Asians in C15 England

[behanner]

Just an observation, but if something is a one in a million occurrence but it's is attested in history then it is still historical. It might not be generic to the time period but it's still historical and provable.

Interesting though about the underlying point that Re-enactment should focus on the generic as this gives the most accurate impression of the time period and is therefore more historically accurate.

I'd prefered to use the word common over generic because generic implies that just because you are doing something common that you can't do it with a lot of specifics.
One of the reasons for this is that if you do lots of different events in different places the something specific might not be appropriate. Also as I said above when you do something specific the specifics are really important. When you do something common the specifics can be fudged much more easily.

[Jenn]

This is obviously refering to black people but I am not sure what they would call black and we would call black are the same
Anyway it's quite interesting
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/path ... /moors.htm

[Marcus Woodhouse]

English xenophobia of the time sems (to me) have been based not on colour of skin but on how much of a threat the alien was to either life and property (ie are those Bretons/ Nomans/French/Channel Islanders/Scots/Welsh going to act as fifth column in an enemy invasion) or trade (ie are those Flemish/Gascons/Germans/Genoese/Venetians/Florintines/Portugese/Icelanders going to undercut me and make me lose cash).
That seems (to me) to have been the root cause of the various riots and parliamentery attacks upon their status.
When there is verbal attacks upon them skin colour only ever gets mentioned as an aside (ie in identifying that one of the Venetians attacked in 1452 in London was a black galley hand). More often it is the cut of their clothes, their hair cuts, their beards, their preference for beer rather than ale, or even in one sermon from 1482 the kind of sausage they eat!
The Church made no distinction between black and white Christians (an immediate effect of baptising a Arabic or African slave in Florence and Venice was the expectaion that they would then be set free, unless they were serving time as crimminals in the alum mines or on board a Florentine ship) or non-Christian black or white peoples (the latter were all to suffer persecution be they Jew, Muslim or pagan, though there was not by the 15th century many of the latter left to convert in Europe anyway).
There was conflict between Roman and "Greek" Christians and between different sects of Islam but this would have beyond the comprehension of most I'd suspect even if it did get in the way of Persians supporting the efforts of the Turks to drive out Venetian/Genoese settlements or Western nations coming to the aid of Constantinople in 1453.
It might well have been that once it had been established that a single Indian was not really a French spy or a Dutch brewer and knew the Creedo they would have been ignored as an irrelevence. It used to be the same where I came from nobody cared a hoot about the Vietnamese families that moved in once they established they weren't left footers or bowler hat wearers, I guess both sides figured they'd still be there to give a good kicking once they had settled the important task of doing over the Fenians or Proddies down the road and never got around to it.

[behanner]

Just as a note to Marcus's post. The end of the 15th century is actually traditionally considered a turning point in the evolution of the ideas of modern racism. As Marcus points out traditionally in western Christianity once you a baptized convert you are Christian. Due to the number of Jews and to a lesser extent Muslims in Spain in this period that converted or forcefully converted to Christianity and the amount of them that may have hidden their true religion the idea that a Jew who converted might not be as Christian as a born Christian emerges. And the idea grows from there.

[Marcus Woodhouse]

The Inquistion of the unified Spain spent most of its energies in the 1490's and 1500's engaged in studying the recentally converted Jews and Muslims, many of whom were expelled (or fled) to Turkey.
The situation in the Spain of Ferdinand and Isabella is quite similar to that in England of the 1450's.
Prior to the Reconquest Jews had been present at the various Iberian courts and while never equal in status were tolerated and protected as worthy subjects while even Fighting Orders such as the Knights of Santiagio made use of Muslim auxilleries and Muslim soldiers were frequently employed as mercenaries by princes in inter-state and civil wars (and were often seen as bein more trustworthy echoing a similar situation in Italy).
However a unified court was smaller and Jews were now seen as competators for rank and postions of power while Muslims were now a potential source of information and resistance fighters for an expaning Ottoman Empire.
As threats these two peoples now faced the same persecutions that had been the experience of similar communities across the rest of Europe combinened with the convictions of a crusader mentality that was still very fervent in Iberia whereas it had colled elsewhere. The result was not pretty for either the Moriscoes and Moorines or for the inhaitants of the lands of Africa or soon to be "discovered" America.