Joined: 04 May 2005 {Posts: 2021 } Location: santiago, chile
Posted: Wed 07 Feb 2007 23:55 Post subject:
Salsassin wrote:
There is still the assumption that she needed to have African ancestry to have those features. She didn't.
By the way, I laugh at the portrayal, in this cover, of Ganibal.
...
Wasn't he like that? Ganibal was Subaharan African, remember. He wasn't Moor, Arab or "in-between", at least I am wrong. If so, please say so... kinddly.
Now, we must make it clear that he was not "Czar of all Russias" but only a favorite and later general in the Czar's court. Just in case
There is still the assumption that she needed to have African ancestry to have those features. She didn't.
By the way, I laugh at the portrayal, in this cover, of Ganibal.
...
Wasn't he like that? Ganibal was Subaharan African, remember. He wasn't Moor, Arab or "in-between", at least I am wrong. If so, please say so... kinddly.
Now, we must make it clear that he was not "Czar of all Russias" but only a favorite and later general in the Czar's court. Just in case
Omar
Actually there is a dispute that he either was from Ethiopia or from Cameroon/Chad. So we really do not know that. But he was definitely not a Moor or wearing Moorish clothes. He was brought over as a child. And the claim about Cameroon/Chad seems just as speculative as that of Ethiopia. The truth is, we just don't know.
Joined: 30 Mar 2005 {Posts: 1053 } Location: New Jersey
Posted: Thu 08 Feb 2007 14:25 Post subject:
Jaime wrote:
Actually there is a dispute that he either was from Ethiopia or from Cameroon/Chad. So we really do not know that. [...] He was brought over as a child. And the claim about Cameroon/Chad seems just as speculative as that of Ethiopia. The truth is, we just don't know.
I've heard that, but most standard sources, like encyclopedias, state he was from Ethiopia. Either way, he was definitely sub-Saharan.
Jaime wrote:
But he was definitely not a Moor or wearing Moorish clothes.
I think the confusion came about because sometimes the term "Moor" was used interchangeably with "Black African," even though technically this is not correct, since the Moors were a heterogeneous mixture of various peoples (including sub-Saharans, but mostly North Africans).
Last edited by William on Thu 08 Feb 2007 16:54; edited 1 time in total
Joined: 04 May 2005 {Posts: 2021 } Location: santiago, chile
Posted: Thu 08 Feb 2007 16:27 Post subject:
William wrote:
...
I think the confusion came about because sometimes the term "Moor" was used interchangeably with "Black African," even though technically this is not correct, since the Moors were a heterogeneous mixture of various peoples (including sub-Saharans, but mostly North Africans).
Yes. That's confussing. The historical Moors were mostly Berbers. And Berbers, with the exception of Tuaregs, are mostly "caucasoid".
Subsequent posts spun off to Non-"Black" Africans? in the "International Stories" forum. Please continue discussion of Berbers, Moors, and so forth there. Discussion of European royalty should continue here.
Joined: 02 Jul 2008 {Posts: 1 } Location: Sydney Australia
Posted: Wed 02 Jul 2008 12:38 Post subject: Queen Philippa
In regard to your post on Philippa of Hainault being multi-racial/AFrican ancestry: As someone who is descended from her (as are many many of British descent), I was interested in her ancestry, and have traced it via the internet. I have not found any African (sub-saharan) blood in the ancestry of Philippa, which is well traced.
However, like most Europeans, she has Byzantine ancestry, and the ancestry of the dynasties she is descended from appears to travel along the Silk Road, the further back it goes. It passes through several Black Sea and Caspian kingdoms, several Central Asian tribal groups (including the Uighur) and ends up in the North India/Nepal area and in China, with the Han Emperors.
Later Queens of England, who descend from the Spanish/Portuguese Royal families may have Moorish blood- almost certainly in fact, although it cannot yet be proven. The lady Zaida baptised Elizabeth, was long held to be the daughter of a Caliph, but this has been disproved, and the child from whom the modern Royal family descend was not Zaida's.
BTW, I am an Australian. My great-grandmother was born in the north of England in 1876, to an unknown, but almost certainly African father. On my mother's side, it appears that one of our lines is Chilean and may descend from the Alderete family of Tordesillas in Spain, which is probably Morisco.
