Historian Miranda Kaufmann in her book 'Black Tudors: The Untold Story,' which debunks the idea that slavery was the beginning of Africans’ presence in England, and exploitation and discrimination their only experience.
Africans were already known to have likely been living in Roman Britain as soldiers, slaves or even free men and women. Kaufmann shows that, by Tudor times, they were present at the royal courts of Henry VII, Henry VIII, Elizabeth I and James I, and in the households of Sir Walter Raleigh and William Cecil. Black Tudors lived and worked at many levels of society, often far from the sophistication and patronage of court life, from a west African man called Dederi Jaquoah, who spent two years living with an English merchant, to Diego, a sailor who was enslaved by the Spanish in Panama, came to Plymouth and died in Moluccas, having circumnavigated half the globe with Sir Francis Drake.
“History isn’t a solid set of facts,” she explains. “It’s very much about what questions you ask of the past. If you ask different questions, you get different answers. People weren’t asking questions about diversity. Now they are.” She added, "Part of it is the surprise element: people didn’t think there were Africans in Tudor England. There’s this fantasy past where it’s all white – and it wasn’t. It’s ignorance. People just don’t know these histories."
Black Tudors does not make overblown claims about ethnic diversity in England – in her wider research, Kaufmann found around 360 individuals in the period 1500-1640 – but it does weave nonwhite Britons back into the texture of Tudor life. Black Tudors came to England through English trade with Africa; from southern Europe, where there were black (slave) populations in Spain and Portugal, the nations that were then the great colonisers; in the entourages of royals such as Katherine of Aragon and Philip II (who was the husband of Mary I); as merchants or aristocrats; and as the result of English privateering and raids on the Spanish empire. “If you captured a Spanish ship, it would be likely to have some Africans on board,” says Kaufmann. “One prized ship brought in to Bristol had 135. They got shipped back to Spain after being put up in a barn for a week. The authorities didn’t know quite what to do with them.”
Although there was no legislation approving or defining slavery within England, it could hardly have been fun being “the only black person in the village” – such as Cattelena, a woman who lived independently in Almondsbury and whose “most valuable item … was her cow”.
Kaufmann uncovers some impressive lives, such as the sailor John Anthony, who arrived in England on a pirate’s boat; Reasonable Blackman, a Southwark silk weaver; and a salvage diver called Jacques Francis. Kaufmann points to them as “examples of people who are really being valued for their skills. In a later age, you get these portraits of Africans sitting sycophantically in the corner looking up at the main character, but they’re not just these domestic playthings for the aristocracy. They’re working as a seamstress or for a brewer. Even in aristocratic households they are performing tasks – as a porter, like Edward Swarthye, or as a cook – they are doing useful things, they get wages. John Blanke, a royal trumpeter, gets paid twice the average wage of an agricultural labourer and three times that of an average servant. They’re not being whipped or beaten or put in chains or being bought and sold.”
Black Tudors are no worse off than white ones. At a basic level, they are acknowledged as citizens rather than loathed as outcasts. “It’s enormously significant, given how important religion was, that Africans were being baptised and married and buried within church life. It’s a really significant form of acceptance, particularly the baptism ritual, which states that ‘through baptism you are grafted into the community of God’s holy church’, in which we are all one body.”
Earlier this year, the historian Mary Beard was the target of abuse for corroborating an educational film for children which showed a well-to-do black family living under the Roman empire. Christopher Nolan’s film Dunkirk, erased the presence of Royal Indian Army Services Corp personnel and lascars from south Asia and east Africa working for the British and, on the French side, Moroccan, Algerian and Tunisian troops from France’s colonies.
Africans were already known to have likely been living in Roman Britain as soldiers, slaves or even free men and women. Kaufmann shows that, by Tudor times, they were present at the royal courts of Henry VII, Henry VIII, Elizabeth I and James I, and in the households of Sir Walter Raleigh and William Cecil. Black Tudors lived and worked at many levels of society, often far from the sophistication and patronage of court life, from a west African man called Dederi Jaquoah, who spent two years living with an English merchant, to Diego, a sailor who was enslaved by the Spanish in Panama, came to Plymouth and died in Moluccas, having circumnavigated half the globe with Sir Francis Drake.
