Wikiquote

History of Free African Diaspora

History of Free African Diaspora contains quotes considering the spread of African peoples, ethnicities and cultures freed from associations of the African slave trade.

Quotes

edit
  • Juan Garriddo, black in color... of his own free will, became a Christian in Lisbon, was in Castile for seven years, and crossed to Santo Domingo [for seven years]... From there he visited other islands then went to San Juan de Puerto Rico... [for] much time, [then]...came to New Spain. He was present at the taking of this city of Mexico and... other conquests, and later to the island with the marquis. He was the first to plant and harvest wheat in this land... and brought many vegetable seeds to New Spain.
    • Juan Garriddo (late 1540s) A short dictated Resume of his services to the crown, as translated by Peter Gerhard, A Black Conquistador in Mexico (1978) Hispanic American Historical Review (1978) 58(3) pp. 451-459, referencing Icaza, Diccionario, no. 169. Epistolario de Nueva España, 1505-1818, recopilado por Francisco del Paso y Troncoso, 16 vols. (México, 1939-1942), Vol. 8-9. ...cf. Millares Carlo and Mantecón, Indice, II, no. 2647.
  • San Hipólito... one of the most interesting churches in the city. ...1520 ...the greatest slaughter of the Spaniards during the retreat of the memorable Noche Triste ...After the final conquest of the city, one of the survivors of that dismal night, Juan Garrido, having freshly in mind its bloody horrors, built of adobe at this place a little commemorative chapel.
  • They lived in a world where skin colour was less important than religion, class or talent: before the English became heavily involved in the slave trade, and before they founded their first surviving colony in the Americas.
    ...Their stories challenge the traditional narrative that racial slavery was inevitable and that it was imported to colonial Virginia from Tudor England. They force us to re-examine the 17th century to find out what had caused perceptions to change so radically.
  • Juan Valiente (ca. 1505-1553) was probably born in West Africa and sold by slavers to Portuguese traders, who... sold him to... Alonso Valiente. ...[H]e was baptized ...and around 1530 ...arrived ...in Puebla, New Spain ...[as] a domestic servant. By 1533 he ...convinced ...Valiente to allow him to become a conquistador ...[H]e would ...record ...his earnings ...to return them to his owner. He went to Guatemala and joined Pedro de Alvarado's expedition to Peru... [which was bought out by] Diego de Almagro... By 1535 he was in Chile fighting the Araucanians with Almagro, became a captain by 1540, and was rewarded with an estancia near Santiago in 1546 and an encomienda in 1550. ...[H]e was killed by Araucanian Indians at the battle of Tucapel in 1553.
    • Juan Valiente, "Unhorsed" Chiricu (2019) vol. 4, no. 1, fall 2019, p. 160.

A Black Conquistador in Mexico (1978)

