Dan Snow's History Hit - The Long History of African and Caribbean People in Britain

Episode Date: October 13, 2022

There remains a tendency to reduce the history of African and Caribbean people in Britain to a simple story: it is one that begins in 1948 with the arrival of a single ship, the Empire Windrush. Yet, from the very beginning, from the moment humans first stood on this rainy isle, there have been African and Caribbean men and women set at Britain's heart.Professor Hakim Adi is the first historian of African heritage to become a professor of history in Britain— he has been researching and writing about the history of African and Caribbean people in Britain for decades. Hakim joins Dan to chart a course through British history with an unobscured view of the actions of African and Caribbean people, sharing the stories of the Africans in Britain during the Roman period, Black Tudors, Stuarts and Victorians, and shedding light on the Windrush Myth.This episode was produced by Hannah Ward and edited by Dougal Patmore.If you'd like to learn more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe to History Hit today!To download the History Hit app please go to the Android or Apple store.Complete the survey and you'll be entered into a prize draw to win 5 Historical Non-Fiction Books- including a signed copy of Dan Snow's 'On This Day in History'.

Hello everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. A bit of news for you all. Thank you very much to you guys, the listeners. We've had happy news from, I don't know if you remember, about a year ago now, maybe a bit less, we talked about the Iron Age coins, the pre-Roman coins found in the New Forest. And I went to my local museum, we did some live streaming, we did some podcasting, all about these extraordinary Iron Age coins, the hoard found, which predated the arrival of those Romans. Well, thanks to that podcast, thanks to your generosity and mobilisation,

the museum has been able to meet the funding requirements to keep those coins in the area. They've kind of added to their gallery and they have been able to secure those coins, found in the New Forest, and they will now be preserved and shared and curated and displayed

right here in the new forest so huge thank you to everybody listening on this podcast we're talking about something completely actually no we're not it's not that different we're talking about the great broad sweep of history we are going back to the prehistoric and we're coming right the way forward to the present we're talking about african and caribbean people in britain we're talking about their presence here on these shores long before the 20th century and people assume this sort of rise of multicultural Britain began. The oldest complete human skeleton ever found in Britain, so-called Cheddar Man, who lived around 9,000 years ago.

Cheddar Man had dark skin and when the Romans arrived 2,000 years ago, they brought with them many men and women of African origin. The story of Africans and then West Indians in British history is a fascinating one. And I've got a person who's a key part of that story. He's Professor Hakeem Addy. He's at the University of Chichester. He's the first historian of African heritage to become a professor of history in Britain. It's fantastic to have him on the podcast. He has just written a book called African and Caribbean People in Britain. And he's a founder and consultant of the group Young Historians Project, which you can check out on social media and elsewhere.

And that's a group of young historians of African and Caribbean heritage working today in Britain. So please go and check those out. Hakeem and I chatted about the history of Africans and Britain. It's fascinating stuff. Enjoy. Hakeem, thank you very much for coming on the pod. You're welcome any time.

Were Africans here before blonde-haired, blue-eyed Anglo-Saxons and Norsemen? In a word, yes. How so? Tell me. Africans were here in Roman times, that is before the Angles, Saxons, Jutes and so on. And probably Africans were here even before the Romans. But certainly Africans were here in Roman times. We even had an African emperor, Septimius Severus, who was Libyan.

We had an African governor, Quintus Nolicus Urbicus, who came from what is today Algeria. So these African Romans brought with them part of their army who were Africans, again, mainly from North Africa. But then we know that there were others here, other African Romans, we can call them, or Africans. Probably the most well-known

is the woman known as Ivory Bangle Lady, who was buried in York, which was a very important Roman city. She was another African. There are several, there are several. I mean, what we know about them is that they had a range of statuses, a range of occupations. There were men, there were women, there were children who were African who were here in Roman times. So centuries before the Anglo-Saxons and Jews. The other things about the Anglo-Saxons and Jutes. The other things about the Anglo-Saxons and Jutes is that they're less important in the kind of ancestry of modern Britain than was previously thought. You probably need to go back to Cheddar Man 10,000 years ago to look at the kind of real ancestors of the British.

