ABSTRACT
The identity and the date of arrival of the first coloured inhabitants of or immigrants into Britain is a matter for speculation. It seems most likely that Negroes were first introduced as slaves in the time of Elizabeth as an outcome of the expeditions of John Hawkins between Africa and the New World; but it would not be unreasonable to suppose that there had been much earlier, if infrequent, visitors. An American Negro author, basing his claim on the writings of Tacitus, wherein he finds mention of “the swarthy faces of the Silures, the curly quality, in general, of their hair” 1 suggests that a black aboriginal race lived in the British Isles in pre-Roman times side by side with a white one. 2 There is no evidence, however, of skeletal types approximating to the Negro in the palaeontological records of these islands, and a controversy similar to that which surrounds the Upper Palaeolithic discovery of “negroid” remains at the Grimaldi Cave in the South of France does not arise. Lack of skeletal remains does not, of course, rule out the possibility of well-pigmented skins having been an aboriginal feature, but passing over the question of the “swarthiness” of the Romans themselves, and the probability of negroid elements amongst their auxiliaries and camp followers, it seems safest to start the British history of the Negro about the middle of the 16th century. English merchants had just begun to turn their attention to the Guinea trade, and John Lok, who sailed for the West Coast of Africa in 1554, brought back with him as part of his cargo “certaine blacke slaves whereof some were tall and strong men”. They apparently found English food and the English manner of life endurable enough, although “the colde and moyst aire doth somewhat offend them”. 1
