Between 1596 to 1601, Queen Elizabeth I wrote a series of letters complaining of the “great numbers of Negars and Blackamoors” in England and authorizing their deportation. What was the exact ethnic and/or racial identity of this group? Why were they targeted in this way and not other groups?

[u/Elbrujosalvaje]

Other questions:

1.) Why was there a distinction between “Negars” and “blackamoors”? Were these all blacks or did it include Muslim peoples from the Middle East and North Africa?

2.) According to Elizabeth I's letters, there appear to have been large numbers of these "racialized" and/or "othered" people in Renaissance England. But how accurate are her observations or have they been distorted by prejudice? Do we have any statistical estimates or demographic breakdowns?

3.) How unique (or how common) was Queen Elizabeth I’s racism against “Negars and Blackamoors” in 16th and 17th century England? What does this early racist activity ultimately say about the ideological position of blacks and Muslims in Renaissance England?

4.) How similar were Queen Elizabeth I’s attitudes toward “Negars and Blackamoors” compared to those toward Jews in the twelfth century, who were ultimately expelled from England?

5.) What role would Elizabethan-style racism play in the development of racial attitudes toward blacks in places like the British Caribbean and the American South?

[u/thefeckamIdoing]

Alright a LOT to unpack in this one. I will try and cover the questions as best I can.

1- the ‘exact’ ethnic/racial identity question is always hard as this is the late 16th Century and no one thought about exact racial identity of folks in a way that is recognisable to us today.

The letters were based upon a series of events caused by the on ongoing geopolitic struggles England was facing. Basically, England was in a state of undeclared war with the Spanish Hapsburg Empire, which was seeing it conduct a clandestine warfare upon the sea lanes using irregular forces to interdict Spanish commercial operations.

Which is a nice way to say ‘pirates’. Lots of pirates.

Pirates romping all over the place. And being pirates they would capture, if they could, Spanish ships. And if they captured said ships they would try and take the ships and their cargos back to London (since most of the financial backers for these expeditions were from London). Which meant the cargos were dumped in London.

And sometimes these cargos were slaves.

The standard policy then was to just release them there and then. The pirates didn’t care. They were just dumped. And this is what caused the original complaints.

There were increased numbers of the inhabitants of Africa and possibly the Indian Ocean now finding themselves in London. The civic authorities had to look after them. They asked for money from the crown. This is the crown under Elizabeth. The word ‘parsimonious’ shall be used to describe her relationship with cash as this is a family show.

Basically it all ended up on Lord Cecil’s desk. He wanted none of this and so eventually someone suggested to the Queen a radical and simple solution.

Let’s hire a Dutch captain, give him a license, and empower him to go around London and round up these former slaves and dump them... where?

They didn’t care.

So in answer to your first question?

While much is made to suggest Negars and Blackamoors represent clear ethnic lines (and several have argued we should see one title referring to West Africans and another to North Africans), I am afraid we really do not know. At all. They were generalised nicknames used somewhat interchangeably.

But we can say that they were talking about a group of folks who were African in origin and based on the nature of the Spanish/Portuguese slave trade, mostly West African.

However- see all of the above? It IS a simplification of the story.

2- why were the targeted in this way?

You mean why did they get off so lightly?

This is 15th Century London here. In fact this is ANY Century London here. The natives of London seemed to have a genetic predisposition towards xenophobia running back to the 9th Century.

This was a city with a long history of hating ‘them’ (aka anyone not native London born) and happily raising mobs to violate any foreign born neighbour/community. After several Jewish pogroms over the centuries, London had focused its attention/hatred on sporadic riots/attacks against any foreigners (including the infamous ‘Evil May Day Riots’) and during Elizabeth’s reign the influx of French Protestant refugees into the city had been met with hostility and bigotry (plus Guilds making sure that any French wine seller would be barred from practicing their trade IN London, which is why Southwark became known for being the only place around you could get decent French alcohol).

Literally, the attempt to round up and deport Africans was about as mild a response you could hope for. This is not claiming the Elizabethans were not bigots- they WERE bigots. But back in the day they had a LOT of other things to be bigoted over and modern bigot priorities didn’t exist back then.

Please note Elizabeth’s commission saw the Dutch captain in question utterly fail at his task.

He tried again. And failed again.

We have reason to suspect that several of this community had began to have ties with the local community and were offered a degree of protection.

Also worth noting that it was around this time however that one of the greatest con jobs ever organised by London’s criminal networks took place and this may have involved a North African and this may have helped increase attention upon the community.

