ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that a tradition of Africanist representation that extends back to Ramsay, the image of Queen Charlotte becomes a template for staging the encounter between white and black that gives rise to British culture during the Romantic era and beyond. Belisario depicts a fully creolized African Queen, draped in European finery but schooled in the ways of the whip she holds, beribboned, in her hand. Africanist representations of Queen Charlotte attest to the reality of a black presence in British culture, even if that presence serves ultimately to consolidate the authority of whiteness. Africanist representations of Queen Charlotte bring the forces into a productive tension that illustrates their mutual involvement. They creolize British Romanticism and miscegenated its dreams. But one effect of Africanist representations of Queen Charlotte is to force another look at British culture of the Romantic era and really see the creative exuberance of the black presence within it.
