The Moors Were Targets For Portuguese, Spaniard and English Slave Markets

Initial Q: Two Soldiers Leading Two Moors before a King (detail), from Feudal Customs of Aragon, Huesca (Spain), about 1290-1310, artist unknown. The J. Paul Getty Museum
 

 “Pope Urban II, 1088–1099, granted Spanish crusaders the same papal indulgences that were granted for making pilgrimages to Jerusalem. Urban thereafter issued the first call for crusades to the holy lands in 1095, and he continued to link crusades with pilgrimages by granting indulgences for crusaders, just as he had done for participants in the holy war with the Moors. The Knights were an infamous, crusading, priestly order, who believed Christians could attack pagans at will and deprive them of their property and lordship. The sources of this power were the papal bulls that had been directed at the Holy Lands. The Knights argued that their territorial and jurisdictional claims could be traced to papal bulls from the Crusading era, which had authorized the complete confiscation of the property and sovereignty of non-Christians. In 1455, Pope Nicholas V granted Portugal title to lands in Africa that were already “acquired and that shall hereafter come to be acquired” and authorized Portugal “to invade, search out, capture, vanquish, and subdue all Saracens and pagans” and to place them into perpetual slavery and seize all their property. The Portuguese, for example, erected stone crosses all along the coast of West Africa to symbolize their possession, and Columbus did the same “with appropriate words and ceremony” on the Caribbean islands he found. See, e.g., MILLER, NATIVE AMERICA, supra note 1, at 12–23, 44–48, 120–26, 131–36 (discussing the European powers dividing up the New World and Africa).

Source: The International Law of Discovery, Indigenous Peoples

Panel of azulejos by Jorge Colaço (1864-1942) at the São Bento railway station, depicting Prince Henry the Navigator during the conquest of Ceuta

Portugal, ever since the capture of Ceuta in 1415 (the event which had set Prince Henry of Portugal thinking on West African discovery), had been striving to conquer for herself an empire over Morocco.”

Source: Liberia Vol. I: Portuguese Assisted break up of Moorish dynasty of Beni-Marin

Portuguese possessions in Magreb (1415–1769)

Possession of Ceuta would indirectly lead to further Portuguese expansion. The main area of Portuguese expansion, at this time, was the coast of Morocco, where there was grain, cattle, sugar, and textiles, as well as fish, hides, wax, and honey.

Source: Payne, Stanley G., A History of Spain and Portugal, Vol. 1, Chap. 10 “The Expansion”

“When the Portuguese started their colonial expansion by taking Ceuta in retribution for its piracy ( Source: Finlayson (1992), p. 26) “in 1415,” (Source: B. W. Diffie, Prelude to Empire, Portugal Overseas before Henry the Navigator, University of Nebraska Press, Ann Arbor, 1960, pp. 83–90.)

“Tangier was always a major goal. They failed to capture it in 1437, 1458, and 1464, (Lévi-Provençal (1936), p. 651.) but occupied it unopposed on 28 August 1471 after its garrison fled upon learning of the conquest of Asilah.”

Source: Elbl, Martin Malcolm (2013), Portuguese Tangier (1471–1662): Colonial Urban Fabric as Cross-Cultural Skeleton, Peterborough: Baywolf Press

“As in Ceuta, they converted its chief mosque into the town’s cathedral church; it was further embellished by several restorations during the town’s occupation.”

Source: Lévi-Provençal, Évariste (1936), “Tangier”, Encyclopaedia of Islam, Vol. IV (1st ed.), Leiden: E.J. Brill, pp. 650–652

“In addition to the cathedral, the Portuguese raised European-style houses and Franciscan and Dominican chapels and monasteries.”

Source: Finlayson, Iain (1992), Tangier: City of the Dream, London: Tauris Parke, p. 26

“The Wattasids assaulted Tangier in 1508, 1511, and 1515 but without success. In the 17th century, it passed with the rest of Portugal’s domains into Spanish control as part of the personal union of the crowns  but maintained its Portuguese garrison and administration.”

Source: Lévi-Provençal, Évariste (1936), “Tangier”, Encyclopaedia of Islam, Vol. IV (1st ed.), Leiden: E.J. Brill, pp. 650–652

“In 1458, the Portuguese, led by Duarte de Meneses, captured the city and built a fortress there. Their domination lasted for over a century before the Moroccans reconquered the city.”

Source: Ricard, R., “Evacuation of Portuguese places from Morocco under Jean III: Ksar es Seghir ( 1549-1550 )”, in unpublished sources of the history of Morocco, Portugal, 1951, t. IV.

Source: Vasco de Carvalho, V., Portuguese domination in Morocco: from the 1415-1769th to the 1415-1769th century (1415-1769), Lisbon, 1942, S.P.N.

“In 1486 the Moroccan coastal city Azemmour’s inhabitants became vassals and tributaries of João II of Portugal. Portuguese control of the city lasted only for a short period; it was abandoned by João III of Portugal in 1541 due to his court’s economic difficulties.”

Source: Lhoussain Simour (19 November 2014). Recollecting History beyond Borders: Captives, Acrobats, Dancers and the Moroccan-American Narrative of Encounters. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. p. 55. ISBN978-1-4438-7142-6.^

Source: EPUB 2-3 (23 October 2013). Ferdinand Magellan. Infobase Learning. ISBN 978-1-4381-4851-9.

Leonor Freire Costa; Pedro Lains; Susana Münch Miranda (3 May 2016). An Economic History of Portugal, 1143–2010. Cambridge University Press. p. 43. ISBN 978-1-107-03554-6.

“Iberian rule lasted until 1661, when it was given to England’s King Charles II as part of the dowry of the Portuguese infanta Catherine of Braganza.” Source: Winston S. Churchill, Marlborough: His Life and Times, Book I (University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 1933) p. 35.

“A squadron under the admiral and ambassador Edward Montagu arrived in November. English Tangier, fully occupied in January 1662,” was praised by Charles as “a jewell of immense value in the royal diadem” despite the departing Portuguese taking away everything they could, even—according to the official report—”the very fflowers, the Windowes and the Dores”.

Source: Elbl, Martin Malcolm (2013), Portuguese Tangier (1471–1662): Colonial Urban Fabric as Cross-Cultural Skeleton, Peterborough: Baywolf Press, ISBN 9780921437505

Source: Finlayson, Iain (1992), Tangier: City of the Dream, London: Tauris Parke, ISBN 9781780769264

Source: Elbl, Martin Malcolm (2013), Portuguese Tangier (1471–1662): Colonial Urban Fabric as Cross-Cultural Skeleton, Peterborough: Baywolf Press, ISBN 9780921437505

“Tangier received a garrison and a charter which made it equal to other English towns, but the religious orders were expropriated, the Portuguese residents nearly entirely left, and the town’s Jews were driven out owing to fears concerning their loyalty.”

