Toby Green

Toby Green FBA is a British historian of inequality. He is also a Professor of Precolonial and Lusophone African History and Culture at King's College London. He obtained his Doctor of Philosophy in African studies, at the University of Birmingham. He is Chair of the Fontes Historiae Africanae (Sources of African History) Committee of the British Academy,^[1] and has written extensively about African early modern history and colonial African slavery, mainly focused on slavery in the Portuguese colonies.

He has also written on the Spanish Inquisition.^[2] Green disagrees with the notion of a Black Legend of the Spanish Inquisition and often quotes sixteenth-century sources, regarding the institution's abuse of power in Latin America, and is often cited regarding this subject. He has other publications regarding the issues of religious prosecution and oppression in Africa and other European colonies. His interests are slavery in the Atlantic and cultural and economic links between America and Africa.^[3]

His book, A Fistful of Shells won the 2019 Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize for Global Cultural Understanding.^[4] It was a finalist for the 2019 LA Times Book prize,^[5] and was shortlisted for the 2019 Cundill History Prize^[6] and 2020 Wolfson History Prize.^[7]

Green was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2024.^[8]