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. 

As Black History Month drew to a close, I found myself addressing the Department for Education. My 'lunchtime seminar' talk  was called " Africans in Tudor and Stuart Britain: before the slave trade." (I hastened to add that I meant before the English really got going at the slave trade, not before the Portuguese and Spanish slave trade, and pointed out that John Hawkins' voyages in the 1560s were something of an aberration, which were not to be repeated for some 70 years). 

A few days before my talk, the poet Benjamin Zephaniah had been quoted  by the BBC as saying that black and Asian pupils are turned off history because they are told only "half the story" in British schools.

The same BBC article reported that Education Secretary Michael Gove "has said schools should focus on a traditional narrative of British history in response to concerns it had become too politically correct [and]... that the current approach to history denies 'children the opportunity to hear our island story', and... this has to change."

Continue reading the main story... the current approach to history denies "children the opportunity to hear our island story", and this has to change."The phrase "our island story"  jumped out at me because it reminded me of an old book I'd grown up with.  Our Island Story is a nostalgic, patriotic storybook written in Australia in 1905  by Henrietta E. Marshall. This Edwardian tome was reprinted in 2005 by the think-tank Civitas, with the aim to send a free copy to each of the UK's primary schools. David Cameron told the RSC it was his favourite childhood book in 2010, and that it "really captured [his] imagination and ... nurtured [his] interest in the history of our great nation.”  But what stories does this book tell? And are they really only "half the story"?

Take Sir Francis Drake, for example. A classic Elizabethan hero, he appears of course in Our Island Story, where Marshall describes him as "very bold and daring", and tells the story of the singeing of the King of Spain's beard, and him refusing to face the Armada before he'd finished his game of bowls on Plymouth Hoe. But my research has shown me another side of Drake, that is writ large upon the Drake Jewel (above, a present from the Queen in 1588, which Drake wore  hanging from his belt in this 1591 portrait) but that is not included in Marshall's version of events. 

The bust of an African man on the Drake jewel has been interpreted as a symbol of Drake's alliance with the Cimaroons.  These were the Africans who had runaway from the Spanish who had enslaved them and set up their own communities. Their local knowledge was invaluable to Drake when he allied with them to capture the Spanish silver train in Panama in 1573.  One of these Cimaroons, a man named Diego, returned to Plymouth with Drake and accompanied him on his circumnavigation voyage of 1577-80. Unfortunately he died near the Moluccas, from wounds received from the hostile inhabitants of Mocha Isle, off the coast of Chile. 

Diego was not the only African onboard. We know of at least three more, one of which, a woman named either Francesca or Maria, who was abandoned, heavily pregnant, on Crab Island, Indonesia. William Camden, the first historian of Elizabeth I's reign, reported in his Annales that Drake "purchased much blame…for having most inhumanely exposed in an island that negro or blackamore maid who had been gotten with child in his ship.” However this, and other stories of Africans who encountered Drake, seem to have disappeared from popular record. 

Drake's cousin, John Hawkins doesn't appear in Our Island Story at all. Drake may well have accompanied him on some of his slaving voyages in the 1560s. And later voyages that Drake made to the Caribbean, for example his raid of 1585-6, also resulted in Africans coming to England. 

The idea of "Our Island Story" needs to be re-imagined. To be 'insular' can mean to be cut off from the rest of the world. But the histories of most islands, from Crab and Mocha isles, mentioned here, to the Island of Britain, are stories of comings and goings, of invaders and immigrants.  The story of our island is one of these. And we need to tell our children the whole story, and to do so we need to re-tell it for our time and not rely on the imaginings of an Edwardian patriot, however picturesque. 

On Friday evening, I spoke at the Readers Research: Blacks in Renaissance Britain event at the British Library, along with Open University graduate Michael Ohajuru  (you can read his highly complimentary version of events here). The event was chaired by Dr. Caroline Bressey of the UCL Equiano Centre. 

It was quite a thrill to be speaking at the British Library, a place I have made regular pilgrimages to for many years now. I even spent some time there helping to catalogue some watercolours of animals in the first Indian zoo in Barrackpore back in 1999.  But I digress...

Michael spoke first, and I was very jealous of his excellent presentation skills and all the lovely pictures he had to illustrate his talk, which was on the black magus he had found in a rood screen painting of The Adoration of the Magi (c.1520) in the V&A, which was probably made in Devon.  In fact, he very effectively compared it with other rood screen images he had found in Devon, and traced the journey of the black magus image from Cologne to Bruges, Alsace and Devon. You can read a transcript here and download his  presentation.  One of the most interesting images for me was of Holy Roman Emperor Henry VI's entrance into Sicily in 1191, heralded by black trumpeters, as it reminded me of the long tradition of royal musicians to which John Blanke, Henry VIII's 'black trumpet' , who I am speaking about on Tuesday at Peckham Library, belonged. 