Source: Finlayson, Iain (1992), Tangier: City of the Dream, London: Tauris Parke, ISBN 9781780769264 p. 26-27

“Meanwhile, the Tangier Regiment were almost constantly under attack by locals who considered themselves mujahideen fighting a holy war. Their principal leader was Khadir Ghaïlan (known to the English as “Gayland” or “Guyland”) of the Banu Gurfat, whom the Earl of Peterborough attempted to buy off. Ultimately, the truce only lasted for part of 1663 and 1664; on May 4 of the latter year, the Earl of Teviot and around 470 members of the garrison were killed in an ambush beside Jew’s Hill. Khadir Ghaïlan hoped to support a pretender against the new Alawid sultan Al-Rashid and things subsequently went so badly for him that he was obliged to abide by its terms until his death in 1673.”

Source: Lévi-Provençal, Évariste (1936), “Tangier”, Encyclopaedia of Islam, Vol. IV (1st ed.), Leiden: E.J. Brill, pp. 650–652 p. 651.

“Lord Belasyse happened to secure a longer-lasting treaty in 1666”

Source: Articles of Peace Concluded and Agreed between His Excellency the Lord Bellasyse, His Majesties Governour of His City and Garrison of Tangier in Affrica, &c. and Cidi Hamlet Hader Ben Ali Gayland, Prince of VVest-Barbary, &c.”, London, 2 April 1666.

Ceuta, a Spanish possession in North Africa.

 

“The English, lagging behind for about half a century, cashed in on the slave trade as early as the 1480s. Various records kept in several Spanish archives disprove the received view that the English as a slaving nation was late coming in the 1550s. Moors and Mooresses of Morocco constituted colonial targets only for the Portuguese and the Spaniards, they were also victims of the English who bought the captured slaves at the slave markets of Andalusia. The trade with enslaved Moroccans led to a serious depopulation of the coastal regions of Morocco.”

Source: Shakespeare Studies, Volume 31 edited by Leeds Barroll, Susan Zimmerman

Vista de Ceuta y la península de Almina desde el mirador de Isabel II

“On the Moroccan side, there was considerable enthusiasm for expelling the Spanish and Portuguese from the several Moroccan coastal cities they had conquered.”

Source: An “Extremely Civile” Diplomacy Written by Caroline Stone

São Tomé, Africa

“In the mid-1400s, Portuguese King Dom Manuel colonized the African coastal islands of Sao Tome and Principe in order “to whiten the race,” as he put it. 

Source: Echoes of Mr. Yakub After Patmos By Tingba Muhammad

One of the principal motives behind Portuguese interest in West Africa and the Canaries was the desire to tap into the trans-Saharan gold traffic. Fernandez-Armesto, Before Columbus, 140-48, 189-92.”

Source: Moors” Of West Africa And The Beginnings Of The Portuguese Slave Trade

   Mauretania Nuova Tavola Southwest

“Gradually the Christian reconquest drove them back until the only Moorish stronghold in Spain, Granada, fell in 1492.“The Iberian Moors, who had considerably intermarried, returned to Africa where they were known as Andalusians, and scattered over the enormous range of the Moors, from the Mediterranean to the Senegal river, and from the Atlantic to Timbuktu.” 

Source: Iberian Moors migrated into West Africa 1492

Brotherhood of St George. A Leugemeete Fresco, Flanders, 14th century. The Andalusia Company

“English trade with Morocco was a natural extension of the existing trade established by the Andalusia company in Spain and in the Levant. Individual voyages can be traced as far back as the 1520s or 1530s. All the evidence is that the English merchants were rugged individuals and rivals. Trading together in one small town, they must have known one another, but during the days of prosperity, there is no hint of any combination or organization. Only in adversity did they combine together and then not very effective. They did so once in order to petition the duke. To give coherence to their organization and standing in the eyes of the English government they petitioned King Henry VIII and in September 1530 he granted them a constitution.”

Source: The English “Andalusia Company” was the “Brotherhood of St George”

“Slavery had long been known in Iberia, but slaves never constituted more than a small percentage of society. By 1492, although more than 35,000 black slaves had been introduced in Portugal, most of them were intended to be reexported to other European markets and to the Americas. By 1550, there were 9,500 African slaves in Lisbon–comprising nearly 10 percent of the total population–and 32,370 slaves and 2,580 freedmen in Portugal as a whole. Black slaves increasingly replaced slaves from other racial origins as the Portuguese became less involved in the wars against the Turks in the Mediterranean and in general against Muslims. The Moors were visible in Portugal in the most southern part of the country, where a relatively large population of Christianized Moors (Moriscos) toiled the fields and worked as artisans in towns and cities.”

Source: Iberia and the Americas: Culture, Politics, and History (Transatlantic Relations)

The English under Elizabeth now deemed the time opportune for gaining a foothold in West Africa. Forts were built at the mouth of the River Gambia in 1588, and towards the close of the sixteenth century English trading-settlements were erected at or near Sierra Leone, and during the seventeenth century, Great Britain became one of the leading Powers of the Gold Coast.”

Source: Liberia Vol. I: Portuguese Assisted break up of Moorish dynasty of Beni-Marin

“The early Portuguese explorers sent out by Prince Henry at first took every opportunity of Kidnapping the Moors whom they met on the coast of the Sahara, and these people were dispatched as slaves to Portugal. Prince, Henry, however, came in time to realize the iniquity of this proceeding and its bad policy on the part of a nation which at that time was aspiring to colonize and rule Morocco. The Portuguese learned in this way that by pursuing their journeys father south they might come to a land where it was possible to obtain “black Moors” as slaves. In fact, a slang term, “Panyar (from the Portuguese Apanhar, to seize, catch, kidnap), had sprung up in the coast jargon to illustrate the English methods. Even English travelers such as William Smith (who went out as a surveyor to the Gold Coast early in the eighteenth century) admit that the English had become very unpopular on the Gold Coast, owing to these aggression’s on the natives; and William Smith and his companions endeavored to pass as Frenchmen when they visited Eastern Liberia and the Ivory Coast, ‘because of the bad name the English had acquired.”

