Marika Sherwood is a Hungarian-born historian, researcher, educator and author, based in England since 1965.
Sherwood was born in Hungary. With the remains of her Jewish family she emigrated to Australia in 1948. A short stint of employment in New Guinea introduced her to racism and colonialism. She returned to Sydney, attended university as a part-time student and then emigrated to the "Mother Country" with her son in 1965. Teaching in London schools introduced her to the many aspects of racism prevalent in the UK. She determined that if it ever became possible, she would do some research on the history of "Black" peoples in the UK as she wanted to replace fighting with fists to fighting with knowledge. Five years of work in Harlem, New York (1980–85), convinced her that this was necessary.
Sherwood has a desk, but is not on the staff of the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London. In 1991 with Hakim Adi and other colleagues she founded what is now known as the Black and Asian Studies Association, in order to encourage research and disseminate information, and to campaign on education issues. This is ongoing.
In 2010 she was honoured by an invitation to contribute to the Kwame Nkrumah Centenary Colloquium in Accra, convened by the African Union and the Government of Ghana.
Apart from her major publications listed below, she has also contributed to a number of films, radio programs, conferences.
Marika Sherwood is the owner of Savannah Press, a publisher for some of her books "at cost" prices.
World War II: Colonies and Colonials, Savannah Press, 2013. ISBN 978-0951972076
The Life and Times of Albert Makaula-White, an African Farmer in Kent 1904-1937, Savannah Press, 2012
Malcolm X: Visits abroad April 1964 – February 1965, UK: Savannah Press, 2010, ISBN 978-0951972069; USA: Tsehai Publishers, 2011. ISBN 978-1599070506
The Origins of Pan-Africanism: Henry Sylvester Williams and the African Diaspora, Routledge, 2010. ISBN 978-0415633239
(with Kim Sherwood) Britain, the slave trade and slavery, from 1562 to the 1880s, Savannah Press, 2007. ISBN 978-0951972052
After Abolition: Britain and the Slave Trade Since 1807, IB Tauris, 2007. ISBN 978-1845113650
(with Hakim Adi) Pan-African History: political figures from Africa and the diaspora since 1787, Routledge, 2003. ISBN 978-0946918003
Claudia Jones: a life in exile, Lawrence & Wishart, 2000. ISBN 978-0853158820
Ernest Bowen and Printers' Trade Unions in British Guiana and Trinidad, 1927-1941,:Savannah Press, 1999. ISBN 978-0951972038
(with Martin Spafford) Whose Freedom were Africans, Caribbeans and Indians fighting for in World War II?, Savannah Press/BASA, 1999. ISBN 978-0951972045
Kwame Nkrumah: the Years Abroad 1935-1947, Freedom Publications (Ghana), 1996. ISBN 978-9988771607
(with Hakim Adi) The 1945 Pan-African Congress Revisited, New Beacon Books, 1995. ISBN 978-1873201121
Manchester and the 1945 Pan-African Congress, Savannah Press, 1995. ISBN 978-0951972021
Pastor Daniels Ekarté and the African Churches Mission, Savannah Press, 1994. ISBN 978-0951972014
(with Bob Rees) Black Peoples of the Americas, Heinemann, 1992. ISBN 978-0435314255
Black Peoples in the Americas - a handbook for teachers, Savannah Press, 1992. ISBN 978-0951972007
Women Under the Sun (African Women in Politics and Production - a bibliography), IFAA, London, 1988. ISBN 978-1870425056
Many Struggles (West Indian Workers and Service Personnel in Britain 1939-1945), Karia Press, 1985. ISBN 978-0946918003
The British Honduran Forestry Unit in Scotland, OC Publishers, 1982. ISBN 978-0907611028
Articles
On peoples of African and Asian origins / descent in the UK
"Two Pan-African political activists emanating from Edinburgh University: Drs John Randle and Richard Akinwande Savage", in Afe Adogame and Andrew Lawrence (eds), Africa in Scotland, Scotland in Africa (Leiden: Brill, 2014). ISBN 978-9004276208
"African and Caribbean British Political Activists", podcasts at The Historical Association.
"Gordon Riots", Total Politics, June 2011.
"Africans in Britain 2000 years ago", New African, October 2010.
"Shall we ever learn the full story of Blacks in the Royal Navy?", BASA Newsletter, #57, 2010.
