History

"[T]here is a record of an African who apparently crossed the Atlantic as a freeman, participated in the siege of Tenochtitlon and, in subsequent conquests and explorations, ...[was] an entrepreneur (with... Negro and Indian slaves...) in the ...search for gold, and... [was] a citizen in the Spanish quarter of Mexico city. His name... Juan Garrido..."

"Cortés... heard that... [one] of his vessels had discovered an "island"... [which] was in fact... the southern tip of Southern California. ...By the time he reached Chametla... the... marquis was accompanied by a... retinue which apparently included Juan Garrido... in a privileged category... [with] his own complement of Negro and Indian slaves... Cortés... returned to Mexico... 1536, accompanied by... some of the colonists including Juan Garrido..."

"Garrido became the first wheat farmer on the American continent. ...According to ..., "...they brought [Cortés] a small amount of rice, and in it were three grains of wheat; he ordered a free Negro to plant them." ...Gil Conzáles Dávila [identified him] as "Juan Garrrido, a servant [criado] of Hernando Cortés.""

"By... 1528, he had acquired on credit... slaves and mining equipment and reported to be in... Zacatula... The gold rush was at its peak but Garrido does not seem to have enjoyed... success..."

"[T]he present study poses the question of whether the Negro experience of Russian society can be instructive for a better understanding of the Negro experience within the major Western societies. ...For the general subject of Negro history, the main contribution of the present study is... offering additional knowledge about a peripheral area of what has been termed the "black diaspora.""

"There were... protagonists of black 'race' in the conquest of America and some... stood out enough to improve their social standing and even to have left their names for posterity."

"[P]re-modern Europe was more diverse than most of us have been led to assume."

"March 10, 1632, an African youth knocked at the door of Cairo’s Venetian consulate, asking to be treated by its resident physician... [H]e introduced himself as Ṣägga Krǝstos... son of the slain Ethiopian Emperor Yaʿǝqob... and told of his escape... after... Catholic Emperor Susǝnyos... killed his father. The story intrigued Paolo da Lodi... prefect of the Franciscan mission in Egypt since 1630... aware of the religious and political turmoil... Father Paolo saw the young Ethiopian as a valuable asset... Ṣägga Krǝstos visited Jerusalem, converted to Catholicism, then traveled to Rome, where Propaganda Fide vetted him in anticipation of his return to Ethiopia at the helm of a Franciscan mission. Instead, he would spend the rest of his life in Europe, as a guest of multiple courts, until his death in 1638 at Cardinal Richelieu’s mansion in Ruel."

"Other notable black men undoubtedly spent time in Puebla... but Pedro López de Villaseñor’s listing suggests... few were able to claim vecindad.[T]he black was... [b]orn on the African mainland around 1505... purchased by Hernan Cortés's cousin and... conquistador, ... [who] took Juan Valiente to Puebla... in 1532. ...In an emerging settlement defined for its anti-conquistador stance, it is not... clear that he benefited from his owner's social standing. ...Valiente asked his owner to grant him four years "to seek opportunity" as a conquistador in 's expedition to Guatemala. ...By 1534 ...[he] had made his way to Guatemala and Northern Peru. He would fight for in Chile the following year. Over the next two decades, Juan Valiente received an estate near de Chile, married Juana de Valdivia, and... received an for his military feats."

"William Shakespeare... wrote several black parts... two of his greatest characters are black... [T]hat he put them into mainstream entertainment reflects... that they were a significant element in the population of London."

"What... allowed these men... vecino status? ...freedom and a wife. Ordáz received a 200-peso dowry from his wife, Catalina Díaz. Montalvo... Puebla’s towncrier... [b]y 1555... had... enough money to send... Pedro de Padilla... to Guatemala... to bring his wife back... Montalvo’s standing as a free black vecino with connections to elite Poblanos distinguished him in a city where the overwhelming majority of people of African descent were enslaved."

"’s possessions... each tell us something of her life. But the fact that she had them... tells us..l. Africans in England were not owned, but themselves possessed property."

"The Diccionario Porrúa, perhaps relying on... Bernal Díaz, says that he arrived with Juan Núñez Sedeño, who accompanied Cortés' 1519 expedition in his... ship... that included "un negro"; has him crossing... with the army of . Magnus Mörner... claiming ... "many" hispanicized and Spanish-speaking blacks took part in the conquest... without details..."

