New discoveries cause us to constantly revise our thoughts about history in general and Black British history in particular. More and more records are being digitised and made available online and these lead to new finds and deeper understanding.
Regular contributor, John D Ellis, recently stumbled across a set of data he had never seen before. Careful analysis of the Army attestation registers for Edinburgh, has enabled John to identify the names of over forty Black soldiers who enlisted in British Army regiments between 1792 and 1848 in the city of Edinburgh alone. John makes the point that if such a register was maintained in Edinburgh, similar registers must have been kept in other cities – where are they and what would they reveal about the Black presence in Britain?
We first became aware of John’s work when he spoke at an event we attended in Huddersfield in 2018, what he had to say about the presence of Black soldiers in the British Army in the late 18th and early 19th centuries opened our eyes to an area of black British history that we had been largely unaware of. Since then, our understanding of the Black presence, in terms of both numbers and geographical spread, has come on in leaps and bounds. Working on this site and becoming aware of the work of John, Audrey Dewjee, Ray Costello and many others has been an educational experience for us and, we hope, for you too.
You can read John’s article here:
https://www.historycalroots.com/black-soldiers-and-edinburgh-c-1792-1848/