Source: Portuguese Explorers took every opportunity of kidnapping Moors on Saharan Coast

In 1704 a Willem Bosman of the Dutch West India company describing the “Gold Coast” wrote:

“Here the Portuguese received a small quantity of gold dust, as well as some ostrich eggs; and, as Gonçalves had always desired, his men also seized some black Africans, twelve in number, to take back to Portugal (“What a beautiful thing it would be,” this commander told his men, ‘if we could capture some of the natives to lay before the face of our Prince’). These people were nearly all Azanaghi, as had been most of those sold in Lagos in 1444. They seem not to have been carried off to serve as slaves—though one of them, a woman, was a black slave, presumably from somewhere in the region of Guinea. They were taken as exhibits to show Prince Henry, much as Columbus would bring back some Indians, fifty years later, from his first journey to the Caribbean”

Source: Historical References on the Black African Skin color of the original Berber Tribes

“All the concerns of this essay begin in Andalusia. Slavery was a matter, raised by Shylock at his trial, in the Merchant of Venice narrative. This topic is of cultural relevance to early modern English audiences. The bottom lines become clear in the earliest records of the English slave trade to which [English American] historiographers often omit from the discussion. Records show that the first English slaveholders and traders of “enslaved Moors” were the English merchant’s resident in Andalusia in the last decades of the fifteenth and early decades of the sixteenth centuries, and further, that the English were the pioneers of the English slave trade with Morocco”

Source: Portia & the Prince of Morocco Essay By Ungerer, Gustav

“The (De)slaving history: Mostafa al-Azemmouri, the sixteenth-century Moroccan captive in the tale of conquest article attempts to revisit one of the most spectacular odysseys in Moroccan-American history, that of the encounters started from the shores of a Moorish town in the sixteenth century by Mostafa Al-Azemmouri, the Moroccan captive and adventurer. Al-Azemmouri was captured by the Portuguese, sold in Spain and then shipped across the Atlantic to the New World around 1527. His narrative has consistently been displaced and subjected to various forms of exclusion in history; his experience in historiographical writing has been distorted by the culturally and historically essentialised forms of knowledge and power. In order to re-orient the debate on Al-Azemmouri’s emblematic journey, this work offers a rereading of sixteenth-century Morocco in its connections with the Atlantic, focuses on the Spanish historical perspective about the reconquista overseas, and spotlights the Portuguese-Azemmour nexus against the background of the Portuguese presence in Morocco to shift the focus into the Other’s Atlantic as a site of complex history that criss-crosses the boundaries of nationality and extends beyond mere geographical locations. It also interrogates the representation of Al-Azemmouri in some sixteenth-century Spanish accounts, which consigned the Moorish slave to textual shadows and obstructed his visibility in the narrative of colonial conquest.”

Source: (De)slaving history: Mostafa al-Azemmouri, the sixteenth-century Moroccan captive in the tale of conquest

Ignatius Sancho Oil painting by Thomas Gainsborough, 1768, National Gallery of Canada

“Indeed Sancho’s life in England was an immediate result of the English involvement with slavery. ‘Dear sir,’ he beseeched Sterne, ‘think in me you behold the uplifted hands of thousands of my brother Moors.’”

Source: Black and white: the Negro and English society, 1555-1945

“Hamet Tanjawi, for instance, was captured and enslaved during the Restoration period; he became a servant of the duke of York, from whom he learned a wide variety of naval lore, and later escaped back to Tangier where he put his English warfare training into Muslim use as held the attack on the English fort in Tangier in 1676. In his account of captivity in Morocco in the 1680s, Thomas Phelps recalled meeting with an “ancient Moor, who formerly had been a slave in England and spoke good English, and who was set at liberty by our late Gracious King Charles the 2d.” Another captive/slave was the corsair  Abdallah bin Aisha, who spent three years in England and was released by King Charles without ransom upon the intercession of James II.”

“Kim F. Hall agreed that “English traders went to the markets of Guinea and Barbary, but African traders rarely went to England.” Only Bernard Harris, Eldred Jones, and Jack D’Amicohave alluded to Muslim ambassadors and “blackmoors” in England..”

“During the period under study, thousands of Turks and Moors visited and traded in English and Welsh ports; hundreds were captured on the high seas and brought to stand trial in English courts; scores of ambassadors and emissaries dazzled the London populace with their charm, cuisine and “Araby” ,,,”from the Elizabethan to the early Caroline periods, Britons undertook another venture as they entered into an extensive commercial, diplomatic, and social engagement with the Turks and Moors of the Muslim empires.”

“In all the surviving records of captured Moors and Turks, there is not a single reference to a Muslim woman. While numerous British women were recaptured and sold in North Africa, no Muslim woman seems to have ever set foot on English soil, either as a refugee or a prisoner. Britons also met Moorish and Turkish captives of Spain in the Caribbean.”

“In March of 1586 some Moors deserted to join Sir Francis Drake during the English attack on Cartegena, and later during the attack on Santo Domingo. In June of that year Drake captured hundreds of “Turks and Moors, who do menial service” in Havana. Although the Moors,  the English encountered in the Caribbean were slaves who projected weakness and despair, they were subjects of rulers whom England’s queen wanted to befriend, and whose assistance she sought against Spain. There must have been so many of these Moors in the American Spanish dominions that in 1617, Purchas mentioned that Islam had spread as far as America. Purchas was probably thinking of these captives, some of whom had been freed by their Spanish masters and were settled in the colonies.”

“In September 1630, the Moroccan ruler, Sidi Alibin Mohammad, sent a letter to King Charles in which he demanded that the king release all Muslim captives and send them back to the lands of Islam (“li-bilad al-Islam”) regardless of whether or not they were Sidi’s subjects. After doing so, Charles could be assured that no captive from the “English tribes”(“qaba’il al-Ingleez”) would remain in North Africa.”

“there are numerous indications that Britons hauled Muslim captives to the Barbary Coast and exchanged them for English captives. In 1635 Robert Blake was authorized to take forty-five Moors to Barbary to exchange them for English captives. But he immediately ran into difficulty. There were more English than Moorish captives.

“In September 16 36, two Moors were captured—one “Mahammet aged twentie seven or thereabout” and “Hammet aged fortie foure yeares or there-about”—from Salee. They had been sailing with “foure Moores, eighteen[sailors] of Sallie, five Renegadoes Dutch one English their Pilott.” When their ship reached the English coast the renegades turned against the Moors after being called “to stand up for their lives & liberties” whereupon “they drove the Moores into the hold, hoisted saile, and brought their Barque into the first [English] port. Writing to the Lords of the Admiralty, the earl of Portland included “copies of the examinations of two of the moores.”

“In 1658, William D’Avenant wrote The Play-House to be Let, in 100 The Renaissance Triangle which which he included a scene about “the Symerons,” a Moorish people brought formerly to Peru by the Spaniards.) Purchas could also have been thinking of an ethnological theory that described the American Indians as descendants of the Moors of North Africa.”

Source: Turks, Moors, and Englishmen in the Age of Discovery Nabil Matar

Muhammad notes that “Moors” from the Barbary Coast—captured by the Portuguese and enslaved—successfully. “Freeland traces how slavery became racialized as slaves became Christians. citing Allan Austin’s estimation that there may have been at least eighteen thousand Muslim slaves imported from 1771 to 1775). Ghanea Bassiri notes that a Moorish identity may have captured the public imagination, the public having heard tales of white slavery coming out of the exotic and well-known Barbary Wars. Eight Moors [enslaved-Muslims] successfully petitioned the South Carolina House of Representatives for their freedom in 1790, describing the perfidy of the English captain who promised to redeem them back to Morocco as captives of war but sold them as slaves in the New World instead. Capet, supra note 8, at 556. One of those eight Muslim slaves was named Fatima.”

