Gone Medieval - Who were the Africans in Medieval Britain?

Episode Date: October 25, 2022

Earlier this month, it was reported that DNA analysis of the skeleton of a 10-year-old girl buried in Kent in the 7th century showed she was of West African descent. Thirty-three per cent of her DNA suggests that the girl’s grandfather or great-grandfather was probably from the Esan or Yoruba people.As Black History Month draws to a close, Dr. Cat Jarman explores what is known about the presence of Africans in Britain during the Medieval period with the distinguished historian of African affairs, Professor Hakim Adi.The Senior Producer on this episode was Elena Guthrie. It was edited by Anisha Deva and produced by Rob Weinberg.For more Gone Medieval content, subscribe to our Medieval Monday newsletter here.If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today! To download, go to Android or Apple store. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From long-loss Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Jarniger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life only on history hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand-new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world,

to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello and welcome to this episode of Gone Medieval from History Hit. I'm Dr. Kat Jarman. October is Black History Month. And here on Gone Medieval, one of the things we wanted to find out more about was how much we know about the presence of Africans in Britain in the medieval period. Many textbooks place the first people from the African continent here, from Tudor times onwards, and sometimes almost entirely linked to the slave trade. But is that really the full story? And what do we actually know about the presence of Africans in Britain

before 1500? The answer to that might surprise you. And in fact, we have some brand new discoveries really just hot off the press that are adding to this picture. Today, I'm delighted to have with me in the studio, Professor Hakeem Adi. Hakeem is Professor of the History of Africa and the African Diaspora at the University of Chichester. and one of his research interests is on the history of the African diaspora in Britain.

He's also the author of a brand new book that's out now called African and Caribbean people in Britain, a history, which is a really thorough and comprehensive guide in a very readable format on this topic. I want to mention also that Hakeem was actually the first person of African heritage to become a professor of history in Britain. So who better to shed light on Africans in medieval Britain? So Haki, thank you so much for joining me today and welcome to the studio. You're very welcome. Great to be here. And congratulations on the book as well, which I'm working all the way through. It's excellent. But I wanted to ask you, first of all, why did you decide to write that particular book?

The short answer is I was invited to write it. I was asked to write it. And so that's an easy and short answer. But I suppose it's also the culmination of a lot of research and teaching over about. 30 years. So it's summarising my knowledge such as it is amassed over that period. And the aim of the book was to try and summarise all the latest research on the subject over the last 40 years or so and presented in a readable form that anyone could dip into and get an overview of, well I guess overall about 10,000 years of history, but a couple of thousand years of Britain's history. And Obviously, the reason for such a book is that the history of Britain is often written without including those of African heritage, or we can say African and Caribbean heritage. Traditionally, that's often been the case. And so we've kind of been forced into writing this almost alternative history.

But essentially there's only one history. That's the history of Britain, which should include everybody, men and women, those of European descent and heritage, those of African, those of Asian descent, and soldiers. that's the history of the whole country and its population. But unfortunately, that hasn't happened, so hence the current book. Of course, a lot of the book covers the period after what we cover here on their podcast, the medieval period. So the vast majority, really, is later on. And I was interested reading your introduction where you go through what other works are out there. You mentioned, for example, one of the first general survey on the subject from 1948,

which included one chapter that started describing this history from 1600 AD to the present day, and all the other ones as well, they seem to go pretty much 1600, that's where it begins, and then the rest. Is that really the case? Is that what the most of the focus has been on from that point onwards? In the very recent period, it's probably been from kind of Tudor Times onwards, 1500 or thereabout. So I suppose that's where written evidence appears, which is easier to get hold of, although even that is sometimes a surprise to people, the idea that there were Africans in Elizabeth in England, and Africans at the time of Shakespeare at the time of Elizabeth I, Henry the 8th, Henry the 7th and so on. All of this is a bit of a revelation to people and you could say in this country people are almost,

