1. The cultural state of moors English homework By Jemima Edwards 8h2

2. How were moors part of society? To be black in the Elizabethan times was foreign and strange. However there were a few blacks in London. The colour black was traditionally related with many of the things we regard as signs of prejudice; blacks were associated with ugliness, savagery, sin and lasciviousness. The agreement of Christian art to represent Satan and other devils as a black person or dark-skinned also added another suggestions to the reader, viewer or performances of Shakespeare’s plays. This affected what white people thought of blacks in English society. Majority of the Africans were black domestic slaves, a few of them were freedmen. Some of them were moors and mostly Berbers from North Africa. The contemporary term for them were blackamoor. Approximately 15,000 African people were living in Britain by the 18 th century; many of them lived near ports of London, Liverpool and Bristol. There was no legislation that made slavery legal. In 1772 it was decided that it was a crime to send an African living in Britain back into slavery.

3. Culture of moors in Elizabethan times They were employed as domestic servants, but mostly musicians, dancers and entertainers. The black people living in London were mostly free, some men and women married native English people. By 1596 a number of African slaves and free blacks were living in Britain. This made queen Elizabeth the first to order all Africans to leave England in 1601 because she blamed them for creating social problems. She attempted to get rid of blacks in England although it didn’t work because blacks had became part of English society. Many coloured people were free or were slaves for wealthy families that wanted to keep them. Blacks formed political and educational organisations like the league of coloured peoples(LCP) to improve the well being of blacks through legal and diplomatic means. London was the centre of the Pan Africanist movement. Pan-Africanism is a movement to bring together African people in the struggle for justice and freedom. They published newspapers such as the African Times and Orient Review.

4. How were they treated They were judged with a mixture of curiosity and suspicion. Moors were characterised as being alternately or simultaneously belonging to highest classes or hideous, polite or vicious. Being a different race meant that being an other, a non-English and as well as a non-Christian. The term moor was commonly used many times interchangeably with “similar certain terms as ‘African’, ‘Ethiopian’, ‘Negro’, and ‘Indian’”. People who had never seen a coloured person was fascinated. Some blacks were given costly, high status, Christian funeral, with bearers and fine black cloth, a mark of esteem in which they were held by employers, neighbours and workers.