Episode 2: What care we for these barefooted rascals? - medieval colonization and race law Artwork

History: darkness and light

This podcast investigates episodes in history that highlight the worst and best of the human condition. History can tell us about past ideas and events, and in doing so it tells us something about the universal. When we hear voices from the past, that say what they experienced and how they understood what was happening, we also often get a sense of their character and personality. In the last three thousand years or so human beings haven’t evolved one bit. This means that as true as the old refrain of Leslie Hartley, that ‘the past is a foreign country: they do things differently there’ may be, the people you meet there usually have the same recognizable personalities and foibles we see in our friends, family, neighbours and acquaintances. Listen, learn and enjoy telling episodes, both evil and good, drawn from the richness of human history. (This podcast's artwork is based on a photo by Syed Hasan Mehdi from Pexels.com)

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History: darkness and light

Episode 2: What care we for these barefooted rascals? - medieval colonization and race law

March 04, 2021 • Season 1 • Episode 2

This episode uses a 1327 petition to the English king from Welshman Adda ap Einion and his English wife Agnes as a jumping-off point to tell the story of the system of anti-Welsh race law that was created when England colonized Wales. This system of legal discrimination would last 469 years, from 1067 until its abolition by Henry VIII in 1536.

For more on this topic, see the recent article by Teresa Phipps and Matthew Stevens, ‘ Towards a characterization of Race law in Medieval Wales’, The Journal of Legal History, number 41 (2020).

Research presented here has been supported by the Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange (Narodowa Agencja Wymiany Akademickiej), fellowship no. PPN/ULM/2019/1/00033 .

The music used in this episode is, in order of appearance:

I know his blood, by Vienna Ditto; Global Warming, by Kai Engel; Abiding, by Kelly Latimore; Harbor, by Kai Engel; Miss very much, by Kosta T; and, Funeral Battle, by Damiano Baldoni.

All are Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) and available from Freemusicarchive.org.