Thank you Netgalley and Perseus Books, Basic Books for access to this arc.

Add me to the list of those who were eagerly looking forward to reading this book but found themselves unable to finish it. The blurb sounded fascinating. I wanted to learn more about the reality of African Europeans as opposed to what has been thought to be the reality. Yet, there are academic books which inform in an organized and entertaining way and there are academic books which dryly lumber on. Unfortunately, despite my interest in the topic, I found this book to be the latter. It's also loaded with current academic jargon that often forced me to read a sentence or even an entire paragraph multiple times in an attempt to figure out what the author was actually saying. I understand that with the probable lack of historical documents and hard evidence there will always be a element of speculation but I found too many times when "thought to be" style language was used to describe what "might have" happened.

To me the information in the chapters was not well organized at times, jumping back and forth chronologically and subject-wise. I want to learn more about this subject but sadly this isn't going to be the book that informs me on it. DNF

African Europeans, while being perhaps a little more academic than I was expecting, was an accessible and fascinating read. The book is both something you can read on its own and also a jumping off point for finding out more. Each chapter is compelling and I very much enjoyed how it took the time to trace from the past into the present and make those links. It's a book that a great many people could stand to read and one I would highly recommend.

I received an e-ARC from the author/publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

African Europeans is a fantastic look at an overlooked part of history. Not only does she explore Africans and people of African descent in Europe, but also those of European and African descent in African colonies. The book is well written, and provides fascinating detail into the lives of African Europeans. I found the writing style itself swung between fairly casual and easy to read, to quite dry and academic, but that is my only real negative critique of the book. Otherwise, this is a cohesive and extremely well researched book, covering many centuries. Not an easy feat, but I think Otele successfully pulled it off.

I recommend this book to those who are interested in Black history or European history.

This draws on a lot of existing studies and scholarship of Black people in European history, but it's an interesting synthesis. The material on African Romans and the Black St. Maurice was particularly fascinating.

“These stories should be taught, widely analyzed, and valued. They bring us back to our human nature, while also serving as reminders that ‘humanity’ itself is a shifting concept.”⁣
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Thank you so much to Netgalley, Basic Books, and Perseus Books for the review copy of African Europeans: An Untold History, publication date May 4, 2021. Where can I begin with this epic read?? I adored it. It’s the answer to so many questions I had during my study of history and has given me a new hunger for this subject.⁣
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European studies is chronically lacking when it comes to portraying the diversity of history. Certain narratives are focused on again and again while leaving out the bigger picture. Each section of this book focuses on a particular region and connects past events to present issues. Every bit of it is fresh and relevant for our era today, not to mention fascinating to read about.⁣
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My main complaint is I felt like the book was too short. Sometimes the author would mentioned a historical figure in passing and then move on, leaving me adrift and longing for more detail. I think I would’ve been happy to read 400 or even 800 more pages on this subject. It really just scratches the surface and I want more!⁣

"As early as the third century, St Maurice—an Egyptian— became the leader of a legendary Roman legion"
That is only one of the many facts about Africans in European that has long been buried and overlooked. This incredibly rich text by Olivette Otele, a historian and Professor of the History of Slavery at Bristol University, is less a book and more a tapestry of an era that has long been white-washed and stereotyped. Otele brings to the forefront a cast of individuals that might only be known to medievalists and Renaissance scholars, forcing readers to ask numerous questions, the first of which is, when it comes to the shaping of 'European' culture, how many African Europeans' stories are really known, and how many are still waiting to be discovered.

I personally found this book too redolent of wishful thinking.....but
unfortunately, even if Alessandro of medici's mother was black, one would have to get up very early to find other blacks going their merry ways around Western Europe during the 15th & 16th centuries or even earlier...

Talking seriously about
African lives & their experiences in Europe prior to the 20th century is a bit far fetched and would definitely sound ridiculous to a lot of people. Nobody in his or her right mind would even nowadays use the expression "African European" or "Asian European" for that matter because It simply doesn't exist overhere in our European vocabulary and it will never exist.

Learning how to deal & coming to terms with the monstrosities our colonial endeavors have inflicted upon the African continent should be much important today for us in Europe than trying to convince ourselves or the others that happy African men & women where happily & freely roaming the European pathways before the dismal & brutal colonial periode.


Many thanks to Netgalley and the Basic Books for the opportunity to read this book prior to its release date

African Europeans set out with an impressive goal, and it did succeed in reaching it - somewhat. The information presented is incredibly important, and I was held with fascination and curiosity throughout my reading. However, the text itself was quite dense at times, and felt laden with a scholarly voice, making it less palatable to casual history readers. On the whole, Otele did a fantastic job, but the marketing of the book may want to look at the ways in which it is advertised.

