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28/7/05
1:14 pm
Page 29
Drum: ARTWORKS 29
In The Spirit
Dr Augustus Casely-Hayford, Programme Director, Africa 05,
explains the reasoning behind this year long cultural celebration.
I
n 1743 William Ansah, a West African ancestor
of mine, stepped off a boat at a Thames dock
side and fulfilled a dream of a lifetime: walking
on London soil. William Ansah was not exceptional,
he was one of tens of thousands of immigrants from all
over the world who had come to the most exciting
city on earth to trade, to learn, to teach and to be.
And he was continuing a
tradition of West
Africans coming to
Britain that had,
even then, been
established for
hundreds of years. But the 18th Century was special.
Look at a Hogarth print and you get a sense of a
dynamic, chaotic city, brimming with new faces and
cosmopolitan confidence. There were at least 5,000
and perhaps as many as 10,000 black men, women
and children living in London at the time, similar
proportions to today, but there were also people from
all over the world – this was the London of Casanova,
Benjamin Franklin and Handel. It is completely
understandable that to make sense of all of this
energy, this chaos, the idea of London being the hub
of world ideas, that in that period The British Museum
was established as the first universal museum: »