Source: Islam in the Mind of American Courts: 1800 to 1960 By Marie A. Failinger

“The Mohammedan Africans remaining of the old stock of importations, although accustomed to hear the Gospel preached, have been known to accommodate Christianity to Mohammedanism. “God,” say they, “is Allah, and Jesus Christ is Mohammed–the religion is the same, but different countries have different names.”

Source: The Religious Instruction of the Negroes. In the United States: Jones, Charles Colcock, 1804-1863

“Clearly it seems that the “Barbares” or Soninke of the Sahel and Sudan were the “Mauri Bavares” or Babars of Mauritania in what is now Morocco and Algeria possibly pushed down by the Tuareg “the second race of Berbers” and/or Arab Sulaym/Hilal peoples like the Trarza or Hassaniya. They were direct ancestors of the black merchants known as Soninke, Sughai (Isuwaghen or Zawagha) or Wangara who are called “whites” in early African manuscripts.” “The Bafour, in fact, is considered by some to be the same as the Zenagha or Znaga Berbers who came to be subject to the Almoravid (Tuareg) nobles. In Mauritania by the 15th century, they were referred to as “tawny and squat” by a slave trader from Venice named Alvice Ca’da Mosto (Thomas, Hugh, 1997, p. 22). They then fell into low caste status under the Hassaniyya or Hassan “Moors” (a group formed from the mixture of Arab/Berber peoples) which might explain how they came to be the first Africans sold out of Lagos to the Portuguese that were brought to Europe.”  

Source: FEAR OF BLACKNESS SERIES – PART II Andalusia and the Mauri: An Exploration of the Original Berbers of Early Sources and their Settlements in Spain

“Most Americans are unaware of the special relationship between Morocco and the U.S.A. that developed subconsciously through the trans‐Atlantic conquests of Moorish‐impregnated Spain and consciously through contacts between our early Republic and this old, dilapidated kingdom. Even fewer Americans seem aware of the complex contacts between Morocco, at Africa’s northwest corner, and the ancestors of our Negro community. Slave traders from the Moorish feudal society raided southward into Senegal and delivered slaves to European traders who, in turn, sold them across the Atlantic. The descendants of these slaves are U.S. citizens today. But more rarely discussed is the vaguely discernible link between Morocco and the American Negro minority. This U.S. knowledge gap is perhaps partially if inaccurately being filled by American Negro teachers, notably Black Muslims.”

Source: The Moroccan, or Moorish ties of U.S. Negroes

Morocco also has an extensive history of slavery. Like the United States, Morocco traded in enslaved black West Africans, who came to Morocco across the Sahara. Slavery in Morocco took other forms, too. Morocco was one of the so-called Barbary States, where for centuries European and American sailors captured by pirates were enslaved and ransomed. In his 1853 book “White Slavery in the Barbary States,” the radical abolitionist senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts depicted North Africa as a disturbing analog to the American South, which he called the “Barbary States of America.”

The Moroccan Front BY JAMIE L. JONES SEPTEMBER 18, 2013

“It difficult to know from available information if this is a massive understatement or fails to give due respect to the comparative few who did make the journey. Though it is well-known that the Iberian powers took slaves from Morocco for service in Spain and Portugal, it is unknown how many of these may ultimately have also been sent across the Atlantic. Spain and Portugal overwhelmingly dominated the transatlantic slave trade in the first century of the Atlantic World, with the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database documenting approximately 275,000 slaves sent during that period to the Americas (a paltry sum compared to later centuries). But the database shows no voyages to or from Morocco – understandable for a location that was not a major source of slaves for work in the Americas – and nothing to suggest that a substantial numbers of slaves first taken to Portugal or Spain ended up across the ocean. Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, http://www.slavevoyages.org (for estimates and maps; accessed September 4, 2017). By the second half of the sixteenth century the slave population in Portugal appears to have been made up predominantly of people from sub-Saharan Africa. Bovill asserts that the decline of the peasant population in Portugal had resulted in their replacement by so many blacks from Africa that the southern part of Portugal had become predominantly black. Subjective evaluations of color and the multiethnic makeup of Morocco might make the assumption that these “blacks” are sub-Saharan suspect. But Bovill’s remark is consistent with Portugal having begun the importation of sub-Saharan slaves in 1444. There was also an apparent preference for sub-Saharan African slaves over North African Muslims slaves, as the former were deemed more open to conversion to Christianity, had no nearby places to which to escape, and were considered more compliant. This made them far less threatening than Muslims, the last of who were forcibly expelled from the Iberian Peninsula in the early seventeenth century. Bovill, The Battle of Alcazar, 5; Joachim Romero Magalhães, “Africans, Indians and Slavery in Portugal,” Portuguese Studies 13 (1997): 143-151, 143.”

Source: MOROCCO IN THE EARLY ATLANTIC WORLD, 1415-1603 A Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Georgetown University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History By Earnest W. Porta, Jr., J.D.

 

Invention of the White Race Vol. 1 Racial Oppression and Social Control By Theodore W. Allen

I appreciate the effort and spirit of Theodore W. Allen’s work, as his position about the “White Race” formed in America is correct. However, the concept of “White Race” preceded its implementation in the America’s and is historically traced to Moorish [Ancient Aethiopian] Society.

“When the first Africans arrived in Virginia in 1619, there were no ‘white’ people there, nor according to the colonial records, would there be for another sixty years. ‘White’ identity had to be carefully taught, and it would be another, sixty years before the word would appear as a synonym for European American.”

Allen’s points as noted in the videos above are as follows:

“The “white race” was invented as a ruling class social control formation in response to labor solidarity as manifested in the latter (civil war) stages of Bacon’s Rebellion (1676-1677).”

“A system of racial privileges was deliberately instituted by the late 17th early 18th century Anglo-American bourgeoisie in order to define and establish the “white race” and establish a system of racial oppression.”

“The consequence was not only “ruinous “to the interests of the African Americans but was also “disastrous” for European-American workers. Their “position vis a vis the rich and powerful was not improved but weakened by the white skin privilege system.”

“White Race is no part of genetic evolution”

“White Race is A ruling-class social control formation”

“The White Race must be understood, not simply as a social construct, but as a ruling class social control formation.”

“White Supremacism: “the Achilles heel of the labor democratic, and socialist movements in this country”.

“White Race Has served as “the principal historic guarantee of ruling-class domination of national life” in the United States.”

“Invention of the “white race” was “political” no part of genetic evolution.” 