Episode 33, "The African Diaspora in Britain" in Africa Past and Present - The Podcast about African History, Culture and Politics. The Africa Online digital Library.
"Misinformation: additional information on the MOD’s", We Were There exhibition, Kent County Council, 2008.
"Krishna Menon, Parliamentary Labour Party Candidate for Dundee 1939-1940", Scottish Labour History, vol. 42, 2007.
"An Emperor in exile, Part 2: Ethiopia and Black organisations in the UK 1935-36", BASA Newsletter #43, September 2005.
"The Coloured Film Artists’ Association", BASA Newsletter #41, January 2005.
"Lascar Struggles against discrimination in Britain 1923-1945: the work of N. J. Upadhyaya and Surat Alley", The Mariner’s Mirror, 90/4, 2004.
"Kent in the Empire and the Empire in Kent", Here's History Kent.
"Blacks in Tudor England", BASA Newsletter, #38, January 2004; #39, April 2004; #40, September 2004.
"And again: more on the Royal Navy", BASA Newsletter #39, April 2004.
"Riots, lynchings, fascists and immigrants: what’s changed?" Searchlight, October 2003.
"Lascars in Glasgow and the West of Scotland during World War II", Scottish Labour History Journal, vol. 38, 2003.
"Black People in Tudor England", History Today, October 2003,
"Coloured Medical Men", BASA Newsletter, #32, 2002, #34, 2002 #36, 2003.
"Lynching in Britain", History Today, 49/3 March 1999.
"Blacks in the Royal Navy", BASA Newsletter #23, January 1999.
"Blacks in the Gordon Riots", History Today, December 1997.
"The Comintern, the CPGB, Colonies and Black Britons 1920 – 1938", Science & Society, Spring, 1996.
"Blacks in London’s Docklands", ASACACHIB Newsletter, May 1992.
"The Coloured Workers Association", ASACACHIB Newsletter, December 1991.
"Quakers and Colonials 1930-1950", Immigrants & Minorities, July 1991.
"Racism and Resistance: Cardiff in the 1930s and ‘40s", Llafur (Welsh Labour History Journal), September 1991.
"Race, Nationality and Employment among Lascar Seamen 1660 to 1945", New Community, January 1991.
"Ticket of Leave", History Today, August 1990.
"The War Against Blacks in Britain", Freedomways, 4th Quarter 1982.
On the trade in enslaved Africans, and slavery
"'Legitimate' traders, the building of empires and the long-term after-effects in Africa", in T. Green (ed.), Brokers of Change: Atlantic Commerce and Cultures in Pre-Colonial Western Africa, British Academy/OUP, 2012.
"Slavery: the Atlantic trade and Arab slavery", New African, October 2012.
"The trade in enslaved Africans", in F. Brennan & John Parker, Colonialism, Slavery, Reparations and Trade: Remedying the ‘Past’, Taylor & Francis/Routledge, 2011.
"Britain, the trade in enslaved Africans and slavery".
"The British illegal slave trade 1808 – 1830", British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 31/2, 2008.
"Britain, slavery and the trade in enslaved Africans".
"Atlantic slave trade and slavery up to and beyond 1807/1833", Slavery, Abolition & Social Justice 1490 – 2007, (September 2007).
"Manchester, Liverpool and Slavery", North West Labour History Journal, #32, September 2007.
"After Abolition", esi, Summer 2007.
"Post-1807 Act", Socialist Worker, 24 March 2007.
"Slaves and slavery, 1807–2007: the past in the present", openDemocracy, 23 March 2007.
"The Nefarious Trade", History Today, March 2007.
"Britain, the slave trade and slavery, 1808 – 1843", Race & Class 46/2, October–December 2004.
"Perfidious Albion: Britain, the USA and slavery in the 1840s and 1860s", Contributions to Black Studies, 13/14 1995/6 (published 1999).
On Pan-Africanism / Kwame Nkrumah
"Nkrumah and Pan-Africanism 1942 – 1958", in Lazare Ki-Zerbo (ed.), Hands Off Africa (forthcoming, 2013).
"The Pan-African Conference, Kumasi, 1953", in T. Manuh and A. Sawyerr (eds), The Kwame Nkrumah Centenary Colloquium Proceedings, Accra: Kwame Nkrumah Centenary Committee, 2013.