And as you probably know, Cheddar Man was a dark-skinned gentleman and probably everybody in Britain was dark-skinned 10,000 years ago. Even the Daily Telegraph said the first Britons were black. So if the Daily Telegraph says it, who am I to argue? I don't want to get bogged down in the Roman period, but do you think the Romans, did they care about skin pigmentation less than subsequent cultures and societies in our history? I would say probably yes, to use a generalisation. I mean, we have to remember that

the way that we think about these issues of so-called race, and particularly racism, is very much a kind of modern phenomenon, and it arises out of our modern history. That's to say the history of the last 500 or 600 years or so. And it's connected with the relationship between Europe and Africa, Britain and Africa after the 16th century, and particularly in later centuries when there was a relationship of inequality. Millions of Africans were enslaved and trafficked around the world and so on. And modern racism developed to explain and justify that relationship. So of course in Roman times and earlier times, that relationship between Europe and Africa

didn't exist. In fact, when Europeans first went to Africa in later centuries, the end of the 15th century, they went to Africa because they thought that Africans were probably wealthy, had things which Europe didn't have. And also Southern Europeans, the Spanish, the Portuguese, had 700 or 800 years' experience of being ruled by people, many of whom were Africans. So I think Europeans in general thought about Africa in different ways centuries ago. Africans probably being in Britain before the Romans. It's hard for us to know, but I'm really interested by,

let's say, coming forward to the late medieval, even early modern, the nature of our maritime communities. And we know that before Julius Caesar arrived here, there were Greek Iberians. People were sailing up to Britain. Southern England was part of a kind of trading system of the Atlantic coast, stretching down to what is now Morocco and North Africa and things. Do you think that the

nature of that sailing and trading relationship means there would have been an african presence in southern england and we see that evidence don't we isn't africa on the mary rose there is an african connected with the salvage of the mary rose the diver oh, the diver. Oh, yes, the diver, of course, yeah. Tell me about him. Well, he was a diver from northwest Africa, one of many Africans, hundreds of Africans who were here in Tudor times. He had an important occupation, but he was one of just hundreds of other Africans who were here who had interesting

and significant occupations during that period. Some of them were skilled, as he was. Some of them were needle makers or basket makers or musicians or a variety of occupations. So I think that, again, we are often presented with a very limited picture of Britain's history, which excludes people. There's no reason to exclude a few hundred people, whether it's Jack Francis, who was the diver, or others. These were just a part of British history and should be recognized. and should be recognised. And British history is all the poorer for having these exclusions and hiding those who were here and who made a contribution

to the history of this country than anybody else did. And I think there was some DNA evidence, wasn't there, that some of the Mary Rose crew might have had North African heritage as well. Yeah, very likely. I mean, Africans sailed with Francis Drake, and it's common. There's Africans featured prominently in depictions of the Battle of Trafalgar as well aboard HMS Victory. Indeed, and Trafalgar Square has an African. If you look at Nelson's column very carefully and the plaques at the bottom, you'll see an African pictured there.

Why are we even talking about this? Isn't it obvious? I mean, Africa's reasonably close in global terms, and we understand trading and slavery and all its guises through history. Why do we still need to have this conversation about there having been people of colour in Britain? Because people have been excluded from this history and are still excluded from this history. And this history is presented as if some people didn't exist. Not just Africans, sometimes history is presented as if women didn't exist or as if others didn't exist. But if you grow up in a country which presents a history which excludes you, that is definitely problematic. And it's not just problematic for those who are excluded, it's problematic for everybody, because we then have a distorted view of the world. And when we study history, we study history, not just to understand the past, but to understand the world in which we live. If we have a distorted picture of that world, that we could say is a very