I won't say besotted, but very keen on Tudor Times and there are all kinds of TV programs and films and so on. But generally you don't see Africans included in those presentations of that period. So although this evidence is very evident, it's around. it's still something that surprises people and there's still the necessity to present it and to go into that period in more detail to investigate it in more detail and to just to present the reality of what that period was like but it also illustrates something about England and Scotland's relationship with other parts of the world with the African continent during that period which is also very important for understanding modern Britain we look at history not just as a

study of the past, but that's something which helps us understand the world in which we live and our place in it. So we can't have an incomplete history or a truncated history. We want to have the whole picture so that we can understand, we have a greater understanding, a better understanding of where we are in the world in which we inhabit. That's a great answer. And I think one thing that you start when you go into the earlier period, so you have your first chapter, starting with the earliest presence that we have. I'm going to talk a little bit about that now. You give an example of a daily mail article that caused a bit of outrage. It discusses GCSE courses on migration that were apparently teaching that there were Africans in Britain before the English arrived,

coarsing understandably from that sort of article's perspective. Some upset. Now, I would see if you could tell me a little bit more what that debate was about, because actually what that boils down to very much is terminology, isn't it? And the terms we use to describe exactly some of what you were saying now, you know, who are we talking about and what sort of history is it? So what exactly was that about? It was about several things. It was about the Daily Mail being the Daily Mail, perhaps. But the essence of it was the idea that, I suppose, some concern that there could have been Africans here in very ancient times.

And this somehow has some kind of detrimental impact on the history of the British Isles. the idea that the ancestors of the English, I mean the question I suppose rolls around who are the English and the sort of traditional idea is that the English emerge out of those who are referred to as Angles and Saxons and even that is probably a little bit more complicated than most people imagine but certainly that was the inference from the Daily Mail that there were Angles and Saxons who arrived at a particular time and the English or the history of the English can be dated from that period. And here were some people suggesting that even before that particular period, there were Africans in the country, or clearly the Roman period was before the early medieval period

or period when there were invasions or migrations from Angles, Saxons and others. And clearly there were Africans here in Roman times. So this is not a mystery or shouldn't be a mystery to anybody. So that was stated many decades ago, but the Daily Mail for some reason took umbrage at it, that's a GCSE course, which actually I was one of those who designed that particular course. The Daily Mail was concerned that anyone should suggest that there were Africans here in Roman times, but of course there were Africans here in Roman times, and there were almost certainly Africans here before Roman times. But that was essentially what their concern or alleged concern,

was. It really points out that there is a very general lack of understanding of that. As you say, the Roman presence of Africans is very well known. So it shouldn't really come as a surprise. But the other thing, if you go even further back, they also talk about terminology and this idea of what it means, what this sort of concept of Black Britons means, especially you go back to Ched a man. So the skeletal remains of a man who lived in what's now Somerset, about 10,000 years ago, where a couple of years ago, DNA analysis showed that this man had dark to black skin and again another outrage. How did that discovery affect our discussions on this sort of history, do you think? Well, I think Cheddar Man is very important.

And as you say, the recent DNA analysis of that skeleton showed that if we were to reconstruct what Cheddar Man looked like, his appearance has now changed. I mean, hitherto he was thought to have been kind of blonde-haired. and blue-eyed and so on, and generally sort of northern European-looking. But the latest DNA analysis shows that although he may have had blue eyes, or probably did have blue eyes, he had dark hair. I think the Daily Telegraph said dark to black skin, and the Daily Telegraph proudly proclaimed that the first Britons, therefore, were black.

In fact, not only were the Britons 10,000 years ago, generally looked like Cheddar Man, but most Western Europeans probably also looked like Cheddar Man. So I think the other important thing about Cheddar Man is that his genes still exist within the present-day population of this country. So that if we talk about the ancestor of the British can be traced back to Cheddar Man and those who look like Cheddar Man were his kitham kin to use another expression. So the idea that everybody's descended from Angles and Saxons, whoever they were, is I think now contested by the idea that it's more likely or that. There's certain evidence that the great many of the population of this country are genetically descended from Cheddar Man, who was, if you like, a Black Britain or a man of colour, however people want to term that.