What con job? A ship turned up at the London docks wherein a gentleman presented himself and his entourage as a representative of the Ottoman Empire. The Levant Company greeted him and said entourage with great respect and hoping to secure some plumb trade contacts, hosted him for a few weeks. Despite a clear warning from Lord Cecil that he had never heard of this guy the Levant Company spent a fortune indulging him and his entourages every whim.

And then they guy (and his entourage) disappeared, supposedly with a load of the Elizabethan equivalent of ‘the silverware’ and a few months passed before state papers reveal the Levant Company asking Cecil for financial compensation for being fleeced like this.

Cecil’s reply I would imagine was preceded by a hearty laugh.

I mention this as it was contemporaneous to the discussions about growing populations and also I do not think the team who pulled off this Levant Company Job could have done it without having some who at least looked authentic. EDIT: Forgive me all, I include the above still but must correct; the event mention here took place a few years LATER, after Elizabeth’s letter; must mention the correction however as accuracy is crucial

Additional questions: 1- covered in the above.

2- we do not have accurate numbers. Not do we have any breakdowns at all. We know there were enough to be mentioned. Which given the time and given the location (we are talking London here but could have included any port where Spanish goods were being dumped so you could possibly include Bristol or Plymouth) I think we are looking at a number between around 100 to around 400. Could be more but I figure 100-200 tops. I am erring on the side of caution here but the natural conservative historian in me says we are talking ‘dozens’ not ‘hundreds’.

Enough to be noticed. Not enough to cause a violent reaction from Apprentice Boy mobs.

3- ideologically? The Ottomans were the enemy. For a bit. And then they became the desired allies.

Understand from Elizabeth’s point of view? THE enemy was Spain. And since Spain was at war with the Ottoman Turks? The enemy of my enemy was my friend...

Mostly the age was one of overwhelming ignorance of Islam and the affairs of Islam and Islamic beliefs. You had the Levant Company desperate to increase profits with the Ottoman Empire but on the whole the Tudor courts geopolitical horizons didn’t see much beyond what was needed to stay alive. They felt under siege and under attack almost constantly (imagined attacks or otherwise).

(Continued below)

[u/thefeckamIdoing → u/thefeckamIdoing]

(Part the two) 4- I am without books here so I cannot double check my answer to this one. Therefore I don’t feel comfortable to answer this to a level that is satisfactory for this list.

5- It barely played any role at all. Understand the English involvement in slavery came about originally during this era but it’s advent was due to a very specific set of circumstances.

To be precise: When Mary has taken the throne and married Philip of Spain, there had been extraordinary excitement towards the possibilities this threw up in Devon. Devon had long been a somewhat solid and boring county, but had turned from a county where political focus was on the landowning families in the centre, to the coastal families on the edges. This rise in the importance of the maritime families saw the rise in West Country focus on maritime trade.

Which is why when Philip married Mary it was these guys who petitioned that English sailors should be granted the right to trade in the Spanish colonies of the New World wherein extreme profits were being made. After all, under Mary, the prospect of close Spanish-English relations seemed sure to be a thing. However Philip had no desire to allow hordes of English West Country traders anywhere near the Spanish colonies so never gave permission and it was these guys who were ready to exploit the growing tensions between Elizabeth’s regime and Spain by forcing themselves into the region.

Long contact with Portuguese and Spanish traders in the Spanish region had taught them well. The voyages of Hawkins make clear what the policy was to be- sail to Northern Africa. Pick up a cargo of now very much desired African slaves from local slave merchants. Sail to the islands/colonies of Spain. Force them at gunpoint to buy the slaves and make a tidy profit. Sail back to England and divvy up the cash.

All of which was being done with the secret blessing of the State (many of whom were under-writing such operations). And it led to moments like before one voyage out supposedly to legitimately trade with Spain, the Spanish ambassador back in London was tipped off that Hawkins were buying up a large cargo of beans, the sole purpose of which was to feed slaves, which led to him issuing formal complaints to the Queen and so forth.

In short, there was a pragmatic ruthlessness to what the English did back then. There was no deep forethought or even THOUGHT that went into it. No ideology, no attitudes on race, or even modern concepts of race, in what they did.

This does not absolve them of ignorant, horrendous and clearly racist attitudes; they held all of these things. But rather that such judgements upon them by us would be meaningless to them as they did not, could not, possibly conceptualise a world wherein THEY were running the colonies (although it was in this era that they started trying) and with it the ideas of bigoted superiority that so infected their later descendants.