damaging, possibly even dangerous thing thing so we want to understand the world in its entirety and history gives us that possibility so it is very important to present things as they were as they are and that so say enables us to understand the world in which we live and you could say not only understand it, but act in it and even change it for the better, hopefully. What about the Stuart period? There are some people at court in this period that are of African origin. There were certainly Africans here during the Tudor and Stuart period. Probably the most famous, again, not Stuart the Stuart period, but in the Tudor period, would probably be John Blank, the royal trumpeter who was in the Tudor period

rather than in the Stuart period. So he's probably the most well-known because we have an illustration of him in the Westminster tournament role of the 1511 or whatever it was. So he has become very well known for that reason in the stewart period less well known of course that was the period when england's involvement in human trafficking the human trafficking of africans became much more significant and so as a result of the trafficking of africans across the atlantic to the Atlantic to the Caribbean, also to North

America, we find that more Africans arriving in the British Isles during that period. And so we could say that Africans become more a factor in the kind of life of Britain during that period. And in order to find some sort of acceptance of that gigantic trade in human beings across the Atlantic, is that the process of othering Africans, questioning their personhood in that process that you mentioned earlier? Yes, because there is a debate, you could say, about the justness, not the legality as such, but the justness, the ethics of enslaving other human beings. And then we find from that period people questioning, how is it these other human beings are being enslaved? Because aren't we all God's creatures? And so

then you get a whole series of arguments presented, well, these Africans are not human beings. They're not the same as us Europeans, we English, they are different, they're different types of being, they're either lesser human beings, or they're not human beings at all. So that development of what we could call modern racism arises out of that contestation, if you like, between the anti-racists of the period and the racists of the period. And the racists of the period are clearly those who are attempting to defend the indefensible, the human trafficking of African men, women, and children. I suppose what's interesting or significant about all of that is that some of the leading philosophers

of the day, the John Locke's, the David Hume's, are those who present the views of the racists who deny the humanity of Africans during that period. But there are many others or significant others who took a contrary view and defended the humanity of Africans throughout that period. So anti-racism is as much a feature of British history as racism is a feature of British history. And many of the leading anti-racists were themselves people of African origin, who we've tended to, again, ignore slightly. who we've tended to, again, ignore slightly? Yes, people like Alado Equiano,

Otobar Koguano, Ignacio Sancho, others who, some of them were active campaigners. Again, we're talking about a later period, the 18th century now. But there were many Africans who were active campaigners and anti-racist abolitionists in the sense that they took action to liberate themselves because we have to remember that African slavery, if you like, was a feature of the British Isles.

People were enslaved in Britain, not just in the Caribbean and North America. People were brought here and enslaved, as enslaved people. So then they had to liberate themselves. And so throughout the 18th century, late 17th century, we see newspaper adverts and other forms of adverts showing that people were liberating themselves, demanding that they should be returned to their owners and so on and so forth.

So those people are also active campaigners. But then you have people like Aladdo Equiano, who was a writer, who published a best-selling autobiography, the autobiography of Guano, again, Ignatius Sancho, another famous writer, who defended the humanity of Africans. He presented their life stories or their writing to show they had the same feelings, the same emotions,

the same everything as Europeans, and therefore sought to undermine the racism of the day and also presented the case for abolition. They're also important because they're part of a kind of mass campaign which has almost been written out of British history. And in the 18th century, the anti-slavery movement is probably still the biggest political movement in Britain's history, but nobody ever talks about it. It involved millions of people signing petitions, boycotting sugar in their tea and coffee and so on and so forth.

It's a very, very important campaign. And these guys and others were all part of that struggle in the late 18th century. You listened to Dan Snow's History. We're talking about Africans and Caribbean people in Britain. More coming up. How much of a tyrant really was Julius Caesar? And it's very interesting to think about why it's Caesar in particular when there have been many political assassinations in the past millennia.

Why Caesar's has been the one that is brought up again and again. Would we have ever stood a chance against the first dinosaurs? In the Jurassic, you see dinosaurs get bigger and you see meat-eating dinosaurs grow into things like the size of buses. And did Helen of Troy really have the power to launch a thousand ships? She is always derided as this sort of terrible adulteress, but at least as old as Homer, at least the 8th century BCE, is a counter-tradition in which Helen doesn't go to Troy.

