{"id":48387,"date":"2016-07-23T23:58:16","date_gmt":"2016-07-23T23:58:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=48387"},"modified":"2016-07-23T23:58:16","modified_gmt":"2016-07-23T23:58:16","slug":"dido-belle-britains-first-black-aristocrat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=48387","title":{"rendered":"Dido Belle: Britain\u2019s first black aristocrat"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dido Belle: Britain\u2019s first black aristocrat<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The Telegraph<\/a>
\n2016-07-06<\/p>\n

Nisha Lilia Diu<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Amma Asante’s<\/a> award-winning film <\/em>Belle<\/a> arrives on Netflix today. In this feature, first published in June 2014, Nisha Lilia Diu reveals the true story that inspired it<\/em><\/p>\n

The amazing thing about Dido Elizabeth Belle<\/a> is not that she was mixed-race. Who knows how many white men\u2019s children were born to black slave women in the 18th century? It\u2019s not even that her father was a wealthy English aristocrat \u2013 there were plenty of titled captains tearing around the Caribbean<\/a> at that time, capturing French and Dutch schooners<\/a> during the Seven Years\u2019 War<\/a> and making off with their sugar, coffee and other (often human) cargo. The extraordinary thing about Dido Belle is that her father, a 24-year-old Navy officer called John Lindsay, took her home to England and asked his extended family to raise her. And they did. They did it in some style, too.<\/p>\n

Belle grew up in Kenwood House<\/a> in north London. It was the palatial weekend retreat of Lindsay\u2019s uncle, the first Earl of Mansfield<\/a>, set in landscaped gardens with a view of St Paul\u2019s Cathedral<\/a> six miles away. Mansfield was Lord Chief Justice, and he made a number of landmark rulings on slavery that were among Britain\u2019s first steps towards abolition. Did Belle\u2019s presence in his home have anything to do with it? Plenty of his contemporaries thought so, and they didn\u2019t admire him for it.<\/p>\n

\u201cDido was very, very privileged,\u201d says William Murray, a descendant of the earl and the son of the heir apparent. \u201cShe was in the top 5 per cent, perhaps the top 1 per cent, in terms of how she lived, her allowance, her dress, her education.\u201d But Belle\u2019s position was far from clear-cut…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dido Belle: Britain\u2019s first black aristocrat The Telegraph 2016-07-06 Nisha Lilia Diu Amma Asante’s award-winning film Belle arrives on Netflix today. In this feature, first published in June 2014, Nisha Lilia Diu reveals the true story that inspired it The amazing thing about Dido Elizabeth Belle is not that she was mixed-race. Who knows how […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,24,1245,459,8,6940,10],"tags":[16715,15271,24565,7738],"class_list":["post-48387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-arts","category-biography","category-history","category-media-archive","category-slavery","category-uk","tag-dido-belle","tag-dido-elizabeth-belle","tag-nisha-lilia-diu","tag-the-telegraph"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=48387"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48387\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48388,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48387\/revisions\/48388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}