My only real criticism was that Michael didn't really differentiate between  Europe and England, with statements such as "Blacks were seen legally as slaves and culturally as barbarians." Whereas my research has show that Africans were not slaves in England at this time. He quotes  "the chronicler of an English voyage to Guinea" in 1554 (Robert Gainsh) as describing "A people of beastly living, without god, lawe, religion or common wealth". However, that same voyage brought five Africans back to London, who admittedly were described as "slaves" in the text, but  were not treated as  such, but only kept here only long enough to learn some English, after which they were returned to Guinea to act as interpreters and trade factors. The only record we have of their experience is brief but evocative: "some were tall and strong men, and could wel agree with our meates and drinkes" although "the coulde and moyst ayer dooth sumwhat offende them". Looking out the window today, I can imagine why they might have found the London air objectionable! Though, at least according to the Cartwright judgement of 1569, "the air of England is too pure an air for slaves to breath in". 

My own talk is a bit of a blur now (Michael seems to remember it better!).  Basically I shared some documents I'd found in the Lansdowne Manuscripts, a collection held by the British Library.  A letter written by the Mayor of Bristol, William Hopkins to the Privy Council in 1590 (two years after the Armada battle and at the height of the war with Spain), and an attached set of accounts written by his Chamberlain, regarding a prize ship that had been brought into Bristol by her Majesty's (Elizabeth I's) pinnace The Charles (captain Jonas Bradbury). There were 32 Spanish or Portuguese and 135 Africans on board the prize ship.  Using the documents, I explained why they were on the ship, what happened to them during their stay in Bristol, and the significance of the fact that they were sent back to  Spain within the week. 

The conversation and Q&A afterwards was wide-ranging: from Hollywood swashbucklers to Moorish Spain via Caspar Van Senden.  Perhaps the most philosophical question came from a gentleman from Ghana: why do we always view Africa as peripheral to Europe, perhaps Europe is in fact peripheral to Africa? This is a matter of perspective I suppose. One book I've read that tries to address this is David Northrup's Africa's Discovery of Europe (Oxford, 2002).  I think I'll read it again!

The event was recorded, and we're hoping it will be available as a podcast in due course.  

Our talks were actually the first in a Readers' Research series- which seems a great idea. Often I look around  (and I think  Dr. Bressey made this point too) and wonder what the studious-looking people around me are studying. On the ocassions when I have managed to strike up a conversation, it has always been interesting. So anything that encourages us to interact and gives us more reason to hang out in the BL's many cafés, seems like a good idea! The fact that Michael and I, not exactly wallflower types, actually both discovered the material we presented in summer 2008 but never met until last autumn shows how much more could be done to forge connections between readers.

 If you're kicking yourself that you didn't make it, or were turned away (we sold out!), then please come along to one of my upcoming talks at Peckham Library on Tuesday or The National Archives on Friday 16th November. 

Just back from a great talk by my friend Dr. Kathy Chater, who I've mentioned here before. She told us some of the fascinating stories she'd uncovered in the Old Bailey court records.  You can now check them out yourself online: http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/ 

But back in 2000, when Kathy began her research, she had to go through the cases on microfilm, scanning the pages for mention of black people. I sympathise as I've spent plenty of time doing the same with parish registers! The advantage of this over the modern keyword search is that you get a feel for the source and the context- Kathy noted how other people were treated in court, so was able to understand the black experience better.  

One of the great things about the Old Bailey records is that they're verbatim accounts of what was said in court, so you really hear people's voices coming through.  One memorable quote came from Ann Duck, who is recorded as shouting during an assault: "Hamstring the dog that he may never run after me again!", another one that made us laugh was the woman who testified "he put his impudence into me"!

Chater concluded that black people in the long 18th century were pretty law- abiding, as she's found less than 200 of them appearing in some 54,000 trials. There were still some juicy stories to be told however- of highwaymen and footpads, theft, rape and murder.  I was reminded of how extreme and sometimes gruesome 18th century punishments could be (see Hogarth's print above). We also learnt of Thomas Latham,  possibly the first black police constable (c.1746). The case is copied on the excellent Black Presence website, here: http://www.blackpresence.co.uk/black-people-at-the-old-bailey/

Anyway, I'm not going to try to recount every case here. You'll have to look for them yourself on the amazing Old Bailey website, or check out Kathy's book, now in paperback.

Just wanted to draw your attention to this great resource.  Kathy is the expert on Africans in the period following mine, and has amassed a huge database of references to their lives here in Britain. This is a recording of her speaking at the National Archives last year. You can download it here. 

The talk  is described  on the site as follows:

"What was life like for the ‘average’ black person in England before the 20th century? Most were quietly getting on with their lives, seeking employment, getting married and raising families. It takes a lot of work to uncover their life histories because there was no legal discrimination against these individuals. Glimpses into their lives can be found buried in The National Archives’ vast collection, which reveals unexpected stories. Dr Chater’s talk challenges some commonly held assumptions that have been made about the lives of black Britons during the period of the British slave trade. Dr Kathleen Chater is an independent historian and writer. Her doctoral thesis is published as Untold Histories: Black people in England and Wales during the period of the British slave trade, c. 1660-1807. She came to the history of Black British people through genealogy and has written books and articles on this subject. This talk was part of our diversity week event in November, highlighting the diversity of The National Archives’ collection." 