So I think that this latest discovery about Cheddar Man in a way changes what it means to be British. Or maybe it should change how people think of it's Britishness or Englishness or all of these terms that are used. these are really terms that should be used to describe people who reside in Britain. So it shouldn't be a problem for me to say I'm British because I reside in Britain. My ancestors may have come from somewhere else. Anyway, I think that's why that discovery was important. And as you say, in some places it may have caused some concern, but it's certainly embraced by the Telegraph.

I don't know whether the Daily Mail embraced Cheddar Man. I can't recall now. No, we'll have to go back and have a little look. So let's get back a little bit to some of the historical details. I wanted to ask you a little bit more about the Romans. Now, I know that we're veering outside of our medieval territory, but I think it's quite important. So what do we know, really?

I mean, can you give a little summary of what we know of African presence in Roman Britain? We have quite a lot of evidence of African Romans. The most famous of those African Romans, I suppose, was Septimius Severus, who was Emperor of Rome, and therefore Emperor of Britain, who died in York and was originally from Libya. In fact, if you go to Libya, you can still see his hometown, which is very well preserved. He was of Berber origin and sometimes even referred to as the African Emperor. And when he came to Britain, he brought with him African soldiers, African troops.

We know something about the, for example, the pottery they used, which also came from North Africa. We know that there were other Africans in positions of power during the Roman period. there was a Roman governor called Quintus Lollicus Urbicus, who was from what is today Algeria and others. And I suppose the most interesting recent discoveries or rediscoveries have been Ivory Bangal Lady, as she's known, who was another resident of York. She's called Ivory Bangal Lady because she was buried with jewelry, including an ivory bangle. And again, the latest DNA evidence can tell us something about her origins, what she looked like and that she was an African woman.

I suppose one of the important things about her is that she was of high status, which is always important because whenever people come across Africans in ancient times, there's often the thinking that if we find an African, they must have been enslaved in some way. But all of the Africans I've mentioned in Roman Britain were of free people, high status, emperors, and so on. An ivory bangle lady was also of high status.

She was quite young when she died. And there are others, beechy head woman, another example of an African woman. And there are several skeletal remains of people who clearly came from North Africa or even from West Africa during the Roman period. So I think one of the things to say about these skeletal analysis is it's not the case, as I understand it, that all Roman remains are routinely. analyzed in the way that ivory bangleade and some others have been analyzed. So there could be many more African Roman remains in other Roman cities up and down the country

that we don't yet know about. It wouldn't say the tip of the iceberg, but this is what we know at the present time that the Roman population was diverse, it included Africans, some of high status, some of less high status and so on. And this shouldn't be news or it shouldn't be seen as anything peculiar. Although it is, and I know from my own personal experience, I wrote a book for children many years ago when I mentioned a couple of these African Romans, and some people take great umbrage at it. Obviously Roman Britain, we do know a reasonable amount about, but then getting into more comfortable grounds of the medieval period,

we know even less. Not nothing at all, but certainly less. Now, and there are a few early written stories or accounts, I suppose, that you write about in your book. One of them I hadn't actually heard about before, which was about Gorman, the king of the Africans. Who was he? And what was his story? That's a good question. Who was he indeed? There were various accounts of Gorman, the African. And the one that I quote in the book is from Geoffrey of Monmouth, a well-known English historian, if I can call him that. And he writes quite a lengthy passage about Gorman, the African, essentially invading England and laying waste to England during Saxon times,

that Gorman came with his fleet and his army and conquered Ireland and then came to England and, as I say, devastated the country. So I don't know much more about Gorman the African than is recorded by Geoffrey at Monmouth, but it's a wonderful story. There are some other sort of ancient myths and legends about Africans in Ireland and in England. But I don't know how much historical evidence there is for this presence,

