'A Good West Indian, a Good African, and, in Short, a Good Britisher': Black and British in a Colour-Conscious Empire, 1760-1950

摘要

From the late eighteenth century onwards the majority of the inhabitants of the expanding British overseas empire were increasingly non-Europeans. Racial and ethnic discrimination was at the heart of British imperial governance, in the black Atlantic world shaped by a long history of slave-holding and then the growth of pseudo-scientific racial ideas in the nineteenth century. Whites rarely perceived the black and brown subjects they ruled as being British, although legally all, irrespective of race or ethnicity, were subjects of the Crown. The institutions of empire helped to foster among many black people in the Atlantic world the use of the English language and a strong sense that they too were British. An identity of 'Britishness' was encouraged by service in the naval and military forces of the Crown, by slave emancipation and by Christian missions, especially through education. Imperial ideologies focused on the monarch helped nurture imperial loyalties. In African colonies where local laws and white attitudes enforced racially discriminatory practise, black elites appealed to the law to demand recognition of their entitlement to 'English liberties' and for full British civil rights. Such appeals were invariably rebuffed. In the United Kingdom, where official and private racial discrimination was overt and covert but rarely endorsed by law, black Britons also failed to secure legislation to protect their civil rights.