Firstly, apologies if this question comes off as ignorant or offensive.
With England being a huge player in the transport of slaves from Africa to America and the Caribbean, why is there not more of a black minority with heritage going back to this period? Most African Americans seem to have slave ancestors; whereas most of the Afro Caribbean minority in England migrated from the colonies during the post war era (or so I was told during my history classes). Is there any particular reason for this?
Thanks.
There was a legal question regarding whether or not the state of enslavement could exist on British soil. The situation was ambiguous, and certain West Indian plantation owners did bring slaves back to Britain with them, as personal valets/maids and the like. However, it became increasingly common, as the 18th century progressed, for enslaved persons to bring a legal challenge against their 'owners' in the courts, to claim their freedom and avoid being sent back to the harshness of plantation life. The earliest such case was in 1690. Judgements varied - there are cases of enslaved persons being granted their liberty, sometimes permanently and sometimes temporarily; as well as cases where the state of enslavement was confirmed rather than overturned.
The most high-profile case of this type was that of James Somersett, a slave 'owned' by a Boston government official, with whom he travelled to Britain. (This is at a point where the US is still a British colony, just about). Somersett escaped, but was recaptured and sent aboard a ship bound for Jamaica. A suit for his release was brought by abolitionist campaigners, and after a lengthy deliberation, the judge Lord Mansfield determined that Somersett had the right not to be forcibly removed from the country against his will. Crucially, he did not rule that slavery on British soil was illegal, but it was interpreted this way by many slaves and masters alike.
So, in short, the number of enslaved black people in the UK was always tiny, due largely to the fact that their ambiguous legal status there meant that their 'owners' risked losing their slaves via legal mechanism. There was a small community of free black people in 18th century Britain, primarily of former slaves who had been granted freedom - the writer Olaudah Equiano was one, as were Francis Barber (the servant and heir of the writer Samuel Johnson), and Ignatius Sancho. It's estimated that there were around 15,000 black people living in London by the end of the 18th century, although these numbers are difficult to fully reconstruct because racial identity is not always recorded in datasets such as parish registers.