but it's a fascinating story. I suppose most of those are likely not entirely true, but there is something about there is potential for some contact. So even if that isn't true in itself, perhaps, you know, other examples, other contacts are interesting as we'll hear about in a moment as well. And you also give the example of the North African Abbott's Hadrian who comes to accompany the Archbishop of Canterbury to England in 668. So again, that's another link, isn't there, that then is driven through the church, I suppose. Yeah, I mean, and that's quite important. Abbott Houdian was quite important and is seen in some ways as revolutionising the English church at that time. I think I say in my book that Christianity was more firmly established in North Africa at that time than it was in England.

So it's very much, we could almost think of Hagen as a missionary coming to England to deal with all these kind of pagans and lax Christians and showing them the true faith and how Christianity should be established. and having quite an important role at Canterbury and beyond in terms of education, reforming the church and so on. And really quite a key figure in the history of the church and rather sorely neglected by the C of E, I think. I understand it just had a recent exhibition where they completely ignored the existence of Hageon. But he is important.

I think, again, what it shows is that people travelled around, that although again he's thought to have come from Libya again to have been a Berber origin but he travelled to Europe he travelled to Canterbury and throughout England and so on so people moved around and we shouldn't be necessarily that surprised to see if Adrian can come others could come during that period and clearly did come during that period so I think his appearance his existence should alert us to the fact that others almost certainly were here. Hi there, I'm Don Wildman, the host of the brand new podcast, American History Hit.

Join me twice a week as I explore the past to help us understand the United States today. You'll hear how codebreakers uncovered secret Japanese plans for the Battle of Midway. Visit Chief Poetan as he prepares for war with the British. See Walt Disney accuse his former colleagues of being communists and uncover the hidden history that lies beneath Central Park. From pre-colonial America to independence, slavery to civil rights, the gold rush to the space race. I'll be speaking to leading experts to delve into America's past. New episodes dropping every Monday and Thursday.

So join me on American History Hit, a podcast by History Hit. That leads me very nicely onto my next question, actually, which goes into exactly that, because of course these are few individuals, and it might be quite easy to think that only people of that sort of status would have the resources and the ability to travel. I think we often think that mobility was sort of something exclusive to those with, well, lots of wealth and money, I suppose. But just as we were preparing for this podcast, there was a new study that came out, a new ancient DNA study. So this was published in nature just a few weeks ago now. And it was a study that was looking to use ancient DNA to try to shed light on the genetics and ancestry of the people in Britain in the early medieval period. And precisely these, as you mentioned earlier, these sort of so-called Anglo-Saxon invasions or migration,

First large-scale study, looking at lots of different graves, I think 278 from England, dating to between 200 and 1300 AD. So we're not going to go into the full details of that in this particular podcast, but it did throw up some, well, surprises to some people. And one of those was a grave from Kent from the 7th century, so precisely the same time periods, really, as Adrian, I suppose. And this was of a 10-year-old child. It was a girl nicknamed Up Down Girl, because she was laterist. up down near East Street in Kent. She had some grave goods with her, but didn't really stand out much more than that. But the DNA analysis showed that

about 33% of her DNA pointed to West African ancestry. And that is something that seemed to come to as a big surprise to quite a lot of people. So she was mixed. She had North European ancestry as well. And this West African ancestry seems to have come from her grandfather or her. great-grandfather. And first of all, was that a surprise to you? I'm presuming not.