George Padmore and Kwame Nkrumah: a tentative outline of their relationship’ in Fitzroy Baptiste and Rupert Lewis (eds), George Padmore: Pan-African Revolutionary, Ian Randle Publications, 2009.
"Pan-African Conferences, 1900 – 1953: what did Pan-Africanism mean?" In Charles Quist-Adade and Frances Chiang (eds), From Colonization to Globalization, Dayspring Publishing, 2011/ Journal of Pan-African Studies, 4/10, 2012.
"Henry Sylvester Williams and his ‘descendant’ George Padmore", BASA Newsletter #60-61, July/December 2011.
"Nkrumah: the Student: Years in London 1945-1947", Immigrants & Minorities, September, 1993.
On Africa / Africans
"The African Diaspora in Europe", Encyclopaedia of the World’s Minorities, Routledge, 2006.
"Jamaicans and Barbadians in the Province of Freedom: Sierra Leone 1802-1841", Caribbean Studies, 13/2-3, 1998.
"Elder Dempster and West Africa 1891 – 1940: the genesis of underdevelopment", International Journal of African Historical Studies, 30/3, 1997.
"'There is no new deal for the blackman in San Francisco': African attempts to influence the founding conference of the United Nations April - July 1945", International Journal of African Historical Studies, 29/1, 1996.
"Strikes! African Seamen, Elder Dempster and the Government, 1940-1942", Immigrants & Minorities, July 1994.
On education
"Racism by omission".
"Have we progressed since the Lawrence Enquiry?", summer issue, Race Equality Teaching, 27/3 2009.
‘Miseducation and Racism’, Ethnicity and Race in a Changing World: A Review Journal, February 2009.
‘Black School Teachers in Britain in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries’, History of Education Researcher, #.81, May 2008.
"Teaching Black history: the struggle continues", Institute of Race Relations (November 2007).
"'There is so much more to the history of Black peoples than slavery….,", Race Equality Teaching, 25/2, 2007.
"In this curriculum I don’t exist", Institute of Historical research (2005).
"Racism in Education?", race equality teaching, 22/3 summer 2004.
"Race, Empire and Education: teaching racism", Race & Class 42/3, 2001.
"Education and the Lawrence Inquiry", Multicultural Teaching, 18/2, 2000.
"Engendering racism: history and history teachers in English schools", Research in African Literatures, 30/1, February 1999.
("Sins of omission and commission: history in English schools and struggles for change", Multicultural Teaching, Spring 1998,
"Multiethnic history: The Picts, Greeks and Romans; The Tudors and Victorian Britain; Britain 1750-1900; Colonies, Colonials and World War II; World War II and anti-imperialist struggles" - a series in Teaching History, April 1997 – February 1998. History, BBC.
"The Dangers of Ethnocentrism", Teaching History, January 1996,
"SOS: Is Anybody Listening?", Teaching History, June 1994.
On racism
"White Myths, Black Omissions: the historical origins of racism in Britain", International Journal of Historical Teaching, Learning and Research, 3/1, January 2003.
"How racist beliefs spread in Britain", ASACACHIB Newsletter, January 1994.
"It’s Not a Question of Racism; a case study of institutional racism 1941–1943", Immigrants & Minorities, July 1985.
Other
"William G. Allen in Britain", Ethnicity and Race in a Changing World, vol. 2, issue 2, winter/spring 2011.
"Africa’s history" (comprising six articles), Revealing Histories (June 2008).
"So which of these ancestries do you claim when you say that you are 'British'?"
(with Kathy Chater), "The Pigou Family Across Three Continents", Proceedings of the Huguenot Society, 28/3, 2005.
"Colonies, Colonials and World War Two".
"Malcolm X in Manchester, 1964", North West History Journal, #27, 2002.
"India at the Founding of the United Nations", International Studies (India), 33/4, 1996.
"The UN: Caribbean and African-American attempts to influence the founding conference in San Francisco, 1945", Journal of Caribbean History, 29/1, 1996.
"'Diplomatic Platitudes': the Atlantic Charter, the United Nations and colonial independence", *Immigrants and Minorities, September 1996.
"The Colonies and World War II", Black Cultural Archives Newsletter, #2, July 1995.
"Walter White and the British: a lost opportunity", Contributions to Black Studies, Nos. 9/10, 1990-1992.
"Special issue: Claudia Jones", BASA Newsletter #44, January 2006.