She's never Helen of Troy, she's Helen of Egypt. Well, you can expect all of this and more from The Ancients on History Hit. Join us twice a week, every week, as we explore some of the greatest moments of our ancient past. Subscribe to The Ancients wherever you get your podcasts. from the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings, Normans, Kings and Popes, who were rarely the best of friends, murder, rebellions,

and crusades. Find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. speaking of the struggle in the 18th century it's one of my favorite uh ways to rile up americans you said the american revolution was the largest emancipatory event in american history before the 1860s because all the enslaved people that could get to British lines were freed. And lots and lots of enslaved people found their freedom via the British forces in that war and ended up in places like Halifax and then Liverpool as well. And many of those formerly enslaved people would have ended up in

actually living in Britain, wouldn't they, in the late 18th? Many of them would have lived in Britain. There wasn't, of course, an attempt to send them back to Africa. Many of them ended up in Sierra Leone, where unfortunately many died. But they were part of the creation, paradoxically, if you like, of Britain's first colony in Africa, because Sierra Leone was created as a colony in 1806, 1807. And so if one looks at history today and the state of Sierra Leone today, it's kind of intriguing that it was a British colony for over 200 years, but remains one of the world's poorest countries. I'm not sure what the connection between the two is, but there you go. What about Black Britons in the 19th century? What about black Britons in the 19th century?

Well, again, there are a whole variety of people to choose from. There were large numbers of people here who were impoverished on the kind of margins of society, beggars, unemployed, society, beggars, unemployed people who were forced to engage in various acts of criminality to survive and so on. Then there were significant numbers of seafarers and sailors, both in the royal and the merchant fleets, many soldiers. And of course, in this period, 18th century and early 19th century, it was quite fashionable to have African musicians, drummers and others. But also there were African soldiers. You mentioned Trafalgar, but nearly every major naval battle and land battle throughout the 19th

century, there were Africans involved. And then, of course, you have people like Mary Seacole, who came to Britain from Jamaica and then served in the Crimea as a nurse and doctorate, has become much celebrated recently, and again, was slightly ignored for much of the 20th century. Then there are others. There are people who came from the Caribbean and could have been quite wealthy. There are people who came to Britain to study, students from Africa, the Caribbean. There were, of course, many people who came from North America during that period, some as just to seek a livelihood, some as abolitionists campaigning for the rights of African-Americans, people like Frederick Douglass, Linda Brent and others. Then there were people who were adopted by the royal family,

like Sarah Forbes Bonetta, who was essentially the goddaughter of Queen Victoria, Prince Alimayo, who was an Ethiopian prince who was also adopted or kidnapped, depending on how you want to look at it, by Queen Victoria. There's a whole variety of people. And of course, in the 19th century, we probably have the beginnings of distinct, we can say, black or African communities in places like Liverpool, Cardiff, London, developing. So the 19th century is very, very interesting.

It's a period when historians used to believe that there were hardly anybody here of African and Caribbean heritage, but actually there are all kinds of people, including famous or perhaps not so famous people like William Cuffey, who was one of the leaders of the Chartists. So there are people too numerous to mention during the 19th century. So how do we end up with this myth about the Windrush? And particularly because actually on the Windrush,

and you and I will have met many people that were on that original first generation, and they all talk about the fact that many of them were actually in Britain during the Second World War. And the Windrush was an act of returning in some ways. So why do we end up with this idea that suddenly a group of West Indian people, men and women, were introduced into Britain and it was the beginning of somehow a kind of multicultural era?