", black in color... of his own free will, became a Christian in Lisbon, was in Castile for seven years, and crossed to Santo Domingo [for seven years]... From there he visited other islands then went to San Juan de Puerto Rico... [for] much time, [then]...came to . He was present at the taking of this city of Mexico and... other conquests, and later to the island with the marquis. He was the first to plant and harvest wheat in this land... and brought many vegetable seeds to New Spain."

"His name appears... in the proceedings of 's cabildo... 1524 when that body granted... land... "...just past the chapel of Juan Garrido." identifies this as the church subsequently rebuilt... occupying the site where... Cortés' men died as they fled from on the Noche Triste."

"Garrido took part in at least one of expeditions sent out by Cortés after the conquest of the Triple Alliance to secure control and investigate the exonomic potential of outlying areas."

"San Hipólito... one of the most interesting churches in the city. ...1520 ...the greatest slaughter of the Spaniards during the retreat of the memorable Noche Triste ...After the final conquest of the city, one of the survivors of that dismal night, , having freshly in mind its bloody horrors, built of adobe at this place a little commemorative chapel."

"Although most blacks who came to America in early years were slaves, records of the Casa de Contractión showed that a good many freed black freedmen from and elsewhere found passage on westward-bound ships. Some... settled in the ... others... to Mexico and Peru, identifying... as Catholic subjects of a Spanish king, with much the same privileges and ambitions as white Spaniards. "Benito el Negro" and "Juan el Negro" (...[i.e.,] Juan de Villanueva) were encomenderos in the province of Pánuco and thus... should not have been slaves..."

"They lived in a world where skin colour was less important than religion, class or talent: before the English became heavily involved in the slave trade, and before they founded their first surviving colony in the Americas. ...Their stories challenge the traditional narrative that racial slavery was inevitable and that it was imported to colonial Virginia from Tudor England. They force us to re-examine the 17th century to find out what had caused perceptions to change so radically."

"(ca. 1505-1553) was probably born in and sold by slavers to Portuguese traders, who... sold him to... . ...[H]e was baptized ...and around 1530 ...arrived ...in Puebla, ...[as] a domestic servant. By 1533 he ...convinced ...Valiente to allow him to become a ...[H]e would ...record ...his earnings ...to return them to his owner. He went to Guatemala and joined 's expedition to Peru... [which was bought out by] ... By 1535 he was in Chile fighting the Araucanians with Almagro, became a captain by 1540, and was rewarded with an near Santiago in 1546 and an in 1550. ...[H]e was killed by Araucanian Indians at the battle of Tucapel in 1553."

"The term "Negro"... here denotes only people of primarily African descent. ...[T]hat would include Alexander Pushkin and... Alexandre Dumas père (who traveled extensively through Russia in 1858 and 1859 and left a detailed account). ...Pushkin's maternal great-grandfather and Dumas's paternal grandmother were Negroes; the two writers were not. Nevertheless, attitudes that Pushkin and other Russians have expressed concerning his African heritage do figure prominently in the present work."

"The question of the earliest presence on Negroes in the geographical region which became the Russian empire centers on the origins of the small scattered settlements of Negroes... until recently... along the western slope of the Caucasus mountains near the Black Sea. ...[A] persistent line of thought ...places the advent of the Negroes in the area ...perhaps even in antiquity. This... was first raised by E. Lavrov in a letter to Kavkaz in 1913. ...[H]e pointed out that this was the area the ancient Greeks called , mentioned in their poetry ...eighth century B.C. ...Herodotus (484?-425? B.C) ...described the Colchians as black-skinned with wooly hair. This led him to believe that they were of Egyptian origin, perhaps of the army of the legendary Egyptian Emperor"

"Patrick English... marshals... data to support... the hypothesis that the Abkhazian Negroes' lineage may extend... to ancient times... He notes Herodotus'... attention... in distinguishing between Egyptians, Ethiopians, and Colchians... observing that the Colchians wove linen like the Egyptians and... no one else. ...English questions the likelihood that slaves would be imported to an area... famous for the export of slaves from its local population. ...English relies upon... the Iliad, the Bible, and... writings of the Church Fathers. He... posits a possible link between the Abkhazian Negroes and the creation of the Khazar empire."

"Lia Golden-Hanga... notes that the tsarist officials frequently listed the Negroes as Arabs and Jews."

"[I]n the twelfth-century German version of the "Song of Roland," the epic tale based on the clashes between Christian and Moslem armies in the eighth century, one of the Moslem leaders is described as... "He was black and ugly, the people [in his country] are wild, the sun never shines there, the devils feel at home there.""

