I don't want my republican sympathies to be praised but why does anyone think that a royal edict (or an act of parliament, or school rules on uniforms etc etc) has an impact on 100% of the alleged victims?
Is there any evidence of deportation - surely the essence of Miranda's e mail?
Jeff Green


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Message Received: Aug 29 2014, 10:26 AM
From: "Angela Allison"
To: [log in to unmask]
Cc:
Subject: Re: New blog post: Elizabeth I and the 'Blackamoors': the Deportation that never was

Huguenot refugees were arriving in 1570s - 1790s?
When did the Huguenots stop arriving? Why?

In 1440 Henry VI taxed all foreigners living in Exeter.
However, I thought that, since Edward I’s 1290 expulsion of them, Jews had not been allowed to return to England until 1655?

Angela Allison, Coventry UK

----- Original Message -----
From: Kathleen Chater
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Fri, 29 Aug 2014 08:53:16 -0000 (UTC)
Subject: Re: New blog post: Elizabeth I and the 'Blackamoors': the Deportation that never was

You have to look at the wider picture too. It wasn't just Black people who were being targeted for potential expulsion. There were numerous proposed edicts against Huguenots, Protestant refugees from France and the Low Countries. The City of London also imposed various regulations against them (and later against Jews who were even more discriminated against). There was general xenophobia, resulting in (oh joy for the researcher!) lists of "strangers" mainly in London but also in the towns, like Maidstone, where Hugeunots had settled. There's a good examination of this in an introduction to one of the Huguenot Society Quarto Series Publications. It might be the Returns of Strangers but if anyone really wants to follow it up I can find the exact volume and extract info from it.

