Black History Month - The Africans That Once Ruled Britain

In AD 43, the Romans invaded Britain. It was not the first time, since Julius Caesar had twice invaded the island about 100 years before that. But Caesar was not interested in conquest, and soon left to fight for the real prize – Rome.

A century later Emperor Claudius was determined to do one better than Caesar, and this time the Romans intended to stay. It took several decades, and through several emperors’ reigns, but by AD 84 Britain was more or less conquered by Rome, apart from the Scottish Highlands.

They tried time and time again, but the Romans could never subdue the northern tribes. So, under Emperor Hadrian, they built a wall.  Hadrian’s Wall ran for about 120km across the width of the island, was an average 10 feet high, and was made of stone with large ditches in front and behind it.

It was built with alternating forts that housed Roman garrisons to defend it against northern invaders, and historians believe the garrisons consisted of about 600 soldiers each. One of these forts, at Aballava, was manned by African soldiers. Referred to as ‘Aurelian Moors’ (Numerus Maurorum Aurelianorum), because of Emperor Marcus Aurelius (AD 121-180) who stationed them there, they are the first recorded African community living in Britain. That is almost 2,000 yeas ago.

They might have been Africans, but they were Romans, too. Thus they most likely acted like the conquerors they were. So there were Africans who ruled over much of what is Britain today.

David Olusoga is a British professor of Public History at the University of Manchester. His four-part award-winning TV documentary series, ‘Black and British: A Forgotten History’, traces the presence of Africans in many facets and periods of British history. The first episode deals with those African-Romans that helped govern the province of Britannia.

“These are things we are not taught about in schools”, Prof. Olusoga says. "There have been back people living in Britain for centuries, back to the Roman times. But there are people that find this challenging, even threatening, that there have been black people in this country since Roman times.”

In 1901, a skeleton was found in Sycamore Terrace, York, in northern England. Analysis showed that it was of a young woman, 18-23 years, who lived and died in the 4th century AD. It was determined that she was of high status, and of African origin. A reconstruction of her face clearly showed a mixed-race person.

The 4th century was when Roman occupation of Britannia reached its zenith, but would crumble a century later when most Roman troops were withdrawn to fight battles elsewhere in Europe. It is said that the African troops stationed at Aballava could have stayed behind, settled down and had families.

But it wasn’t just black soldiers that had a presence in Roman Britain. Lucius Septimius Severus was the first of four African to become Emperors of Rome. Born in Africa, he moved to Rome when he was 18 years old. He proceeded to go through the customary succession of offices until he seized power after the death of the emperor Pertinax in AD 193.

In AD 208 Severus went to Britain to try and conquer the stubborn land of Caledonia (present day Scotland). He had an army of over 40,000 men, and after a protracted campaign that lasted about 3 years, the Caledonians sued for peace. But they would revolt a year later. Severus prepared for war, again, but was taken ill and died in AD 211 at present day York.

His two sons became co-Emperors after his death, but that did not last for long, with the younger brother assassinated soon after. Two more of Severus’ descendants would also become Emperors.

And last, but definitely not least of all, there was Quintus Lollius Urbicus, who was governor of Britain from AD 139 to 142. Born in north Africa, he served in the Roman army and also in the Senate. A brilliant military commander, he was instrumental in the Romans crushing the third and final Jewish revolt against the empire, and thus their banishment from the present Palestine.

Not sure how that would be taken today, but it was an African man that was largely responsible for removing the Jews from their ancestral land, and thus allowing the later Arab migration. If Quintus Lollius Urbicus had not been successful in his war against the Jews, what would the middle East look like now?

Quintus Lollius Urbicus then served as the governor of Germania before being transferred to Britannia after emperor Hadrian’s death in AD 138. On orders from emperor Antoninus Pius, Quintus Lollius Urbicus went on to subdue Caledonia over two years. His legacy is what became to be known as the Antoine Wall, a new barrier of turf and timber stretching for thirty-five miles from east to west, which he completed.

Later he returned to Rome, where he eventually became its ‘Prefect’, which is probably equivalent to a modern-day Mayor, but was more or less second in command to the Emperor.

Writing about Quintus Lollius Urbicus, British historian Collin Wells said: ‘…at no other period of history could the second or third son of a Berber landowner from a very small town in the interior enjoy a career which took him to Asia, Judaea, the Danube . . . the lower Rhine and Great Britain, culminating in a position of great power and honor in the capital of the empire to which all these regions belonged’.

For the record, England as a country did not come into existence till AD 927, almost a thousand years later. So these Africans ruled over the island of Britain long before England was formed.