African Europeans
An Untold History
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4.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
A dazzling history of Africans in Europe, “masterfully” (Smithsonian) revealing their unacknowledged role in shaping the continent
A finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in History
Conventional wisdom holds that Africans are only a recent presence in Europe. But in African Europeans, renowned historian Olivette Otele debunks this and uncovers a long history of Europeans of African descent. From the third century, when the Egyptian Saint Maurice became the leader of a Roman legion, all the way up to the present, Otele explores encounters between those defined as “Africans” and those called “Europeans.” She gives equal attention to the most prominent figures—like Alessandro de Medici, the first duke of Florence thought to have been born to a free African woman in a Roman village—and the untold stories—like the lives of dual-heritage families in Europe’s coastal trading towns.
African Europeans is a landmark celebration of this integral, vibrantly complex slice of European history, and will redefine the field for years to come.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Royal Historical Society vice president Otele (coeditor, Post-conflict Memorialization) delivers a concise scholarly history of the presence of people of African descent in Europe. Covering events from the third century to the present day, Otele contends that Africa and Africans had a greater influence on Europe than is widely known. She discusses the legend of Saint Maurice, a Roman army soldier born in what is now Egypt, who was allegedly executed in 287 BCE for refusing to make sacrifices to pagan gods. In the 10th century, statues and paintings of "Maurice the African" began to appear in northern Europe as symbols of the power and reach of the Holy Roman Empire. Other profile subjects include Jacobus Capitein, a West African–born minister in the Dutch Reformed Church who defended slavery in the 18th century, and Paulette and Jane Nardal, Afro-Caribbean sisters who helped spark the Négritude literary movement in 1930s France. Otele also explores the "racial stereotypes" found in representations of Zwarte Piet ("Black Pete"), a 19th-century Dutch children's book character, and "the exoticization of black and dual-heritage female bodies" in contemporary France. Though short on political and socioeconomic context, Otele's profiles reveal the richness and variety of the African European experience. This is a welcome introduction to an underexplored subject.
