Adi
African and Caribbean People in Brita..., Hakim Adi
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African and Caribbean People in Britain
A History

Author: Hakim Adi

Narrator: Brenda Iyalla

Unabridged: 22 hr 43 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 09/01/2022


Synopsis

Brought to you by Penguin.

A major new history of Britain that will transform our understanding of this country's past

Despite the best efforts of researchers and campaigners, there remains today a steadfast tendency to reduce the history of African and Caribbean people in Britain to a simple story: it is one that begins in 1948 with the arrival of a single ship, the Empire Windrush, and continues mostly apart from a distinct British history, overlapping only on occasion amid grotesque injustice or pioneering protest.

Yet, as acclaimed historian Hakim Adi demonstrates, from the very beginning, from the moment humans first stood on this rainy isle, there have been African and Caribbean men and women set at Britain's heart. Libyan legionaries patrolled Hadrian's Wall while Rome's first 'African Emperor' died in York. In Elizabethan England, 'Black Tudors' served in the land's most eminent households while intrepid African explorers helped Sir Francis Drake to circumnavigate the globe. And, as Britain became a major colonial and commercial power, it was African and Caribbean people who led the radical struggle for freedom - a struggle which raged throughout the twentieth century and continues today in Black Lives Matter campaigns.

Charting a course through British history with an unobscured view of the actions of African and Caribbean people, Adi reveals how much our greatest collective achievements - universal suffrage, our victory over fascism, the forging of the NHS - owe to these men and women, and how, in understanding our history in these terms, we are more able to fully understand our present moment.

© Hakim Adi 2022 (P) Penguin Audio 2022

Reviews

Goodreads review by Janalyn, the blind reviewer on June 25, 2022

I couldn’t wait to read African and Caribbean people in Britain in this book they talked about Black people being freed from slavery and the great things they were known to do and the horrible things that went on to be done to them. The whole time reading this book all I could do is compare it to th......more

Goodreads review by Pamela on November 08, 2022

Essential reading for students and those interested in History.......more

Goodreads review by Jay on October 14, 2022

Although some of the sections about groups and movements were a bit laboured, leaving a limited view of daily life and culture in those periods, this was engaging as it deals with people and their stories, a more panoramic view rather than a total focus on enslavement and abolition.......more

Goodreads review by Ali on November 06, 2022

Although this treads similar ground to David Olusawa's , it is considerably more thorough, especially in dealing with 19th and 20th Century movements rooted in African-British influences. Hakim's style is a fairly dry recounting of who, what, when, what, which can make this a slog at times (and some......more

Goodreads review by Baher on January 25, 2024

I really enjoyed this book. Hakim Adi has dedicated his life to Black and African history and as I understand it was the first Black professor of History at a UK university. I saw this book at the British Library after I’d seen an exhibition on Black people in the UK at the London Metropolitan Archi......more