Olivette Otélé's African Europeans: An Untold History is a meticulously researched look into the lives, both past and present, of people of African descent living in Europe. This book dispels the harmful myth that Europe was a place where only white people lived until the recent past and how this is something that Europe, as a whole has yet to really address and acknowledge. You can really feel the time and effort that Otélé put into this book and you can feel the passion she has to bring this there but overlooked history to light once and for all.

I picked up Olivette Otélé's book because I was interested in learning about the history of African Europeans which has always been there but has been overlooked and I was not disappointed. Otélé starts with African interactions with Ancient Greece and Rome in the first chapter to in the last chapter discussing French Afrofeminists and British artists who still live and work today. This book goes into detail about the varied relationship Europe has had with people living there of African descent and how this can vary from country to country and throughout time. The chapter I found the most interesting is the chapter discussing how white Europeans reminiscing about the age of empire is coinciding with glossing over of the history of African Europeans, causing harmful side effects for the well being of African Europeans today.

African Europeans: An Untold History is recommended reading and should definitely be picked up when it comes out.

Read if you: Want a detailed exploration of a history that should definitely be better known.

This requires a patient reader. At times, it feels academic and daunting. However, with so little of the history of African Europeans available to general readers, this should be a top consideration. I only wish a more general audience had been considered. This is not it, unfortunately.

Librarians/booksellers: This adds a necessary focus to European history. Purchase for your serious history readers.

Many thanks to Perseus Books/Basic Books and NetGalley for a digital review copy in exchange for an honest review.

There is a lot to take in, a lot of information packed into the book. A number of people, events, and places introduced. Good for those who want to get a wider look at the experiences of Africans that were not living in America. A view point some may not think about.

A well written book that dives deep into a part of history that has been sadly neglected or ignored. A definite must read!

I am grateful to NetGalley and the Hatchette Book Group for providing me an advanced digital copy of African Europeans: An Untold History by Olivette Otele to review. This nonfiction book is extremely well researched and well written, however it doesn’t make for easy, pleasurable reading. Ms. Otele describes in detail the lives of many Europeans who either were born in Africa or were born in Europe of African descent, beginning in the earliest days of recorded history, 23 BCE, through to the present. She provides an eye-opening look at how these people were treated centuries ago all over Europe, particularly beginning in Italy, and how they are treated today. Her characters include rulers and slaves, people of high birth and low, outsiders and fully connected individuals, all of whom show an ongoing interconnectedness between the African and European peoples. I recommend this book for anyone interested in Black History, race relations, European history and even African American history.

Otele has done a masterful job of weaving together the experiences of Africans in Europe from Antiquity to the present. The sweeping nature of this task requires limited engagement with each item, but individual case studies and firm theoretical links make this engaging and thorough.

This should be required reading for all graduate students, whether in a methods, historiography, or content specific course. I am writing my dissertation in medieval history and studied transatlantic history as an outside field. I saw quality familiar scholars, such as Geraldine Heng, in Otele's references and learned of many new ones. And, most importantly, I learned how things I was already familiar with continued and linked with other things over time and until the present. I would slightly quibble about African and European in a Roman imperial context, but this conversation is necessary because of how that history is used. Scholars of ancient Rome have received death threats for such mundane things as reminding people that statues were painted! Putting the modern frame of African and European on ancient Rome within this context confronts these (ab)uses of ancient history and set the stage for the rest of Otele's analysis.

Right now, this is necessary reading for graduate students or faculty. With some signposting, subsections, and maybe the various theories introduced early in its own section, this could be a wonderful addition to any western civilization or world history class. Something on these topics is desperately needed for those big surveys and the scope is there. As it stands it would be difficult to even excerpt for those audiences. That said, anyone who teaches this material, get this in your hands and update your lectures!

I really wanted to like this book, it is such a fascinating and important subject. I didn't get past the first chapter or two. The authors say in the introduction that they are going to go chronologically, but within the first chapter they start with WWII and go back to medieval times, etc. It was a lot of interesting anecdotes about people, but not organized well either by chronology or geography. They also say they intend to be accessible for a general audience, but use a lot of liberal arts style jargon and overly convoluted language, which I found to be off-putting. And I have a liberal arts education! I really hope that editing can remedy the organization problems and rein in the jargony style, so that it can reach that broader audience. I can see how it will make a big difference to a lot of people to learn about this history.