edit
by Peter Gerhard, Hispanic American Historical Review 58(3), 1978, 451-459.
  • Only rarely do we hear about a Negro slave who achieved distinction... Two examples... are Juan Valiente, the conquistador of Chile, and Yanga, the famed Maroom leader in Veracruz.
  • Although most blacks who came to America in early years were slaves, records of the Casa de Contractión showed that a good many freed black freedmen from Seville and elsewhere found passage on westward-bound ships. Some... settled in the Carribbean... others... to Mexico and Peru, identifying... as Catholic subjects of a Spanish king, with much the same privileges and ambitions as white Spaniards. "Benito el Negro" and "Juan el Negro" (...[i.e.,] Juan de Villanueva) were encomenderos in the province of Pánuco and thus... should not have been slaves...
  • [T]here is a record of an African who apparently crossed the Atlantic as a freeman, participated in the siege of Tenochtitlon and, in subsequent conquests and explorations, ...[was] an entrepreneur (with... Negro and Indian slaves...) in the ...search for gold, and... [was] a citizen in the Spanish quarter of Mexico city. His name... Juan Garrido...
  • The Diccionario Porrúa, perhaps relying on... Bernal Díaz, says that he arrived with Juan Núñez Sedeño, who accompanied Cortés' 1519 expedition in his... ship... that included "un negro"; Manuel Orozco y Berra has him crossing... with the army of Pánfilo de Narváez. Magnus Mörner... claiming ... "many" hispanicized and Spanish-speaking blacks took part in the conquest... without details...
    • Ref: Magnus Mörner, La corona española y los foráneos en los pueblos de indios de América (Stockholm, 1970), p. 94.
  • His name appears... in the proceedings of Mexico city's cabildo... 1524 when that body granted... land... "...just past the chapel of Juan Garrido." Lucas Alamán identifies this as the church subsequently rebuilt... occupying the site where... Cortés' men died as they fled from Tenochtitlan on the Noche Triste.
  • Garrido took part in at least one of expeditions sent out by Cortés after the conquest of the Triple Alliance to secure control and investigate the exonomic potential of outlying areas.
  • Garrido became the first wheat farmer on the American continent. ...According to ...Andrés de Tapia, "...they brought [Cortés] a small amount of rice, and in it were three grains of wheat; he ordered a free Negro to plant them." ...Gil Conzáles Dávila [identified him] as "Juan Garrrido, a servant [criado] of Hernando Cortés."
  • By... 1528, he had acquired on credit... slaves and mining equipment and reported to be in... Zacatula... The gold rush was at its peak but Garrido does not seem to have enjoyed... success...
  • Cortés... heard that... [one] of his vessels had discovered an "island"... [which] was in fact... the southern tip of Southern California. ...By the time he reached Chametla... the... marquis was accompanied by a... retinue which apparently included Juan Garrido... in a privileged category... [with] his own complement of Negro and Indian slaves... Cortés... returned to Mexico... 1536, accompanied by... some of the colonists including Juan Garrido...

Russia and the Negro (1986)

edit
: Blacks in Russian history and thought by Allison Blakely
  • [T]he present study poses the question of whether the Negro experience of Russian society can be instructive for a better understanding of the Negro experience within the major Western societies. ...For the general subject of Negro history, the main contribution of the present study is... offering additional knowledge about a peripheral area of what has been termed the "black diaspora."
    • Preface
  • The term "Negro"... here denotes only people of primarily African descent. ...[T]hat would include Alexander Pushkin and... Alexandre Dumas père (who traveled extensively through Russia in 1858 and 1859 and left a detailed account). ...Pushkin's maternal great-grandfather and Dumas's paternal grandmother were Negroes; the two writers were not. Nevertheless, attitudes that Pushkin and other Russians have expressed concerning his African heritage do figure prominently in the present work.
  • The question of the earliest presence on Negroes in the geographical region which became the Russian empire centers on the origins of the small scattered settlements of Negroes... until recently... along the western slope of the Caucasus mountains near the Black Sea. ...[A] persistent line of thought ...places the advent of the Negroes in the area ...perhaps even in antiquity. This... was first raised by E. Lavrov in a letter to Kavkaz in 1913. ...[H]e pointed out that this was the area the ancient Greeks called Colchis, mentioned in their poetry ...eighth century B.C. ...Herodotus (484?-425? B.C) ...described the Colchians as black-skinned with wooly hair. This led him to believe that they were of Egyptian origin, perhaps of the army of the legendary Egyptian Emperor Sesostris
  • [A]n 1884 compilation of classical writings... grown out of an archeological congress... Tiflis in 1881... mentions Pindar... who refers to the Argonauts going to the river Phasis, where Aieta attacked the dark-skinned Colchians. ...[T]he compiler ...concludes that the Laz people of Abkhazia had formerly been called Colchians. While admitting ...gaps in the evidence, the compiler cites a number of Greek writers, including Procopius, to support this contention.
    • Ref: Patrick English, "Cushites, Colchians, and Khazars," Journal of Near Eastern Studies 18 (1959): 49-53. See also Frank M. Snowden Jr., Blacks in Antiquity (1970) p. 270; and W.E.D. Allen & Paul Muratoff, Caucasian Battlefields (1953)
  • Patrick English... marshals... data to support... the hypothesis that the Abkhazian Negroes' lineage may extend... to ancient times... He notes Herodotus'... attention... in distinguishing between Egyptians, Ethiopians, and Colchians... observing that the Colchians wove linen like the Egyptians and... no one else. ...English questions the likelihood that slaves would be imported to an area... famous for the export of slaves from its local population. ...English relies upon... the Iliad, the Bible, and... writings of the Church Fathers. He... posits a possible link between the Abkhazian Negroes and the creation of the Khazar empire.
  • Lia Golden-Hanga... notes that the tsarist officials frequently listed the Negroes as Arabs and Jews.
  • Slava Tynes... discusses the work of Dmitri Gulia... who believed the Colchians had "Abyssino-Egyptian" origins. ...Gulia showed the similarities between many Abkhazian and Egyptian geographical names, those of deities and families... manners and customs.