These things are very interesting to someone like me, but even if it is proven that my ancestry includes Saharan and Subsaharan blood, I would not regard myself as being of that ancestry, because most of my blood is not. Nor do I belong to that culture.
I think the same would hold for Queen Philippa or Princess Charlotte. Even if it could be proven that they had a line or lines sub-Saharan, that does not make them "that". Queen Philippa was Flemish by birth and culture. Princess Charlotte was German by birth and culture. They were no more "AFrican" than they were "Chinese" or "Indian". All we can say is that there was non-European blood in their veins, as there is in mine (both through Philippa and through my other lines).
My children are 1/4 Italian, via their grandfather, but they term themselves Italo-Australian, because they were brought up in the Italo-Australian context, and speak Italian (as their first language) as well as English. This despite the fact that they are 1/4 Anglo-Australian, 1/4 Anglo-New Zealand culture and 1/4 German.
They do not regard themselves as Anglo-Aussie or New Zealander because their home culture was neither of these.
I know it is hard for Australians to comment on these things, as our experiences of racialism are nothing like those of America, but I would just like to say that it is not good scholarship to seize upon descriptions of women, or even photos of them and say "they are African", when the history just doesn't match up. Nor would the women themselves have seen themselves as such.
What we are is much more complex. It involves so many aspects: birthplace, culture, and bloodline being just three. This is why I always have trouble answering the question :what are you? I was born in one country to parents of two other countries, then raised in the country of my mother, but am now married to a tri-cultural man. I sometimes call myself Italo-Australian even though I have no Italian blood, because I speak the language and operate within the culture.
Nevertheless, continue to be proud of who you are. Without the sweat and blood of your AFrican ancestors, America would not be what it is today. And American culture is all the richer for you. Blessings.
In regard to your post on Philippa of Hainault being multi-racial/AFrican ancestry: As someone who is descended from her (as are many many of British descent), I was interested in her ancestry, and have traced it via the internet. I have not found any African (sub-saharan) blood in the ancestry of Philippa, which is well traced.
However, like most Europeans, she has Byzantine ancestry, and the ancestry of the dynasties she is descended from appears to travel along the Silk Road, the further back it goes. It passes through several Black Sea and Caspian kingdoms, several Central Asian tribal groups (including the Uighur) and ends up in the North India/Nepal area and in China, with the Han Emperors.
Later Queens of England, who descend from the Spanish/Portuguese Royal families may have Moorish blood- almost certainly in fact, although it cannot yet be proven. The lady Zaida baptised Elizabeth, was long held to be the daughter of a Caliph, but this has been disproved, and the child from whom the modern Royal family descend was not Zaida's.
BTW, I am an Australian. My great-grandmother was born in the north of England in 1876, to an unknown, but almost certainly African father. On my mother's side, it appears that one of our lines is Chilean and may descend from the Alderete family of Tordesillas in Spain, which is probably Morisco.
These things are very interesting to someone like me, but even if it is proven that my ancestry includes Saharan and Subsaharan blood, I would not regard myself as being of that ancestry, because most of my blood is not. Nor do I belong to that culture.
I think the same would hold for Queen Philippa or Princess Charlotte. Even if it could be proven that they had a line or lines sub-Saharan, that does not make them "that". Queen Philippa was Flemish by birth and culture. Princess Charlotte was German by birth and culture. They were no more "AFrican" than they were "Chinese" or "Indian". All we can say is that there was non-European blood in their veins, as there is in mine (both through Philippa and through my other lines).
My children are 1/4 Italian, via their grandfather, but they term themselves Italo-Australian, because they were brought up in the Italo-Australian context, and speak Italian (as their first language) as well as English. This despite the fact that they are 1/4 Anglo-Australian, 1/4 Anglo-New Zealand culture and 1/4 German.
They do not regard themselves as Anglo-Aussie or New Zealander because their home culture was neither of these.
I know it is hard for Australians to comment on these things, as our experiences of racialism are nothing like those of America, but I would just like to say that it is not good scholarship to seize upon descriptions of women, or even photos of them and say "they are African", when the history just doesn't match up. Nor would the women themselves have seen themselves as such.