 Source: The Invention of the White Race, Volume 1

“Amongst the Whites there are entire populations, whose skin is as black as that of the darkest Negro. I shall only quote the Bishareen and other tribes inhabiting the African coasts of the Red Sea, the black Moors of Senegal, etc. On the other hand, there are yellow Negroes, as the Bosjesmans, who are the colour of light mahogany, or of cafe au lait, as Lingstone tells us.”

Source: The Human Species By Armand de Quatrefages

“Most Marka identified themselves as ‘white’ (the black were the recently converted). The Dyula were a long-distance merchants, called Marka on the Niger bend…” They called themselves the whites due to their faith – Islam. “

Source: A History of African Societies to 1870 By Elizabeth Isichei

“In this country as in the east, a word meaning white is attached to the ruling class and black is synonymous with dependency and servitude.” 

Source: “Black Racial Status” A Synonym For “Slave Status”

The Moroccan system of racial definition was clearly “racialist” and was in fact a curious inversion of the Western racist model. Whereas in the western model “one drop” of black blood identifies one as black, in the Moroccan model, “one drop” of white blood identifies one as Arab (i.e., privileged).” “This process helped create a “nationalist” Moroccan Arab majority and at the same time subjugated black ancestry (i.e., those without the “one drop” of Arab blood), seen as having more bearing on the historical antecedents of slavery.”

Source: Black Morocco: A History of Slavery, Race, and Islam Chouki El Hamel

In the Virginia code of 1705, for example, the term sounded much more like a definition of race than of religion: “And for a further Christian care and usage of all Christian servants, Be it also enacted, by the authority aforesaid, and it is hereby enacted, That no Negroes, mulatto, or Indians, although Christians, or Jews, Moors, Mahometans, or other infidels, shall, at any time, purchase any Christian servant, nor any other, except of their own complexion, or such as are declared slaves by this act.” By this time “Christianity” had somehow become intimately and explicitly linked with complexion.”

Source: White over black: American attitudes toward the Moores, 1550-1812

According to Lewicki, in fact, Bavares is also thought to be the name of the people that came to be called the Bafour. “According to some traditions Bafour were whites … belonging to the Berber group of the Zenata. “Clearly it seems that the “Barbares” or Soninke of the Sahel and Sudan were the “Mauri Bavares” or Babars of Mauritania in what is now Morocco and Algeria possibly pushed down by the Tuareg “the second race of Berbers” and/or Arab Sulaym/Hilal peoples like the Trarza or Hassaniya. They were direct ancestors of the black merchants known as Soninke, Sughai (Isuwaghen or Zawagha) or Wangara who are called “whites” in early African manuscripts.”  Quoting Dana Reynolds Marniche

Source: Historical References on the Black African Skin color of the original Berber Tribes

“One anthropologist who did fieldwork in the 1960s in a village along the Nile near Merowe, for example, noted that the village’s continued to have social obligations toward families who had owned them or their forebears. Since those of higher status frowned upon intermarriage with them, the group had remained largely endogamous. Slave descent, therefore, “blackened” an individual in social terms. Skin color was no index, since in the years before the nationalist transformation that would make Sudanese-ness acceptable, a person of high status could have had dark skin without being regarded as “Black,” or “Sudanese,’ by his community. Such an individual would most likely have identified himself instead as “Arab,’ which conveyed not simply his use of the Arabic language, but, more importantly, his claim of distinguished parentage. Good parentage derived from membership in a patrilineally reckoned tribal group (e.g., the Sha’iqiyya or Baqqara) that claimed a distant Arabian progenitor. The father’s line was paramount, though high status on the mother’s side enhanced social position.”

“Ultimately, “Arab” and “Black” were both more important to the Northern Sudanese as labels of status and class rather than of ethnicity or color. The British appear to have absorbed some of these attitudes, in the form of an “Arab”/”Black” classification system that easily dovetailed with their own prejudices and notions of race. The system was also reinforced by their partnership with the Egyptians in the Condominium, since Egyptians tended to carry their own racialized stereotypes about Sudanese slavery and servitude. The result, by and large, was the promotion of policies that favored Arabs over Blacks–high status over low—for the finest academic educations and the most lucrative office jobs. A British soldier, D.C.E. Comyn, provided an insight into this rough classification system in his memoirs, publishd as follows: “Of the 150 men, 50 were pure, straight-haired Arabs; 70 were Kordofan Arabs, who, by intermarriage with the Nubas, tc., have the curly hair of the latter. The remainder were Sudanese.”

Source: Living with Colonialism: Nationalism and Culture in Anglo-Egyptian Sudan

“The word “Caucasian” is in scarcely better repute. It is at best a conventional term, with an altogether fortuitous origin, which, under scientific manipulation, has come to include far more than the unscientific mind suspects. According to Keane, for example, . . . It includes not only the Hindu but some of the Polynesians, (that is the Maori, Tahitians, Samoans, Hawaiians, and others), the Hamites of Africa, upon the ground of the Caucasic cast of their features, though in color they range from brown to black. We venture to think that the average well informed white American would learn with some degree of astonishment that the race to which he belongs is made up of such heterogeneous elements.” U.S. vBhagat Singh Thind (1923)

Source: Hamites are Classed as under “White” In the USA

The South Carolina District Court thus determined that Albanians, Spanish, and Portuguese “Moors” are white, while “all inhabitants of Asia, Australia, the South Seas, the Malaysian Islands and territories, and of South America” are not unless they can show European descent. Ex parte Shahid, 205 F. at 814–16

Source: Islam in the Mind of American Courts: 1800 to 1960 By Marie A. Failinger

The word Negro comes from the Latin word niger, meaning black. Hamites, Kushites, and Moors were also black, but they have been inducted into the white race. The word Negro was manufactured during the Atlantic Slave Trade; or to put it another way, there are many species of small fish in the ocean; when put into cans they are called sardines.”

Source: The Story Of The Moors In Spain: Backwards Ones Are Called Negroes [Blacks]

Ibn Mandour says that the expression The Red People applies to the non-Arabs because of their whiteness and because of the fact that most of them are fair-skinned. He says that the Arabs used to call the non-Arabs such as the Romans and the Persians and their neighbors, The Red People. He also says that when the Arabs say that someone is white, they mean that he has a noble character–they don’t mean that he is white. He says that the Arabs call the slaves The Red People. This is because most of the slaves of the Arabs were white (red).”

Source: ARABIC TERMS USED FOR SKIN COMPLEXIONS – THE BLACK ARABS ENCORE

Ptolemy Cosmographia 1467 – North Africa

Λευκαιθίοπες ; Leucæthiopes (White Aethiopians) is a term found in ancient Roman literature.