Not in the least. Not in the least. I mean, I think it's a great find and it just goes to show if you do the DNA analysis what you come up with. I mean, it's a large sample, but it's a relatively small sample of people. What's even more interesting than the girl is the girl's grandfather or great-grandfather. And it raises a question, was he here? You know, if it's the great-grandfather, what happened to the grandfather? Who was the father? What were they doing here? I think just going back to the Roman period when you find young people here, it immediately raises a question about families. Because if young people are here, presumably their families are here. So when we find a young child, it immediately raises a question about the father as well as the grandfather and so on. So,

no, it wasn't a great surprise to me. Again, I think it's, as I say, interesting how she got here or how her father got here or how how our grandfather got here, what they were doing, where they came from. It's very interesting that DNA should be very specific about West Africa, rather than North Africa, which is often what we tend to find. So no, I just think it's very fascinating. And again, it should alert us to the fact that people move around, people travelled. And I thought the other thing which was interesting about the comments was, oh, well, she was just buried like everybody else.

Why wouldn't she be buried like everybody else? She died like everybody else. The idea that she should have been buried in some other way, I just thought was just crazy. Why would you think she would be buried in any other way? It's quite extraordinary that anyone would think that. It reflects more on our society, doesn't it? That we should think that that is something that, you know,

being a third generation or fourth generation immigrant should possibly, or maybe not even that, depending on that, that should affect it a bit more. But I wanted to ask you a little bit more about this West African link, actually. I mean, in the 7th century, do we know much about contact between West Africa and Britain in terms of goods? I mean, obviously, this is a period where we are getting quite a lot of imported goods into Britain. So, you know, we have things like garnet coming from Sri Lanka and we have cowrie shells from the Indian Ocean turning up in graves quite a lot. What about West Africa? Is there anything specific there that comes?

There's nothing specific that I can think of in that period. Later periods, yes, maybe 11th century, 12th century, maybe they're there, you can account for that. And obviously in the period when there's the Moorish, as it's called, occupation of Spain and Portugal, from the 8th century onwards, you would probably expect to find more of those trade links between Northern Europe and Africa in general. But no, in this period, I can't think of any exchanges that are known, but maybe there were. Again, it would be interesting how was that journey made? Presumably it was made across the Sahara and then to Spain and then through Europe and so on. That's what one would imagine.

Maybe there was some other connection. But no, it's fascinating and it just, in a way, it shows us what we don't know. Here is the physical evidence of that movement, of that connection between peoples. And we can't explain it. Every kind of medievalist or early medievalists in the country should be, for their, I'm not sure what, their trowels maybe, looking for more evidence, more information about, you know, it's just so fascinating, absolutely fascinating. Yeah, absolutely. And also, I mean, she's not the first either, because as you point out in your book,

there's a number of others from the early medieval period as well, aren't there? So this isn't at all the first example? No, it's not. And in fact, if we, you know, look at the centuries from the seventh century up to the 14th century. We find not many, but one or two examples of an African woman, an African man, an African child, turning up in what would appear to be the strangest places. Some of them, okay, we might connect with the Crusades and the fact that people from England were travelling to what we call the Middle East, Western Asia, North Africa and so on, and maybe bringing people back with them. But some of them, are just African women who are turning up in Gloucestershire or in Norfolk.

Why is anybody from Africa going to Norfolk or Gloucestershire in the 10th century or the 9th century or the 11th century? How did they get there? Are they with others? We just don't know the answer and it just needs more investigation. It is the tip of the iceberg in the sense that we cannot explain the presence of these people that appear to be isolated individuals that probably were not. We need much more investigation to know exactly what was going on. I mean, there was another very interesting study. I mentioned the book of the period of the Black Death, which is a bit later, and of a cemetery in Smithfield, in London, where there were several individuals. Archaeologists investigated about 41 skeletal remains, and several of them were African or people of African heritage during that

period. And they make the comment to draw the conclusion that this was an investigation that hitherto hadn't been done or when it had been done it was kind of almost hidden you know there are things that people didn't speak about oh yeah we found an african but let's you know let's keep quiet about it whereas it's just so fascinating it kind of enriches our history that there is this diversity not because it's diverse but it shows something about the interconnections of this country with other parts the world and probably shows that it was a very different type of place than perhaps we imagined or we were taught and so on. So why should this information be hidden or why should it be in any way downplay? To me it's just absolutely fascinating. Yeah, I completely agree. And actually,