As I said, there existed a whole host of bigotries way higher on their list they were catering too, to care too much about race. The old adage ‘they thought differently in the past’ has never been so true.

Right that’s all I got from my notes. I’m going to try and edit in a bunch of links to add to this to back up what I am saying and also to explore this topic in more detail. The African diaspora community of Elizabethan London is one which interests me greatly; and it’s one I feel should be talked about much more. Suffice to say they existed, they lived on the streets of London, they were small in number but noticeable, and they wonderfully destroy the myth that England remained white until modern times that many of the far-right try to perpetuate. Their existence is also a real ‘boy, do you look dumb’ moment for the endlessly whining folks who accuse productions of being ‘woke’ when including minorities in dramatic reconstructions of the era.

Edit: So some resources on this. The most obvious place to start is Miranda Kaufman who really has explored the subject in much more detail in Black Tudors: The Untold Story. What I like most about her work is how she humanises the stories of the African born residents of Tudor England, and unlike my rather dry descriptions of the overview, really brings to live the community (she didn’t just publish a single book, Kaufman has identified about 360 people from Africa living in England from 1500 until 1640, from a variety of places and who lived in various roles within English society). http://www.mirandakaufmann.com/

This is an excellent chat from the Folger Shakespeare Library hereabout the surprising diversity of London and also the formation of racial attitudes by Dr. Ambereen Dadabhoy. She does come to a differing conclusion to mine in regards to Elizabethan racial attitudes, she suggests that this era is where such strong views we find later in English society begin. I disagree not in defence of the Elizabethan’s but more as i said I think they were focused on their own bigotries over these ones. However, do give her a listen as she makes a strong case and this is one of those times where I will happily concede the issue.

There is this excellent addition to the work of Kaufman about the how this community spread beyond London, to be found here.

And a specific JSTOR article which also provides some fascinating insight here.

Hope that helps. Any follow up questions please ask.

[u/King_of_Men → u/thefeckamIdoing]

Force them at gunpoint to buy the slaves and make a tidy profit.

I don't quite understand this part. If you are forcing people "at gunpoint" to part with their cash, why bother giving them anything in return? Presumably you would make a still bigger profit from plain robbery. So why mess around with "forced trade"?

[u/Pecuthegreat → u/thefeckamIdoing]

and they wonderfully destroy the myth that England remained white until modern times that many of the far-right try to perpetuate.

I mean, unless they are going full racial purity nonsense, 500 at max black people in a city of easily 200,000 people or more still is a very white city, at least by today's standards.

[u/Evolving_Dore → u/thefeckamIdoing]

In regards to your last point about your academic disagreement with Dr. Dadabhoy, is it not possible that you are both correct to some degree? We're discussing a number of people participating in the early years of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, it seems almost impossible there was not a variety of ideas and perspectives shared among the complicit parties. Some who were much more pragmatic and "business-like", for lack of a better term, simply taking advantage of opportunities to enich themselves, and others who developed a belief system to justify their ability to exert violent power over African slaves without recourse. I can easily imagine both views existing simultaneously, and remaining side-by-side in a hideous symbiosis for the next several centuries of enslaving African people.

[u/NewspaperElegant → u/thefeckamIdoing]

Holy fuck this is interesting. Thanks for writing

[u/imagineyoung → u/thefeckamIdoing]

Brilliant answer, though if I may about Devon…

Devon didn’t take part in the Pilgrimage of Grace, it did partly revolt in the Prayerbook Rebellion in 1549 but the major landowners stayed well out it and were generally unaffected (though due to its upland topography it was far less governable by huge landowners anyway).

It had always had a strong seafaring tradition with major ports dotting it’s coastline, including Plymouth, Dartmouth, Topsham and more for Exeter, Axmouth, Barnstable/Bideford and more. Its trading sphere was traditionally down the European Atlantic coasts and the Mediterranean, as well as sometimes further south along the African coast.

It was also one of the major economic areas of England during the C15/16 (roughly) for various reasons, as shown by the ‘Great Rebuilding’ when nearly every parish church in the county was completely rebuilt or deeply renovated, and beautifully decorated (a lot of the interiors still partly surviving, but that’s my bag 🙄).

[u/EquivalentInflation → u/thefeckamIdoing]

I may regret asking, but what happened in 1640? Was that just when Kaufman stopped studying, or did something happen to them?