Source: Morel, Edmund Dene (1968) [1902]. Affairs of West Africa. Library of African Study. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-7146-1702-2

Both Herodotus  (Herodotus. History VIII:70.) and Strabo (Strabo. Geography XV:21.) “speak of two Ethiopias, one eastern, the other western”. Strabo also said that the ancient Greeks “designated as Ethiopia the whole of the southern countries towards the ocean”, not just a region near Egypt. Ephorus asserted that the White Ethiopians came from the Far East. Philostratus claimed that “The Indians are the wisest of mankind. The Ethiopians are a colony of them”.

Source: Philostratus Vit. Apol. II:33f. Atlantis: The Lost Continent Finally Found By Arysio Santos

“Speaking of the difference between modern thought and ancient times, Richard Smith warns that even apparently well-defined categories “like ‘race’ can be confusing”. According to him, Ptolemy placed two peoples, the Leukaethiopes and Melanogaetulians (‘Black Gaetulians’), in the far west of North Africa; namely, in southern Morocco. Smith suggests that the Leukaethiopes, “literally, ‘white Ethiopians'”, could also be described as “white black men” since in ancient times “the term ‘Ethiopian’ referred to skin color”. He further asserts that Pliny the Elder places the Leukaethiopes south of the (Sahara) desert, between the white Gaetulians and the black Nigritae; the closest neighbours would then have been the Libyaegyptians, “literally the ‘Egyptian Libyans’, another oxymoron”. However, Smith indicates that Pliny does not mention any black Gaetulians.”

Source: What happened to the ancient Libyans? Chasing Sources across the Sahara from Herodotus to Ibn Khaldun. Journal of World History, Vol 14, No 4, pages 459–500. Smith, Richard (December 2003). page 475

“Louis Vivien de Saint-Martin posits that the Leucaethiopes were early Berbers, who had penetrated southward into the desert.”

Source: Vivien de Saint Martin, Louis (1863). Le Nord de l’Afrique dans l’antiquité grecque et romaine: étude historique. Imprimerie Impériale., page 158

The Hausa-Fulani are an ethnic designation that includes the Hausa and the Fulani, ethnic groups that are spread throughout West Africa with smaller populations in other African regions.

 

Edmund Dene Morel, writing in 1902, confirms that both Ptolemy and Pliny speak of the Leucaethiopes, but believes that Ptolemy places them “in the neighbourhood of the Gambia”, whereas Pliny places them “a couple of degrees farther north”. Morel concludes that the Leucaethiopes may have been early Fulani since the first record on West Africa (ca. 300 AD) describes an Empire governed by “white” rulers, which was established by a king whose name contains a Fulfulde affix. According to Morel, this Fulani connection was first made in 1799 by Major Rennel in his Travels in the Interior of Africa, a notebook on Mungo Park’s travels.”

Source: Morel, Edmund Dene (1968) [1902]. Affairs of West Africa. Library of African Study. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-7146-1702-2, pages 141–142

Edmund Dene Morel suggested that the early Fulani could have been Pliny’s Leucaethiopes.

 

Pliny the Elder wrote in section 5.8 of his Natural History that:

“If we pass through the interior of Africa in a southerly direction, beyond the Gætuli, after having traversed the intervening deserts, we shall find, first of all the Liby-Egyptians, and then the country where the Leucæthiopians dwell.”

Source: The Natural History. Pliny the Elder. London: Taylor and Francis, vol. 1., pages 403–404 Bostock, John (1855).

“Oric Bates [fr] notes that Ptolemy wrote of the White Aethiopians and the Melanogaetulians, and compares this to the mention by Orosius of the Libyoaethopians. Bates places the White Aethiopians in Morocco and the Melanogaetulians just to the east of them, claiming Ptolemy’s authority for this, and arguing that “These descriptives are good evidence of the ancient opposition of whites and blacks in the Sahara, and of their fusion. Bates further compares these claims with what he argues is the “marked xanthochroid element of foreign (Nordic) origin” in Morocco, i.e. a mixing of light-skinned people from Northern Europe.”

Source: The Eastern Libyans. London: Macmillan. Bates, Oric (1914), page 44

“Pomponius Mela wrote, in Frank E. Romer’s translation, that “On those shores washed by the Libyan Sea, however, are found the Libyan Aegyptians, the White Aethiopians, and, a populous and numerous nation, the Gaetuli. Then a region, uninhabitable in its entire length, covers a broad and vacant expanse”

Source: Romer, Frank E. (1998). Pomponius Mela’s Description of the World. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. ISBN 0-472-10773-9., page 40

Jean-François Champollion

Francis Champollion was the scholar credited with deciphering the hieroglyphs (Medu Netar which meaning language of the Gods) with the Rosetta Stone. The information that he was said to have unraveled about the origins and true history of the “Tamahu” (which literally translate into the wordscreated White people“) devastated him and he wrote about what he found in the letter to his brother below. ” ‘The Tamahou Is The European’ – Said Champollion.  Champollion affirmed this in his letter to his brother and wrote:

Tomb of Seti I book of gates

“…Right in the valley of Biban-el-Moluk we admired, like all previous visitors, the astonishing freshness of the paintings and the fine sculptures on several tombs. I had a copy made of the peoples represented on the bas-reliefs. At first, I had thought from the copies of these bas-reliefs published in England, that these peoples of different races led by the god Horus holding his shepherd’s staff, were indeed nations subject to the rule of the Pharaohs. A study of the legends informed me that this tableau has a more general meaning. It portrays the third hour of the day, when the sun is beginning to turn on its burning rays, warming all the inhabited countries of our hemisphere. According to the legend itself, they wished to represent the inhabitants of Egypt and those of foreign lands. Thus, we have before our eyes the image of the various races of man known to the Egyptians.

Valley of the Kings in Egypt is also known as Biban el- Moluk, translated to mean Gates of the Kings

“And we learn at the same time the great geographical or ethnographic divisions established during that early epoch. Men led by Horus, the shepherd of the peoples, belong to four distinct families. The first, the one closest to the god, has a dark red colour, a well-proportioned body, kind face, nose slightly aquiline, long braided hair, and is dressed in white. The legends designate this species as Rt-en-ne-Rme, the race of men par excellence i.e. the Egyptians. There can be no uncertainty about the racial identity of the man who comes next: he belongs to the Black race, designated under the general term, Nahasi. The third presents a very different aspect; his skin colour borders on yellow or tan, he has a strongly aquiline nose, thick, black pointed beard and wears a short garment of varied colours; these are called, Namou. Finally, the last one is what we call flesh-coloured, a white skin of the most delicate shade, a nose straight or slightly arched, blue eyes, blond or reddish beard, tall stature and very slender clad in a hairy ox-skin, a veritable savage tattooed [see my article on European Goths] on various parts of his body, he is called, Tamahou.”