Kathy


> Date: Fri, 29 Aug 2014 08:42:16 +0000
> From: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: FW: New blog post: Elizabeth I and the 'Blackamoors': the Deportation that never was
> To: [log in to unmask]
>
> So now I need to investigate people of African origin, living in England, Portugal & Spain who could read and write.
>
> I also need to investigate evidence of how wide awareness of the 1596 bill was, even if diseminated by word-of-mouth, as oppose to reading it for themselves. eg. did it make coffee-shop talk? (Coffee houses began in Istanbul in 1550s and by 1650s were more common in England). Did it feature in the plays of the day?, esp. the street-theatres?
>
> Brilliant. I like a challenge.
>
> Angela Allison, Coventry UK
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: msherwood
>
> Elizabeth wanted the money, I think to pay the ransom for the kidnapped Brits.....
>
> If the population could read, if there had been newspapers, the effect of the Bill might have been similar to what Angela lists below, but as they couldn’t and there weren't....
>
> ----- Original Message -----
>
> From: [log in to unmask]
> To: The Black and Asian Studies Association
> Sent: Thu, 28 Aug 2014 20:58:44 -0000 (UTC)
> Subject: Re: FW: New blog post: Elizabeth I and the 'Blackamoors': the Deportation that never was
>
> I'm amazed that anyone would seek to justify the actions of QE1 with regard to Senden.
>
> Did QE1 authorise the 1596 bill by signing it? Yes
> Had she authorised similar removals a week earlier by an Edward Baynes? Yes
>
> Even though the Senden's bill proved to be void, and just a delaying tactic, what impact would it have had on hearts & minds of all those who were aware of it (both black & white), the fact that the country's ruler (not just some drunken lout at the local pub) had been prepared to but her name to such a thing?
>
> Might it not have been similar in impact to the Tory election posters of the 1964, stating 'If you want a nigger next door, vote Labour?
> Might it not have been similar in impact to Enoch Powell's 'Rivers of Blood' speech of 1968 - just weeks after the assassination of MLK?
> Might it not have been similar in impact to Maggie Thatcher's anti-immigrants speeches, esp. when she used emotive words such a 'flooded' & 'swamped'?
> Might it not have been similar in impact to David Cameron's recent anti-immigrants vans/posters?
>
>
> Angela Allison, Coventry UK
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: msherwood
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Sent: Thu, 28 Aug 2014 16:29:20 -0000 (UTC)
> Subject: FW: New blog post: Elizabeth I and the 'Blackamoors': the Deportation that never was
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> From: Miranda Kaufmann [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Elizabeth I and the 'Blackamoors': the Deportation that never was
>
>
> 28/08/2014
>
> 0 Comments
>
>
>
> Photo from the Guardian Black History Timeline
>
> Today I am compelled to blog. There is a wrong I must right. The world simply cannot be allowed to continue to believe that Elizabeth I expelled Africans from her realm in 1596.
>
> This is perhaps the most oft-quoted (sometimes the only quoted) "fact" relating to the history of Africans in Tudor England. Recently, I have seen it repeated in the Guardian Black History timeline, the Medieval POC tumblr, and the New York Times.
>
> It has also been peddled by historians, including the wonderful Peter Fryer, who wrote in his magisterial Staying Power in 1984: “The queen was soon expressing strong disapproval of the presence of black people…in the realm and indeed, ordering that ‘those kinde of people’ should be deported forthwith.” While Ania Loomba went so far as to assert in 1992 that “Elizabeth I's communique deporting blacks... [indicates that] the 'preservation' of the white race is seen to be at stake.”
>
> It's a prime example of how anything can become "fact" through repetition. and it is a particularly dangerous story to peddle in our immigration- obsessed times. It is all too easy to elide the centuries and imagine that Elizabeth I had an immigration policy that would have been approved of by Enoch Powell.
>
> The "fact" has made its way into the classroom. In 2009 year 7 pupils at St John Plessington Catholic College in the Wirral were to be taught: “To understand the reasons for Elizabeth I’s policy of expulsion”, while the BlackHistory4Schools website has a lesson plan which explicitly compares the Tudor rhetoric with modern newspaper headlines.
>
> What makes this all worse, on a personal level, is that I wrote an article disproving this so-called "fact" some seven years ago. Clearly, academic articles are not as widely read as academics might like. And looking back, I can see it is a bit dense. Maybe "Caspar van Senden, Sir Thomas Sherley and the ‘Blackamoor’ Project" wasn't the most catchy title?
>
> Anyway, now I'm taking to my blog to explain the truth behind the myth once and for all, in plain terms (but still with some original quotes!).
>
> So, What really happened?
>
> Well, on 18 July 1596, the Privy Council issued an open letter addressed “to the Lord Mayor of London and to all vice-admirals, Mayors and other public officers whatsoever to whom it may appertain.” The letter authorised a merchant of Lubeck named Caspar Van Senden to “take up…Blackamoores here in this Realm and to transport them into Spain and Portugal.”
>
> Crucially this required the "consent of their masters.” It was this requirement that made this a dead letter, as I learnt from reading the various petitions from a disappointed Van Senden amongst Robert Cecil’s papers. In an undated petition to the Queen, Van Senden asks for a far more powerful authorisation to take Africans out of the country, without the "interruption of their masters or any other persons." He complains that the 1596 Council warrant was not effective as he:
>
> "together with a Pursivant [basically an enforcer] did travell at his great Charges into dyvers partes of your highness Realme for the said Blackamoores, But the masters of them, perceiving by the said warrant that your orator could not take the Blackamoores without the Master’s good will, would not suffer your Orator to have any one of them."
>
> Van Senden did not get what he wanted. Another document of 1601 has been quoted as a second Privy Council letter or proclamation, but in fact it was never promulgated, and only exists as a draft amongst Cecil’s papers. It might have been drafted by Van Senden himself, as it is more strongly worded that the 1596 letter.
>
> Ultimately Van Senden's schemes were unsuccessful. This was not a deportation, but rather a small-scale bargain with a persistent merchant, on an individual basis.
>
> Elizabeth I did not expel Africans from England. In fact, Africans, who had been present in both England and Scotland from the earliest years of the sixteenth century, continued to live here for the rest of her reign, and beyond. I have found evidence of over 360 African individuals living in these isles between 1500 and 1640. We no longer need to rely on the 1596 document to make the point that there were Africans in Tudor England.
>
> _____
>
>
>
> Dr. Miranda Kaufmann
>
>
>
> www.mirandakaufmann.com
>
>
>
> [log in to unmask]
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> 07855 792 885