European Dimensions of the African Diaspora (1999)

edit
: The Definition of Black Racial Identity, by Allison Blakely in Crossing Boundaries: Comparative History of Black People in Diaspora (1999) ed., Darlene Clark Hine, Jacqueline McLeod.
  • Blacks were in Spain and Portugal in high numbers in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, with many assimilated into the population. The first Africans who went to the Americas were from Europe, not Africa. ...Blacks were not just subordinate, passive pawns in these developments: they participated as rulers, merchants, seamen, soldiers, and free laborers, as well as slaves.
  • [I]n the twelfth-century German version of the "Song of Roland," the epic tale based on the clashes between Christian and Moslem armies in the eighth century, one of the Moslem leaders is described as... "He was black and ugly, the people [in his country] are wild, the sun never shines there, the devils feel at home there."
  • Wolfram von Eschenbach's "Parzival," which was drawn from the legend of King Arthur... in the thirteenth century and evolved for centuries om England, France, Germany and the Netherlands... repeated the theme of black skin color as fearsome, but implied that Blacks could become enobled by racial mixing with whites and through Christianization.
  • Hume's and Kant's denial of any significant achievements by blacks ignored prominent nearby examples in Europe, such as Frances Williams, a Jamaican classicist who had excelled as a student at Cambridge and whose career was familiar to Hume. Among those less known were three closer to Kant's home... Jacobus Capitein, who through his accomplishments in Holland had in 1742 become the first black minister of any Protestant church. ...[T]he West India Company and the Church would not condone his marrying an African woman, choosing... to provide him a Dutch bride... from Rotterdam. ...Anthony William Amo ...born on the Gold Coast, around 1700 ...The West India Company brought him to Amsterdam ...and presented him to the Duke of Wolfenbüttel. He was baptized... in 1707 ...[H]e was able to enter the Universities of Halle in 1727 and Wittenberg in 1730, where he became skilled in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French, German, and Dutch and concentrated on philosophy. ...In 1734 he was awarded a doctorate... In his philosophical work he... devoted... attention to mathematical and medical knowledge in the context of Enlightenment thought. He became a lecturer at the University of Halle and later at the University of Jena. ...[I]n Russia ...Peter the Great ...became the godfather of one of his black servant boys and provided him with the best possible education. ...Abraham Hannibal ...was ...sent to France for ...higher education in mathematics and military engineering. This adventure would... provide the... plot for a short story by his great-grandson, Alexander Pushkin. Hannibal... attained the rank of major general and... served as commandant of the city of Reval... [and] later direct major canal construction projects...