“I hasten to seek the tableau corresponding to this one in the other royal tombs and, as a matter of fact, I found it in several. The variations I observed fully convinced me that they had tried to represent here the inhabitants of the four corners of the earth, according to the Egyptian system, namely;..”

“The inhabitants of Egypt which, by itself formed one part of the world.  The inhabitants of Africa proper: Blacks, Asians…”

Nineteenth Dynasty of Egypt (1292 BC –1189 BC )

“Finally [and I am ashamed to say so, since our race is the last and the most savage in the series]. Europeans who, in those remote epochs, frankly did not cut too fine a figure in the world.  In this category we must include all blonds and white-skinned people living not only in Europe, but Asia as well, their starting point. This manner of viewing the tableau is all the more accurate because, on the other tombs, the same generic names appear, always in the same order. We find there, Egyptians and Africans represented in the same way, which could not be otherwise; but the Namou [the Asians] and the Tamahou [Europeans] present significant and curious variants. Instead of the Arab or the Jew, dressed simply and represented on one tomb, Asian’s representatives on other tombs [those of Ramases 11 ect] are three individuals, tanned complexion, aquiline nose, black eyes, and thick beard but clad in rare splendour.”

Cheikh Anta Diop

“In one, they are evidently Assyrians, their costume, down to the smallest detail, is identical with that of personages engraved on Assyrian cylinders. In the other, are Medes or early inhabitants of some part of Persia. Their physiognomy and dress resemble, feature for feature, those found on monuments called, Persepolitan. Thus, Asia was represented indiscriminately by any one of the peoples who inhabited it. The same is true of our good old ancestors, the Tamahou. Their attire is sometimes different; their heads are more or less hairy and adorned with various ornaments; their savage dress varies somewhat in form, but their white complexion, their eyes and beard all preserve the character of a race apart. I had this strange ethnographical series copied and coloured.”

Tamhou This tile from Ramesess III matches in garb in the Champollion-Figeac book illustration I posted of the Tamhou from the Seti I tomb circa 1294 to 1279 BC

“I certainly did not expect, on arriving at Biban-el-Moluk, to find sculptures that could serve as vignettes for the history of the primitive Europeans, if ever one has the courage to attempt it, nevertheless, there is something flattering and consoling in seeming them, since they make us appreciate the progress we have subsequently achieved…”

– Champollion

Source: The African Origin of Civilization: Myth Or Reality By Cheikh Anta Diop

Slide Presentation/Talk by Jeffrey B. Perry on
The Invention of the White Race (Verso Books)
by Theodore W. Allen
with special emphasis on Vol. II: The Origin of Racial Oppression in Anglo-America.
Hosted by “The Hubert Harrison and Theodore W. Allen Society”
Filmed by Fred Nguyen on January 31, 2013
Brecht Forum, New York City

Source: The Invention Of The White Race” by Theodore W. Allen. Presentation by Jeffrey B. Perry

A History of African Societies to 1870 By Elizabeth Isichei

 

“Ethnic’ identities were determined by occupation and religion as well as by language. The Dyula were a long-distance merchants, called Marka on the Niger bend; the Fulbe, ideally, pastoralist, the Bozo and Somono fisherman. The Dyula were Muslim, and the Bambara ‘pagans’. The social reality was fluid and changing, there was a Muslim presence in the Bambara states, and some Dyula were not Muslims. ‘It was not uncommon for FulBe to become Bozo, Bozo to become Somono, and…animist farmers to become Maraka Muslim traditionalist. Most Marka identified themselves as ‘white’ (the black were the recently converted).”

Source: A History of African Societies to 1870 By Elizabeth Isichei

Dana Reynolds-Marniche cited the above reference along with the following commentary:

“In other words after converting to Islam many of the Beriberi and people like the nomad Fulani and Tuareg came to refer to themselves as “whites”. The Marka Soninke (Wa’nGara/Wakar and Wa’Kore) were also called Dyula. “The Dyula were a long distance merchants, called Marka on the Niger bend…” They called themselves the whites due to their faith – IslamI told you Wa Kore and WaKara were Korah and Kore from Teras (Jeter/Jethro) but i know – many of us are in denial – too brainwashed. Believe it!

The newly remade film involving Kunta Kinte a man of Soninke/Mande stock. 

“Paradoxically the Wakoré are designated in the Tarikhs as blacks from the south, but in other sources e.g. al-Bakrî, al-Idrı¯sı – as whites from the North.”  See what I mean? Awkar, Wakara, or Wa’ngara and Wakore Malinke peoples were Beriberi from the North. The word “white” refers to their Muslim heritage.

Source: (The Wa’nGara: An Old Soninke Diaspora in West Africa. ” Andreas W. Massing 2000

“…most Marka. identified. themselves. as. ‘white’. (the. blacks were the recently converted.”)

Source: A History of African Societies to 1870 p. 223 Elisabeth Isichei 1997, Cambridge University press.

” Those who have read the peer-reviewed ‘Fear of Blackness” in West Africa would know this already. This is what was in the peer reviewed Fear of Blackness…..”

Furthermore another division of the Wakar or Wa’nGara merchants were the Songhai in some places called Zarma, Germa, Songhai i.e. Garama who founded the empire of the Garamantes.

“Like modern linguists, even colonialists knew the early Arabs used the term white for a type of blackness. Example hamam = “Being black. Becoming white. Being charred (a burning coal or billet)…”

Source: A Dictionary, Persian Arabic and English. By Frances Johnson. p. 493

Source: Dana Reynolds-Marniche

White over black: American attitudes toward the Moores, 1550-1812

 

“As suggested by Sandys’s remark, an equation had developed between African Negroes and slavery. Primarily, the associations were with the Portuguese and Spanish, with captivity, with buying and selling in Guinea and in America. While the Negro’s exact status in America was not entirely clear, neither was it conceived as an off-brand of apprenticeship or servitude: Hawkins assumed as his crest a “demi-Moor” (plainly Negroid) “captive and bound.”

“Nor was Portuguese or Spanish slavery regarded as being of a mild, protective sort:

The Portuguese doe marke them as we doe Sheepe with a hot Iron, which the Moores call Crimbo, the poore slaves stand all in a row … and sing Mundele que sumbela he Carey ha belelelle, and thus the poore rogues are beguiled, for the PortugaIs make them beleeve that they that have not the marke is not accounted a man of any account in Brasil or in Portugall, and thos they bring the poore Moores to be in a most damnable bondage under the colour of love. “

“Slavery, therefore, frequently appeared to rest upon the “perpetual enmity” which existed between Christians on the one hand and “infidels” and “pagans” on the other. sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Englishmen at home could read Scores of accounts concerning the miserable fate of Englishmen and other Christians taken into “captivity” by Turks and Moors and oppressed by the “verie worst manner of bondmanship and slaverie.”