Kathy has also written a book on the subject which I've illustrated above, and is giving a talk about Black People at the Old Bailey in Islington next month, which looks really interesting.  The records of the Old Bailey are available online and are a fascinating source of information on everyday life from 1674-1913, containing 197,745 criminal trials held at London's central criminal court.  So once you've listened to Kathy, you can look up some of the cases for yourself!

My thesis 'Africans in Britain, 1500-1640' is now available to read in the Bodleian library. You can access the listing on SOLO [Search Oxford Libraries Online] or read the short abstract. 

I found records of over 350 Africans in Early Modern Britain in the course of my research, and used them to consider questions including how Africans came to Britain, what work they did, their religious and social experience and their status in the eyes of the law. My thesis includes an appendix listing all the  evidence I found of Africans in a wide range of sources from parish registers to court records.

I sent the following letter to the BBC via their website, after Wood's article was published on 20th July 2012, but have received no response.  As I explain, it was great that they ran the article on this fascinating subject, but there is more to say:

                                                                                                                      London, 27th July 2012
Dear BBC News Magazine,

I was pleased to see Michael Wood’s article on ‘Britain's first black community in Elizabethan London’ (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-18903391) on your magazine last week, as it brought a fascinating subject to your readers’ attention (in much greater depth than that night’s Great British Story). 

However, I feel that it did not tell the whole story. Having recently completed a D.Phil. thesis on ‘Africans in Britain, 1500-1640’ at Oxford University, in which I found evidence of over 350 Africans living in Britain during that time, I wanted to add to and comment on what Wood had to say. 

Firstly, I would question Wood’s use of the term “community”. How do you define “community”? A handful of people living in the same area? Though they may have had the same colour skin, they may not have socialised, or even spoken the same language. Kathy Chater’s book Untold Histories, on the 18th century black population questions the use of this term even then. 

My study showed that not only were Africans in Britain not slaves, but some were paid wages or even worked independently as craftsmen (I found a needlemaker and a silkweaver) or died leaving property.

They were not just musicians before Elizabeth I’s reign. Some were courtiers, but there was also a soldier in Exeter in 1522, a man buried in Northamptonshire in 1545, a diver in Southampton in 1547-8 and a needlemaker in Cheapside c.1554-8. 

Africans were not only living in London- they were in Southampton, Bristol and Plymouth, but also in less likely places, from Hull to tiny villages like Stowell in Somerset or Bluntisham-cum-Earith in Cambridgeshire. 

Wood asserts that two of Shakespeare’s greatest characters are black. We can assume he means Othello and...Aaron from Titus Andronicus? The latter is not usually described as “great”- as he is cruel, lascivious and murderous- even killing his own son!

The discussion of ‘Lucy Negro’ is misleading and conflates various unrelated biographies. This was a fairly common nickname, given to various women with dark hair in the literature and records of the period. There is no evidence of a real African woman of this name. In fact I found more evidence of African men using London prostitutes than African women working as prostitutes. 

In his comments on the attempt to transport Africans to Lisbon in 1596 and 1601, Wood concludes “Whether this actually happened is unclear.” In fact another letter in the Hatfield archives, from the merchant who had petitioned for permission to transport the Africans, Caspar Van Senden, shows that he was unsuccessful, as I explain in my full analysis of the situation in my article  ‘Caspar Van Senden, Sir Thomas Sherley and the “Blackamoor” project’, Historical Research, 81, no.212 (May 2008), pp. 366-371.


Some factual errors:
The”1602” letter of Denis Edwardes that Wood uses to prove Turnbull Street’s notoriety was in fact written in May 1599 (It is at The National Archives, TNA, SP 12/270/119). 

The figure of 20,000 black servants in 18th century London was suggested by the 
Gentleman’s Magazine in 1764. Modern estimates are more conservative, putting the figure at between 10,000-15,000. 

Wood says that “In 1599, for example, in St Olave Hart Street, John Cathman married Constantia "a black woman and servant".” Where is this quote from? The parish register (http://www.history.ac.uk/gh/baentries.htm) says only that her surname was “Negrea”- I wasn’t sure this was clearly an African.  I did however find 6 other records of marriages, 3 inter-racial (including 1617 Curres/Person mentioned here) and 3 between two black partners. 

I would like to end by thanking Michael Wood and the editor that commissioned him for bringing this subject to greater prominence- the article has at time of writing been shared 3487 times, and no doubt many more saw the TV programme. I realise that a short article cannot do the subject justice, and hope that further airtime will be given to this vital part of our shared history in the future. 

Yours sincerely,

Dr. Miranda Kaufmann