Marika Sherwood (8 November 1937 – 16 February 2025) was a Hungarian-born historian, researcher, educator and author based in England. She was a co-founder of the Black and Asian Studies Association and a pioneering researcher into the history of Black British people.
Life and career Sherwood was born on 8 November 1937, into a Jewish family living in Budapest, Hungary. With the surviving members of her family (many had died during World War II), she emigrated in 1948 to Sydney, Australia, where she attended North Sydney Girls' High School until 1954. In 1955, she married Ronald Troy, with whom she had a son, Craig, before divorcing in 1962.
She was briefly employed in New Guinea (then under Australian control) for a period before moving back to Sydney to attend university as a part-time student. She earned a BA degree in anthropology from the University of Sydney in 1965. She had a short marriage to Peter Sherwood, a professor of French, before she eventually emigrated to England with her son after divorcing her husband in 1965, and she found employment as a teacher in London. There, she learned of the discrimination faced by Black students in the educational system, which spurred an interest in Sherwood to research the history of the African diaspora. This resolve was strengthened by a five-year period of academic research in Harlem, New York City, from 1980 to 1985.
Sherwood was a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London., 2012–2013, Institute of Commonwealth Studies. In 1991, with Hakim Adi and other colleagues she founded what is now known as the Black and Asian Studies Association (BASA), in order to encourage research and disseminate information, and to campaign on education issues. This is ongoing.
In 1998, Sherwood published a tribute to her recently deceased friend, the Communist Party of Great Britain member Billy Strachan, in BASA's newsletter.
In 2007, she published After Abolition: Britain and the Slave Trade Since 1807. Stephen Shapiro, writing in the Ohio State and Miami University history journal Origins, described the book as "provocative" and "a worthwhile read" for "those interested in British or African history."
In 2010, she was invited to contribute to the Kwame Nkrumah Centenary Colloquium in Accra, convened by the African Union and the Ghanaian government.
Apart from her formal publications listed below, she also contributed to a number of films, radio programmes, and conferences. Sherwood set up Savannah Press, a publisher for some of her books "at cost" prices.
In 2017, Sherwood was planning to give a speech about the treatment of the Palestinians during the University of Manchester's Israel Apartheid Week under the title "You're doing to Palestinians what the Nazis did to me". The Israeli embassy intervened, contacting the university with concerns that the title violated the International Holocaust Remembrance Association's definition of antisemitism, adopted by the UK government. Manchester University censored the title and put conditions on the speech.
She wrote nine entries in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: Dusé Mohamed (1866–1945), journalist and playwright; Peter McFarren Blackman (1909–1993), political activist; Robert Broadhurst (1859/60–1948), pan-African nationalist leader; William Davidson (1786–1820), conspirator; George Daniel Ekarte (1896/7–1964), minister and community worker; Nathaniel Akinremi Fadipe (1893–1944), writer and anti-colonialist; Claudia Jones (1915–1964), communist and journalist; Ras Tomasa Makonnen (c. 1900–1983), political activist; and Henry Sylvester Williams (1869–1911), pan-Africanist.
In October 2022, Sherwood was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of History at the University of Chichester.
Sherwood died at home on 16 February 2025, at the age of 87.
