Was Tanya Samuel (the sugar heiress) pretending to be a white woman in the Regency period?
No Gods, No Masters
No, she was black. Ever read or watched Vanity Fair? I'm certain Tanya's role was inspired by the black(or mulatto) Caribbean sugar heiress,Miss Schwartz, who was brought in to to marry George Osbourne by his father before he was guilted into wedding Amelia Sedley.
shareIt would have been proper for there to be black women and men of fortune at this time in England. While America was still using slavery as a means of labor, Brittian was becoming strongly against it.
There is a book called 'Family' written by J. California Cooper that is written from an American slave hand's point of view just before slavery was abolished in America- she describes how one of her daughters (fathered by her master) had married a wealthy British gentleman and that some of her decendents even became royality.
The possiblity of a fair skinned black woman marrying a wealthy white gentlman or even an unwealthy one would have been common during this time so the character of Tanya was historically correct.
It is very likely there were many wealthy black people (although still in the minority) at this time.
"The possiblity of a fair skinned black woman marrying a wealthy white gentlman or even an unwealthy one would have been common during this time so the character of Tanya was historically correct."
I doubt this to be the case. After 30 years of studying British history, I have never seen any record of a black woman during the Regency marrying into upper-class white British society or the gentry, much less the aristocracy or nobility. It likely would've been social suicide for a man to do so. The only group of biracial marriage that happened in any real quantity was between East Indians and ethnic Britons, but even that could hardly be described as "common".
No doubt there were many black and part black mistresses and mothers of natural children with such men, but that's something quite different than marriage. There were probably a few women who were a fraction African who married into the lower ranks of society, but if so, history doesn't seem to have noticed them. At least, this has been my perception from many years of study.
The book that accompanies the series, Regency House Party: Companion to the Channel Four Series by Lucy Jago, offers this:
Queen Charlotte herself, mother of the Regent, was of mixed race, being directly descended from Margarita de Castro y Sousa, who was part of the black branch of the Portuguese royal house. [...] Mrs. Hester Piozzi, in a letter to a friend in 1802, noted 'a black lady covered in finery, in the Pit at the opera, and tawny children playing in the gardens of the squares with their nurses. She observed 'men of colour in the rank of gentlemen' were a sign of social change. [...] [An] American visitor noted in 1805 that a black man, dressed fashionably and arm-in-arm with a well-dressed white woman, could walk along Oxford Street unmolested and largely unremarked (p. 168).
No, no -- claims that Queen Charlotte was "part black" are absolute rubbish; nothing more than internet conspiracy-mongering, promoted by Afrocentrists. This is reflected in such claims as "the black branch of the Portuguese royal house". There is no such thing.
Claims that Charlotte was "part black" rely entirely upon three claims: (1) that King Alphonso III of Portugal (1210-1279) was her direct ancestor, 500 years earlier, (2) that Alphonso had a lover named Madragana who bore him children through which Charlotte descended, and (3) that Madragana was "black". In fact, there was just ONE author, five centuries after Madragana lived, who claimed that she was a "moor". Most historians doubt this was true. It is known that Madragana's father was a Sephardim Jew, so it's possible that Madragana looked Sephardim (typically dark-skinned with curly black hair and dark eyes).
Even IF all three claims are factual, the fact remains that Charlotte would've been FIFTEEN GENERATIONS REMOVED from Madragana. To put that in perspective, if you count back 15 generations in anyone's family, you have no fewer than 16,384 direct ancestors (great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparents), ONE of whom MAY have been black. How much DNA do you really think she retained from that ONE ancestor?!
Racism didn't exist back then really. It was more the fact they were pagan that people had issues with.
shareMaybe she's supposed to remind us of Mrs. Rochester from Jane Eyre?
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The IMDB site says, "Create a new list", but how, I wonder, could I create an old one?
I know it's an exceptionally late answer, but quite honestly, there is a huge whitewashing of history in our society. I highly suggest that you check out medievalpoc.tumblr.com for a vast quantity of images of people of color in European art history, especially focusing on the Medieval period but also occasionally taking jaunts into the Regency, Victorian, and other eras. People of color moved among all spheres of life (granted, in fewer numbers) throughout Great Britain and especially the rest of Europe during these times.
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