 

 

“An Entire Commentary upon the Whole Epistle of the Apostle Paul to the Ephesians • . . (London, 16[41-]43), 694-95 (italics mine). Too late for incorporation in the text. I came across a discussion published in 1627 which described five varieties of “servants.” The author, a minister, used that term except for one category, the “semi belli, as these that are taken slaves in the wars.” In this context he explained that “this curse to be a servant was laid. first upon a disobedient sonne Cham, and wee see to this day, that the Moores, Chams posteritie. are sold like slaves yet.” This passage suggests how dearly defined a condition slavery was for Englishmen and that they associated it with Negroes, but of course it fails to disclose who is selling Negroes as slaves “yet.” John Weemse [Le., Weemes]. The Portraiture of the Image of God in Man . . • (London. 1627) , 279.

“The Body of Liberties made equally clear that captivity in a just war constituted legitimate grounds for slavery.The practice had begun during the first major conflict with the Indians,the Pequot War of 1637. Some of the Pequot captives had been shipped aboard the Desire, to Providence Island; accordingly,the first in England arrived in exchange for men taken captive in a just That this provenance played an important role in shaping Jews about Negroes is suggested by the first recorded plea by an Englishman on the North American continent for the establishment of an African slave trade. Emanuel Downing, in a letter to his brother-in-law John Winthrop in 1645, described the advantages: “If upon a Just warre [with the Narragansett Indians] the Lord should deliver them into our hands, wee might easily have men women and children enough to exchange for Moores, which will be more gaynefull pillage for us then wee conceive, for I doe not see how wee can thrive untill wee get into a stock of slaves sufficient to doe all our business, for our children’s children will hardly see this great Continent filled with people, soe that our servants will still desire freedom to plant for themselves, and not stay but for verie great wages. And I suppose you know verie well how wee shall mayneteyne 20 Moores cheaper than one Englishe servant.” 

“These two facets of justifiable enslavement-punishment for crime and captivity in war-were closely related. Slavery as punishment probably derived from analogy with captivity, since presumably a king or magistrates could mercifully spare and enslave a man whose crime had forfeited his right to life. The analogy had not been worked out by commentators in England, but a fairly clear linkage between crime and captivity seems to have existed in the minds of New Englanders concerning Indian slavery. “

“A contemporary account of Bacon’s Rebellion caustically described one of the ringleaders, Richard Lawrence, as a per­ l son who had eclipsed his learning and abilities “in the dark embraces of a Blackamoore, his slave: And that in so fond a Maner, … to the noe mean Scandle and alfrunt of all the Vottrisses in or 82 about towne.”

“From the first, then, vis-a.-vis the Negro the concept embedded in the term Christian seems to have conveyed much of the idea and feeling of we as against they: to be Christian was to be civilized, rather than barbarous, English rather than African, white rather than black. The term Christian itself proved to have remarkable, elasticity, for by the end of the seventeenth century it was being used to define a species of slavery which had altogether lost any connection with explicit religious difference.”

“In the Virginia code of 1705, for example, the term sounded much more like a definition of race than of religion: “And for a further christian care and usage of all christian servants, Be it also enacted, by the authority aforesaid, and it is hereby enacted, That no Negroes, mulatto, or Indians, although Christians, or Jews, Moors, Mahometans, or other infidels, shall, at any time, purchase any christian servant, nor any other, except of their own complexion, or such as are declared slaves by this act.” By this time “Christianity” had somehow become intimately and explicitly linked with complexion.”

“The 1705 statute S declared “That all servants imported and brought into this country, by sea or land, who were not Christians in their native country, (except Turks and Moors in amity with her majesty, and others that can make due proof of their being free in England, or any other christian country. before they were shipped, in order to transportation hither) shall be accounted and be slaves, and as such be here bought and sold notwithstanding a conversion to Christianity after wards.” 

As late as 1753 the Virginia slave code anachronistically defined slavery in terms of religion when everyone knew that slavery had for generations been based on the racial and not the religious difference. In significant contrast, the colonists referred to Negroes and by the eighteenth century to blacks and to Africans, but almost never to Negro heathens or pagans or savages. Most suggestive of all, there l’1 L.t  I’ seems to have been something of a shift during the seventeenth century in the terminology which Englishmen in the colonies ap­ tt1 plied to themselves. From the initially most common term Christian, at mid-century there was a marked drift toward English and \-..V free. After abou¡, taking the colonies as a whole, a new term appeared-white. 

By 1676 it was possi. ble in Virginia to assail a man for “eclipsing” himself in the “darke imbraces of a Blackamoore” as if “Duty consisted all together in the Antiphety of Complexions.” In Maryland ‘l–revised law miscegenation (1692) retained white and English but dropped the term Christian-a symptomatic modification. As early as 1664 a Bermuda statute (aimed, ironically, at protecting Negroes from  brutal abandonment) required that the “last Master” of senile Negroes “provide for them such accommodations as shall be convenient for Creatures of that hue and color until their death.” By the end of the ­tenth century dark had become an independent rationale’ for enslavement: in 1709 Samuel Sewall noted in his diary that a “Spaniard” had petitioned the Massachusetts Council for freedom but that “Capt. Teat alleged that all of that Color were Slaves.” 123 Here was a barrier between “we” and which was visible and permanent: the Negro could not become a white man. Not, at least, as yet.

It is worth making still closer scrutiny of the terminology which Englishmen employed when referring both to themselves and to the two peoples they enslaved, for this terminology affords the best single means of probing the content of their sense of difference. The terms Indian and Negro were both borrowed from the Hispanic languages, the one originally deriving from (mistaken) geographical locality and the other from human complexion. When referring to the Indians the English colonists either used that proper name or called them savages, a term which reflected primarily their view of Indians as uncivilized, or occasionally (in Maryland especially) pagans, which gave more explicit expression to the missionary urge. When they to the colonists occasionally spoke of themselves as Christians but after the early years almost always as English.

          Source: White over black: American attitudes toward the Negro, 1550-1812 by Winthrop D. Jordan

 

Black and white: the Negro and English society, 1555-1945

“Visitors to England were forcibly struck by the number of Blacks to be seen in town and countryside alike. Writing of London in 1710 a visitor remarked: There are, in fact, such a quantity of Moors of both sexes in England that I have not seen before. “

“round the bends of distant rivers, where, he claimed, lived those people ‘which we now call Moores, Moorens or Negroes, a people of beastly living, without god, law, religion, or commonwealth, and so scorched and vexed with the heat of the sun, that in many places they curse it when it riseth.”

Indeed Sancho’s life in England was an immediate result of the English involvement with slavery. ‘Dear sir,’ he beseeched Sterne, ‘think in me you behold the uplifted hands of thousands of my brother Moors.’ Despite his influential contacts, he was aware that he must forever remain isolated; ‘one of those people whom the call “….”

 

Source: Black and white: the Negro and English society, 1555-1945