The Black Presence in Pre-20th Century Europe (2008)

edit
: A Hidden History by Allison Blakely
  • Africa and Africans have had an influence on European thought and culture far disproportionate to the size of the small black population (which... approached 150,000 in the [16th century] Iberian peninsula... and by the 18th Century... several thousand in France, a few thousand in the Netherlands, and several hundred... through Germany, Scandinavia, and Russia.
  • [P]ersons of African ancestry... achieved distinction in Moorish Iberia and later in Spain and Portugal, the European societies that first saw a large influx of blacks. Most... were mulattos... Cristóbol de Meneses, a Dominican priest; the painters Juan de Pareja and Sebastian Gomez; and Leonardo Ortiz, a lawyer. ...In 1306 an Ethiopian delegation came to Europe to seek an alliance with the "King of the Spains" against the Moslems. King Anfós IV of Aragon considered arranging a double marriage with the Negus of Ethiopia in 1428. And the Portuguese sent Pedro de Corvilhao to Ethiopia in 1487 on a similar mission.
  • [L]iving experience of blacks in Europe appeared to be marked by smooth integration into European society... The 140,000 slaves imported into Europe from Africa between 1450 and 1505 were a welcome new labor force in the wake of the Bubonic Plague. On the whole, blacks in Christian Iberia were not limited to servile roles; but... were... not influential as a group. ...Free blacks living in Loulé and Lagos in the southern edge of Portugal owned houses and worked as day laborers, midwives, bakers, and servants. Most were domestic servants, laborers (including those on ships and river craft), and petty tradesmen. Some free blacks, especially women, became innkeepers. Blacks in Spain served as stevedores, factory workers, farm laborers, footmen, coachmen, and butlers. ...A few Africans active in the Americas during the early Iberian expansion were among returnees to Portugal and Spain from America and Africa from the 16th to the 18th centuries. These included free mulatto students, clerics, free and slave household servants, sailors, and some who attained gentlemen’s status. ...[M]any black women slaves as domestics and concubines led to mulatto offspring who received favored treatment, and ...some ...attained middle-class and even aristocratic status.
  • [L]ater... in the northern, central, and eastern European societies... with smaller populations... it became fashionable... to employ blacks as house servants and in ceremonial roles such as military musicians.

Black Faces of Tudor England (2017)

edit
: From the court musician who persuaded Henry VIII to give him a handsome pay rise, to the family man who profited from high society’s passion for silk stockings, Miranda Kaufmann profiles six Africans who called England home in the 16th and 17th centuries, by Miranda Kaufmann, BBC History Magazine (December 1, 2017) @historyextra.com

Henry VIII’s "black trumpet"

edit
The Tudor king lavished gifts on his long-serving musician, John Blanke
 
John Blanke, Henry VIII's Tournament Roll
  • Scores of black men and women set up home in England as early as the 16th century—many arriving from Iberia, as the Spanish and Portuguese laid claim to swathes of Africa.
  • Blanke... performed at Henry VII’s funeral and... coronation (...1509) ...
  • Blanke—like all Africans in England—was a free man.
  • He received... twice... [what] most servants would... earn... before successfully petitioning... for a pay rise, doubling his wages...

The Landowner’s Enforcer

edit
Edward Swarthye's role in a vicious family feud landed him in court
  • In 1596, a black man... Edward Swarthye whipped John Guye... future first governor of Newfoundland. They were both servants... of Sir Edward Wynter...
  • It was... that such a high-status, educated servant as John Guye had been publicly humiliated that upset... onlookers, not the colour of Swarthye’s skin.
  • Swarthye... [was] one of many Africans who fled their Spanish enslavers to join the English.
  • The fact that Swarthye was allowed to testify in court demonstrates that he was... a free man... Swarthye’s testimony was taken by the Court... without demur.

Silk Weaver

edit
Reasonable Blackman made a good living from a booming new industry
  • Reasonable Blackman was a silk weaver... probably... from Antwerp... which had a sizeable African population and was a... centre for cloth manufacture.
  • Blackman had a family of at least three children... Edward, Edmund and Jane... we can assume he was married... As with John Blanke’s wife... she was probably an Englishwoman.
  • 1614... "Edward Blakemore of Mile End, silkweaver" was married in Stepney.

