Who were the Africans in Medieval Britain?

Gone Medieval

History Hit

History

4.5 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 25 October 2022

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Earlier this month, it was reported that DNA analysis of the skeleton of a 10-year-old girl buried in Kent in the 7th century showed she was of West African descent. Thirty-three per cent of her DNA suggests that the girl’s grandfather or great-grandfather was probably from the Esan or Yoruba people.

As Black History Month draws to a close, Dr. Cat Jarman explores what is known about the presence of Africans in Britain during the Medieval period with the distinguished historian of African affairs, Professor Hakim Adi.

The Senior Producer on this episode was Elena Guthrie. It was edited by Anisha Deva and produced by Rob Weinberg.

For more Gone Medieval content, subscribe to our Medieval Monday newsletter here.

If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today! To download, go to Android or Apple store.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	If you're a fan of the podcast, I've got some exciting news for you. We're publishing a book.
0:04.7	If you've ever wondered, who was the third man on the moon? Why was a pigeon a hero in the
0:09.6	American army? And wasn't Napoleon really all that small? Then the history hit
0:14.0	Missellony will have the answer. It's available for pre-order now and will be published on
0:18.5	the 28th of September. Pre-order from your favourite bookshop or visit historyhit.com forward slash book.
0:24.8	This episode is sponsored by the London Review of Books, Europe's leading magazine of books and
0:33.1	ideas. There are plenty of reasons to read the London Review of Books, the finest book reviews
0:38.0	is only one of them. There are articles by writers including James Meek, Alan Bennett,
0:43.0	Amir Shrinivasan and Patricia Lockwood. Add to this quality of writing the removal of a
0:48.3	restrictive word count and you have incredibly knowledgeable people with the space to explore their
0:53.4	ideas to the fullest. There's a vast range of topics and a huge back catalogue to explore.
0:58.8	Right now there's a very special offer said that you can give it a try. It's so good,
1:02.6	it seems rude not to and you can cancel it at any time anyway too.
1:06.5	Go to lrb.me forward slash hit to try three issues of the London Review of Books for just one
1:14.6	pound and get six weeks of online access to their archive of more than 18,000 pieces.
1:20.5	That's a saving of 94% off the cover price. Go to lrb.me forward slash hit now.
1:33.1	Hello and welcome to this episode of Gone Medieval from History Hit. I'm Dr. Cat Jarman.
1:38.6	October is Black History Month and here on Gone Medieval one of the things we wanted to find out
1:43.8	more about was how much we know about the presence of Africans in Britain in the medieval period.
1:49.7	Many textbooks place the first people from the African continent here
1:53.4	from two to times onwards and sometimes almost entirely linked to the slave trade but
1:59.2	is that really the full story and what do we actually know about the presence of Africans in
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from History Hit, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of History Hit and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.