"Wolfram von Eschenbach's "," which was drawn from the legend of King Arthur... in the thirteenth century and evolved for centuries om England, France, Germany and the Netherlands... repeated the theme of black skin color as fearsome, but implied that Blacks could become enobled by racial mixing with whites and through Christianization."

"Africa and Africans have had an influence on European thought and culture far disproportionate to the size of the small black population (which... approached 150,000 in the [16th century] ... and by the 18th Century... several thousand in France, a few thousand in the Netherlands, and several hundred... through Germany, Scandinavia, and Russia."

"[P]ersons of African ancestry... achieved distinction in Moorish Iberia and later in Spain and Portugal, the European societies that first saw a large influx of blacks. Most... were mulattos... Cristóbol de Meneses, a Dominican priest; the painters and Sebastian Gomez; and Leonardo Ortiz, a lawyer. ...In 1306 an Ethiopian delegation came to Europe to seek an alliance with the "King of the Spains" against the Moslems. King Anfós IV of Aragon considered arranging a double marriage with the of Ethiopia in 1428. And the Portuguese sent Pedro de Corvilhao to Ethiopia in 1487 on a similar mission."

"Possibly the most famous black conquistador... he was... a slave when in 1533 he asked his master, , a landowner from Puebla (Mexico), for permission to go on a four-year journey in search of fortune with the promise of returning and paying for his freedom with the profits... The Spaniard agreed and Juan enlisted... with two hundred other Africans (most of them slaves) in the expedition [to Peru] that Hernán Cortés' former lieutenant, , was preparing... Once at his destination... there was no opportunity because Pizarro had gone ahead. paid Alvarado... in exchange for his leaving... hiring the men who wanted to stay. Juan Valiente was one of them and in 1535 he was in Chile with... [the] new leader, fighting against the Araucanians. Five years later he had managed to rise to captain and amass some capital, including an and a property on the outskirts of , as well as a wife, Juana de Valdivia, an alleged former slave of... the famous . ...[H]e died in combat, along with Valdivia himself, in the (1553)."

"Manumission was not rare and many achieved it, establishing themselves as colonists with typical jobs as peculiar as doorman (the most common, in addition to guarding the door, he also called the councillors to meetings), town crier, auctioneer, executioner or... bagpiper. But some preferred to take the risk and enlist in the conquering forces."

"[A] parallel life, enslaved by the Portuguese but converted to Christianity in Lisbon... allowed him to acquire freedom and travel to , where he embarked in 1503 for Santo Domingo as a servant under... Pedro Garrido. ...[H]e fought [for eleven years] in the conquest of Cuba and Puerto Rico, as well as participating in the discovery of Florida. In 1519 he joined Cortés' expedition to Mexico... [I]n a letter to the King he boasted of having been the one who introduced the cultivation of wheat in those parts. He later returned to military life, during Antonio de Carvajal's [[w:Nuño de Guzmán#As conqueror of western Mexico|incursion [under Guzmán's command] into]] Michoacán and Zacatula. In 1525 he was granted a property in the new Mexico City, where he worked as a doorman, town crier and guard of the Chapultepec aqueduct... three years later... leading an expedition to exploit the gold mines of Zacatula. After another break, he enlisted under Cortés when he explored Baja California; he was responsible for—and co-owner of—a battalion of black and indigenous slaves. He died in 1547, leaving behind a wife and three children."

"Juan Beltrán This mulatto became famous in the Chilean wars, where for his brave actions and his collaboration in the founding of the city of Villarrica he was entrusted with the construction and position of captain of a fort on the outskirts, in addition to... a commission of half a thousand Indians. Beltrán led several victorious malocas (...raids in the language of overseas soldiers), but... died fighting against the indomitable Araucanians."

"[T]housands of people of colour... were omitted by the chroniclers (although Cieza de León usually mentions them generically), such as the two hundred who helped put out the fire in Cuzco during the siege of Manco Inca in 1536 or the similar number sent from as armed reinforcements; or those who collaborated in the conquest of New Granada, of whom only the identity of a mulatto called Pedro de Lerma has been revealed."

"Scores of black men and women set up home in England as early as the 16th century—many arriving from Iberia, as the Spanish and Portuguese laid claim to swathes of Africa."

"Blanke... performed at Henry VII’s funeral and... coronation (...1509) ..."

"Blanke—like all Africans in England—was a free man."

