got this reply to my post about the series 'gentleman jack' and my gripe about the very, very white cast (except for the one poc)
i've replied to them after doing some fact checking, as they woke up my inner historian (is it inner if i'm actually technically a historian?), but there are so many of these types of insidiously racist messages that try to make themselves pass as 'this is for historical accuracy's sake!' that i felt the need to share it with everyone rather than it being hidden in the replies. also, it's really interesting! i've now blocked them, as even without that comment, the vibes of their blog were nopetty nope for me. i've just added 'proper' citations and a bibliography and changed the order of words in one paragraph, and some wording to make it clearer, but otherwise, this is my exact reply.
the reply:
so many things to reply to your comment, so little time.
little aside before i start: as a historian who loves academic research, my first instinct is to go to my trusty library/archive catalogue and look for academic sources instead of doing a google search (though i did do that after, which from what i saw of the results, is probably where you got your own numbers). now, fair enough, not everyone has access to this, though i'll add that the books i used for this reply are available to the general public so would be available in any local public library. but then, google is easy isn't it?
that being said, although sources used in the various online articles that cite the numbers you mention are sometimes dubious or at least wouldn't hold up to academical scrutiny (or weren't available at all any more), for once, the number wasn't actually totally factually wrong. however, and it's quite important, it only represents the number of the black population (african/west indies ancestry), not the one for people of colour as a whole. which was my first impression, seeing it in your comment, and my research confirmed.
furthermore, as historian david olusoga mentions in his book (black and british: a forgotten history, 2017, p.85) "the size of the black british population in the age of slavery is a mystery that lies beyond the capacity of historians to solve." this is because we can only use the contemporary estimates, which vary widely from 3000 for the whole country to 20,000 within the metropolis only to 40,000 for the whole country. the exact number is impossible for us to know, only that they were present in consequent enough numbers to be noticed everywhere in the country, though yes in greater number in big cities like london.
however, again, those numbers do not represent all poc! have you forgotten your uk history? english east india company (eic) ring any bell? the precursor to the british raj? asia? india in particular? no?
now, as historian rozina visram confirms in her book (asians in britain: 400 years of history, 2002, pp.3-44), we have the same issue with numbers here. records were already not that great in late georgian era with their white population, it's not gonna get better for their poc population. if anything, it'll be worse. but indian professionals (lawyers, teachers, etc) were very popular in big cities, english families from all over the country coming back from india came with their many indian servants, only some of which are recorded to having been sent back to india later on. white men (often, but not always, eic men) came back with their indian wives/mistresses. and let's not forget all the asian seamen (indian 'lascars', but also chinese) that worked for the eic and arrived in the thousands every year in the uk. some were only temporarily there until they could find a way home, like the ayahs (sort of nanny that looked after the family/children only while on the voyage from india to the uk), but some stayed there more permanently.
in both cases though, any official record tend to forget the mixed race children or classify them apart from their non-white parent.
and this brings me nicely to the specific case of anne lister. had you read the few comments made before your so 'helpful' one, you would've seen that lister's first lover was eliza raine, the illegitimate half-indian daughter of an eic surgeon, that she met at boarding school. so your argument of, what was it? ah yes 'not unexpected to see so few poc appearing in a circle of what was a snapshot of a predominantly white and wealthy privileged society sadly' is kinda proven wrong. plus in such circles, it would have been even more probable for anne to have met/seen poc, esp indian, as servants, as the wealthy were apparently exceedingly 'fond' of them, as visram informed me. also anne is shown travelling, port cities were notorious for their poc population, which both visram and olusoga mention.
so this was the history lesson saying: there were more poc in late georgian britain than you think there were!
that being said, in this context, of me saying that having only one poc within the whole 1st season of the series was disappointing. although historically improbable if not completely inaccurate, my main gripe about it, is that representation is important, regardless of historical accuracy, and i used the historical accuracy bit as a way to drive home that it wasn't even a good excuse. should the cast have been entirely poc? well, personally i would've loved that! but that's also not what i was saying. i'm saying that adding poc as, at the minimum, background characters, wouldn't have made me stop suspending my disbelief and it would have been a good choice to promote historical accuracy and representation to today's poc community members, who's history is always disproportionally hidden away or completely erased, by the very people who promote arguments like the one you gave, which are racist, regardless of if that was the intention or not, as they promote racist message and propaganda.
so there you have it. also a little caveat, poc history in britain, although an area of interest to me, is not my area of expertise. which is why i'm referring to other historians and their own very good research instead of using primary sources. i do not have that kind of time or spoons for a reply to a comment on my post. but replying anyway, as even if i don't think you'll read it or that it will change your mind view, it was important to me to publicly (so to speak anyway) remedy the inaccuracies of your own comment.
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so there, hope you learned something useful with my impromptu history lesson. this would not get a passing grade would i have sent this as a paper, but then, knowing your readership is important. not that i think some of you wouldn't appreciate something like that, but in the context of why i wrote it in the first place.... well. i did kinda fall into a rabbit hole, as often happens when researching topics i find interesting, but had to force myself to stop and think of the purpose of this. so this is all you're getting. 🤷♀️
bibliography of the books i looked at for this (all of which i recommend, super interesting reads, even if not all had the info i was looking for specifically):
Bygott, David. Black and British. Oxford: University Press, 1992.
Fisher, Michael Herbert. Counterflows to Colonialism: Indian Travellers and Settlers in Britain, 1600-1857. Delhi: Permanent Black, 2004.
Nasta, Susheila. Asian Britain: A Photographic History. Westbourne Press, 2013.
Olusoga, David. Black and British: A Forgotten History. London: Pan Books, 2017.
———. Black and British: An Illustrated History. London: Macmillan Children’s Books, 2021.
Visram, Rozina. Asians in Britain: 400 Years of History. London: Pluto Press, 2002.
———. Ayahs, Lascars, and Princes: Indians in Britain, 1700-1947. Routledge Revivals. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2015.
