Preface

Black people – by whom I mean Africans and Asians and their descendants – have been living in Britain for close on 500 years. They have been born in Britain since about the year 1505. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries thousands of black youngsters were brought to this country against their will as domestic slaves. Other black people came of their own accord and stayed for a while or settled here. This book gives an account of the lives, struggles, and achievements of men and women most of whom have been either forgotten or, still more insultingly, remembered as curiosities or objects of condescension.

Can such an account be written by a white writer in a way that is acceptable to black readers? This question has been much discussed in the United States. Robbed in the past of all they had, from their freedom to their very names, Afro-Americans have made up their minds never to be robbed again – and no longer to tolerate the pillage of their history by ignorant and superficial white writers out for fame and gain.1 On the other hand, it is accepted that white writers who make the effort to ‘think black’ – i.e. to grasp imaginatively as well as intellectually the essence of the black historical experience – may have something worthwhile to offer. But they are warned that this may entail a painful rethinking of basic assumptions.² I have written with these considerations in mind.

This however, though peopled to a large extent by Africans, West Indians, Afro-Americans, and Asians, is a history of the black presence in Britain. And it is written, not just for black or just for white readers, but for all who have a serious interest in the subject.³ Serious readers will want to know first of all what keys to understanding this book has to offer. It offers two. One is the contribution made by black slavery to the rise of British capitalism and, in particular, to the accumulation of wealth that fuelled the industrial revolution. That’s why there is a chapter on Britain’s slave ports. The other key is the effect English racism has had on the lives of black people living in this country. That’s why there is a chapter on the rise of English racism. These two chapters are not ‘background’. They go to the heart of the matter. Black slave labour on sugar plantations in the West Indies was British industry’s springboard. And racism not only justified plantation slavery and, later, colonialism but also poisoned the lives of black people living in Britain. It is still doing so. Without these two chapters this book would be like a history of the Jews in Germany that stayed silent about antisemitism and extermination camps.

Readers familiar with Eric Williams’s classic, Capitalism and Slavery, will see that I have made use of it. But not uncritically. Much work has been done in that area of economic history since Williams’s book first came out 40 years ago. Some of it supports his case; some argues against him. I haven’t seen it as part of my job to defend Williams against his critics; on essentials, no such defence is needed. In any case, when I have used other people’s work I have gone, wherever I could, to the original sources and judged for myself. In quoting such sources I have retained archaic spelling and punctuation, explaining whatever might be obscure or misleading.

For the rest, the method is as far as possible biographical, the scope comprehensive but not exhaustive. It seemed best to tell the earlier part of the story, about which the least is generally known, in the greatest detail. So the book becomes more selective as it approaches the present day. Thus music, dance, and sport are covered to the start of the twentieth century only. And the two final chapters, treating of the past 35 years, are purposely restricted to a bare outline. To be sure, the great majority of black people who have ever lived in Britain have done so in this recent period; but to write their history on the scale of the rest of the book would require a perspective, and an access to documents, that will not be available for a long time.

It is a pleasure to thank those who urged me to take on this task and have helped and encouraged me along the way. It was a chance remark by Bob Supiya of the British Library, during the 1981 ‘riots’, that finally led me to lay aside other work and start writing this book instead. I learnt much from the ‘Roots in Britain’ exhibition assembled by Ziggi Alexander and Audrey Dewjee. Ziggi Alexander has kindly made time to read much of my manuscript; her criticisms saved me from many blunders and she gave me a number of valuable leads. Paul Gilroy read a draft of the last two chapters and made helpful comments. Jeffrey P. Green gave me a lot of information about black people in Britain in the early years of this century. Bill Elkins, Elisabeth lngles, Walter Kendall, John Lipsey, Douglas Lorimer, Norma Meacock, Ron Ramdin, John Saville, A. Sivanandan, Nicolas Walter, and Ken Weller have sustained me with advice and encouragement. I was privileged to attend the International Conference on the History of Blacks in Britain (1981), and the scholars I met there were unstinting with information and suggestions; my particular debts to them, and to others who have so generously shared their knowledge with me, are specified in the notes. I am grateful to Pluto Press Limited: for being so patient with an author whose project took four and a half times as long as promised; and for the skill and care with which Paul Crane and Angela Quinn pruned a bulky MS. of irrelevancies and obscurities. I am grateful to the staffs of the British Library (Colindale as well as Bloomsbury), Institute of Commonwealth Studies, Institute of Race Relations, London School of Economics, Public Record Office (Chancery Lane as well as Kew), School of Oriental and African Studies, and University of London Library who met my requests for books and documents with such efficiency and courtesy. Not least, I thank the three people to whom this book is dedicated; it is, I fear, an inadequate return for their forbearance and love.

It seems to me now that I began work on this book with an arrogance that has been deservedly humbled by what I have learnt while writing it. Above all, I have learnt how little I know and can hope to know. All who venture into this field must sooner or later ponder the West African saying: ‘Knowledge is like the baobab tree; one person’s arms cannot encompass it.’

Erratum

On page 395 and the index, the name Malcolm Chambers should read Markland Chambers.

The blacks will know as friends only those whites who are fighting in the ranks beside them.

And whites will be there.

C.L.R. James, The Black Jacobins (1938)