Haiti is well known as the sight of the first successful slave revolt which resulted in independence in 1804. But African slaves, brought to Mexico by the Spanish in the late 16C , also have a history of rebellion and at the time Mexico had the largest African population outside the continent.

“The African Presence in Mexico: From Yanga to the Present” is traveling exhibition documenting 500 years of an African presence in Mexico and the untold shared history of Mexicans and Afro-descendants. The exhibition which will be touring the US and Mexico over the next four years.

Tags:
Mexico + Slavery
Afro-Descendants
Africans + Mexico

The central criminal court in London, the Old Bailey has published court records from 1674-1913 online. The database includes records on the lives of Africans and their descendent’s in London.

The defence of highwayman Joseph Guy in 1767 was that ‘There are a thousand black men in London besides me’. Unsurprisingly, most appear in criminal contexts. Poor Thomas Robinson (’a Negro Black Boy ‘), for example, was sentenced to death for house-breaking and stealing ‘divers Goods’ in 1724. But others were respectable citizens. John Bardoe was bought as a slave in Lagos by a Genoese sea-captain and, when their ship docked in London in 1859, Bardoe apparently freed himself with the aid of a fellow countryman and began working for another Italian. Bardoe then fell ill and, in a feverish state, assumed he was being recaptured. He first barricaded himself into his room, then made a break for it and stabbed a policeman in a rooftop chase. An interesting story in itself - but the translator at the trial was ‘Miss. M. B. Servano, a native of Yorubah, and educated in England’. There are lots of interesting analytical details there: social networks among Africans in London, the continuation of slavery at sea, perceptions of freedom, and the education of African women. Bardoe was found to have acted in self-defence and judged not guilty.

The publication of the archives on line is probably one of the most exciting additions to the history of Black people in Britain. I did my own search on “Calabar” which revealed this case for what appears to be the murder at sea of a Black servant by a ships Captain.

Thanks to Emeka

Tags:

Historical Archives
Black Britain + History
Old Baily Court

Here is a comment to one of my posts. I decided to turn it into a full-blown post because of its length. So here it is. Khotso to all.

Reply:
‘Dear Tim,

“We” can’t freely move anywhere, to Darfur or elsewhere, if any survival attempt on the African’s part is clouded with taunts and suspicions of incompetence and stupidity. “We” can truly start moving when the African has got the respect (s)he deserves.

History is never over as it always has a bearing on the present. It stands to reason that what happened yesterday influences what happens today and what will happen tomorrow. America is a gun-wielding, trigger-happy nation because the Far-west happened. Many African nations are poor today because their people were stolen, their economic and political structures destroyed, their land occupied, and so on.

Tim, of course people, not peoples, do things. People enslaved the African, colonised the African, Jim-crowed the heck out of the black person. But you must admit that very few, if any, American Indians did these things. Few Canadians, few Peruvians, few Inuits, few Mexicans. Perhaps they did other ills, I don’t know. The question here is not that.

It is interesting that you might say, ‘…most of us do not want to know about the slavery, the French in the North, the English in the south,the Boer’s, The Belgians in the Congo or Germans in Southwest Africa, where the phrase ‘final solution’ was first used.‘

Why in Heaven’s name would you want to zap that? In that case, zap Lincoln, and his four-score speech. Zap Franklin and his kite. Zap the Pilgrims and that rock they landed on. The Wright brothers, the American’s struggle of independence against England, and in a few years, zap Vietnam, too, the atom bombs in Japan, zap Iraq, zap Michael Jackson and his best-selling album. Zap the hostage-taking crisis in Iran when Carter was president, Elvis and Martin Luther king Jr (?) and Malcolm X (?) and Monica Lewinsky and Reaganomics and 9/11 and all the history of the blooming world. Let’s zap the big bang, too, while we’re at it. I went to prison in South Africa for pass laws. Let’s zap that. Zap slavery and colonisation and Apartheid, as you suggest.

China. China is another question. It is messing up in Tibet and has messed up in Darfur. Does that give me the right to say, ‘Don’t talk about the fact that I pounded your face into the ground yesterday. Chun-Lee here is pounding it into the ground now.’ Perhaps Chun-Lee is doing it because I got away with it. Learning from history isn’t just a cliché, it’s something we must do. We must all be accountable. You, me, them, everybody. If we’re all equal on this planet, then no one gets away with pounding another’s face into the ground. China is beginning to have the sort of fiduciary influence on Africa that leads straight to dependence, and the notion that the money-lender can do whatever they want. That’s very bad, and Africans should not let it happen. Why they might is beyond the scope of this post.

Still, I think your comment of ‘the ignorant’ concerning the Chinese is not fair. Nowhere in your comment do you say that Caucasian people are ignorant, although they’re the ones that have done a lot of atrocities against the African (and the Australian Aborigine and the American Indian)

I’m not sure I know what you mean by the following, Tim: ‘So … why do I suppose it is that I sit here in front of a shelf full of books on African History yet I remain astounded at the ignorance about it?‘ But let me take a jab at it: What I say and other Africans say isn’t in your history books? Or, you haven’t actually read the history books on your book-shelf? In either case, what happened in the past still happened. Give you the South African example. History books never mentioned the African hero, of the African good deed, or the African innovation, or the African suffering. That was until some African scholars decided to write real history books that told it all, good and bad, and across the spectrum of southern African life.