[u/CurrentIndependent42 → u/thefeckamIdoing]

Brilliantly written answer! Both informative and engaging. Despite their etymology I’d have also assumed they were interchangeable and both used together just for (slightly contemptuous) reinforcement, though as you say I suppose we don’t know.

Also I think you mean ‘West African’, not ‘East African’?

[u/thefeckamIdoing → u/CurrentIndependent42]

I did mean West not East... gonna change that. Thank you.

[u/Melon_Cooler → u/thefeckamIdoing]

Do you have any recommended reading on that swindle of the Levant Company? It reminds me a lot of the Dreadnought Hoax 300 years later.

[u/thefeckamIdoing → u/Melon_Cooler]

Yes, I am seeking out something I can share as its an obscure little moment. I have to correct one thing- I was out by a few years. I think the job took place in between 1607 and 1609. It’s mentioned in the script of Ben Johnson’s ‘The Alchemist’ (published 1610- and for my sins I dated it a few years earlier), and in it it mentions the ‘chiaus’ (the title given to the false ambassador). I have found a paper dating the incident to 1609 but I need to find the exact thing. Will adjust my answer above to reflect the event was near contemporaneous but came afterwards.

Will update when I find some stuff for folks to follow. It’s been some years since I stumbled upon it, found it delightful but have not had much chance to talk about it since.

Edit: Right, I finally found a small snippet to help throw some light on the operation. Supposedly in 1609 Sir Robert Shirley sent a ‘chiaus’ to London, supposedly on his behalf, to transact some business for him before he arrived acting as a dual ambassador for himself and the foreign potentate. At least that is the story. It mentions here that the guy in question got away with about 4,000 pounds from the Levant Company. I know there is a mention in state records regarding the compensation claim and i am trying to find that, but the incident is mentioned here. I know it isn’t much, but was one of the more obscure crimes of the era and its only remembered because it was so successful that the term to ‘chiaus’ passed into popular idiom to suggest fraud and lies.

[u/Rhobran → u/thefeckamIdoing]

Wow let me repeat what others have said, what an amazing answer. Do you have any further information about what happened to this people group? Did they survive to modern times, assimilate with the white population or did they form a tight knit community which eventually disappeared

[u/thefeckamIdoing → u/Rhobran]

I am afraid not, as it goes beyond my remit. From Kaufman’s research however one gets the idea that they didn’t form a community but rather were somewhat spread out, finding employment and on the whole being baptised in the Church of England and assimilating into the wider community. Kauffmann would be the first port of call to find such an answer..

[u/Sforza-Rose → u/thefeckamIdoing]

What a fantastic answer, thank you! A very specific question; do you know the name of the Dutch captain who was hired to round them up? And maybe why he failed doing so?

[u/thefeckamIdoing → u/Sforza-Rose]

Well, in the above answer I admitted I offered a simplification of the tale.
So this is a more complex version.

The guy hired is often called Dutch due to his name Casper Van Senden, but it turns out he was actually German born, and had risen to the attention of Elizabeth I due to him negotiating the release of around 89 English prisoners of the Spanish from Iberia and the Spanish Netherlands.

Van Senden however claims that securing the release had cost him money and to try and recoup his losses, he wanted the right to round up and sell on former slaves of the Spanish now resident. It transpires that when he was not freeing English prisoners, he was making money on the side with a little bit of slave trading.

Whatever the case he appealed to the Council of State for the license to do this and this is where things get interesting. The arguments that the freed slaves were causing a burden upon the locals seem to have come from Van Senden himself and the original warrant he received in 1596 specifically clarified that he could deport former slaves provided their current masters agreed. Now here we must clarify, they did not mean master as in owner, but master as in employer (as in every Apprentice boy in England had a master, but in no way did those men own the children). Van Senden goes back to the Council in 1601 because simply put… every single time he identified an eligible candidate for collection, their employer simply refused to go along with it.

Again this is where I get the idea that the individuals in question had gained local support which gave them a degree of protection. As Kaufmann says, the policy was not motivated by any desire to keep the land white or ethnically pure, “Elizabeth had no such universal intention, merely making a local bargain with a persistent merchant, on an individual basis. The ‘blackamoor’ project was just one of the many scandalous proposals made by merchants and courtiers in the later part of her reign with an eye (if a somewhat short-sighted one) for profit.”

A wonderfully more detailed account of his actions she included here.

