Caspar Van Senden, Sir Thomas Sherley and the `Blackamoor' project

Author: Kaufmann, Miranda

Source: Historical Research, Volume 81, Number 212, May 2008 , pp. 366-371(6)

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Abstract:

This article investigates the project of Caspar Van Senden, a Lübeck merchant, and his patron Sir Thomas Sherley, who sought crown permission to collect `negars and blackamoores' in England and sell them in Lisbon. By examining the reports of Robert Cecil's agent in Lisbon and letters written to Cecil by Van Senden and Sherley, it explains how unsuccessful their project was, and how it may have had political as well as financial motivation. It also reinterprets the privy council order of 1596, and concludes that a similar document of 1601, conventionally listed as a proclamation, is likely never to have gone beyond draft form. The article concludes that Elizabeth's government never envisaged an expulsion of blacks, but was merely trying to fend off another debtor with a patent.

Document Type: Research article

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2281.2007.00416.x

Affiliations: 1: Christ Church, Oxford

Publication date: 2008-05-01