once I sort of started reading your book and looking into some of these studies a bit more, you realize that there is actually quite a lot out there. There's, you know, if you start to pull it together and I think there is just a bit of a gap there for people to actually grab hold of it and interrogate it more and just start looking around. So I think that's something that we need, isn't it? So any students out there are listening to this, looking for a thesis or something, go for it. There's so much more to find. Definitely. Any students, any medievalists, any archaeologists, I mean, just to put things into context, there was a time when people said this about the 19th century. They said, oh, well, there might have been a few Africans here in the 18th century or even a few

thousands, but then in the 19th century they all died out and there was almost nothing. In a sense, even now, we're still recovering from that. Maybe people haven't really looked at the 19th century that much. Of course, when you start looking, there's so much evidence you're not quite sure what to do with you or how to present it. But we have to, you know, get rid of these kind of funny ideas and actually do the research, investigate, find out, and then draw the conclusions, It's not drawing conclusions before we've done any investigation. That's, you know, that's ridiculous. Yes, absolutely.

And I mean, the other thing that links in a little bit, and you mentioned this briefly early on, when we talked about the Romans, this idea of the roles of these people, and you sort of mentioned the kind of assumption that there would be low status. If we've got people from Africa, they would be in low status roles,

and obviously the African example shows that it's not the case. And I think the same with something like the up-down girl as well. There's nothing on any difference in status there. Do you think that's something that where, our knowledge of what comes later, the slave train and any, you know, racism attached to all of this as well. Is that still affecting how we interpret our ideas about what people from the African continent would be doing in Britain in earlier periods as well, do you think? I think very much so, and it's amazing, really. Even if you look at the 18th century, that's not the situation. It's not the case everybody was enslaved.

So yes, I think it's a kind of stereotype that we have to get rid of. Again, you have to do. the investigation and certainly in this early medieval period i mean africans are just as likely to have been you know traders or philosophers or rulers of spain or of anything else you know even if we go into tudor times and elizabeth tudor had diplomatic relations with morocco and it's just a completely wrong image of africa a very negative image of africa especially in this period before the 15th century Now, of course, that's not to say that some people who came to Europe may well have been enslaved or may have come in the course of being trafficked across the Sahara. That's quite possible. But there are also many other examples. And I think rather than drawing a conclusion, I think as people that have done with some of these fines from around about the 10th century, there's just speculation about them. But why speculate? Much better to do the investigation and let's find the answers to all these questions. I think the sort of takeaway point from all this really conversation I came, it's really that this is, in the medieval period, especially,

there seems to be a big gap, but actually maybe that gap isn't quite there. Maybe all this information really is out there, but partially with new methods, so things like DNA, but also actually doing the active looking for it, there is an awful lot more out there. And it's just something that we need to connect it with, the written sources connect it with, trade, objects, understand what's going on in the rest of the world. And then actually there is a huge

amount of potential there. Would you agree with that as a sort of summary? Definitely. Absolutely. Definitely. Definitely. Definitely. Excellent. That's good to hear. Well, I absolutely would love to see more research on exactly, you know, what we've got, but also where we can go from here. So hopefully people listening to this podcast, we might have some students or something thinking, right, here's my little niche. Here's my window. But thank you so much. And I would absolutely Men, Hakeem Adis book, African and Caribbean people in Britain, a history. We've only scratched the surface of what that book covers and obviously it goes into so much more detail of later periods, but do you pick up a copy to learn more. So Hakeem, thank you so much once again for

joining me here today. You're very welcome. Thanks for inviting me. And that brings us to the end of this episode of Gone Medieval from History Hit. Don't forget to subscribe if you haven't already and we would be grateful if you could leave us a review as well because it will help other people find the podcast. Thank you so much for listening. My colleague, Matt Lewis, will be back again on Saturday, and I will be back with a new episode next Tuesday.