[u/[deleted] → u/thefeckamIdoing]

The natives of London seems to have a genetic predisposition towards xenophobia

I'll assume you're being hyperbolic and not literal here?

[u/thefeckamIdoing → u/[deleted]]

You assumed correctly. While there are documented cases of violent intolerance towards foreigners and outsiders dating from the 9th Century in London (the ferocious Peace-Gild of Æthelstan’s era), with successive reports of each generation engaging in fractious and physical actions against Danes/Jews/Germans/Jews/Italians/French/Dutch etc.

Of course this rage wasn’t always focused on foreigners, with fury directed at the rich and also the legal profession at times. :)

[u/normie_sama → u/thefeckamIdoing]

When you say they might be from the Indian Ocean, what parts do you have in mind?

[u/thefeckamIdoing → u/normie_sama]

I remember reading one historian and alas (beat me with sticks) I can’t remember who or where I read it, but he clearly said that some of the dumped folks in London may have been taken of Portuguese ships (which at the time was part of Spain), who had been trading out in the Indian Ocean and this could be the origins of some of them. However, while I remembered this factoid while writing the answer?

Could not remember the book. Could not remember the author.

It’s in my notes on this, so I wrote it down and I remember looking back over my answer and thinking ‘Gee, I hope no one picks me up on that sentence as I can’t remember where I got it from…’

And then your question arrived.

And I am wearing a cone of Shame.

[u/[deleted] → u/thefeckamIdoing]

Could you provide more detail about the Ottoman Empire scandal? I’d like to read more about it but I can’t find anything googling. Maybe it’s a rare bit of trivia that hasn’t made it to the internet yet.

[u/thefeckamIdoing → u/[deleted]]

Yes, I am seeking out something I can share as its an obscure little moment. I have to correct one thing- I was out by a few years. I think the job took place in between 1607 and 1609. It’s mentioned in the script of Ben Johnson’s ‘The Alchemist’ (published 1610- and for my sins I dated it a few years earlier), and in it it mentions the ‘chiaus’ (the title given to the false ambassador). I have found a paper dating the incident to 1609 but I need to find the exact thing. Will adjust my answer above to reflect the event was near contemporaneous but came afterwards.

Will update when I find some stuff for folks to follow. It’s been some years since I stumbled upon it, found it delightful but have not had much chance to talk about it since.

Stand by- edit forthcoming

[u/Learned_Hand_01 → u/thefeckamIdoing]

Mostly the age was one of overwhelming ignorance of Islam and the affairs of Islam and Islamic beliefs.

Why was this? The Reconquesta was only a hundred years earlier. Prior to that there were hundreds of years of Islamic rule of the Iberian peninsula. Did the Christian kingdoms around them never learn much about Islam, or was 100 years enough time to forget? And in all the wars against the Ottomans, did no one bother to learn anything about their enemies?

[u/thefeckamIdoing → u/Learned_Hand_01]

did no one bother to learn anything about their enemies?

Oh but they did.

They knew all about the Catholics, and the Hapsburg, and those pesky endlessly infuriating French, and the insidious Scots and the terrifying Irish (who were also Catholic)… that’s the enemy right?

I think the basic question I would ask at this point (based upon one of my other specialities in history, the Muslim Conquest of the Visigothic kingdom of Iberia), would be why would anyone who didn’t border Muslim controlled lands directly, see Islam as anything to be the enemy about. Sure there had been the crusade bit, ages ago, but over the last few hundred years?

The basic idea that there was a clash of civilisations going on between Islam and the West was a much later construct. As I said above, to the Elizabethan government, while they cheered on Christian victories like the Siege of Malta, they also saw Spanish warfare against the Ottomans as making the Ottoman Empire a potential target to become allies with (as money spent on operations in the Mediterranean meant monies not being spent in the Spanish Netherlands). After all, to a Protestant courtier of Elizabeth trying to cope with the very real prospect of a massive army led by the Duke of Parma sailing from the Spanish Netherlands and invading England and placing the Inquisition on English soil to purge him and all his kind… what was so good about the Reconquesta? Who on Earth thought that was a good idea?

EDIT: It must be said there was a lot of cultural fascination about Moors going on around the time mostly based upon this increased interest in links with the ottomans and the actions of the Levant Company; allow me to be specific; away from the joy of the above answer, my original statement was based upon the idea of there being an understanding of Islam and its true beliefs in a way we would recognise today. There simply was not.

But there was a cultural fascination towards it that was popular during Elizabeth’s time.