[7]
WIKIPEDIA
REGENCY ERA
[8]
BBC
BRITAIN’S FIRST BLACK COMMUNITY IN ELIZABETHAN LONDON
20 JULY 2012
SEE FOR THE WHOLE TEXT, NOTE 4 FROM
[9]
AI
Plantation owners in the West Indies
often sent their mixed-race (“mulatto”) children to England to be educated and to remove them from colonial, race-based legal restrictions. This practice served to “whiten” them along class and cultural lines, validating and advancing these children by securing their place within British society.
Key details regarding this practice include:
- Motivation: Fathers aimed to protect their children from the stigma and restrictions of West Indian slave societies.
- Education and Lifestyle: These children were often sent to boarding schools and, in some cases, provided with inheritances, allowing them to live as elite, educated members of British society.
- Legal Status: Some fathers went to great lengths, even using special acts of Parliament, to ensure their children were treated as white subjects rather than enslaved people.
- Context: While many remained enslaved, a significant minority of, particularly Scottish, plantation owners took steps to provide for their “colonial families” by bringing them back to the metropole