Black Stuarts : Africans in Stuart England, 1603-1714

Merrix, Sophie and Pettigrew, William and Donaldson, Christopher (2025) Black Stuarts : Africans in Stuart England, 1603-1714. PhD thesis, Lancaster University.

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Abstract

This study examines the position of Africans in Stuart England, advancing the field of Black British historiography by addressing key questions about race, status, and societal integration. Focusing on the period 1603-1714, it investigates whether Africans in England were enslaved, indentured, or free during a time when the English were developing a trans-Atlantic empire reliant on the enslaved labour of Africans in English-owned colonies. This is the first project to consider a wide range of source types and to use the fragmentary evidence these offer to reconstruct how Africans were treated within early modern English society. While previous scholarship has touched on this subject, it typically focuses on a specific region, presents a brief overview as part of a broader study of Africans in Britain, or concentrates largely on one source type. In contrast, this thesis uses a methodology of extensive record collection, allowing for a nuanced exploration of African experiences. The study reveals the ways in which Africans were integrated into English society in religious, social, and penal contexts, whilst also being exoticised in portraits and through dress. New colonial structures of governance were largely predicated on established English practices. This thesis demonstrates that, when it came to the treatment of Africans, English practices were not transposed in the colonies. Rather than being accepted and integrated into the developing English colonial social order, Africans were treated separately as property to be enslaved, distinguished as an inferior other. These colonial practices, developed to suit their specific environments, then influenced English attitudes in Stuart England. The actions of some English masters reflect the growing influence of colonial ideologies of racial inferiority and enslavement. Some believed they could retain ownership of the African individuals they brought to England from the colonies, subjecting them to practices like collaring, attempting to sell them, or even sending them overseas back to colonial environments.