‘Traces of Shame? Imtiaz Habib: BLACK LIVES IN THE ENGLISH ARCHIVES, 1500-1677’ Review, TLS, 8 August 2008, p. 26.
On the 6th June 1588, 'Isabell a blackamore' was buried at St. Olave, Hart Street in London. On the 16th October 1616, 'George, a blackmore' married Marie Smith at All Saints Church in Staplehurst, Kent. On 7th September 1665, Samuel Pepys recorded in his diary that over dinner with banker Sir Robert Viner, he was shown 'a black boy he had that died of a consumption; and being dead, he caused him to be dried in an Oven, and lies there entire in a box.'
Imtiaz Habib, who has previously studied black characters such as Othello in English Renaissance Drama, has listed 448 such records of black people (including thirty-two describing Indian and Native American individuals) in Early Modern England and Scotland. Their traces are scattered in the documents of the time: their baptisms, marriages and burials were recorded in parish registers, the purchase of their clothes, shoes and other necessaries lie itemised in household accounts, their presence was noted in travel accounts, legal documents and diaries.
Historians have explained the black presence (if they acknowledged it at all) as a side effect of slave trading. However, Habib shows that there were blacks in England sixty years before John Hawkins' first slaving voyage of 1562, and over a century before the British slave trade really got going in the 1640s. Thus, either slave trading began earlier or these people came here in a different capacity. Habib asserts the former, arguing that the black presence in England at this time is evidence of a hidden slave trade in the sixteenth century, the traces of which have been shamefully covered up, both at the time and by later historians. Yet John Hawkins in the 1560s and the African trading companies in the 1660s openly declared their slaving interests. A more detailed investigation of English trade with Africa and the Caribbean in the intervening century is required before this question can be properly addressed.
The treatment of black people in England is equally contentious. Although slavery was not a status recognised by English law (the 1569 Cartwright case ruled that 'the air of England is too pure an air for slaves to breathe in'), Habib believes that black people were slaves in all but name. Records of people which do not mention masters are interpreted as records of abandoned or destitute former slaves. Evidence which contests this interpretation, such as the £10 (£1,142 today) charitable donation made by a 'Christian negro' maidservant in 1627, individuals being paid wages, being baptised, marrying English people and testifying in court is disregarded as anomalous. Baptism is in fact characterised as a 'protocolonial' act of 'cultural effacement'. The interpretation of this evidence is vital in answering the question of whether racism was endemic in English culture, or whether it developed as a consequence of the practice of colonial slavery. The case of Robert Viner shows a repellent disregard for black humanity by 1665, but by this time the English were regularly supplying slaves to their colonies: the black experience in the preceding 140 years was perhaps more nuanced than Habib (who describes the 'black subject' as 'protozoic debris in the corneal fluid of the English socius') allows.
Habib seems to distrust the archives, referring to them as 'secretive', and suggesting that 'documentary imperfection should not be a limit but a point of departure for scholarly investigation', and belittling those who have 'too great a fidelity to historical exactitude'. This attitude sometimes results in a questionable level of accuracy in his data and references. Habib admits that the persons he discusses are of what he calls 'fluctuating ethnic clarity'. In an attempt to make up for the previous 'invisibility' of black people in early modern England, Habib has chosen to extend the benefit of the doubt to all persons with surnames such as 'Blackmore', 'Moore' and 'Black'. By these standards, the origin of Sir Thomas More should also be interrogated. He was, after all, nicknamed 'Niger' by his friend Erasmus. By my calculation, 122 of the 448 records presented are of this uncertain nature. There is a qualitative difference between a record that reads 'Domingo being a ginny [Guinea] negar' and one that reads 'Henry Blackemer': the former describes ethnic identity, the latter records a surname. 'Despite the vagaries of early modern orthography and the ambiguity of naming practices, a more convincing methodology of identification needs to be developed.
