The presence of Black people in Georgian Britain can appear fleeting, like the enslaved man who fled from a ship in Orkney and whose unexpected story refocused my attention during a long day reading newspapers on microfilm in the National Library of Scotland. Yet, the apparently momentary nature of this and other snippets of evidence of the Black presence does not necessarily reflect reality. It is as much the product of histories, be they political, military, social, gender, cultural etc., that tend to privilege the White experience and implicitly assume that Black history existed in imperial space, and the empire existed only overseas. The exhibition Black Georgians: The Shock of the Familiar, currently on display at the Black Cultural Archives (BCA) in Brixton, London, seeks to change our viewpoint, and to ‘inspire imaginations, promote critical enquiry, and challenge academic thinking to further question the gaps in the narrative of British history’ (Black Cultural Archives, press release, September 2015). It succeeds in doing all of this.

The exhibition encourages us to think critically about representations of the past, and the visitor is faced with questions as they move through the exhibition. These include, ‘How would you fight to maintain your identity in similar circumstances?’ and, when examining Thomas Rowlandson’s 1821 print, The Advertisement for a Wife, ‘Does the inclusion of a Black woman of means at the front of the unruly queue offer evidence of changing social mobility?’ These are all subsidiary to the first question that confronts the visitor: ‘Why have these stories been omitted from British history?’

To aid the recovery of this history, Black Georgians includes but moves well beyond the better-known stories of Olaudah Equiano, Ignatius Sancho and Dido Elizabeth Belle (the latter the subject of the 2013 film, Belle). We are told also of famous Black boxers, such as Bill Richmond, of enslaved Blacks in the British Army, and of many other ‘ordinary’, and often poor, African people living in Britain, whose presence is illustrated through sources such as the Clapham Baptism Register. To bring these stories together, a variety of sources are employed, from the BCA’s own collection as well as from the London Metropolitan Archives, the National Archives, Scone Palace and private collections. Particularly enjoyable were the collection of prints by George Cruikshank and Rowlandson featuring Black people, from the private collection of Lesley Braine Ikomi. The chairs in the final room, embroidered with the faces of famous Black Georgians such as Equiano and Mary Prince, encouraged reflection, and left this reviewer wondering whether there may have been scope to include more material history in the exhibition.

Black Georgians occupies only one room but any fears of it being brief and basic are quickly dispelled. While an exhibition that sought simply to recover the Black experience would be worthwhile in itself, Black Georgians does much more than this. It places this experience in dominant narratives of the Georgian period by addressing questions and themes that will be familiar to most historians of the era, including the impact of class, considered here in the context of its intersections with race through the experiences of people like Nathaniel Wells. While including stories of social mobility, it does not overplay agency nor deny the inequality and oppression faced by Black people in Britain and overseas during this era; a reproduction of newspaper advertisements for runaway slaves, for instance, offers a stark reminder of the primary way that White British society engaged with Black people. Yet, unlike a narrative that focuses on slavery alone, Black people have much greater agency and diversity of experience in this exhibition.

At a time when very few Black British students study History at university, the question which faces the visitor at the start and as they leave – ‘Why have these stories been omitted from British history?’ – is one that ought to receive more attention from those of us who teach and research it.

Black Georgians: The Shock of the Familiar is at the Black Cultural Archives, Brixton until 9th April 2016.