At a special joint session of the IHR’s Parliaments, Politics and People and British History in the Long 18th Century seminars on Wednesday 3 December, Dr Helen Wilson will be discussing Black participation in British Politics between 1750 and 1850.
The free seminar takes place on 3 December 2025, between 5:30 and 7:30 p.m. It is fully ‘hybrid’, which means you can attend either in-person in London at the IHR, or online via Zoom. Details of how to join the discussion are available here.
On 3 December 2025 I will be discussing my doctoral thesis ‘Black & Political: Black Political Participation in Britain, 1750-1850’. My research re-examines the political landscape of the long eighteenth century through the lives of Black and mixed-heritage individuals active in British political culture.
Focusing on a self-built database of over 80 figures, my work combines archival research, digital methodology, and prosopography. It illuminates modes of political participation during the long eighteenth century, ranging from electoral voting and petitioning to informal political influence and community leadership.
My paper for the seminar will reflect on the methodological challenges and opportunities involved in recovering these individuals, many of whom left fragmentary archival traces. I will explore how sources such as poll books, wills, newspapers, personal correspondence and institutional records can be read together to reconstruct political agency beyond the traditional boundaries of office-holding and elite reform circles.
I will also explain how I constructed the profiles for several key individuals in my database and the methods I used to identify race and uncover instances of previously marginalised political activity. In doing so, I will discuss how implicit markers and passing references can be used to identify race, as well as the variety of historical sources that can be used to confirm political participation.
Importantly, my case studies illustrate both the limitations and possibilities of the historical archive for demonstrating the diverse forms of political life that have been overlooked in British historiography. In doing so, my work acknowledges the entangled histories of race, empire and politics at the heart of British political history.
HW
Helen’s seminar takes place on 3 December 2025, between 5:30 and 7:30 p.m. It is fully ‘hybrid’, which means you can attend either in-person in London at the IHR, or online via Zoom. Details of how to join the discussion are available here.
You can read more about Helen’s work in the following History of Parliament articles:
H. Wilson, ‘Profile of an 18th century Black Voter: George John Scipio Africanus’, History of Parliament (2022)
H. Wilson, ‘The Presence of Black Voters in the 18th and 19th Centuries’, History of Parliament (2022)
H. Wilson, ‘Catherine Despard (c.1755-1815): Wife, Mother, Radical advocate’, History of Parliament (2023)