Imtiaz Habib has done us a great service by providing this accessible database of references to Africans, Indians and Americans in early modern England, some never published before. He himself stresses that it is by no means comprehensive: it now behoves historians to re-examine the archival record, and use their expertise to identify more references to black people and to further contextualise and explain the significance of their presence.
You can read my review of the same book for the BASA Newsletter here.
Imtiaz Habib, who has previously studied black characters such as Othello in English Renaissance Drama, has listed 448 such records of black people (including thirty-two describing Indian and Native American individuals) in Early Modern England and Scotland. Their traces are scattered in the documents of the time: their baptisms, marriages and burials were recorded in parish registers, the purchase of their clothes, shoes and other necessaries lie itemised in household accounts, their presence was noted in travel accounts, legal documents and diaries.
Historians have explained the black presence (if they acknowledged it at all) as a side effect of slave trading. However, Habib shows that there were blacks in England sixty years before John Hawkins' first slaving voyage of 1562, and over a century before the British slave trade really got going in the 1640s. Thus, either slave trading began earlier or these people came here in a different capacity. Habib asserts the former, arguing that the black presence in England at this time is evidence of a hidden slave trade in the sixteenth century, the traces of which have been shamefully covered up, both at the time and by later historians. Yet John Hawkins in the 1560s and the African trading companies in the 1660s openly declared their slaving interests. A more detailed investigation of English trade with Africa and the Caribbean in the intervening century is required before this question can be properly addressed.
The treatment of black people in England is equally contentious. Although slavery was not a status recognised by English law (the 1569 Cartwright case ruled that 'the air of England is too pure an air for slaves to breathe in'), Habib believes that black people were slaves in all but name. Records of people which do not mention masters are interpreted as records of abandoned or destitute former slaves. Evidence which contests this interpretation, such as the £10 (£1,142 today) charitable donation made by a 'Christian negro' maidservant in 1627, individuals being paid wages, being baptised, marrying English people and testifying in court is disregarded as anomalous. Baptism is in fact characterised as a 'protocolonial' act of 'cultural effacement'. The interpretation of this evidence is vital in answering the question of whether racism was endemic in English culture, or whether it developed as a consequence of the practice of colonial slavery. The case of Robert Viner shows a repellent disregard for black humanity by 1665, but by this time the English were regularly supplying slaves to their colonies: the black experience in the preceding 140 years was perhaps more nuanced than Habib (who describes the 'black subject' as 'protozoic debris in the corneal fluid of the English socius') allows.
Habib seems to distrust the archives, referring to them as 'secretive', and suggesting that 'documentary imperfection should not be a limit but a point of departure for scholarly investigation', and belittling those who have 'too great a fidelity to historical exactitude'. This attitude sometimes results in a questionable level of accuracy in his data and references. Habib admits that the persons he discusses are of what he calls 'fluctuating ethnic clarity'. In an attempt to make up for the previous 'invisibility' of black people in early modern England, Habib has chosen to extend the benefit of the doubt to all persons with surnames such as 'Blackmore', 'Moore' and 'Black'. By these standards, the origin of Sir Thomas More should also be interrogated. He was, after all, nicknamed 'Niger' by his friend Erasmus. By my calculation, 122 of the 448 records presented are of this uncertain nature. There is a qualitative difference between a record that reads 'Domingo being a ginny [Guinea] negar' and one that reads 'Henry Blackemer': the former describes ethnic identity, the latter records a surname. 'Despite the vagaries of early modern orthography and the ambiguity of naming practices, a more convincing methodology of identification needs to be developed.
Imtiaz Habib has done us a great service by providing this accessible database of references to Africans, Indians and Americans in early modern England, some never published before. He himself stresses that it is by no means comprehensive: it now behoves historians to re-examine the archival record, and use their expertise to identify more references to black people and to further contextualise and explain the significance of their presence.
You can read my review of the same book for the BASA Newsletter here.
