Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Richard Hakluyt]

The Venetians traded extensively with England and Flanders back in those days and sent an annual galley fleet with valuable cargo such as silk and spices. Those galley crews would almost certainly have had many black people in them.

This is part of a larger story where people routinely underestimate how mobile our ancestors were. Though I do think that in this case they sticking their necks out with the small sample size https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/nov/21/women-with-black-african-ancestry-at-greater-risk-when-plague-hit-london

[Sheilbh]

In Sweden measuring skulls for race purposes has fallen into disrepute.

Yeah. It is mad. I also saw lots of people querying those findings - firstly because it is based on skull measuring for race (but this is progressive, somehow) and also a tiny sample size.

Not sure I'd say it's "woke archaeology" it feels to me more likely that they wanted publicity for their research and race is currently a good way to spin your study in a way the mainstream media may take an interest in.

The Venetians traded extensively with England and Flanders back in those days and sent an annual galley fleet with valuable cargo such as silk and spices. Those galley crews would almost certainly have had many black people in them.

Yeah and there were definitely tens of thousands of black people in Georgian England - probably around 50,000. Some enslaved but then with uncertain legal status post Somerset's Case. My understanding is that generally many settled down and married often white Brits - Francis Barber, Samuel Johnson's heir is an example of this. So I think the estimate is that there's probably around 3 million Brits who are descended from the Black Georgians.

This is part of a larger story where people routinely underestimate how mobile our ancestors were.

I think it's both. I think we underestimate how constrained and geographically narrowly circumscribed the lives of many people were - I don't think we fully appreciate that. But at the same time we underestimate how mobile others were.

[Josquius]

To be fair the researchers themselves did say its a small sample size. They seem to be aware of their own problems.

As to skulls for race...As I understand it this is a topic of debate? Certainly the MP there is speaking from her arse to mention phrenology.

Yeah and there were definitely tens of thousands of black people in Georgian England - probably around 50,000. Some enslaved but then with uncertain legal status post Somerset's Case. My understanding is that generally many settled down and married often white Brits - Francis Barber, Samuel Johnson's heir is an example of this. So I think the estimate is that there's probably around 3 million Brits who are descended from the Black Georgians.

Yes. By the 18th century there were clearly loads of black people in the UK. But the 14th century is curious. Strikes me as pretty obvious there'd be at least one or two oddities coming via a chain of ships and ending up there, but sizable numbers? How would that happen?

[HVC]

I think it's both. I think we underestimate how constrained and geographically narrowly circumscribed the lives of many people were - I don't think we fully appreciate that. But at the same time we underestimate how mobile others were.

As big as the city rural divide is now it used to be a lot bigger. Always surprised how cosmopolitan cities were (even going back to ancient times) while at the same time rural areas were isolated. You could go your whole life, born, married, raised kids, died, within a few kilometres and never ventured further. Unless you were unlucky enough to be called up for war. Then you're flung away to die in some unknown land.

[Tamas]

To be fair the researchers themselves did say its a small sample size. They seem to be aware of their own problems.

As to skulls for race...As I understand it this is a topic of debate?

[Josquius]

To be fair the researchers themselves did say its a small sample size. They seem to be aware of their own problems.

As to skulls for race...As I understand it this is a topic of debate?

That's phrenology.
These skull features correlate to being stupid. Incidentally also skull features black people tend to have.
This is long since dismissed.
That people with different genetics tend to have some different skull features so you can get a good estimate of someone's race from examining their skull is where there's a debate. This often being done by archaeologists and even police forensics.

[Gups]

To be fair the researchers themselves did say its a small sample size. They seem to be aware of their own problems.

As to skulls for race...As I understand it this is a topic of debate? Certainly the MP there is speaking from her arse to mention phrenology.

Yeah and there were definitely tens of thousands of black people in Georgian England - probably around 50,000. Some enslaved but then with uncertain legal status post Somerset's Case. My understanding is that generally many settled down and married often white Brits - Francis Barber, Samuel Johnson's heir is an example of this. So I think the estimate is that there's probably around 3 million Brits who are descended from the Black Georgians.

Yes. By the 18th century there were clearly loads of black people in the UK. But the 14th century is curious. Strikes me as pretty obvious there'd be at least one or two oddities coming via a chain of ships and ending up there, but sizable numbers? How would that happen?

But it's such a small sample size as to be completely useless in terms of being able to draw any conclusions about it.

[Sheilbh]

Yes. By the 18th century there were clearly loads of black people in the UK. But the 14th century is curious. Strikes me as pretty obvious there'd be at least one or two oddities coming via a chain of ships and ending up there, but sizable numbers? How would that happen?

From my understanding the most commonly used explanation is slavery. Particularly Viking raids or Africans sold into Iberia who end up in England. However, from what I've read, there's not really much evidence of this.

The reality is we don't know. There are bodies of black people dating back to the 9th-10th century - I think the earliest is in Gloucester, which seems surprising. There are references in texts to Africans (probably - terms differed and I'm not sure we know how they perceived race but there are references to Moors, Saracens, Garamantes, Ethiopians etc) in London. The highest estimate I've seen is that 30% of London's Medieval population was not white European. That seems high to me - even accounting for London as a trading city and for "official absence" in the records. But I think that there is definite evidence of Africans and black people and Asians (whose skulls were discounted in this study for some reason - again this sounds so dodgy) in these isles in far larger number than we assume.

And - because of that "official absence" and that this is a period when relatively few people could write their stories - we don't know where they came from, what race they were, how they came, why. So there's a lot of guesswork to fill that in. As I say from my understanding the common explanation is slavery but there is zero other evidence that it's slavery - so I wonder if that is just applying what we know happened in the early modern period to the Medieval (Garbo will know so much more about this I imagine).