Get back to me if you’d like, Tim. If you’d rather not post openly (and not anonymously), my e-mail address is retjoun/gmail/com. And if it is your wish, I’ll keep such correspondence private.
Cheers.
Rethabile’

Nice excuses do you have more concocted for the next 100 years or so? I mean its been over 50 years and using the same excuse does not attract pity anymore. I mean take the case of India for example, their population alone is greater than that of the African continent, colonized for more than 300 years,Gained independance [sic] 60 years ago and you can see substantial development. How come this is not the case in many African countries? English is not their mother tongue either.

Comment by Reid — 28 March 2008 @ 10:53 pm

The above comment was in response to my 20 June 2006 post called, “Why is Africa poor?” And I just wanted to react to the comment. I know full well that the commenter, Reid, won’t listen to me because his/her mind’s made up already, but what the heck, I’ll give it a shot. I wish Reid would come out so we could talk things over (my email is at the top of http://sotho.blogsome.com, in case you’re reading this, Reid).

Nice excuses do you have more concocted for the next 100 years or so?
As a matter of fact, yes, I do. Except they aren’t excuses per se but what I believe to be the truth. Much as you have accusations and insults stocked up for the next one hundred years, your side of the story, I have what I believe in stocked up, too, my side of the story. And what I believe is that a series of events have contributed to stunting the economic development of many African countries. And, yes, slavery and colonialism are part of that series.

The same thing happened to the American Indian and the Australian Aborigine. It is no surprise that these peoples, who were subjected to the same conditions Africans endured, have been marginalised and are actually struggling to survive in the land of their birth. Only a very short-sighted brain will fail to see this, and choose to label it something else. And skin colour has no bearing on intelligence or stupidity, Reid. None whatsoever.

Skin colour is the organism’s reaction to the intensity of sun rays. The stronger the rays, the more pigmentation cells in the epidermis, called melanocytes, become active, producing melanin, the dye that gives dark people their tan.

I mean its been over 50 years and using the same excuse does not attract pity anymore.
Today we’re still going on about the facts of Alexander the Great’s life, which did not occur 50 years ago but more than 20 000 years ago! What grounds could you possibly stand on to suggest we should not speak about historical facts of half a decade ago? And what historical facts would those be?

By 1905, African soil was almost completely controlled by European governments, with the only exceptions being Liberia (which had been settled by African-American former slaves) and Ethiopia (which had successfully resisted colonization by Italy). Britain and France had the largest holdings, but Germany, Spain, Italy, Belgium, and Portugal also had colonies. As a result of colonialism and imperialism, Africa suffered long term effects, such as the loss of important natural resources like gold and rubber, economic devastation, cultural confusion, geopolitical division, and political subjugation. Europeans often justified this using the concept of the White Man’s Burden, an obligation to “civilize” the peoples of Africa.
[source…]

Colonialism came after slavery, mind you. Slavery devastated the continent, depleting it of its healthiest, most viable, strongest citizens. Then colonialism came in to finish the job. When I bring these facts up, it is neither to attract pity nor to seek revenge. It is to bring them up in order to respond to comments such as the one you left on my blog.

And why in the world would the African seek pity? From whom? As far as I know, the African wants the European and the American off the continent. But there’s just too many raw materials and minerals in Africa, aren’t there? And the Occident ain’t getting out unless it has to, is it?

I mean take the case of India for example, their population alone is greater than that of the African continent, colonized for more than 300 years,Gained independance [sic] 60 years ago and you can see substantial development. How come this is not the case in many African countries? English is not their mother tongue either.
It seems to me you might be making an error made by many, which is taking Africa to be a country. For the sake of clarity, Africa is a continent, a continent with many countries; India is a country, and is equivalent to one among the 53 states on the African continent. Due to this, India could not have undergone the same fate under colonialism as Africa. Let me explain.

In the nineteenth century Europe scrambled for Africa, and proceeded to carve it up like pie to suit its strategic needs. No concern was given to how the pie was carved, nor to what toppings were on each piece. In fact, “some 10,000 African polities were amalgamated into 40 European colonies and protectorates [source…].” Imagine that. 10 000 boiled down to 40!

Traditional foes were placed within the same borders, and villages were divided by new boundaries. Take a look at the map of Africa and see how many straight lines there are. India is one country and did not suffer this fate.

Upon independence, when colonial armies were no longer present to keep foe from foe, wars broke out in many places on the continent. And this has nothing to do with skin colour. Take the former Soviet Union, or Yugoslavia. These places, like Africa, had artificial frontiers held together by an ideology backed by a well-trained army. Take away the army, and the rest is history, among black people as among white ones (actually brown and pink respectively. Sort of). Like I’ve said, if you’d like to talk, you’ve got the comments section, and you’ve got e-mail.

A group of us including Marian of Marian’s Blog have re-named the March 17th Irish holiday “Billie Holi-DAY” to celebrate the forgotten Black people with Irish ancestry wherever they may be.

Most people do not know but jazz vocalist Billie Holiday, writer Alex Haley, Muhammed Ali and many other Black people in the Diaspora have Irish ancestry. As well as immigrants to the USA, a large number of Irish settled in the Caribbean, some as indentured servants used by the British to settle islands such as Montserrat which had the largest Irish population. Others went as merchants, plantation owners and missionaries to Guadeloupe, Martinique and Haiti. The islands were also used by the British as penal colonies similar to Australia.

Tags:
Billie Holiday
St Patrick’s Day
Irish