Would any exotic, darker skinned Easterners (Indians, Ethiopians, etc.) ever appear in medieval England? If so, how? Was trade with the East occurring in England and not just mainland Europe? Would a human have been traded to England from the East in the Middle Ages?
And if an Easterner came to be in medieval England, how would he be treated due to his skin color? With superstition?
Thanks so much!
EDIT: I'm thinking House of Plantagenet era, specifically, but Middle Ages in general; Early, High, or Late.
Of course they did; Europe is really small, and trade routes to the east were exceptionally common. The Romans were trading with the Chinese in the 3rd Century (and the Chinese thought they were amusingly small-scale), there were black people in the UK in the 5th century, Scandinavia was trading with central and southeast Asia, there were the Crusades (if the Europeans could get to the Holy Land, why couldn't people from the Holy Land get to Europe?), and by the time of Elizabeth I, there were so many "blackamoors" in England that she tried to have them all deported.
Europe wasn't a particularly lily-white place at any point of history.
As far as
how would he be treated due to his skin color? With superstition?
As late as the 1600s, dark-skinned people were treated as curiosities. There was a tradition of Moors as characters in the theater (Othello was part of long line, including The English Moor and earlier works).
But I know I've read a description of a party that involved having lots of "blackamoors" there as a kind of attraction for the other partygoers. It was in a book talking about Ben Jonson's The Masque of Blackness... I'm afraid I can't recall the details, but simply reading about The Masque of Blackness itself should give you an idea of public attitudes in England.
Speculating here, but earlier than that, I'd imagine dark-skinned Easterners would be even more novel - not so much a member of some racial category as simply special and different.
Hey, thanks so much guys! You've been helpful.
I found this from Callaghan's Shakespeare Without Women. Not England, but Scottland.
In an entertainment at the Scottish court in 1594, a lion was supposed to play exotic beast of burden and pull a chariot before courtly spectators. In the end an African, apparently regarded as its human equivalent, understudied for the lion on the grounds that he was less likely to cause alarm among spectators.