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The Black London Emonograph Series Black Britannia The Black London eMonograph series Black Britannia By Thomas L Blair, editor and publisher Publishing information Black Britannia: From slavery to freedom in the 18th century Thomas L Blair ISBN 978-1-908480-18-7 The Black London eMonograph Series. ©Thomas L Blair All rights reserved. ©2013 No part of this publication and series may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the written permission of the author and copyright holder. The greatest care has been taken in producing this publication; however, the author will endeavour to acknowledge any errors or omissions. 1 The Black London eMonograph series Key writings on African and Caribbean peoples in the nation‟s capital by Prof Thomas L Blair. Well researched, theoretically informed and policy related. Titles range from The Shaping of Black London to the first Black settlers in the 18th century to today‟s denizens of the metropolis. My work is supported by decades of scholarly and action research on race, city planning, community development and regeneration. Major publications can be accessed at the British Library http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=1&frbg=&scp. scps=scope%3A%28BLCONTENT%29&tab=local_tab&dstmp=1385312994646&s rt=rank&ct=search&mode=Basic&vl(488279563UI0)=any&dum=true&indx=1&t b=t&vl(freeText0)=thomas%20l%20blair&vid=BLVU1&fn=search&fromLogin=tr ueia Relevant research monographs from 1968-1997 appear in Thom Blair.org.uk http://www.thomblair.org Click Thomas L Blair Collected Works/MON (or search). The publications include The Tiers Monde in the City; The City Poverty Committee; PCL-Habitat Forum. The Condition of England Question; Informatiion-based Report on Ethnic Minorities in London Docklands; Area- based projects in Districts of High Immigrant Concentration in Europe; and The Unquiet Zone: Planning Renewal in Post-war Social Housing Areas of Black and Ethnic Concentration in Inner London (Deptford). Together, Prof Blair‟s work is credited as a significant continuous study of Black Londoners. It is a boon to educators, policy makers, community and heritage archivists and problem-solvers. http://socialwelfare.bl.uk/subject- areas/services-activity/community- development/pub_index.aspx?PublisherID=149777&PublisherName=Editions+Bl air Notes on the Author Thomas L Blair, PhD, FRSA, is a social science writer on the creative renewal of Black communities in urban society. His themes of community development and regeneration are cited in the archives of the British Library Social Welfare Portal. The Black London eMonograph series benefits from research undertaken for an MA degree and Urban Studies Fellowship at Goldsmiths College, University of 2 London, in the 1990s. Evidence was gathered through seminars, conferences and fieldwork in inner city housing areas of Lewisham, southeast London, and widespread coverage of the media and official reports. Prof Blair has held professorships at UK and American universities, is well-known as a cyber-scholar, publisher of Editions Blair series editionsblair.eu, and edits the pioneering Black Experience web sites founded in 1997 http://www.chronicleworld.org and http://chronicleworld.wordpress.com Thomas L Blair Series Editor and publisher November 2013 Cover Photograph by TLB, “New day at Brixton London Underground Station” Acknowledgements Black Britannica, a volume in the Black London eMonograph series, has benefited from both information professionals and web designers. Thanks are due to Jennie Grimshaw, Leading Curator, Social Policy and Official Publications, The British Library. Web designer David Stockman was instrumental in shaping the format and presentation of the digital text. 3 Black Britannia Roots in 18th Century London Thomas L. Blair Black Britannia delivers research on the first generation of Blacks who shook the slavers’ capital in the 18th century. It restores the historical conditions that changed a people and the Metropolis of the Empire. Early African and Caribbean settlers are the focus. However, Black Britannia raises issues of conflict and change on two dynamic levels. It helps to understand the triumphs and travails facing ex-colonial peoples of colour in globalising London. And, it challenges historians and policymakers to review and rewrite their euro-centric urban histories. 