“History isn’t a solid set of facts,” she explains. “It’s very much about what questions you ask of the past. If you ask different questions, you get different answers. People weren’t asking questions about diversity. Now they are.” She added, "Part of it is the surprise element: people didn’t think there were Africans in Tudor England. There’s this fantasy past where it’s all white – and it wasn’t. It’s ignorance. People just don’t know these histories."
Black Tudors does not make overblown claims about ethnic diversity in England – in her wider research, Kaufmann found around 360 individuals in the period 1500-1640 – but it does weave nonwhite Britons back into the texture of Tudor life. Black Tudors came to England through English trade with Africa; from southern Europe, where there were black (slave) populations in Spain and Portugal, the nations that were then the great colonisers; in the entourages of royals such as Katherine of Aragon and Philip II (who was the husband of Mary I); as merchants or aristocrats; and as the result of English privateering and raids on the Spanish empire. “If you captured a Spanish ship, it would be likely to have some Africans on board,” says Kaufmann. “One prized ship brought in to Bristol had 135. They got shipped back to Spain after being put up in a barn for a week. The authorities didn’t know quite what to do with them.”
Although there was no legislation approving or defining slavery within England, it could hardly have been fun being “the only black person in the village” – such as Cattelena, a woman who lived independently in Almondsbury and whose “most valuable item … was her cow”.
Kaufmann uncovers some impressive lives, such as the sailor John Anthony, who arrived in England on a pirate’s boat; Reasonable Blackman, a Southwark silk weaver; and a salvage diver called Jacques Francis. Kaufmann points to them as “examples of people who are really being valued for their skills. In a later age, you get these portraits of Africans sitting sycophantically in the corner looking up at the main character, but they’re not just these domestic playthings for the aristocracy. They’re working as a seamstress or for a brewer. Even in aristocratic households they are performing tasks – as a porter, like Edward Swarthye, or as a cook – they are doing useful things, they get wages. John Blanke, a royal trumpeter, gets paid twice the average wage of an agricultural labourer and three times that of an average servant. They’re not being whipped or beaten or put in chains or being bought and sold.”
Black Tudors are no worse off than white ones. At a basic level, they are acknowledged as citizens rather than loathed as outcasts. “It’s enormously significant, given how important religion was, that Africans were being baptised and married and buried within church life. It’s a really significant form of acceptance, particularly the baptism ritual, which states that ‘through baptism you are grafted into the community of God’s holy church’, in which we are all one body.”
Earlier this year, the historian Mary Beard was the target of abuse for corroborating an educational film for children which showed a well-to-do black family living under the Roman empire. Christopher Nolan’s film Dunkirk, erased the presence of Royal Indian Army Services Corp personnel and lascars from south Asia and east Africa working for the British and, on the French side, Moroccan, Algerian and Tunisian troops from France’s colonies.
Some black people in Tudor England
John Blanke, the musicianOne of the court trumpeters, he was present in the entourage of Henry VII from at least 1507. He performed at both Henry VII’s funeral and Henry VIII’s coronation in 1509.
Jacques Francis, the salvage diverAn expert swimmer and diver, he was hired to salvage guns from the wreck of the Mary Rose in 1546. When his Venetian master was accused of theft in Southampton, Francis became the first known African to give evidence in an English court of law.
Diego, the circumnavigatorDiego asked to be taken aboard Sir Francis Drake’s ship in Panama in 1572. Diego and Drake circumnavigated the globe in 1577, claiming California for the crown in 1579.
Anne Cobbie, prostituteCobbie was one of 10 women cited when the owners of the brothel where she worked were brought before the Westminster sessions court in 1626.
Reasonable Blackman, the silk weaverHe lived in Southwark around 1579-1592 and had probably arrived from the Netherlands. He had at least three children, but lost two to the plague in 1592.
Mary Fillis, servantThe daughter of Fillis of Morisco, a Moroccan basket weaver and shovel-maker, Mary came to London around 1583-4 and became a servant to a merchant. Later she worked for a seamstress from East Smithfield.
Dederi Jaquoah, merchant and princeJaquoah was the son of King Caddi-biah, ruler of a kingdom in modern Liberia. He arrived in England in 1610 and was baptised in London on New Year’s Day 1611. He spent two years in England with a leading merchant.
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