What we are is much more complex. It involves so many aspects: birthplace, culture, and bloodline being just three. This is why I always have trouble answering the question :what are you? I was born in one country to parents of two other countries, then raised in the country of my mother, but am now married to a tri-cultural man. I sometimes call myself Italo-Australian even though I have no Italian blood, because I speak the language and operate within the culture.
Nevertheless, continue to be proud of who you are. Without the sweat and blood of your AFrican ancestors, America would not be what it is today. And American culture is all the richer for you. Blessings.
Queen Caroline of Brunswick, divorced wife of George IV, son of Charlotte Sophie Mecklenburg. She was a daughter of Charlotte Sophia's brother, so she was George's niece as well.
NB. 25 august 2008
This is not a very convincing portrait. But there is a better one in google.
Last edited by Egmond Codfried on Mon 25 Aug 2008 14:09; edited 1 time in total
http://www.readthehook.com/Stories/2006/02/02/coverqueen.html
\I took the liberty of reprinting this entire article, minus the portraits, as it’s the most informed one I have come across. And I want to analyse it over the next weeks, if I’m permitted to do so. Virginia Daugherty did not go into this Abraham Hannibal connection, thank god!
Her African heritage is part of the legends and facts that cling to the petite German woman who married "mad King George" and who inspired not only Charlotte, North Carolina, but at least eight other places in North America-- including our town.
Although she was German, Charlotte was directly descended from Margarita de Castro y Sousa, a member of the black branch of the Portuguese royal house. Whether her lineage affected her appearance is contested.
Historian Mario de Valdes y Cocom says that her features, as seen in royal portraits, were conspicuously "negroid" and reports that they were noted by numerous contemporaries including the queen's personal physician, Baron Stockmar, who described her at age 84 as "small and crooked, with a true mulatto face."
Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, explains that Charlotte's ancestor, Margarita de Castro, descended from Portuguese monarch Alfonso III and his mistress, Mourana Gil, an African of Moorish descent.
The Wikipedia blog contains an ongoing argument, with one blogger writing, "This is precisely the kind of thing historians would love to cover up." Another objects, "The whole 'Queen Charlotte was black' thing is total garbage." A third answers, "It's apparent that racist sentiments seem to find their way into the simplist [sic] of arguments." "An African ancestry doesn't mean she's black." "It is actually quite certain that all European royalty has a slight amount of black ancestry." And so on.
De Valdes notes that in 1952 the English royal family referred to Queen Elizabeth II's Asian and African bloodlines as a justification for her coronation as head of the British Commonwealth of Nations. Elizabeth is a direct descendant of Charlotte.
The most decidedly African of her portraits were painted by Sir Allan Ramsay, an anti-slavery artist who was responsible for the majority of the paintings of the queen. A full-length Ramsay portrait of Queen Charlotte in its original Chippendale frame hangs in the Mint Museum in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Could the queen's features have had significance to the Abolitionist movement? By the time of his portraits, Ramsay was married to the niece of Lord Mansfield, the English judge whose 1772 decision was the first in a series of rulings that ended slavery in the British Empire.
How was the young Charlotte depicted by her contemporaries? One English description glowed, "Her appearance... was pleasing beyond description... her whole person possessed of that inexpressible something that is beyond a set of features, and equally claims our attention. To be sure, she has not a fine face, but a most agreeable countenance, and is vastly genteel, with an air, notwithstanding her being a little woman, truly majestic."
On the other hand, historian J.H. Plumb described her as "plain and undesirable." When King George sent out scouts to engage his bride, none of them thought her beautiful, but they did agree she was healthy, amiable, and gay.
A poem that may refer to her African features was written in her honor for the royal wedding on September 8, 1762:
Descended from the warlike Vandal race,
She still preserves that title in her face.
Tho' shone their triumphs o'er Numidia's plain
And Alusian fields their name retain;
They but subdued the southern world with arms,
She conquers still with her triumphant charms,
O! born for rule-- to whose victorious brow
The greatest monarch of the north must bow.
The Vandals were a Germanic tribe, and Numidia was in northern Africa, so these lines are puzzling.
