Techno-Prosthetic Romantic FuturismInvisible Men--and Women tooI don't mean to be rude, but if you need an example of the bias built into historical knowledge, consider the status of blacks in London at the end of the eighteenth century. By some estimates there were 20,000, many living around St. Giles, home to the infamous blackbirds. You can read every single page of Roy Porter's London: a Social History and not meet with a single reference to them. [2] The merchant marine, the British Navy, both were by some accounts one quarter black. And we are only now beginning to recover these invisible histories. [3] The victors don't write history. They forget it. Notes1. See Peter Fryer, Staying Power: the History of Black People in Britain since 1504 (New York: Humanities Press, 1984). 2. Roy Porter, London: a Social History (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1995). 3. As for instance Mike Phillips, London Crossings: a Biography of Black Britain (New York, Continuum, 2001), or Gretchin Gerzina, Black London: Life Before Emancipation (New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1995). Navigation |