The Bibliography of British and Irish History (BBIH) is a record of nearly 630,000 books, articles and essays relating to the British and Irish past, worldwide.

Throughout Black History Month 2021, we have been running #FridayFind on the Institute of Historical Research’s twitter channel to highlight some of the latest research in Black British history you can find in the Bibliography.

#FridayFind from BBIH

The first #FridayFind is Catherine Babikian’s 2021 article in the Journal of British Studies. In this article, Babikian discusses the recruitment and subsequent labour of Caribbean and African nursing staff to fill some of the 35,000 nursing vacancies when the National Health Service (NHS) launched in 1948.


The next #FridayFind is Christine Kinealy’s book Black Abolitionists in Ireland published by Routledge in 2020. This publication traces the stories of ten black abolitionists who travelled to Ireland to win support for the anti-slavery movement:

  • Olaudah Equiano (1745–1797)
  • Moses Roper (1815–1891)
  • Charles Lenox Remond (1810–1873)
  • Frederick Douglass (1818–1895)
  • William Wells Brown (c.1814–1884)
  • Henry Highland Garnet (1815–1882)
  • Edmund Kelly (1817–1884)
  • Samuel Ringgold Ward (1817–c.1866)
  • Benjamin Benson (1818–?)
  • Sarah Parker Remond (1826–1894)

Another #FridayFind from BBIH is Seumas Macdonald’s and John Saillant’s article about Jean-Baptiste Philip (1796-1829) published in the journal Archives: The Journal of the British Records Association in 2020. Philip was a mixed-race Trinidadian doctor and civil rights leader who was educated in London and Edinburgh. This article contains a translation from Latin of an 1815 medical dissertation presented to the University of Edinburgh.

The final #FridayFind is Sarah Longair’s and Chris Jeppesen’s book chapter in Decolonising Europe?: popular responses to the end of empire. This chapter considers the presence of colonial-era items in the contemporary homes of 3 former British colonial officials who had intentionally turned rooms in their homes into curated displays of colonial-era objects.

Black British history online reading list

The Bibliography defines British and Irish history very broadly, and includes extensive records on histories of race, empire and migration. In October 2020 the Bibliography’s editors compiled a listing of publications relating to Black British History, drawn from the Bibliography. The list offers 412 recent publications in this field published between 2010 and 2020. It is available online via BBIH’s publisher Brepols and the BBIH webpages on Institute of Historical Research’s website.

About the Bibliography of British and Irish History

The Bibliography of British and Irish History (BBIH) is the largest and most comprehensive guide available to what’s been written about British and Irish history, from the early 1900s to 2021.

The Bibliography is updated three times a year, with the latest update (June 2021) adding records of 3138 new publications — many of which cover titles published in 2020-2021.

It’s an essential resource for research and teaching, providing up-to-date information (and links) on nearly 630,000 history books, articles, chapters, edited collections and theses. New records are added in three annual updates. These records are searchable by a wide range of facets including: title, author, chronology, date and form of publication, historical topic and geographical region.

The Bibliography is a research project of the UK’s Institute of Historical Research and the Royal Historical Society, and is published by Brepols. BBIH is a subscription service and is available remotely via university and research libraries worldwide.