Welcome to Black History Wales

This site has been set up to collect stories from Welsh History linked to Black History.  "Black History" in this context does not only include the history of peoples of Africa or of African descent. It includes people of any ethnic group of non-European descent.

The stories you will find here are not only those of black Welsh people, but of Wales' links to British colonial history, including the African Slave Trade, ownership of plantations in the British colonies and the European colonisation of Africa during the Nineteenth Century.

Some of these stories are shocking, some surprising, but others are inspiring.

Wales' links to Black History go back further than you might think, and go deeper than you might know. 

From the various activities of the Welsh pirate Sir Henry Morgan - later a plantation owner and Lieutenant-Governor of Jamaica in the Seventeenth Century, through the story of the gardener John Ystumllyn (right, in a portrait of 1754), through to the involvement of the great estates throughout the colonial period Wales' Black History is one that changed the country as well as the fortunes of its people.

Welsh industry, even before the Industrial Revolution, was profiting from Britain's growing Empire in the West Indies and American Colonies.  This included participation with the African Slave Trade and the plantation economy, not only ownership of land and slaves as well as trading in human souls, but producing the items used to purchase them.

Later, the story of the Welsh born explorer Henry Morton Stanley and his role in the opening up of the African interior to Europeans is an equally complex and divisive one. 

But there are stories of empowerment, of inspiration too.

The stories of people like John Ystumllyn, the work of Enrico Stennett and the amazing link of the Congo Institute in Colwyn Bay to the life of Nelson Mandela and the Anti-Apartheid Movement in South Africa show more positive stories. 

Throughout these pages you wil find links to other pages where you can find organisations working in Black Welsh History, as well as sources of further information. This site is here to collect and highlight these stories and will grow in time to become a resource for people to research this subject, encounter amazing people and reveal the true story of Wales and its Black History.

If you think there are stories that need to be told here, or further information on the stories on this site, please feel free to get in contact through our feedback page.

Note: this is a not-for-profit site, run without funds on a voluntary basis.  Volunteer translators are always welcome!

If you are using content from this site, please credit the site in your work. Thank you!