What do you think?
Rate this book
Black England: A Forgotten Georgian History
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
July 16, 2025
Lots of great material, but very frustrating, particularly when read in dialogue with Black Tudors which is deeply grounded in the historical record. Gerzina isn't an historian, and it shows. She has a tendency to make somewhat sweeping claims on thin evidence ("why did they do this? presumably because...") and her analysis is, generally, less grounded in the evidence than it could be. Most problematically, she rarely takes the time to pin down whether someone she's discussing is a servant or a slave, and she tends to use "slaves" interchangeably with "black people" even while repeatedly making the point that there have been free Black people in Britain since the 16th century at least. Particularly given the unsettled legalities around slavery in Georgian England, it's entirely possible that Gerzina is unclear because the historical record is unclear and people's statuses shifted, but if that's the case she needs to say it. I was repeatedly frustrated by her lack of precision in describing people's status.
All that said, there's tons of great information in here. Gerzina is sharing an incredibly important aspect of history that is little known and should be much more widely known. I enjoyed learning about the legal battles around slavery and abolition, and I appreciated Gerzina's efforts to place the white people involved in these fights within their own context rather than applying modern value systems to them. She's clear on what we would consider their good and problematic qualities, and she helps us to understand how those would have been perceived at the time. I'm glad I read the book.
All that said, there's tons of great information in here. Gerzina is sharing an incredibly important aspect of history that is little known and should be much more widely known. I enjoyed learning about the legal battles around slavery and abolition, and I appreciated Gerzina's efforts to place the white people involved in these fights within their own context rather than applying modern value systems to them. She's clear on what we would consider their good and problematic qualities, and she helps us to understand how those would have been perceived at the time. I'm glad I read the book.
June 19, 2026
This book was only 230 pages but was so densely packed with information that I fear I have already forgotten the things I learned at the beginning.
I appreciated the continuous reminder throughout that black people, like many poor people, were not able to write accounts of their own experiences for much of recent history. A majority of the sources we have come from the people around them, and in the case of the slave trade, specifically from the written accounts of their masters. Even the writings that we have are written by black people who at the time held a fragile space within the England of the 18th century, and were often careful not to rock the boat.
I also liked the reminder that many of the white people who were integral to the abolition movement were still racist. They did not view black people as equals, as people they could marry or have children with or even share a country with. They still could see that the treatment of black people as property and cattle was cruel and inhumane.
There were accounts in this book that made me sick to my stomach. There is nothing written here with graphic detail or embellishment. The true, clear facts of it were enough.
Still, if I had one thing to say against this book, it is only in how abrupt it ends, and how saccharine the ending feels. 'And so 50 years after slavery was abolished in England, racism was no more.' It just feels there could have been just one more chapter highlighting the racism still present within English culture, or even a discussion of how racial attitudes can ebb and flow within a society. But instead it just feels cut off and stale.
Otherwise, though, this is a very informative read.
I appreciated the continuous reminder throughout that black people, like many poor people, were not able to write accounts of their own experiences for much of recent history. A majority of the sources we have come from the people around them, and in the case of the slave trade, specifically from the written accounts of their masters. Even the writings that we have are written by black people who at the time held a fragile space within the England of the 18th century, and were often careful not to rock the boat.
I also liked the reminder that many of the white people who were integral to the abolition movement were still racist. They did not view black people as equals, as people they could marry or have children with or even share a country with. They still could see that the treatment of black people as property and cattle was cruel and inhumane.
There were accounts in this book that made me sick to my stomach. There is nothing written here with graphic detail or embellishment. The true, clear facts of it were enough.
Still, if I had one thing to say against this book, it is only in how abrupt it ends, and how saccharine the ending feels. 'And so 50 years after slavery was abolished in England, racism was no more.' It just feels there could have been just one more chapter highlighting the racism still present within English culture, or even a discussion of how racial attitudes can ebb and flow within a society. But instead it just feels cut off and stale.
Otherwise, though, this is a very informative read.
Read
November 19, 2025Abandoned on page 70 of 281. Should have been an interesting subject but I couldn’t get on with the author’s style.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews