I was delighted to hear Onyeka talking about Africans in Tudor England yesterday morning on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme. It's fantastic this subject is getting airtime, and we must all hope that translates to lesson time in schools, university courses and research, and further media coverage. 

It was a very short discussion (for a longer one, see this interview with Vox Africa TV; for more detail on the status of Africans in Tudor England, see my articles on "Slavery and English Common Law"; on "Why Slavery shouldn't distort the History of Black People in Britain" and the case of Caspar van Senden and his failed attempts to transport Africans from Britain in 1596-1601).

However I was puzzled by Onyeka's reference to an African in Tudor Blackburn, so I looked it up in his book and found (on p.361) a reference to the baptism of "Leticia" whose father is described as "Willm Voclentine Egiptian", on 3rd December 1602 in the record of St. Mary's, Blackburn, now held at the Lancashire Record Office. 

Other similar examples I found in my research  include ‘Anthoine an Egyptian’, buried in Gravesend on 26 May 1553, and ‘Batholomew the sonne of an Egiptian’ baptized in Barnstaple on 23 August 1568.

However, I didn't include these references in my thesis because I didn't feel that they could be taken as straightforward evidence of individuals who came from Egypt. 

The people referred to as "Egyptians" at this time were ‘gypsies’, or Roma/Romany people, of Hindu origin. Both linguistic and genetic studies have confirmed their origin in the Indian subcontinent. A Parliamentary Act of 1530 concerning Egyptians (illustrated above, and transcribed here) explained that: 

"before this tyme divers and many owtlandisshe people calling themselfes Egiptsions using no craft nor faict of merchandise, have comen in to thys realme and goon from Shyre to Shyre and place to place in grete companye and used grete subtile and craftye meanys to deceyve the people bearing them in hande that they by palmestrye could tell menne and Womens Fortunes and soo many Tymes by craft and subtiltie hath deceyved the people of theyr Money & alsoo have comitted many haynous Felonyes and Robberyes to the grete hurt and Disceipt of the people that they have comyn among."

Further Acts concerning ‘Egyptians’ were passed in 1552, 1554, and 1562. They were to be banished, their goods forfeited. By 1562, this was somewhat modified by the ruling that those born in England were to be placed in service. 

The fact that these people did not come from Egypt was recognised by at least one contemporary writer. Thomas Dekker wrote in Lantern and Candlelight (1608): 

"If they be Egyptians, sure I am they never descended from the tribes of any of those people that came out of Egypt. Ptolemy, King of the Egyptians, I warrant never called them his subjects; no nor Pharoah before him."

For more on Egyptians in Early Modern England, have a look at Chapter 3 of D. Mayall, Gypsy Identities, 1500-2000: From Egipcyans and Moon-men to the Ethnic Romany (2004). 

When an individual really is of African origin, the records are not slow to report or comment on it. It is only when an individual is described as ‘a/the blackamore’, ‘a/the negro’, or we are told where they come from or were born that we can be completely sure of their identities. 

 There is enough certain evidence of Africans in Tudor England (for example, this list of references found in London parishes, one of which is pictured below; my own research gathered evidence of over 360 Africans in Britain, 1500-1640, some 200 of which date from the Tudor period) to work with, without having to include these misleadingly-named "Egyptians". 

Since first posting this, Michael Ohajuru, art historian and author of the Black Africans in Renaissance Europe blog, has pointed out that the image above isn't that easy to decipher. Below is an annotated version. Where it says "East" ( in most of the entries on this page), it means they were buried in the east end of the graveyard. 

October was the 25th UK Black History Month.  I attended 20 related events over the last 8 weeks, and thought I'd write a blog diary of them in retrospect, to show the diversity of approaches and venues I encountered. As you will see, the diary begins in September and ends in November- showing that Black History Month is well on its way towards becoming Black History Season. But, ultimately, I'd like to see it disappear, because as Andrea Stuart has argued, it will only be a success once it has become redundant, because we have what Tony Warner of Black History Walks calls a "Full- Colour History", all year round. In the interim, we need Black History Month, to educate and campaign for an inclusive approach.  

I've tried to keep the entries brief, but sometimes there was a lot to say. Let me know which ones you'd like me to discuss further in later posts!

1. Sunday 29th September: Influential Black Londoners exhibition opens at National Trust Sutton House

Still on till the end of November, the exhibition opened with a Family Fun Day on the last Sunday of September, with activities and an appearance by John Blanke himself!

I was delighted to see the letters I'd written to 9 Londoners in situ, with great artwork by Jane Porter.

The featured individuals were: John Blanke, fl.1507-1512; Lascars, 17th-20th century; Ignatius Sancho, c.1729-1780; Francis Barber, c.1735-1801; Olaudah Equiano, c.1745-1797; Dido Elizabeth Belle, c.1761-1804; George Bridgetower, 1780-1860; Mary Seacole, 1805-1881; Samuel Coleridge- Taylor, 1875-1912.

Sutton House in Hackney was a great venue to tell the story of Black Londoners as it was built in the Tudor period by Ralph Sadleir, who might have encountered our earliest Black Londoner, John Blanke, at the court of Henry VIII. 

You can read more about the project here. And see more photos here. 

2. Monday 30th September: Othello at the National Theatre

What better play to watch on the eve of Black History Month? I've studied the "Moor of Venice" in the context of my research into Africans in Shakespeare's England but the experience of watching Adrian Lester, Rory Kinnear and Olivia Vinall play out the tragedy of jealousy was something else. My viewing was in part informed by having seen Toni Morrison's excellent Desdemona last year at the Barbican. I felt the modern setting was a distraction, but was most disturbed by the speed at which Othello is transformed from a hero to a violent, irrational murderer in the central scene. Food for thought as I write an article for Literature Compass on '"Making the beast with two backs": interracial relationships in early modern England'- due out next year. 

3. Thursday 10th October: Influential Black Londoners Launch

Back to Sutton House for the official launch event for the exhibition, with some honoured guests- including some of those Influential Black Londoners of the 1980s and 1990s nominated to be included in the exhibition next year. (The eventual winner was Doreen Lawrence). 

This was also my first glimpse of some of the local school children's fantastic artistic responses to the letters. See this photo album for more. 

4. Friday 11th October: Dan Lyndon-Cohen, Black History in the National Curriculum talk at Balham Library

Dan is Head of History at Henry Compton School, Fulham and the creator of www.blackhistory4schools.com. He gave us a useful summary of the complicated political wranglings over the curriculum over the last year and then proceeded to demonstrate how he manages to incorporate Black History into his own teaching. Much of his approach is summarised in this article he wrote for History Workshop. 

There was some strong feelings in the room- some wanted to get rid of Black History Month, others told of the troubles they'd had trying to convince their children's schools to teach Black History.

Nonetheless, Dan's pioneering approach is a model that others should emulate.

5. Wednesday 16th October: Africans in Stuart England 1603-1642 talk at Beauchamp College, Leicester. 

On a rainy Wednesday, I travelled to Leicester to speak to some 6th formers who were "doing" the Stuarts, 1603-1642 for A-Level. This was remarkably close to a paper I had sat back in 2000- and of course had no reference to the black presence in Britain at that time.  
Using plenty of images, I told the story of Africans in Stuart Britain, what they were doing, how they got here and how they were viewed in the eyes of the law. I enjoyed showing them pictures of both Oliver Cromwell and Prince Rupert depicted with black pages, and showing them a different side to history. Hopefully this will be reflected on their Black History Month display board next year- the teacher who invited me later tweeted: "my students want to start a hist soc to talk about things we don't normally do. Think your talk helped :-)."

6. Friday 18th October: Righting Past Wrongs? The Case for and Against Reparations, Senate House

Having read about the latest move by Caricom to seek reparations for slavery, and that they were being advised by London law firm, Leigh Day, who won the Mau Mau case earlier this year, I was very curious to hear Daniel Leader of that firm talk. Also speaking were Sir Ronald Sanders, Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies and a former Caribbean diplomat (who has blogged about reparations here) and Professor Philip Murphy, Director of the Institute. 
It was agreed that there had always been a strong moral case for reparations, but the question was whether it was possible to bring a legal case.
Daniel Leader spent a long time explaining the details of the Mau Mau case, which was fascinating, but didn't give us much idea how he would go about bringing a case for slavery reparations. Professor Murphy made the point that it would be a bad idea to have politicians feeling morally cleansed, having paid reparations- can a residue of guilt serve as an inoculation against future mistakes? Sir Ronald brought up the worry that pursuing reparations might have a negative impact on the tourism industry on which Caribbean countries are dependent. 
There were some strong feeling in the room that it was wrong that the case for reparations was being judged in a European court by European legal standards. From a historical perspective, I found it interesting that the case was being brought against Britain, France and the Netherlands by their former colonies, but that there is no sign of a similar move by the former Spanish and Portuguese colonies- when the Spanish and Portuguese were the originators of the transatlantic slave trade, with over 13,000 voyages marked with their flags on the 
Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Voyages database.
Ultimately the issues involved are too varied to go into here but I will watch the progress of this with interest. There's already been some interesting comment in The Telegraph,  The Economist and the New York Times. 

7. Friday 18th October: My review of Slavery and the British Country House is published in the TLS.

A fascinating collection of essays based on the 2009 conference of the same name, making a big step towards breaking the silence on this subject that has been deafening for too long.

You can read my review here, and find out more about my own research into links between English Heritage properties and Slavery & Abolition here. The book was launched in September at the Little Britain's Memory of Slavery Conference, and has been made available to download for free on the English Heritage website. 

8. Monday 21st October: Image and Reality of Africans in Renaissance England (IRBARE) talk at Sutton House with Michael Ohajuru. 

Miraculously managed to arrive to give this talk on time, having attended my godfather's funeral in Vienna that morning! 
I presented on John Blanke, and the reality of the lives of Africans in England, in contrast to Michael's work on the Black Magi. You can read more about our double act on the IRBARE2013 website.

9. Thursday 24th October: Michael Ohajuru's Hidden in the Collections- Africans in Medieval & Renaissance Art- guided tour of the V&A

Really enjoyed Michael's tour of the V&A which he wrote up on his blog. It's a wonderful place, and the tour showed a different side to the art presented there. Michael's approach showed up some shortcomings in the museum's interpretation of some of the works on show- see his blog on this. I've heard they've already taken steps to rectify the mis-identification of Simon of Cyrene in the Marnhull Orphery (see this page for more accurate info, which has not yet been interpolated into the main listing), but it's even more vital to provide some context to the Tilman Reimenschneider statue to show that St. Maurice was usually depicted as of African origin. Michael has written a persuasive document to this effect here, but really all you need to see is the statue (below, left) alongside other images of the saint (below) and more on Pinterest:

10. Thursday 24th October: Unveiling of Mary Seacole statue maquette at the Royal College of Nursing

Having written about Mary Seacole earlier this year in The Times, it was fantastic to see the unveiling of this 1/4 size maquette of the statue, which is to be placed outside St. Thomas's hospital, striding towards the river and the Houses of Parliament. This will be the first statue erected to commemorate a black woman in Britain. More info on the Memorial Appeal website.

As a historian, I was particularly fascinated by artist Martin Jennings's account of his trip to the Crimea to find the site of Seacole's British Hotel. Using old maps and with the help of the local authorities, he was able to pinpoint the exact place, and found remnants of bottles and pots still lying on the ground. The 15 ft high disc behind Mary in the statue will bear the imprint of stone from a quarry near the site, which has a detonation mark from a WW2 tank. I'll be watching out for the documentary, due to air on ITV in 2015. 

11. Tuesday 29th October: Image and Reality of Africans in Renaissance England talk at SOAS with Michael Ohajuru. 

A second performance of the IRBARE double act, this time at SOAS, the School of Oriental and African Studies. Michael explained the appearance of a Black Magus in 1520s Devon while I talked about the realities of life for Africans in Renaissance England, through the experience of John Blanke, the Tudor court trumpeter (who I've now been asked to write an entry on for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography). Read more on the IRBARE2013 website.

12. Wednesday 30th October: Africans in London, 1500-1640 talk at Queen Mary University London. 
The next night, I rushed to QMUL after a day spent proof-reading the Sunday Times Food List, to talk about Africans in early modern London. I had kindly been recommended to my hosts, the QMUL History Journal, by Professor Kate Lowe, who is doing some fascinating research into sub-Saharan Africans and African objects in Southern Europe between 1440 and 1650, and was involved in the great Revealing the African Presence in Renaissance Europe exhibition I reviewed for History Today earlier this year. The QMUL History Journal had a Black History theme this term (read it online here), with an essay entitled To what extent was ‘race’ used to categorise people as ‘other’ in early modern England? by Joanna Hill, one of Kate Lowe's students, which I look forward to reading. 

13. Thursday 31st October: 100 Great Black Britons at the National Portrait Gallery

in 2003, as a response to the BBC's 100 Greatest Britons poll, in which the most diverse individual was Freddie Mercury (born in Zanzibar), Patrick Vernon launched 100 Great Black Britons, with Mary Seacole eventually topping the list.  Ten years later, the campaign is being re-launched. 
The debate at the NPG posed the questions:  What are the issues, challenges  and impact of black achievement in Britain today? And who should we be calling Great?
Patrice Lawrence of Every Generation Media chaired the debate on black achievement and British identity. The speakers were: Rev Rose Hudson–Wilkin, The House of Commons Speaker's Chaplain; Elizabeth Pears, News Editor, The Voice newspaper; Dean Atta, writer and poet and Patrick Vernon OBE, Founder of 100 Great Black Britons.

Luckily, not everyone arrived on time, so we were treated to an impromptu performance by Dean Atta. I liked the line: "Silence is not golden/Silence is the truth stolen"- seemed to chime with the Mansfield Park Complex of not speaking about slavery I wrote about here. Dean pointed out when he spoke later that all the terms "Great", "Black" and "Briton" are problematic and require definition. We discussed whether the list should expand in size, or include categories, such as Science, Law, Business, Medicine, Young achievers, Parenting, and Regional lists.


The Rev Hudson-Wilkin pointed out how important it is that white people see images of successful black people. In the same way as some people see BHM as a segregation, this Black-only list has the same problem. But, as long as the mainstream doesn't include these stories, we need BHM and 100GBB as campaigning tools. Elizabeth Pears made the point that perhaps the BBC should re-run their poll, to see whether attitudes have changed.  I pointed out in the discussion that, although there's still a long way to go,  there are some signs of progress in mainstream media- such as the increasing inclusion of people of African and Asian origin or descent in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, the National Trust's Influential Black Londoners exhibition at Sutton House, Hackney and recent discussion on the BBC Radio 4 Media Show on how to reach black audiences. 

14. Friday 1st November: Black History's Future, Islington 

This event, organised by Everyvoice, brought together some key decision-makers from Islington Council with a great panel of speakers to debate the future of BHM. 
The conference sought to address the question: how do we reach a place where people’s histories are not marginalised, so there will be no need for Black History Month? How do we ensure that diversity is integrated in mainstream education and celebrations all year round?
 I had in mind the thought-provoking article I'd read by Andrea Stuart in the Guardian the day before on the same subject. I blogged my response to the article here.

The speakers were so engaging that no one seemed to mind that the event overrun its timetable. One of the most impressive images I saw was the map above that Patricia Lamour showed us that the African continent is larger than the United States, China and India put together. Dr. Robin Whitburn and Abdullahi Mohamud spoke about their Doing Justice to History project, which is designed to explode two false premises: 1) Black people did not play a significant role in British life before 1948; 2) Multiculturalism doesn't work. They used some fascinating case studies to prove their point, such as the story of Somali sailor Mahmood Hussein Mattan, who was unjustly hung in 1952.  Tony Warner, Director of Black History Walks showed us how Black History is everywhere when you know how to look,  and reminded us that the BFI has a regular African Odysseys  film programme, as well as showing us a very disturbing video of the black doll/white doll experiment. Kandace Chimbiri talked about her Black History books for children, including one to accompany the recent Origins of the Afro Comb exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. History teacher Martin Spafford summarised the latest curriculum wrangling and explained how Black History could still be taught within the new framework, sharing stories such as the North African "Ivory Bangle Lady" who lived in Roman York and the Indian Hockey team that beat Germany in the 1936 Olympics, which can easily be incorporated into study of "The Romans" or "Nazi Germany". 

The ensuing discussion was passionate and varied. It was mostly agreed that BHM needs to continue for now, as a campaigning tool, a stepping stone to where we'd like to be, with a "Full-colour" history. 

15. Wednesday 5th November: Graeme Evelyn's Call and Responses: Odyssey of the Moor at Kensington Palace

Was lucky enough to be invited to a private view, where Graeme spoke about the piece. You can see it at Kensington Palace until 6th January. 

The work is a contemporary response to John van Nost’s Bust of the Moor – a marble sculpture commissioned by King William III in 1688/1689. 

Evelyn places the bust within a gilded cage, but with its doors flung open to capture the view over Kensington Gardens, creating for the Moor a dream of self-determination and freedom. The inside of the cage is circled with a series of tiles telling an imagined story of the Moor's life, using the premise that this man had read Homer's Odyssey and seen parallels. 

Evelyn's earlier work, Reconciliation Reredos, an altarpiece in Bristol confronts the fact that the church, St Stephen’s, blessed every ship that left the port, including every slaver that left the city harbour for Africa to trade for enslaved people during the Transatlantic Slave Trade.

Evelyn's work is part of a wider trend in which heritage institutions seeks to commission the work of black artists. Other temporary installations, e.g. Yinka Shonibare's Mrs Oswald and Colonel Tarleton Shooting (2007) for Scratch the Surface at the National Gallery and his current exhibition in Greenwich. This was discussed by 
Lubaina Himid, Joy Gregory and Sokari Douglas Camp  on the artists  in conversation panel at the Little Britain's Memory of Slavery conference at UCL in September.

Call and Responses: Odyssey of the Moor poses many unanswered questions about Africans in late 17th Century England and Holland. Evelyn has thrown down the gauntlet to historians to answer some of these questions. For example, at it's base, the installation incorporates a contemporary report of William of Orange marching into Exeter in 1688 with: "200 Blacks brought from the plantations of the Netherlands in America, Imbroyder'd Caps lin'd with white Fur, and Plumes of white Feathers, to attend the Horfe."  Evelyn hopes the piece will inspire historians to research the context of this, and what impact the advent of a Dutch monarch had on the history of Africans living in England and the history of English involvement in the slave trade. 

The work has already inspired a response by Delia Jarrett-Macauley, who won the Orwell Prize for Political Writing for her debut novel, 'Moses, Citizen and Me' and is currently a Fellow in English at the University of Warwick.

You can listen to the music Graeme Evelyn listened to while creating the work here:  ODYSSEY of the MOOR art 2013   

16. Wednesday 5th November: Making Freedom exhibition at the Royal Geographical Society

On until Sat 21st December, this important exhibition marks the 175th anniversary of the emancipation of nearly 1 million Africans in the Caribbean. This is taking the date of freedom as 1838, when indentured labour ended, as opposed to 1834, when slavery was officially abolished.

In front of a large map of the Caribbean created specially, to show all the islands and their capitals, Burt Caesar quoted Claude McKay's If We Must Die (1919), which sets the tone for this exhibition's tale of constant resistance, "Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!".  

Sir Keithlyn Smith, author of To Shoot Hard Labour told the story of his grandfather's great grandmother, Mother Rachel's quest to be reunited with her daughter Minty in 1838. You can listen to the story here.  Benjamin Zephaniah performed his powerful poem White Comedy and shared some of his own experiences of racism. He pointed out how important this exhibition is, to dispel the myth that "slaves were given freedom by the white man". In fact, their constant resistance and rebellion made the slave system increasingly hard to sustain. Toussaint L'Ouverture's  uprsing in Haiti in 1791, leading to the declaration of independence in 1804 was the most successful, but not an isolated occurrence. The exhibition tells the stories of other attempts to make freedom- in Barbados in 1816, Guyana in 1823 and in Jamaica in 1832. 

This exhibition put the agency back in African hands and tells the other side of the story we heard in 2007. A must -see! And there's now talk of putting it on at the House of Commons next year!

17. Thursday 6th November: Black People in Tudor England and Inclusive Curriculum  event at the House of Commons

There was an impressive crowd gathered in Committee Room 11 of the House of Commons to hear Onyeka talk about his new book, Blackamoores: Africans in Tudor England, their presence, status and origins, published by Narrative Eye and discuss how to get a more inclusive history curriculum with Stella Creasy MP, Chi Onwurah MP, Cllr Lester Holloway, and Tony Warner of Black History Walks.

Onyeka gave a passionate and gripping speech about his research- he has been working on the subject since 1991. When he first set out to look into the history of Tudor Africans, people told him he was wasting his time, that he would find nothing. I heard similar opinions when I started my research on the subject in 2004. I was very pleased to get my hands on a copy of his book, for although I've known Onyeka for years, this was the first time I'd been able to read his work at greater length.

It was fantastic to see the political support for the subject from Stella Creasy, Chi Onwurah and Lester Holloway. I'm looking forward to reading the book and engaging further on the challenge it poses to politicians and educators. 

18. Friday 8th November: Africans in Urban Britain, 1500-1640, talk at the University of Leicester

Went up to Leicester again, this time to talk about Africans in Urban Britain, 1500-1640 at the University's Centre for Urban History. I told some stories about the lives of Africans in 16th and 17th century England and Scotland's ports and cities, explaining how they arrived in Britain, what occupations and relationships they found in the city and how they were treated by the church, the law courts and the other inhabitants of urban Britain. This provoked a lively debate and I also learned about my host Dr Kidambi 's fascinating research into the All India Cricket Team's 1911 tour of England. 

19. Friday 8th November: Vincent Carretta on Ignatius Sancho: Britain's First African Man of Letters at the British Library

I rushed back from Leicester to catch expert Vincent Carretta talking about Ignatius Sancho, one of the Influential Black Londoners I had written to at Sutton House. 

The British Library has recently acquired 13 of Sancho’s signed letters to his friend and patron William Stevenson, plus two to his father the Rev. Seth Ellis Stevenson.  These are the only letters by Sancho that are known to survive.
The British Library's Untold Lives has an interesting blog post on this, but, as Carretta himself remarked, it's a great pity Sancho does not feature in the Georgians Revealed exhibition. 

Carretta provided us with a handout with quotes from them and Sancho's other correspondence and proceeded to explain the significance of the new acquisition in context. One thing that makes these letters really significant is that they can now be studied alongside the printed text of 1782, revealing identities obscured and also proving beyond any doubt that Sancho wrote the letters himself. For this was questioned by none other than Thomas Jefferson who, in his Notes on the State of Virginia (1781) grudgingly admitted  him "to the first place among those of his own colour who have presented themselves to the public judgment", but went on to say "This criticism supposes the letters published under his name to be genuine, and to have received amendment from no other hand; points which would not be of easy investigation." The acquisition of the Stephenson archive has made this investigation much easier and will allow scholars to defend Sancho from this underhand attack. 

20. Tuesday 19th November: Image and Reality of Africans in Renaissance England talk at Greenwich University with Michael Ohajuru. 

A third outing for IRBARE, this time in Greenwich, the location of the old royal palace, built by Henry VII on the site of today’s Old Royal Naval College, where John Blanke would have worked.  You can read more about the presentation on the IRBARE2013 website. In the light of discussion of Black History Month's future, it's interesting to note that this talk took place in the second half of November, as part of the Greenwich Student Union's Black History Week (see poster). Could we be making a transition to a Black History Season?

Black History 365...

For me, this is really an artificial end, because I seek out events like these all year round! Check my Talks page for details of my upcoming talks, and if there isn't one near you, invite me to your local school, university, library or history society!

Less than eight minutes into Juliet Gardiner's programme, Presenting the Past, How the Media Changes History on Radio 4, I had to press pause and start tweeting yesterday. 

She said that as a historical advisor on Atonement (2007), there was a decision that had made her uneasy- the depiction of a  black soldier appearing with Robbie in Dunkirk. She asserts: "In fact, it was almost impossible for there to have been a black soldier in the British Expeditionary Force in France". She suspects this was done "to reflect today's multicultural society" and "gave a misleading impression of how Britain was at the time". Screenplay by Christopher Hamilton- explains it away as colour-blind casting, but says "it probably wasn't accurate". This element of the film did prompt discussion at the time, in the Guardian and the Spectator. And Gardiner herself responded to questions, commenting "statistically one would expect there to have been a handful of black soldiers scooped up by the Military Services Act, and one or two of those may have been sent to France with the BEF"- a statement which seems quite contradictory to what she says on her Radio 4 programme. I'm no expert on the 20th century, but I've seen plenty of pictures of black soldiers in both world wars- not just African Americans, or even Imperial troops, but British-born men too, as you can see from this online exhibition from the Ministry of Defence, this slideshow from Phil Gregory of the Black Presence website, and Tony Warner's recent talks at the Imperial War Museum. Surely, even if there wasn't a huge number of black soldiers in the BEF at the beginning of the war, showing one in Atonement makes the larger point that there were black soldiers in World War 2, in the same way as the Lancastria was co-opted to represent many smaller ships that sunk at Dunkirk. 

But where I really had to press pause in shock was when Tim Bevan, producer of Elizabeth (1998) as well as Atonement, commented "had that [casting a black actor] taken place in our Elizabeth movie, you wouldn't have been able to prove that, at all,  and it would have been interpretative". This is a film which has no problem placing it's own dramatic interpretation on various other historical events- showing the queen sleeping with Robert Dudley, for example- something that really is unprovable. (See Alex von Tunzelman's unpicking of the film on her Guardian Reel History blog). But I'd like to pick up Bevan's gauntlet now, just in case he's planning a third Elizabeth film to follow Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007). If he ever wants to cast a black actor in a Tudor film (or indeed a Stuart or a Georgian one): I can prove it for him! In my research into Africans in Britain, 1500-1640 for my Oxford D.Phil. thesis I found evidence of over 360 Africans living in England and Scotland during the period. (Oh, please, someone make a film set in the court of James IV of Scotland, featuring the "More Tabronar"). More specifically, there is clear evidence that Elizabeth I had at least one African servant at her court. Records survive from 1574 and 1575 showing her ordering clothes for a "lytle Blackamoore" from her tailor. Further to this, a painting known as "Elizabeth I at Kenilworth" shows her being entertained by a small troupe of black musicians. This was in keeping with a wider trend  of Africans working at royal and aristocratic courts across Europe. However, it would equally be accurate to show Africans walking about in Tudor crowd scenes. The most interesting recent attempt to show this was in Dr. Who, The Shakespeare Code (2007). But that's another story (and another blog?).


For now, I just want to end by saying that as historians, we have to work harder to ensure that the Media doesn't Change History, but History Changes the Media. This is a two-way street, but we need to do our bit (by blogging, for example!) to ensure new research is fed into the media. The BBC Radio 3/ AHRC collaboration New Generation Thinkers initiative  is a great example of how this can work in practice. Let's have more of that!



You can read yesterday's Twitter discussion on this with @jessicammoody, @cath_fletcher, @michael1952 and @HistoryNeedsYou on Storify. 

I've just written a comment on Andrea Stuart's article that ended up being so long that I thought I'd make a blog post out of it!

I'm hoping to write a retrospective blog on all the interesting events I've attended this Black History Month soon [I did!- read it here], but I need to digest a bit first, and events are continuing into November this year anyway!

Andrea Stuart concludes: "Instead of the jingoistic version of history championed by the likes of education secretary Michael Gove, we should aim to create a narrative for our citizens that tells the whole story, warts and all. We will know Black History Month is successful only when it is redundant – when our history is understood by us all, and young people gain the pride and self-assurance that a genuine account of it would afford."

I commented: 

I strongly agree that Black History Month needs to continue, as a campaigning and educating tool, until we have a more inclusive, and therefore accurate, understanding of British History. 

To make this happen, we need to focus on History during BHM, not taster Zumba lessons (as I saw advertised as part of one London borough's programme). 

One positive sign this year is that BHM events continue into November in many places, so is becoming a season!

I argued for a diverse curriculum in the Times earlier this year, when Mary Seacole was in danger of being removed from the syllabus.

And I blogged about the dangers of the narrow "Our Island Story" vision of British History, championed by Gove and Cameron.

In the spirit of understanding all our history, the statement: "Britain was also one of the originators of the institution of slavery, certainly in the Atlantic context."- is a bit misleading. Portugal and Spain were the first European transatlantic slavers, transporting the first Africans across the Atlantic in the early 16th century, over 50 years before John Hawkins and over a century before the English began trading regularly. And, as others have pointed out, the institution of slavery was ancient!

However, the wider point that it is hypocritical to pat ourselves on the back for abolishing the trade which we happily profited from for some 150 years is quite right. I recently reviewed a book on Slavery and the British Country House, which explores some of the buildings around Britain that remain as physical reminders of these profits.

And in the context of abolition, it's important to remember that the end of slavery was brought about not just in Parliament, but as a result of the agency of Africans, both abolitionists like Equiano, and those that actively resisted in the Caribbean, whose story is being told in the Making Freedom exhibition, opening at the Royal Geographical Society next week, on 6th November.

But, as I argued in the Guardian last year, we need to stop equating Black History with the History of Slavery.

For more on the history of Africans in Tudor and Stuart Britain, see the History page of my website, or come to one of my Talks. 

Dear Reader,

I'm writing to tell you about one of the more unusual tasks that has befallen me as a freelance historian. I'm used to writing about dead people, but this time I had to write to them!

As an anonymous admirer, I've written to nine "Influential Black Londoners" from Tudor royal trumpeter John Blanke (the one whom I'm the best acquainted with) to the composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor for a new exhibition at the National Trust's Sutton House in Hackney. 

The letters are based on research provided by a team of volunteers, overseen by Patrick Vernon OBE, founder of 100 Great Black Britons and a Labour Councillor in Hackney.

My epistolary efforts will be displayed at Sutton House throughout October and November, each in the room that seemed most suited to their story. Illustrator Jane Porter has designed stamps - you can see the one inspired by Virtuoso Violinist George Bridgetower, 1780-1860 on the poster- while I found addresses for the envelopes (listed below). 

I didn't have space to tell Mary Seacole how I'd defended her in The Times earlier this year or to admit to Ignatius Sancho that I felt a bit embarrassed writing to a man whose collected letters with the great and the good of his day were worthy of publication back in 1782. 

There also wasn't space (apparently most museum visitors switch off after about 180 words) to go into some of the still disputed facts of their lives and legacies. Even though all the figures (except John Blanke and the Lascars) now have entries in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, we still don't really know some basic biographical information, such as whether Equiano was born in Nigeria or South Carolina.

Nonetheless, I hope the letters will spark the readers' interest and inspire them to find out more. To this end I have put together a list of suggested further reading.  I will also be giving a talk at Sutton House with Michael Ohajuru, on Monday 21st October,  further details here.  

I hope you get a chance to see the exhibition, or come to my talk, or both- if you do, please let me know what you think of the letters, and what/to whom would you write to if you could correspond with any historical character?  

I wonder what the Influential Black Londoners would have written back to me? 

Yours sincerely,

Miranda Kaufmann



My correspondents, with addresses

 -why not write your own and post in the comments below?

John Blanke, fl.1507-12, Greenwich Palace, under the Old Royal Naval College, Greenwich, London SE10 9NN.
(This was Henry VIII’s main London seat until he built Whitehall in the 1530s.) 

Lascars, 17th-20th century: The Strangers' Home for Asiatics, Africans and South Sea Islanders, West India Dock Road, Limehouse,London E14 8HB.

Ignatius Sancho, c.1729-1780, 20 Charles Street London W1J 5DT. (His grocery shop)

Francis Barber, c.1735-1801, 17 Gough Square London EC4A 3DE (now the Dr. Johnson's House museum).

Olaudah Equiano, c.1745-1797, 67-73 Riding House Street, London, W1W 7EJ.

Dido Elizabeth Belle, c.1761-1804, Kenwood House, Hampstead Lane, London NW3 7JR.

George Bridgetower, 1780-1860, 8 Victory Cottages, Peckham, London SE15. (One of Rita Dove's poems inspired by Bridgetower is named #Victory Cottages, Peckham, 1860) 

Mary Seacole, 1805-1881, 14 Soho Square, London, W1D 3QG.

Samuel Coleridge- Taylor, 1875-1912, 6 St. Leonards Road, Croydon CR0 4BN.

There's a mystery man in red on display in the In Fine Style, the Tudor and Stuart Fashion exhibition at the Queen's Gallery, Buckingham Palace, on til 6th October. Well actually, there's two. One has a whole room devoted to him. The other is not even mentioned in the interpretation, which, both on the wall in the gallery and on p.258 of the catalogue, reads: "Anne of Denmark is shown alongside her horse and hounds." The Queen's animals seem to be of more interest to the curators than this man in red. The trend continues on the Royal Collection website, where a later copy of the painting by Jan Van Belcamp is described as "without the horse, landscape background and fewer dogs." It is also bereft of the man in red. 

It seems odd that such a finely dressed young man should be entirely overlooked in an exhibition devoted to fashion. The colour of his garment is one that is associated with royalty elsewhere in the exhibition, the lace of his collar is very fine, and the artist has lovingly rendered the red ribbon of  his shoe. And yet somehow, he has disappeared into the background of Paul Van Somer's painting, unworthy of mention.

I was so excited to finally see this painting in the flesh, after having written about it and used it to illustrate lectures. The silence surrounding Anne of Denmark's African groom was deafening for me. 


I took  some comfort in the fact that there was no mention of the groom in the adjoining painting of Prince Henry either. Indeed the exhibition had nothing to say on the subject of servants' fashion. 

Of course my instinctive reaction was to immediately start telling the old man standing next to me all about the black presence in Stuart Britain, then to take lots of pictures (it was kind of the Royal Collection to allow photography) with this blog in mind. 

So, what ought the curators have mentioned about this other man in red? Well, here it's my turn to go red, as I don't know his name, or anything else about his life. But I can provide you with some compelling context!

We know that there were Africans working in royal and aristocratic stables across Europe. A painting of c.1630-2 by Daniel Mytens shows an African groom bringing Charles I and Henrietta Maria their horses. 

We know from household and treasurer's accounts that Anne of Denmark had an African in her household back in Edinburgh, c.1590-94. She also commissioned and performed with her ladies in Ben Jonson’s Masque of Blackness in 1605 and its sequel, the Masque of Beauty (1606), in which the black daughters of Niger seek "beauty" and become white, thanks to the rays of the British sun (which represented King James).

Going back to the painting, I was curious about the palace in the background, as this might be some clue to where the man in red lived. I learnt that this was Oatlands Palace, which James I granted to his wife in 1611. She made many improvements, including: "a new brick wall to compass and enclose her majesties vineyard at Otelands and the long privy walle addoiyninge to the same ass in levellinge the grene above the vineyarde being trenched very deep to kill the ferne rootes and making a Silkewormehouse ... seates of wainscott to stande in the vineyard ... A false dove for the privy walke..." The only part of the palace that remains today is a c.1545 entrance gate and part of the walls, swamped by suburban housing in Elmbridge, Surrey. 

So, perhaps we can have a Google Art Talk on this equally enigmatic man in red, or even better a whole exhibition devoted to the many Africans in British Portraits?

Last year Michael Ohajuru and I both spoke at an event at the British Library about Blacks in Renaissance Britain. He spoke about images of the Black Magi and other Africans in the art of the period, while I focused on a particular case in which 135 Africans had spent a week in Devon in October 1590. You can read my blog on the event here. 

The contrast between the image and the reality of the Black African experience really struck us, and so this year, we've decided to join forces during Black History Month in October to present our thoughts on The Image and Reality of Black Africans in Renaissance England, which we've called IRBARE for short. 
We've put together a website, Facebook page and Twitter account to promote this, so please do check those out/Like/Follow to hear more. Michael's already uploading lots of fascinating images, and I will be doing my best to keep up with some "reality checks"! And if you know any history societies, universities or other institutions who would like to book us for a Black History Month event, send them our way! To book, contact me or email IRBARE2013.

Hope to see you at one of our IRBARE events this October!

I was looking forward to catching up with the Time Traveller's guide to Elizabethan England series on BBC2, having enjoyed the book, and even used its tips on Tudor greetings last time I tried my own hand at time travel by dressing in Elizabethan costume on a visit to Hampton Court. I was particularly interested in what Dr. Ian Mortimer had to say about Africans in Elizabethan England. 

About 45 minutes into the third episode, Brave New World, Dr. Mortimer  dives into what he calls "the darker side" of Elizabethan human nature. Warning the viewer that they will likely be shocked and appalled by the racism and prejudice of Elizabethan Englishmen, he embarks upon a brief but devastating denunciation of the treatment of Africans in Elizabethan England. 

The most shocking records, he says, "suggest that rich men are lending out their black female servants to friends and neighbours for sexual novelty and experimentation." Our modern moral outrage at such practices would "baffle" Elizabethans, we are told.  But a quick glance at the church court records, where hundreds of cases of fornication were routinely punished every year, shows that the Elizabethans would be equally appalled at such behaviour. 

But what is Dr. Mortimer's evidence for this scandalous assertion? He quotes from the baptismal register of St. Andrew's, Plymouth,  2nd May 1593, which reads:

 "Helene, daughter of Cristian the negro servant to Richard Sheere, the supposed father beinge Cuthbert Holman, base "

There is no indication in this record of the kind of nefarious activity that Mortimer suggests. Elizabethan parish registers are peppered with records of illegitimate children, born to both African and Englishwomen.  Indeed some 4% of all children were born illegitimate in the late 16th and early 17th century. Furthermore, the majority of children born to servant women out of wedlock were fathered by a fellow servant.  This was sometimes spelt out in the records: for example in St. Keverne, Cornwall, ‘Constance the base child of a blackmore ye reputed father John the servant of John Langford’ was baptised in January 1605.  

Far from being free to sexually experiment, Elizabethan Englishmen regularly found themselves in court and paying for their amatory actions: in January 1603, Roger Holgate, servant to Thomas Browne, a hatmaker, confessed to the Bridewell Court that ‘he hath committed with his fellowe a blackmoore in the house the abominable synne of whoredome’.  He was punished and, more importantly ‘kept till he put in sureties to discharge the cittie and parishe of the childe and children’. 


Dr. Mortimer does not mention that Cristian had at least one other child, as on 14 April 1594 ‘Cristian, daughter of Cristian, Richard Sheer's Blackmoore’ was buried in the same parish. This time, no father is named, and the child may have died before she could be baptized, or may have been an older child, baptized elsewhere with the name ‘Christian’. 


Unfortunately neither Sheere nor Colman have left many records in Plymouth- the only reference I found was to Sheer hiring out a horse in 1591. Holman could just as well have been Sheer's servant, as his friend. Further research into these individuals is required if we are to fully understand Christian's experience of Elizabethan Plymouth. 

Her experience should also be viewed alongside those which tell a more positive story, such as this St. Philip's and St. Jacob's, Bristol baptism record of 18 August 1600:

"Richard a Bastard, the sonne of Joane Marya a Black Moore & nowe the wyffe of Thomas Smythe Byllysmaker[a manufacturer of bills, a type of weapon] was baptized."

Besides the transformation of Richard Sheere of Plymouth into some sort of racist pimp, Dr. Mortimer further comments that made my hackles rise. Although I realise that the exigencies of filming and editing can result in valuable qualifying clauses being left on the cutting room floor, having spent years of my life researching Africans in Britain, 1500-1640, I could not stand by and let some of the resulting statements go unchallenged. 

Dr. Mortimer's comment, "Before the slaving expeditions of the 1560s, there were only a handful of black men and women in England" suggests that  Africans largely came to England as a result of the slave trade, which is not true. A successful slave trading operation would result in Africans arriving in the Americas, not England. In fact, Africans were more likely to arrive in England as a result of (non-slave) trade with Africa, privateering voyages, or via Europe. Mortimer refers to Francis Drake in the preceding segment of the programme, but without mentioning how some of his privateering voyages brought Africans to England, or the significance of the black man's head on the Drake Jewel which he wears round his waist in the portrait we see. 

Mortimer asserts that "the majority of black men and women are to be found serving in the houses of the powerful", however, there is more evidence of Africans living in merchant households, and even in the homes of seamstresses and beer brewers, and indeed the majority of Africans in England are not recorded as having masters at all. Some were financially independent, working as craftsmen, like Reasonabel Blackman, a silkweaver in 1590s Southwark. 

Mortimer suggests there were efforts to deport "as many [Africans] as possible" in 1596 and identifies a "rising tide of racism, as attitudes that were once based on curiosity and ignorance turn hostile". However, as I showed in my article about Caspar Van Senden, the merchant who was given permission to take Africans to Lisbon, the events of 1596 were less of a deportation act and more of a money-making scheme cooked up by a foreign merchant and a bankrupt politician. Far from reflecting a rise in racism, the fact that these men were ultimately unsuccessful in their attempts, shows that the position of Africans in Elizabethan society was stronger than Mortimer suggests.  His main evidence for racism in Elizabethan society comes from Shakespeare and Reginald Scot. However, literature is devised to entertain and is prone to exaggeration. The more prosaic evidence of the archives, which show that Africans were baptised, married Englishmen and women, were paid wages, or were able to earn their own living, and were allowed to testify in court, shows that they were treated much better than Dr. Mortimer suggests.  The subject is fascinating, and not only deserves, but requires, a programme, or even a series, of its own to properly explore its complexities. 

"it's as if a bunch of squatters were to vote on whether or not to keep occupying a building illegally."


This was the Argentinian President Kirchner's  comment on the recent referendum in the Falkland Islands (or Islas Malvinas to the Argentinians), where 1,513 out of 1,517 (a 92% turnout) voted in favour of remaining British.  


Her attitude was no surprise to anyone who's been following her approach over the last few years, but the extent of her commitment surprised to me, when I visited the Casa Rosada in Buenos Aires last month, and found the writing literally on the wall! 

This picture shows a metallic outline of the islands, displayed in a prominent position in one of the courtyards. The image, emblazoned with the Argentinian flag, also appeared in the Gallery of Latin American patriots (see below), while outside in the Plaza de Mayo, protestors flags (picture below) read: 

"Las Malvinas fueron, son y serán Argentinas. 
La sangre derramada jamas será negociada. 
Por nuestros hermanos muertos en las Islas, océano y continente. 
Soberania si. 
Abandono no." 

Loose translation:
The Malvinas were, are and will be Argentina's.
The blood shed will never be negotiated.
For our brothers killed in the islands, ocean and continent.
Sovereignty YES.
Abandonment NO."

I was born on 15th April 1982, during the Falklands war, on a day when Argentine tanks were photographed rolling down one of the island's streets. So I had a heightened sensibility to this area of conflict between my country and the country I was visiting. I spotted the outline of the islands in other prominent places around Buenos Aires, in one case it made a rather attractive water feature! I avoided discussing it with people we met, but my travelling companion, a Frenchman, was not so discreet! His enquiries met with a determined silence from most. I got a sense of a culture where it was best to avoid political conversations, particularly with strangers. 

I was fascinated by Matthew Parris's recent article in The Times highlighting the hypocrisy of Argentina's approach. He  quotes General Julio Argentino Roca, President of Argentina twice near the end of the 19th century:

“Our self-respect as a virile people obliges us to put down as soon as possible, by reason or by force, this handful of savages who destroy our wealth and prevent us from definitely occupying, in the name of law, progress and our own security, the richest and most fertile lands of the Republic.”

and points out that the history of Argentina has left only  1.6 per cent of its 40 million inhabitants directly descended from or calling themselves indigenous people.

Of course two wrongs don't make a right. However, Kirchner's focus seems to be on the land, whereas the British are taking the cue from the people. For me, the people are more important. But my trip to Buenos Aires has left me in no doubt that this is not a problem that's just going to go away. 

I really enjoyed my visit to the Shakespeare exhibition at the British Museum last week: hurry and see it before it shuts on 25th November! Thought I'd do a little round-up of the exhibits related to Africans in Shakespeare's Britain for you... Staging Africa in 13 objects, if you will.  I've listed the objects in the order you would encounter them in the exhibition, with some help from the excellent exhibition catalogue. Some of the links are obvious, others a little more obscure!

1. Africans in Shakespeare's London

One of the first things you see when you enter the exhibition is this amazing map of  London, created by Wenceslaus Hollar in 1647 (so technically a while after Shakespeare died). It shows the Globe, and also lots of churches, such as St. Olave Tooley Street, shown here across the Thames from the Tower.  St. Olave's was the parish where Reasonable Blackman, a silkweaver, and his family lived in the 1590s and ‘Constantyn a negare’ was buried  on 5 November 1605. Many of the other churches marked on the map have similar entries in their parish registers...

2. Bayning's ewer?

This Iznik Turkish ceramic ewer, made in London in 1597-8, may have been made for Paul Bayning, a prominent Levant merchant. What is not revealed in the exhibition is that Baning was also a huge sponsor of privateering voyages and had at least five Africans in his household. In 1593 ‘three maids, blackamores’, are recorded as lodging in his house. In March 1602 ‘Julyane A blackamore servant Wyth Mr Alldermanne Bannying of the age of 22 yeares’ was christened at St. Mary Bothaw. In 1609, ‘Abell a Blackamor’ appeared before the Governors of the Bridewell, ‘his M[aste]r Paul Bannyinge present’, and Bayning’s 1616 will made provision for the education of ‘Anthony my negro’. 

3. African horn

This horn was carved in the Calabar region (modern Nigeria) in the 1500s, then found its way to England, where in 1599 it was recarved as a drinking cup, and inscribed:

 "Drinke you this and thinke no scorne
   Although the cup be much like a horn."

It was later further adapted to be an oil lamp. This strange object has travelled a long way, through many incarnations. It demonstrates the existence of trading links with Africa in Shakespeare's time, which were increasingly regular from the 1550s.   Richard Hakluyt chronicled many of these early voyages in his Principall Navigations. 

4. Portrait of the Moroccan ambassador

Abd-al-Wahid bin Masoud bin Muhammad al-Annuri, portrayed here, led an embassy to the court of the 'sultana Isabel' (Elizabeth I) in 1600, but was in fact only one of a series of such ambassadors. Moroccan envoys also visited London in 1551 and 1589. The shared enemy was Spain, but the proposed alliance never amounted to much.  A clue to the problems can be found in the letter John Chamberlain wrote to Dudley Carleton on 15 October 1600:

"The Barbarians take theyre leave sometime this week, to goe homeward for our merchants nor mariners will not carry them into Turkie, because they thinck it is a matter odious and scandalous to the world to be friendlie or familiar with Infidells but yet yt is no small honour to us that nations so far removed and every way different shold meet here to admire the glory and magnificence of our Queen of Saba [Sheba]." 

5. Sir Henry Unton's masque

The unusual biographical portrait of Sir Henry Unton, painted posthumously for his widow c.1596 shows this masque of Mercury and Diana being performed at his wedding in 1572. The procession behind these main characters consists of small, childlike black and white figures, which have been identified as Cupids. The black figures are of interest as they are a rare visual depiction of the trend for "counterfeit blackamoors" in pageantry and masques. For example, in 1566, on the occasion of the baptism of the future James VI and I, six shillings was laid out from the royal coffers for: ‘thre lamis skynnis quhairof was maid four bonnets of fals hair to the saidis mores’- so four Scots wore lamb's wool wigs to imitate African hair as part of their costumes.  Why were these "Masques of Moors" so popular in the sixteenth century? 

6. Sir Francis Drake

This German broadside  from the late 1580s celebrates Drake as a Protestant hero, freedom-fighter and scourge of the Catholic Spanish. 
The catalogue speaks of his circumnavigation and raids on the Spanish Caribbean, but doesn't mention his many encounters with Africans on those voyages (which I blogged about here) or the fact that some of them returned to England with him. 

7. Titus Andronicus

This drawing, c. 1594 by Henry Peacham illustrates Titus Andronicus. It shows that the character of Aaron, described as a 'moor' is certainly thought of as black, not merely 'tawny'. The actor is most likely an Englishman, in costume.  A good book on this (which in fact uses this image on its cover) is V.M. Vaughan's Performing Blackness on English Stages.

8. Cleopatra
Cleopatra was of course an African Queen, though some people seem to forget Egypt is in Africa, a complaint I've heard from Tony Walker, who shows people Cleopatra's Needle on the Embankment  on his Black History Walks. Shakespeare at least imagined Cleopatra as having dark skin.  He describes her as having a ‘tawny front’ (Antony and Cleopatra, I. i. 4-6) and being 'with Phoebus’ amorous pinches black' (I. v. 29). This identity is not always clear in the various images of the Egyptian queen in the British Museum's collection.  The artists seem to have been more interested in portraying her death by snake venom- most including an asp biting her bared bosom. My favourite was the set of French playing cards (shown left): Le Jeu des Reynes Renommées (The Game of Famous Queens) by Stephano della Bella (1644). The gift shop really missed a trick by not stocking a replica pack! 

9. Portrait of an African Man

This amazing portrait was painted by Jan Jansz. Mostaert c. 1525-30. He worked at the court of Margaret of Austria, regent of the Netherlands, in Mechelen, near Antwerp. Unfortunately, we know very little about the man in this painting. We don't even know his name. But he has all the trappings of a high-ranking courtier. Of special significance is the badge in his hat, which has been identified as a badge given to pilgrims who had visited the Madonna of Hal, a shrine associated with the Valois and Hapsburgs.  The British Museum has one in its collection (below, right). This sends a clear message that this man, like Othello (II, iii, 307) and at least 67 Africans in Britain, 1500-1640, was a baptised Christian. Curiously, the Madonna of Hal (below, left) is a Black Madonna, an ambiguous symbol, but one that seems strangely appropriate here!  

10. Allegorical African

This illustration of a commission granted to Tommaso Morosini dalla Sbarra (1546-1622), a Venetian patrician, is sadly not a portrait, but part of an allegory  of Truth and Justice that has yet to be fully explained. It's suggested that the black figure wearing the family's heraldic colours of gold and blue may be a pun on the 'Moro' (Moor in Italian) of 'Morosini'. So in some ways, this is a more artistic development of the Moor's heads found on heraldic coats of arms across Europe, and even in the arms of the current Pope, Benedict XVI.

11. Aesthetic of blackness
Black Africans appeared in decorative works of art, from cameos, like this one showing an African woman, made c.1600 in Prague or North Italy (now set in a modern gold ring), to sculptures, such as this marble, classically-inspired bust made by Nicholas Cordier in Rome (below, left), and even the splendid gilt-silver cup made by  leading Nuremberg goldsmith,Christoph Jamnitzer in about 1602 (below, right).  This cup may in fact have been a sports trophy at a Saxon court tournament to celebrate Christian II's wedding to Hedvig of Denmark, which makes me think of the Tournament of the Black Lady held at the court of James IV of Scotland a hundred years before, described in William Dunbar's poem, Ane Blak Moir. 

12. Sycorax and Circe
Shakespeare's ‘damned witch Sycorax’, mother to Caliban in Shakespeare’s The Tempest (1610-11), was a native of Algiers. Her name may have been inspired by Circe, the witch who turned Odysseus's men into swine on her Greek island.

Interestingly, this Greek pot shows Circe as a black African woman.  In the Tempest, Sycorax is said to have been: 
'hither [to the island] brought with child,
And here was left by th’sailors.’ (I. ii. 318-20)

Her fate is not entirely fictional. On his circumnavigation voyage of 1577-80, Drake abandoned a heavily pregnant African woman on Crab Island, Indonesia, an action for which he 'purchased much blame' at the time, but not in later legend.

13. A Daughter of Niger

On 6 January (Twelfth Night) 1605, Ben Jonson's Masque of Blacknesse was performed at the Old Banqueting House before the court of James I and Anne of Denmark.  This sketch by architect and scenery-builder extraordinaire Inigo Jones shows the costume of one of the masquers, to be dressed as a 'Daughter of Niger'. This performance and its sequel, the Masque of Beauty (1606), in which the Queen and her ladies themselves blacked up to play the daughters of Niger, who seek beauty and become white thanks to the rays of the British sun (which represented King James) were perhaps the most sophisticated expression of  an ongoing interest in 'Masques of Moors' (see no.5, above).   

So, as you can see, there are plenty of fascinating things in the Shakespeare exhibition that illuminate the history of Africans in Early Modern Britain and Europe. I'd seen pictures of some of these things in books, and it was a thrill to see them for real. Others were new, and so all the more intriguing. I hope you get the chance to see them before 25th November- and even better, to see them alongside so many other relics of that long-ago time, all lovingly linked to a snippet of Shakespearean verse. And as imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, I will leave you with these words: 

"I speak of Africa and golden joys" (Henry IV, Part 2: V, iii, 101)