According to Margaret O'Bryant, librarian for the Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society, there are no original paintings or sculptures of the city's eponym on display in the Charlottesville area.
However, the city of Charlotte, North Carolina, known as the Queen City, has two sculptures of Queen Charlotte. A statue at the airport, installed in 1990, shows the queen in the middle of a reflecting pool, dramatically bent backwards as if buffeted by a gust from a jet engine. The other statue, located downtown, is quite realistic, showing a woman in her mid-thirties walking in her garden with two dogs.
The sculptor of the 1989 downtown work, B. Graham Weathers, researched his subject by going to England to see her many portraits. He says he found as many variations of her image as there were artists.
"I did not find the Negroid features of the wide nose, large lips, etc. I saw a small, young girl who had an overbite..." In an article in Citi Magazine, Weathers also comments, "To me it doesn't matter if she is black or not."
Whether Charlotte's African heritage matters, Charlottesville should acknowledge that she's part of our heritage and appreciate her interesting personality.
Before she married, she supposedly wrote an anti-war letter that was circulated all over Europe. Addressed to Prussian king Frederick the Great, the letter said, "The same success that has covered you with laurels has overspread the county of Mecklenburg with desolation... I know you may think it more properly my province to study the art of pleasing, or to turn my thoughts to a domestic nature; but, however unbecoming it may be in me, I can't resist the desire of interceding for this unhappy people."
The teenager's plea went unheeded. Some say that the letter was sent to England and much admired there. In fact, it was rumored that after reading it, George III's mother decided she wanted the writer to become her son's bride.
Owen Hedley, the most respected of Charlotte's biographers, believed the letter to be forged. In fact, Hedley maintains that George would never have taken the letter-writer as his bride because he was skittish about "petticoat government."
Eventually, the king and queen produced 15 children-- six daughters and nine sons, only two of whom died before reaching adulthood. Two of her sons became kings, and her granddaughter became Queen Victoria, the longest-reigning monarch in British history.
Charlotte took an active interest in the American Revolution, accompanying her husband to review the fleet and inspect the troops. She became such a patriot that she wrote her brother William, "I ought to become an Amazon and defend the country with the rest.... Forgive my vanity, dear Brother, but... I am of opinion that if women had the same advantages as men in their education they would do as well...."
Charlotte stood by the King through his apparent "madness"-- which, in fact, was a disease called porphyry, then thought to be insanity. His illness started with acute pain in the stomach and cramps in the leg muscles, and soon caused excessive talkativeness. Eighteenth-century doctors treated him by burning blisters on his legs and putting him in a straitjacket.
The queen's good sense and dignity enabled her to assume control and preserve the crown for George until he recovered ("petticoat government," indeed!). A bill was passed making her Regent until he resumed his duties after three attacks. But the fourth and last was too severe, and he did not return to governing thereafter.
Fascinated by horticulture, Charlotte founded the famous Kew Gardens and sponsored the nine-volume Botanical Tables, written by Lord Bute. The Bird of Paradise plant is named Strelitzia reginae after her home state, Mecklenburg-Strelitz In 1800, she introduced the Christmas tree, a German custom, by decorating a fir for her children.
During George III's reign, Charlotte reportedly played a role in abolishing the punishment of burning at the stake. She certainly had a strong sense of social responsibility-- her public donations fill a long list, some of them with larger significance.
She supported the creation of the Queen Charlotte Maternity Hospital for poor women and paid for girls to attend Phoebe Wright's school of embroidery.
She loved intelligent conversation and hired popular writer Fanny Burney as her personal attendant. Burney kept a diary during the five years she worked as companion to the Queen, a diary valued today for its astute descriptions of 18th-century life.
Burney once witnessed an intimate meeting between the king and queen. Burney was alone with the queen when the king rushed in with some letters. Ignoring Burney, he spoke to the queen in German, and pushed the letters into her hands. Charlotte took the letters "and endeavoured to kiss his hand as he held them. He would not let her, but made an effort... to kiss hers. I saw instantly in her eyes a forgetfulness... that anyone was present, while, drawing away her hand, she presented him her cheek. He accepted her kindness with the same frank affection that she offered it."
Burney and the queen had a common interest in literature and the arts, and the writer came to respect Charlotte's "nobleness of mind that sets her above all false fears or vague suspicions."