A Single Woman in Rural England

edit
Cattelena of Almondsbury sold butter and milk from her most prized possession, a cow
  • Cattelena’s possessions... each tell us something of her life. But the fact that she had them... tells us..l. Africans in England were not owned, but themselves possessed property.

The Rarely Depicted Presence of Black/African People in European History (2021)

edit
—Black History Month, by Melissa Simon-Hartman @Simon-Hartman.com
  • There were black/African people in pre-modern Europe during the Medieval and Tudor times! ...Some were affluent members of the society, iconic fictional characters, revered Saints, and... Knights.
  • [P]re-modern Europe was more diverse than most of us have been led to assume.
  • [P]eople of African descent were a part of the Tudor society... accepted and given the same rights as anyone else.

"I Was Not Born to Obey, but Rather to Command" (2021)

edit
: The Self-Fashioning of Ṣägga Krǝstos, an Ethiopian Traveler in Seventeenth-Century Europe by Matteo Salvadore, Journal of Early Modern History (2021) 1-33.
 
Zaga Christ (1635)
by Giovanna Garzoni
  • In 1632, an Ethiopian traveler named Ṣägga Krǝstos arrived in Cairo and introduced himself to Franciscan missionaries as the legitimate heir to the Ethiopian throne. Following conversion to Catholicism, he embarked on an epic journey throughout the Italian peninsula and France, where he was hosted and supported by the Congregation of Propaganda Fide, multiple northern Italian rulers, and the French monarchy. Ṣägga Krǝstos was an impostor, but... thanks to... skilled self-fashioning, he was extensively supported by his... hosts.
  • March 10, 1632, an African youth knocked at the door of Cairo’s Venetian consulate, asking to be treated by its resident physician... [H]e introduced himself as Ṣägga Krǝstos... son of the slain Ethiopian Emperor Yaʿǝqob... and told of his escape... after... Catholic Emperor Susǝnyos... killed his father. The story intrigued Paolo da Lodi... prefect of the Franciscan mission in Egypt since 1630... aware of the religious and political turmoil... Father Paolo saw the young Ethiopian as a valuable asset... Ṣägga Krǝstos visited Jerusalem, converted to Catholicism, then traveled to Rome, where Propaganda Fide vetted him in anticipation of his return to Ethiopia at the helm of a Franciscan mission. Instead, he would spend the rest of his life in Europe, as a guest of multiple courts, until his death in 1638 at Cardinal Richelieu’s mansion in Ruel.

Black Tudors and the Haberdashers' Company (2022)

edit
by Dr David Bartle, company archivist, The Haberdashers' Company @haberdashers.co.uk
  • In her 2017 book Black Tudors: The Untold Story Miranda Kaufmann has written a seminal work...
  • Africans were already known to have been living in Roman Britain as soldiers, slaves or even free men and women. Kaufmann shows that, by Tudor times, some were... present at the royal courts... and ...in households of courtiers ...
  • William Shakespeare... wrote several black parts... two of his greatest characters are black... [T]hat he put them into mainstream entertainment reflects... that they were a significant element in the population of London.
  • [T]hey were employed... as domestic servants, professional businessmen, musicians, dancers and entertainers. ...[T]hey were not slaves.
  • [I]n Elizabeth's reign, the black people of London... were free; some... married native English people.
  • [I]n the reign of Queen Mary... 'there was a Negro made fine spanish needles in Cheapside but would never teach his Art to any'. ...'Spanish needles' ...fine sewing needles ...of steel, were new to England ...the black man in Cheapside ...first brought the art of steel needle-making to England.
  • Black Tudors were socially no worse off than white ones. ...[T]hey were acknowledged as citizens ...

See also

edit
edit
 
Wikipedia
Wikipedia has an article about:
Retrieved from "https://en.wikiquote.org/w/index.php?title=History_of_Free_African_Diaspora&oldid=3584005"