Certainly in the last 40 or 50 years, that is the way in which this history has been presented, that everything started with the Windrush in 1948. But as you say, it is a bit of a myth because, of course, there were ships that came to Britain from the Caribbean in the post-war period before the Windrush. the wind rush. Perhaps more significantly, there were ships that came from Africa to Britain in the post-war period that brought significant numbers of people from Africa as well. So the wind rush wasn't the first ship. It wasn't even the beginnings of the kind of really mass migration from the Caribbean, which took place in the 1950s. And as've discussed africans have been in britain for thousands of years before the wind rush so it is a bit of a a myth which in my view which has sort of been concocted and has now taken over i suppose like many historical myths what we do have with the wind rush is of

course a nice film we have everything presented to us we have a calypso we have lord kitchener singing we have everything there so it's a kind of handy package of images of music and everything which is allegedly a turning point in britain's history but it's just not the case and i think it's of course if people wish to celebrate the arrival of a particular ship that's fine but when it's presented as a way of understanding this history I think that it's rather misleading. Where are we today? Is the traditional pattern of immigration to Britain from former colonies and commonwealth states is that now being replaced by people coming from different places and communities across Africa?

Like, what's happening now? It's a little bit different. I think we tend to think of Black Britons, if I can use that expression, as mainly coming from the Caribbean and mainly arriving in this period during the 1950s and 1960s. In fact, that's not the case anymore. The sort of majority black population is now African, from continental Africa. Most people will have come from, or their families will have originated from,

those former colonies, Commonwealth countries connected with Britain, former colonies, Commonwealth countries connected with Britain, like Nigeria, Ghana, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Kenya, and so on. Those are the biggest African descended populations in the country. But in the recent period, in the 21st century, we also have significant numbers of people who one could think of as coming from the Francophone world, people from the Congo, places like Cape Verde, a whole range of different places. So it has changed a little bit. As I say, it's now mainly African, and the range of African countries which people have come from has widened a little bit.

But you still find lots of people of Nigerian heritage, lots of people of Ghanaian heritage are here in Britain. What's the direction of travel historically at the moment, do you think? Are we overcoming the legacy of the trade and enslaved humans across the Atlantic? Are we moving back to a more Roman view of skin pigmentation? I would say that a struggle is going on as to whether that's the case. Certainly it's a different place to how Britain was 30 or 40 years ago, that's certainly the case. But I think things like the Windrush scandal, which is really about issues of citizenship

and who is really considered a citizen of this country and who isn't and how they're treated. I think that's a very good example to show that these kinds of problems of racism and so on still persist. And I think also in the comments very often of leading politicians, you still find the kind of racism that would have existed 100 years ago in some of the things that they say. Then again, if we look at events such as Black Lives Matter, which is what only two years ago, which is a kind of outpouring of anti-racism from Land's End to John O'Groats,

you kind of get the idea of how people in general feel, I would say. So I think people in general get it, are understanding of these things, are opposed to racism, want a society in which everybody can flourish and so on. But I think that the powers that be are not yet in that place yeah it's interesting the British social attitude survey I think it's the figure of people even in my amazingly in my lifetime which is very short of course who object to interracial marriage have gone from very significant majorities of the public to an insignificant fraction. One would hope that means something.

Yeah, I mean, interracial marriage, so-called, is quite interesting because it's always been a feature of British life. As far as you go back, certainly to Tudor times, for example, marriages between Africans and English people were taking place. And throughout centuries, there have always been those people who've tut-tutted and said, isn't this shocking? But it's always been a feature of British lives. And if one looks at the longest established communities in Britain, such as those in Liverpool, Cardiff. That was a feature of those communities that usually African and Caribbean men came to this country and then married, lived with, cohabited with English, Scottish, Irish, Welsh women. It's always been a feature of British life. And it's interesting

that the surveys have now caught up with what's been going on for centuries and reflect that. It may be that public opinion was always not very much concerned about it. Certainly some people were concerned about it, but maybe generally people weren't. Hakeem, thank you very much for coming on and talking to me all about this. Tell me what your book is called. My book is called African and Caribbean People in Britain, a history. It's published by Alan Lane Penguin. Good luck with it. Thank you very much indeed. Thank you. our school history, our songs, this part of the history of our country, all work out.