What was the experience of Africans who became European? Such is not normally presented as part of the historical narrative of Europe.

The author begins with Roman times and some information known regarding Africans in Europe, yet the majority of the work covers the period since the Renaissance. The story is very much tied with colonialism: the Portuguese experience, those of mixed European and African heritage in Guinea unable to fit in either in Europe or in Africa; the fate of Cameroonians acculturated to Germany after Germany lost its Empire; conditions for Africans in Sweden, Denmark, and the surprising celebration of Pushkin's African heritage in Russia. Much is made of the modern experience of Europeans of African descent, both of those who came to Europe in the colonial days and those who have more recently immigrated. The author gives a strong voice to those African Europeans who wish to be seen and valued in Europe as Europeans without experiencing discrimination or exoticization.

A good work which highlights aspects of European history most often neglected, and one with which Europe should grapple.

This is an incredibly important work of history. It needs to be read and analyzed in graduate classrooms, it should be in every graduate student's exam reading list, and it needs to be read by anyone who teaches European or World history at any level. Otele traces the history of Africans in Europe from ancient Greece to today and in doing so tells us a story of racial discrimination and perseverance. Because of the expansive nature of her work, not everything is covered. By choosing the stories included, Otele does cover a large geographic area. The strongest and most accessible chapters are the last two, which are of interest to a general audience, The rest of the book is better suited for specialists because knowledge of European and African history is required to fully understand the stories and analysis.

This erudite and well-researched book deals with people of African origin in Europe. It begins with the Roman Empire through the Middle Ages and ends with modern-day Europe. It tells of African born people who achieved fame or an integrated life in a variety of European countries, for example, Juan Latino in Spain or Jacobus Capitein in the Netherland.
The historical narrative of integration or success of African Europeans was the most interesting part for me. It showed how the perception of otherness or belonging changed in different civilizations and or times. Also, the artificial construct of superior and inferior races stands out when economic policies had to be justified like slave trading.
However, at times the authors digresses into modern-day academic discourses or gets lost in definitions and this makes reading difficult. I feel the second part of the book which is more about modern day discrimination should be better in another book.
Nevertheless, it is an important book on the subject and I learned many things, like language use, which I try to be more aware in the future.

An untold story, certainly, and one that is worth the telling. I learnt a lot from this book, which explores the presence of people of African descent in Europe from way back, something that is perhaps not widely known. From as far back as Roman times, in fact, there have been Africans in Europe. Even Russia’s national poet Pushkin had African ancestry. Often there is little evidence to go on, particularly for women, but the author’s research has been thorough and deep, highlighting individuals from different time periods and exploring attitudes and perceptions through the ages. She also explores the different words that have been used – negro, black, slave – and how they came not only to denote race and colour but eventually inferiority. The book is academic and scholarly and thus not always an easy read, although the author has made it as accessible for the general reader as it can be. I found the constant references to other writers and quotes from them, which peppered the text, intrusive, and would have preferred to read the author’s own views, leaving her sources to notes or footnotes, as I felt this impeded the narrative flow, and I can’t say that I really enjoyed the book. However, it is an important one and adds much to our understanding of race in history and thus any quibbles do not detract from that importance.

This was a fascinating and eye opening book but it read like a text book at times so this is not for the distracted reader.

Otele presents the lives and experiences of Black Europeans from Roman times up until today, and there is a great moment near the end where she points out that for some Black people Europe is now a choice as opposed to being forced to. There were stories about well known people, like a Medici and Pushkin, and lesser or totally unknown people. She talked about ancient times and Rome that one kind of figures "duh, there was contact and migration with Black people and Africans" but didn't fully think about and realize until now, and also about Danish involvement in Africa that no one talks about and the interactions between Europeans and Africans in a way I had not thought about before including how African and Black communities benefitted from these interactions. Just fascinating all around.

However, the chapters were very long and could have benefitted from subsections or each chapter could have been a section instead with its own chapters. I say this because chapters often felt like they abruptly changed focus or jumped around topics and I felt a little lost and wondered "How did we get here from six pages ago?' Basically, it felt unstructured at times. And finally, I was bothered by what felt like a glossing over of racism in modern Britain after expounding on racism in France and colorblindness in the Netherlands. And moreover how we went from African European lives and history to French feminism, BLM, and modern British music (when music was never mentioned prior). So it was like a history book that suddenly became an essay on modern race relations?

I did enjoy this book for the most part but the seeming lack of structure and incongruent ending were a big distraction.