[Duque de Bragança]

The Venetians traded extensively with England and Flanders back in those days and sent an annual galley fleet with valuable cargo such as silk and spices. Those galley crews would almost certainly have had many black people in them.

This is part of a larger story where people routinely underestimate how mobile our ancestors were. Though I do think that in this case they sticking their necks out with the small sample size https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/nov/21/women-with-black-african-ancestry-at-greater-risk-when-plague-hit-london

In Southern European mediterranean ports yes, through the oriental/muslim slave trade connections, a Venetian specialty that's possible. I'm more skeptical about England though, until some centuries later that is.

[Gups]

Yes. By the 18th century there were clearly loads of black people in the UK. But the 14th century is curious. Strikes me as pretty obvious there'd be at least one or two oddities coming via a chain of ships and ending up there, but sizable numbers? How would that happen?

From my understanding the most commonly used explanation is slavery. Particularly Viking raids or Africans sold into Iberia who end up in England. However, from what I've read, there's not really much evidence of this.

The reality is we don't know. There are bodies of black people dating back to the 9th-10th century - I think the earliest is in Gloucester, which seems surprising. There are references in texts to Africans (probably - terms differed and I'm not sure we know how they perceived race but there are references to Moors, Saracens, Garamantes, Ethiopians etc) in London. The highest estimate I've seen is that 30% of London's Medieval population was not white European. That seems high to me - even accounting for London as a trading city and for "official absence" in the records. But I think that there is definite evidence of Africans and black people and Asians (whose skulls were discounted in this study for some reason - again this sounds so dodgy) in these isles in far larger number than we assume.

And - because of that "official absence" and that this is a period when relatively few people could write their stories - we don't know where they came from, what race they were, how they came, why. So there's a lot of guesswork to fill that in. As I say from my understanding the common explanation is slavery but there is zero other evidence that it's slavery - so I wonder if that is just applying what we know happened in the early modern period to the Medieval (Garbo will know so much more about this I imagine).

It's plausible that there were some black men in 14th century London, but I'm struggling with the idea that there was a more than neglible number of black women. And the study doesn't find any "discrimination" against black men, only thohat they identify as black women.

[Sheilbh]

I see Sir Simon Jenkins is once more contributing to the national discourse:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/dec/14/housing-policy-britain-chaotic-shambles-green-belt-brownfield

[Jacob]

I wouldn't be surprised by a significant number of black people in 14th century London, especially if we consider people with a single black grandparent black.

A few years ago there was a genetic study of viking graves and it revealed a massive difference between the vikings settled in coastal areas associated with frequent raiding or buried overseas and those in inner farming areas (let's call them Scandinavian farmers). The vikings had genetics from all over - including large amounts from Asia and Southern Europe as well as all over Baltica. The prevailing view seems to be that to be a viking was more a matter of culture - you adopted the Scandinavian raider culture - than one of ethnicity.

It doesn't seem far fetched for one of the cosmopolitan cities of a seafaring nation to have accumulated genetic material from a wide range of places, including sub-Saharan Africa.

I'd also expect that 14th century England had a very different conception of what it means to be "Black" than we do today - same goes for a number of other identities.

[Josquius]

Oh yeah, people back then totally didn't care about "black" as a thing. That's a product of slavery.
Religion was the primary basis on which they differentiated the world from all I hear - though it does seem a bit overly far the other way to pretend they wouldn't notice "hey George has super dark skin like nobody else I've ever met".

But 1/4 black =black sounds weird to me.

[Sheilbh]

A few years ago there was a genetic study of viking graves and it revealed a massive difference between the vikings settled in coastal areas associated with frequent raiding or buried overseas and those in inner farming areas (let's call them Scandinavian farmers). The vikings had genetics from all over - including large amounts from Asia and Southern Europe as well as all over Baltica. The prevailing view seems to be that to be a viking was more a matter of culture - you adopted the Scandinavian raider culture - than one of ethnicity.

Presumably some of that is also Vikings enslaving people? Not to fall into the potential problem I mentioned earlier where slavery is the default explanation but there's actually limited other evidence for it.

It doesn't seem far fetched for one of the cosmopolitan cities of a seafaring nation to have accumulated genetic material from a wide range of places, including sub-Saharan Africa.

Yeah although again it's worth sayig this study was based on a single graveyard with, I think about 100-150 burials and wasn't looking at DNA analysis but anthropology/shape of the skull analysis. It was then spun either in the reporting or how the PRs sent it to reporters as "Black women most likely to die in medieval London plague" which seems like a reach

I'd also expect that 14th century England had a very different conception of what it means to be "Black" than we do today - same goes for a number of other identities.

For sure - it's why I'm always a little dubious about policing of terms like Saracens, Moors, Garamantes, Ethiopians as having a specific meaning. In the current usage and our understanding of those terms they have a distinct meaning, for Moors, Garamantes and Saracens you'll see people say that means they're North African. But I don't think that's clearly how those terms were used in the Medieval period - or early modern for that matter. I think again it's reading back.

[Tamas]

Oh yeah, people back then totally didn't care about "black" as a thing. That's a product of slavery.
Religion was the primary basis on which they differentiated the world from all I hear - though it does seem a bit overly far the other way to pretend they wouldn't notice "hey George has super dark skin like nobody else I've ever met".

But 1/4 black =black sounds weird to me.

I wonder to what extent that is true. The one visible minority we do have records of in that period, I think, are Jews, and they did not have a good time.

In Eastern Europe Indian immigrants got segregated into the class of (half-)nomadic entertainers and general underclass where they stay to this day. Hard to imagine what else than skin colour was the identifying method to do that. So the thought of some (especially if very few) black people showing up in Europe and then people around them being like "whatever" is hard to imagine and I think is way too rose-tinted.