The article discusses engineer and service corps in the British Army which operated during the 18th and 19th centuries and were made up of African, African-American, and West Indian soldiers and laborers. According to the author, the existence of these corps is not readily apparent in the historical record because they depended on commissioned officers from other units for senior command and because for political reasons their funding was taken discreetly from the budgets of other units and government departments. Details on the roles of enslaved soldiers in engineer and service corps are presented. Other topics include the corps' service in Jamaica, Grenada, St. Vincent, the abolition of slavery in Great Britain, and compensation received by the soldiers.
Culture is a powerful tool for inspiring human beings and bringing them together in a concerted `family' action, says Prof [Marimba Ani], adding: "Our cultural roots are the most ancient in the world." This is very true and it is accepted that Egyptian science and technology laid the foundations for the development of Europe. It is also true that the finance to fund this development came from the proceeds of the barbaric slave trade. Black history is rich and diverse and knowledge of African achievements in education, politics, art, agriculture, medicine, science, religion, metallurgy, engineering, music and sports can help to boost our self-confidence no end. Records refer to the small population of `Negras' in Elizabethan London and even stretch back to the Roman Empire's occupation of Britain, when Africans were marooned at Hadrian's Wall in the third century AD. In the mid-'50s the Transport and General Workers' Union, now headed by Jamaican-born Bill Morris, insisted that no more than 52 of Wolverhampton's 900 bus workers should be black. This kind of colour bar was prevalent in many city transport companies from West Bromwich to Bristol.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
45 p, The surpport and security of the Negro-trade depends wholly on the due and effectual support of the Royal African company of England, in which has hitherto prefevered this value trade to the thefe Kingdom; Signed: A British merchant./ Attributed to Malachy Postlethwayt in NUC pre-1956 and Halkett & Laing./ Reproduction: Microfilm./ New Haven, Conn. :/ Research Publications,/ [1974]./ 1 microfilm reel ; 35 mm./ (Goldsmiths'-Kress library of economic literature ; no. 8158)
Houndmills Basingstoke Hampshire New York: Palgrave Macmillan
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Journal Title Details:
xx
Notes:
Contains: Three concepts of Atlantic history /; David Armitage --; Migration /; Alison Games --; Economy /; Nuala Zahedieh --; Religion /; Carla Gardina Pestana --; Civility and authority /; Michael J. Braddick --; Gender /; Sarah M.S. Pearsall --; Class /; Keith Wrightson --; Race /; Joyce E. Chaplin --; Empire and state /; Elizabeth Mancke --; Revolution and counter-revolution /; Eliga H. Gould --; Politics of slavery /; Christopher L. Brown --; Atlantic history : a circumnavigation /; J.H. Elliott.
This article addresses how Northamptonshire Afro-Caribbeans c. 1960-1990 were simultaneously part of the transformation from people of the Caribbean with individual island identities or nationalities into Afro-Caribbean British people whilst helping to shape this ethno-racial development. Oral history has been integral in conducting this research. Northamptonshire Black History Association (NBHA) interviews from 2002 to 2005 supplemented the interviews conducted by the author in 2009-10. Economic concepts derived from understanding monetary currencies and flight to quality will be used to help historians understand how culture and its manifestations are forms, and have systems, of exchange. These monetary concepts will also be used to create an understanding of cultural currency, as well as the frameworks for analysing how acquiring strong cultural currencies often leads to a process of exchange for other strong cultural currencies. Northamptonshire Afro-Caribbean organisations and individuals' usage of their historical and developed cultural currencies to obtain greater ethnoracial pride will be illuminated in this article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR].