"Our sailing ships like common-sewers we use, And through our distant colonies diffuse The draught of dungeons, and the stench of stews; Whom, when their home-bred honesty is lost, We disembogue on some far Indian coast, Thieves, pandars, palliards, sins of every sort; Those are the manufactures we export."

"The roots of modern civilization are planted deeply in the highly elaborate life of those nations which rose into power over six thousand years ago, in the basin of the eastern Mediterranean, and the adjacent regions on the east of it."

"[T]he eastern Mediterranean region...lies in the midst of the vast desert plateau, which, beginning at the Atlantic, extends eastward across the entire northern end of Africa, and continuing beyond the depression of the Red Sea, passes northeastward, with some interruptions, far into the heart of Asia. Approaching it, the one from the south and the other from the north, two great river valleys traverse this desert; in Asia, the Tigro-Euphrates valley; in Africa that of the Nile. It is in these two valleys that the career of man may be traced from the rise of European civilization back to a remoter age than anywhere else on earth; and it is from these two cradles of the human race that the influences which emanated from their highly developed but differing cultures, can now be more and more clearly traced as we discern them converging upon the early civilization of Asia Minor and southern Europe."

"[T]he past was supreme; the priest who cherished it lived in a realm of shadows, and for the contemporary world he had no vital meaning. Likewise in Babylon the same retrospective spirit was now the dominant characteristic of the reviving empire of Nebuchadrezzar. The world was already growing old, and everywhere men were fondly dwelling on her faraway youth."

"The origins of diplomacy date back at least to the Bronze Age in the Near East. Caches of documents from the Euphrates kingdom in the mid–eighteenth century BC and from Akhenaten’s Egypt four centuries later reveal a regular exchange of envoys with neighboring states, prompted by the need for trade and the danger of war. This was hardly a fully fledged diplomatic “system.” Envoys were not resident ambassadors and they were not protected by agreed rules of immunity—but it was a recognizable form of diplomacy. Summitry, as we would understand it, was rare, being mostly confined to visits by minor rulers to pay homage at the courts of their overlords. This is hardly surprising because of the travel time required—six weeks for even a fast courier from Egypt to Babylon—and because of the hazards and insecurities en route. For a ruler to undertake such a journey was therefore a sign of his inferior status. Rulers of great powers, though they might address each other in letters as “dear brother,” would never meet unless one of them had become the booty of battle, which was not summitry but submission."

"It lies like an army facing south, with one wing stretching along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean and the other reaching out to the Persian Gulf, while the center has its back against the northern mountains. The end of the western wing is Palestine; Assyria makes up a large part of the center; while the end of the eastern wing is Babylonia. [...] This great semicircle, for lack of a name, may be called the Fertile Crescent."

"Since progress is the rare exception, and not the rule, among the communities of mankind, it is less important to speculate about the reasons for its cessation among the ancient Egyptians than to observe how the technological advances made in the Near East became by degrees more widely diffused until they penetrated Europe. Neither Mesopotamia nor Egypt had the resources which would have enabled it to develop its civilization on a basis of autarky. They had never been self-contained as regards timber or metals or even ivory: in the second millenium B.C. the development of larger ships and better organized land transport encouraged greater efforts to satisfy their needs by importations. In exchanging the products of their superior technology for raw materials they stimulated imitation. Moreover, in ancient as in modern times the needs of trade often stimulated the desire for conquest, which likewise left its mark upon the life of neighboring peoples long after the tide of conquest had receded. Aggression then provoked counter-aggression: some barbarian intruders were eventually absorbed into the life of the two empires, others clashed with them, and kept their independence."

"Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919); 13th ed. (1955)"

"Aubrey Stewart; George Long, Plutarch's Lives, 4 vols. (1892–1894); digitised for , vols. 1, 2, 3, 4"

"John and William Langhorne, Plutarch's Lives, 6 vols. (1770–1774); digitised for , vol. 1"

", Plutarch: Parallel Lives, 11 vols. (LCL, 1914–1923); digitised by Bill Thayer, "Plutarch's Lives", LacusCurtius (2 November 2022) — also the Greek text used throughout this page, except for quotations sourced from King"

"Α. Αἱ μὲν δὴ Μάρτιαι Εἰδοὶ πάρεισιν. Β. Ναὶ πάρεισιν, ἀλλ ̓ οὐ παρεληλύθασι."

"Βέλτιόν ἐστιν ἅπαξ ἀποθανεῖν ἢ ἀεὶ προσδοκᾶν."

"Ὄψει δέ με περί Φιλίππους."