BAME people in British politics, 1750-1850: A story of unrecorded presence

自1807年《奴隶贸易法案》（Slave Trade Act）以来的200多年里，英国和英国政治的废奴史一直是一个得到很好研究的领域。由于废奴运动产生的环境，这一时期对英国政治史至关重要。在废奴运动之外，17、18世纪见证了西方思想和启蒙运动的发展。这一时期孕育了一些世界上最伟大的政治理论家和一些最有影响力的政治理论著作。这是一个欧洲正在经历广泛发展、国际殖民扩张、革命和战争的时期。在某种程度上，正是由于这种变化，关于自然权利、社会契约理论、普遍主义、财产所有权等新思想形成，并成为大多数西方政治制度的基础。在这一时期知识分子的广泛学术中，有一些思想家的工作被忽视了。其中一位思想家是奥托巴·库戈亚诺（Ottobah Cugoano，约1757年- 1791年后），他是18世纪生活在英国的非洲黑人奴隶，曾为艺术家理查德·考斯威（Richard Cosway）当仆人。在为科斯威服务期间，他在一位受过教育的非裔英国人、前奴隶奥劳达·埃奎亚诺的帮助下学会了阅读，写了《关于人类卑躬屈膝地向英国居民贩卖奴隶制和商业的邪恶和邪恶的思想与情感》，作者是非洲人奥托巴·库戈亚诺（这里位于《思想与情感》1787/1791年之后）。他们还在废奴组织“非洲之子”中合作。

The history of abolition in Britain and in British Politics is an area that has been well served over the 200 years since the Slave Trade Act 1807. This period is of such critical importance to British political history because of the environment that the cause for abolition arose from. Outside of the abolition movement, the 17th and 18th centuries see the development of western thought and the enlightenment. This period holds some of the world's greatest political theorists and some of the most influential works of political theory. This is a period when Europe is experiencing widespread development, international colonial expansion, revolution and wars. It is in part due to this flux that new ideas about natural rights, social contract theory, universalism, property ownership etc are formed and become the basis of most western political systems. Within the broad scholarship of the intellectuals of this period there are thinkers whose work has been overlooked. One of these thinkers is Ottobah Cugoano (c.1757 - after 1791), a Black African ex-slave, living in Britain in the 18th century who worked as a servant for the artist Richard Cosway. While in the service of Cosway he learned to read and with the help of Olaudah Equiano, a fellow educated Afro-Britain and former slave, wrote Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil and Wicked Traffic of the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species Humbly Submitted to the Inhabitants of Great Britain by Ottobah Cugoano a Native of Africa (here after Thoughts and Sentiments 1787/1791). They also worked collaboratively in the abolition group the Sons of Africa.