Mapping the dark and feminine: black women in eighteenth-century London.

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Marché, Montaz Ciani ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0007-8276-5005 (2025). Mapping the dark and feminine: black women in eighteenth-century London. University of Birmingham. Ph.D.

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Abstract

This thesis is the first comprehensive social history of black women of African heritage in eighteenth-century London. Black women are often ignored in histories of the African diaspora in Britain, especially in the eighteenth century, but this erasure is unwarranted. Using a wide range of sources, including parish, newspapers, and court, family, hospital, and prison records, I have identified 635 black women and girls in eighteenth-century London. Drawing on quantitative and qualitative approaches, this thesis considers how even fragmental archival records might provide important insights into black women’s lives, identities and experiences and how their lives were shaped by gender, race, class, culture, and geography, respectively and collectively.
By exploring black women’s lives, this thesis contributes to a more inclusive history of women in eighteenth-century England. The chapters explore the population's demographics before examining some of the population’s social groups, namely black women as wives, mothers, and workers, both in and outside service. This thesis shows how primary material emphasises how black women’s experiences were shaped by gender and argues that aspects of black women's lives paralleled women generally in London. Throughout, I show how many black women were held to similar standards and conditions of work, marriage and family as women and emphasise the pervasive impact of gender on women’s lives. Yet, I highlight the subtle ways racialisation and representations of blackness in archival materials indicate a racialised experience for black women and provide insights into how blackness was perceived in everyday environments. I show how historical and lived experiences of enslavement and colonial practices from across the British Empire permeated London’s local communities. Various states of unfreedom or exploitation because of colonial practices resulted in some black women being perceived differently from other women, including other black women. This thesis further details the specific ways in which black women were racialised within primary materials and begins to observe how racialisation depended on various cultural, social, economic, and, sometimes, gendered factors. Finally, this thesis argues that geography was an influencing factor in black women’s social engagement. It shows how some black women’s actions, occupations and identities correlated with the localised identities, characteristics, regional industries and occupations within London’s many districts; hence, the local environment helped shape black women’s actions and diversify their experiences across London’s districts.
This thesis illustrates how to humanise black women as three-dimensional historical agents. It shows how archival materials can be used to centre black women’s actions, social engagement and relationships and to characterise their lives as women who lived, worked, loved, and subtly shaped eighteenth-century London communities. This study is vital for observing eighteenth-century black women as participants and contributors to London’s various local environments. Furthermore, it shows historians how analysing eighteenth-century black lives using an intersectional framework can expand the social histories we construct, offering important insights into how local people, including racialised individuals, interpreted blackness in the everyday.

Type of Work:

Thesis (Doctorates > Ph.D.)

Award Type:

Doctorates > Ph.D.

Supervisor(s):