4 Glossary “Black” is variously used to apply to (a) African, Afro-Caribbean and African American persons, and or (b) to apply to all persons of Negro descent or people of mixed Negro and Caucasian and other ethnic descent. Contemporary sources also included as “Black” the Lascar seamen and other persons originating from South Asia: India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. “Slave” is used here to apply to Black peoples who were bound in servitude as instruments of labour as the property of a slaveholder or household. Slaves were a central element of the tri-continental or triangular trade system and chattel slavery which had unprecedented importance for social, economic, cultural and moral society in Britain, and in Africa and the Caribbean. “Slavery” is defined as a form of “institutionalised domination over persons who have no property or birth rights…and who are subject to control in all aspects of their lives, with no enforceable limits” (Collins Dictionary 1991: 571). “Free Blacks” or “freedmen” applies to slaves who were manumitted and born free; and to those who gained their own freedom by desertion or flight. 5 Table of contents Glossary The London Found: heart of the empire and the slave trade The First Black Londoners: Africans and West Indians transformed in the city, economy and society Shaping their life experiences: from hovels to palatial mansions Freedomways: their demand for equality and justice marked the transition from slavery to freedom Rising Tide of Black Radicalism: Black action for all workers and colonial peoples is an enduring legacy Conclusion: The first Black Londoners birthed a positive identity and communal perspective. They were in the anti-slavery vanguard. Professionals and workers rallied for all proletarians, “Black or white, slave or free”. Of lasting value, Black seafarers linked dockside communities with the global outposts of the African diaspora. Bibliography: Evidence is based on the canonical works of writers and historians compiled in the reference bibliography _____________________________________ 6 The London Found The growth of Black urban communities was a major phenomenon of 18th century London, the burgeoning capital of world commerce and the slave trade. Close examination of the origins, occupations and settlements of newcomers from Africa, the Caribbean and the Americas reveals a distinctive pattern of Black experience in the metropolitan heart of the empire. The Black presence in London spans many centuries, from Black soldiers in Roman encampments astride the Thames, to musicians to the court in medieval palaces, to the first Africans introduced into England in the late 1500s. But it was during the 18th century that Blacks became familiar sights on the streets of London, cast there by the historical forces that the British themselves, the great slave trader of the world, had set into motion. The London they found had grown rich from slavery and the sugar trade. It is said that: “Between 1700 and 1780 English foreign trade nearly doubled; it trebled during the next twenty years. Shipping doubled too, ….All this great increase in our treasure proceeds chiefly from the labour of negroes in the plantations,‟ said Joshua Gee in 1729, with a frankness that few historian have emulated” (Hill 1969:226-27). Though no single definition applies to this burgeoning capital City on the Thames, it was a pattern of bricks and mortar produced by the wealth, taste and industry of a great age (Summerson mcmxlvii: dust jacket). It was the time of Georgian London, an epoch encompassed by the ascendancy of George I and the demise of George IV, when architects and builders created new urban workshops and townscapes of markets, shops and churches, and architectural styles. Town life was a desirable feature of this new urbanity and masses of workers sustained the wealthy elites with their labour (Gray 1978: 201; cf. Trevelyan 1942: Ch.XIII). In time, sprawling districts of workers, servants and slaves served the growing city and its port traffic. London of that day was like a boiling steam kettle, says one writer “though the gentry, by and large, were sitting on the lid” and “What one was born to, in London, included: ordure left lying in the streets, broken pavements, ruinous houses, the driving of bullocks through the city, the prevalence of mad dogs, the gin shops, the swarms of beggars, the deluge of profanity and street-cries” (Boswell 1980: Introduction xii). In the suburbs a handful of aristocrats had their isolated palaces. In the built-up areas most people lived in narrow terraced houses. The poor, unemployed and criminal classes had their squalid hovels and centuries-old rookeries. Poverty and its consequences among the labouring classes were everywhere suppressed 7 by a harsh regime of control punishment and public executions (Linebaugh 1991: Introduction passim). The London found was also a place of popular attitudes and learned concepts that claimed Blacks were inferior beings. Learned men of the 18th century, almost without academic dissent, were unanimous in their thinking that Africans were intellectually
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