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Dr Samuel Johnson, portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds (dated 1769)
© Courtesy of Dr Johnson's House Museum
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Black roots: Francis Barber |
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Britain's black population in the 18th Century
In 1772, estimates made during the famous Somerset court case which ruled that slaves could not be shipped out of Britain against their will, put the black British population at between 14,000 and 15,000. These people were slaves, brought over from the Caribbean to work as unpaid servants in the houses of returning plantation owners, civil servants and seamen.
Slavery was at its peak in the 18th Century
© Courtesy of National Museum and Galleries on Merseyside |
Francis Barber was one of these slaves. He was brought to England at the age of 15 by Colonel Bathurst, a plantation-owner and father of Richard, a close friend of Samuel Johnson (1709-1784). In an interview conducted in October 1799, Barber wrote that he was born in "Jamaco in the West Indies", sometime around 1735.
The slave trade was at its height during the 18th Century and racism was deeply entrenched in British culture and politics. Images of black people were used on packaging for tobacco, spices, tea and coffee. Writers such as Edward Long were openly racist in their work. In his 1772 pamphlet, entitled Candid Reflections Upon the Judgement lately awarded by the Court of King's Bench On what is commonly called the Negroe-Cause, he wrote on the subject of children born of mixed parentage, "in the course of a few generations more, the English blood will become so contaminated with this mixture till the whole nation resembles the Portuguese and Moriscos in complexion of skin and baseness of mind".
In reaction to their inferior position, a group of educated and freed slaves began to make their voice heard in the literary world. By the middle of the 18th Century, Africans living in Britain were producing literature and corresponding with the leading people in society. Writers such as Olaudah Equiano, a former slave, and Ignatious Sancho, who received patronage from the Duke of Montagu, published books and articles campaigning against the slave trade. The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano was the first abolitionist book written by a black man. Two characteristics were common to each person in this network of notable black people: they were all freed slaves and educated. The course that Barber's life took meant he also stood out as a notable black person of the time.
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