Servant, sailor, soldier, tailor, beggarman: Black survival in white society 1780–1830

Abstract

Black history has witnessed an upsurge in historical interest from the 1970s onwards. However, significant developments have been impaired by the lack of direct black testimony and the paucity of information in general. Thus, scholarship has concentrated on a triumvirate of black literary figures and on the abolition of slavery. New dimensions and departures have been achieved by the work of Duffield, Lorimer and Braidwood; nevertheless, there remain identifiable areas in which our knowledge is deficient. One of the most important is that of black economic survival in white society, which has received only cursory attention. The aim of this study is to reconstruct black occupational structures and examine strategies of survival during the period 1780 to 1830. This reconstruction of black socio‐economic groupings and employment patterns identifies complexities that were previously obscured. Important distinctions between the free and enslaved are discernible, especially in the occupations of servant and sailor. To support these conclusions evidence has been quarried from newspapers, parish registers and criminal records and comparisons made with the white population. Occupational structures of black men and women have been analysed and the material has enabled black people in the metropolis to be geographically located. Furthermore, the results reinforce the young male dominance of the black population as gender ratios and ages are distinguished. By adopting a ‘history from below’ approach, attention has finally been diverted away from an elitist group of articulate black men and the issues of abolition towards an analysis of ‘rank and file’ black men and women, and will assist those in search of black roots.