Was the beloved Queen Charlotte black?
As we search today for true "black history," it's an intriguing question. Her African lineage is established, although through a very distant relative. Some of her contemporaries thought her face reflected her African heritage, and some of our contemporaries believe you can see it today in the Ramsay portraits.
The author is a businessperson who served on City Council during the 1990s, including a stint as mayor.
Also, because PBS historian Mario Valdez y Cocom claimed that Buckingham palace had published a white paper in 1953 (for the current queen's coronation) that referred to her African ancestry through Charlotte, I asked PBS for a source but was unable to get one. So I wrote to the royal historian at Buckingham Palace and also to the Windsor family historian at Balmoral. Neither historian could find such a document. Here is a scan of the letter to me from Buckingham palace.
Dear Mr. Sweet,
I'm very impressed with this piece of real research on your part, like taking this internet stuff to the real world and checking 'facts.' Most people seem to think that reprinting a internet site its all there is to it. I work my way to heaps of books, portraits and documents, sometimes finding only one sentence for my research purpose. For this you need to have to have a lot of information present in your mind, to evaluate what you find, which does not always come with a tag were this or that was learned. But of course I understand the need of giving sources, but it's tricky, as you have shown here. So what we make of the rest of what Mr Valdez is saying?
As you say, the consensus is that there may well be some infinitesimal sub-Saharan ancestry in Europe. Sub-Saharan DNA markers average less than one percent of the European genome. But this is far too little to result in visible features. Also, most folks agree that Mario Valdes y Cocom tends to overstate.
On the other hand, your speculation that Elizabeth Albertine of Saxe-Hildburghausen may have been the daughter of an Ethiopian will certainly stir the group's interest again. (Were you aware that the late British actor Peter Ustinov had an Ethiopian grandmother?) And your genealogical information will be very well received indeed.
Dear Mr. Sweet,
I'm reading the rest of this marvelous site, and I'm impressed. Unfortunatly the premiss of this discussion is that European Royalty is White. This is based on what? Portraits? I have taken pains in the 'Black Blood is Bleu Blood' thread to show some White and Black portraits of the same persons, in support of personal descriptions which describe them as 'Black, brown, Yellow, basané, not the white hands, black as chimney, chimney sweep, ugly, of low birth.'
This quote of yours about "infinitisimal SSA' traces would apply only taken over the whole population. It would not apply to people who are SSA allover, or have a large part of SSA ancestry.
I have stated, based on my findings that Black blood is Bleu Blood. Also that this European nobilty was endogamic, and remained a 'fixed, Mulatto race' because of this. Some popped out looking SSA, like Charlotte Sophie who was also brown of skin, according to some portraits I have seen. Somewhere she is mentioned as 'yellow' which still today points to a coloured skintone.
The letter you have posted from Portugal by Pedro Vasconcelos, does not offer any personal descriptions of the people mentioned, but we have to understand from their names or cultural groups what they have looked like. I do not think this is a reasonable way to approach things this complicated.
Queen Caroline of Brunswick, divorced wife of George IV, son of Charlotte Sophie Mecklenburg. She was a daughter of Charlotte Sophia's brother, so she was George's niece as well.
Some people might take a good look at this portrait, a drawing, and notice dark skin. Portraits like these are to me part of the proof that Charlotte Sophie came from 'a fixed, mulatto race' as most of her ancestors would be of colour. As nobody is pure this or pure that, subsequent mulatto children could show all kinds of features. They might be very dark of skin but with narrow noses and thin lips, favoring the 'White' phenotype genes.
Then I favor Sheick Anta Diop, who is against the sharp North of - and South of Sahara Africa divide when it comes to describing African types. J.A.Rogers arguid against the narrow skulled Africans being seperate from the broad skulled, showing its just a variation. Freely mixing with the 'true' Classical African type. And certainly not being some superior group amongst them. The Senegalese and Kameroun people called Wolof are West African and SSA too, look tall and narrow skulled, but are pitch black and woolly haired. Ridley in 'The Races Of Europe' writes that the narrow skulled type found in Europe 'could be either Teutonic or African.' Very ambigues, to both sides of the argument.
'
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