Selected publications
Books An African Family in Kent: The African Makaula-White Family in East Kent, RTP, 2025, Kwame Nkrumah and the Dawn of the Cold War: The West African National Secretariat, 1945-48 (Pluto, 2019). World War II: Colonies and Colonials, Savannah Press], 2013. The Life and Times of Albert Makaula-White, an African Farmer in Kent 1904–1937, Savannah Press, 2012 Reviews:, Faversham Times, 22 June 2012.Taylor, Erica, "Little Known Black History Fact: Albert Makaula" , BlackAmericaweb.com, 5 June 2012. Malcolm X: Visits abroad April 1964 – February 1965, UK: Savannah Press, 2010, ; USA: Tsehai Publishers, 2011. The Origins of Pan-Africanism: Henry Sylvester Williams and the African Diaspora, Routledge, 2010. Reviews:Killingray, David (2011), "Origins of Pan-Africanism. Henry Sylvester Williams, Africa, and the African Diaspora", The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 39:2, 348–351.Whittall, Daniel (2011), "The imperial African - Review of Origins of Pan-Africanism: Henry Sylvester Williams, Africa, and the African Diaspora, by Marika Sherwood (Routledge, , 354 pp." The Caribbean Review of Books). (with Kim Sherwood) Britain, the slave trade and slavery, from 1562 to the 1880s, Savannah Press, 2007. After Abolition: Britain and the Slave Trade Since 1807, I.B. Tauris,Sherwood, Marika (2007), After Abolition: Britain and the Slave Trade Since 1807 , I.B. Tauris Publishers. 2007. (with Hakim Adi) Pan-African History: political figures from Africa and the diaspora since 1787, Routledge, 2003. Reviews:Martin, Guy (2005). "Pan-African History: Political Figures from Africa and the Diaspora since 1787 (review)". African Studies Review. 48 (1): 214–217.Heywood, Linda (2005). "BOOK REVIEWS - Pan-African History: Political Figures from Africa and the Diaspora since 1787". The International Journal of African Historical Studies. 38 (1): 117.Vinson, R. T. (2005). "Pan-African History: Political Figures from Africa and the Diaspora since 1787, by H. Adi and M. Sherwood : book review". Unisa Latin American Report. 21 (2): 113–115.Killingray, David (2004). "Pan-African History: Political figures from Africa and the diaspora since 1787, edited by Hakim Adi and Marika Sherwood. London: Routledge, 2003. 203 pp. (paperback)". African Affairs. 103 (412): 496–497. Claudia Jones: a life in exile, Lawrence & Wishart, 2000. Review:Bourne, Jenny (2001), Claudia Jones: a life in exile (Review), Race and Class, vol. 42, no. 3, January–March 2001, p. 105 (ISSN: 0306-3968). Ernest Bowen and Printers' Trade Unions in British Guiana and Trinidad, 1927–1941,:Savannah Press, 1999. (with Martin Spafford) Whose Freedom were Africans, Caribbeans and Indians fighting for in World War II?, Savannah Press/BASA, 1999. Kwame Nkrumah: the Years Abroad 1935–1947, Freedom Publications (Ghana), 1996. Review: (with Hakim Adi) The 1945 Pan-African Congress Revisited, New Beacon Books, 1995. Manchester and the 1945 Pan-African Congress, Savannah Press, 1995. Pastor Daniels Ekarté and the African Churches Mission, Savannah Press, 1994. (with Bob Rees) Black Peoples of the Americas, Heinemann, 1992. Black Peoples in the Americas — a handbook for teachers, Savannah Press, 1992. Women Under the Sun (African Women in Politics and Production — a bibliography), IFAA, London, 1988. Many Struggles (West Indian Workers and Service Personnel in Britain 1939–1945), Karia Press, 1985. The British Honduran Forestry Unit in Scotland, OC Publishers, 1982.
Articles On peoples of African and Asian origins / descent in the UK
"The Multi-ethnic Royal Navy and Merchant Marine, from the Seventeenth Century Onward" Topmasts, #2, August 2018. "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). "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. "Krishna Menon, Parliamentary Labour Party Candidate for Dundee 1939–1940", Scottish Labour History Journal, vol. 42, 2007. "Lascar Struggles against discrimination in Britain 1923–1945: the work of N. J. Upadhyaya and Surat Alley", The Mariner’s Mirror, 90/4, 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. "Blacks in Tudor England", History Today, Volume 53, Issue 10, October 2003. "Lynching in Britain", History Today, 49/3 March 1999. "Blacks in the Gordon Riots", History Today, December 1997. "The Comintern, the CPGB, Colonies and Black Britons 1920 – 1938", Science & Society, Spring 1996. "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. "The British illegal slave trade 1808 – 1830", British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 31/2, 2008. "Manchester, Liverpool and Slavery", North West Labour History Journal, #32, September 2007. "Slaves and slavery, 1807–2007: the past in the present", openDemocracy, 23 March 2007. "The Nefarious Trade", History Today, March 2007. "British companies continued to profit after abolition of slave trade", Socialist Worker, 24 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 "The beginning of the Cold War in the Gold Coast?" in David Featherstone and Christian Hogsbjerg (eds), The Red and the Black: The Russian Revolution and the Black Atlantic (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2021) "The All Colonial Peoples Conferences in Britain, 1945", Leeds African Studies Bulletin, 79 (2018). "The Quest in the United Kingdom for African Unity, 1945-48" Contemporary Journal of African Studies, 5/1, 2017 "Nkrumah and Pan-Africanism 1942 – 1958", in Lazare Ki-Zerbo (ed.), Hands Off Africa (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. "Nkrumah: the Student: Years in London 1945–1947", Immigrants & Minorities, September, 1993.
On Africa / Africans "African Students Association of America and Canada, 1941 – 1945" The Lagos Historical Review, issue 14, 2015 "The African Diaspora in Europe", in 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.