Richard C. Maguire 
Africans in East Anglia, 1467-1833 [EPUB ebook] 

What were the lives of Africans in provincial England like during the early modern period? How, where, and when did they arrive in rural counties? How were they perceived by their contemporaries?


This book examines the population of Africans in Norfolk and Suffolk from 1467, the date of the first documented reference to an African in the region, to 1833, when Parliament voted to abolish slavery in the British Empire. It uncovers the complexity of these Africans’ historical experience, considering the interaction of local custom, class structure, tradition, memory, and the gradual impact of the Atlantic slaving economy.


Richard C. Maguire proposes that the initial regional response to arriving Africans during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was not defined exclusively by ideas relating to skin colour, but rather by local understandings of religious status, class position, ideas about freedom and bondage, and immediate local circumstances. Arriving Africans were able to join the region’s working population through baptism, marriage, parenthood, and work.


This manner of response to Africans was challenged as local merchants and gentry begin doing business with the slaving economy from the mid-seventeenth century onwards. Although the racialised ideas underpinning Atlantic slavery changed the social circumstances of Africans in the region, the book suggests that they did not completely displace older, more inclusive, ideas in working communities.

Cuprins

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgements

List of Abbreviations

A note on dating, transcription, currency, weights and measures, and references

Introduction. A Social History of Africans in early modern Norfolk and Suffolk

One. Identifying the African Population in Early Modern Norfolk and Suffolk

Two. Beginnings: The Establishment of the African Population, 1467 to 1599

Three. ‘Strangers’, ‘Foreigners’, and ‘Slavery’

Four. The Seventeenth Century. The Early Shadow of Transatlantic Slavery

Five. The African Population, 1600-1699

Six. Eighteenth-Century Links to the Atlantic Economy

Seven. Eighteenth-Century African Lives

Eight. The ‘Three African Youths’, a Gentleman, and Some Rioters

Epilogue: Reconsidering the Social History of Africans in Norfolk and Suffolk

Appendix A: The African and Asian Population identified in Norfolk and Suffolk, 1467-1833

Appendix B: The Surname ‘Blackamore’, 1500-1800

Appendix C: Plantation Ownership in Norfolk and Suffolk, 1650-1833

Bibliography

Despre autor

RICHARD C. MAGUIRE is Honorary Senior Lecturer in the School of History at the University of East Anglia, Norwich. He is the author of Africans in East Anglia, 1467-1833 (Boydell Press, 2021).