Britain's Black History

Learn about the growth in popularity of coffee and its connections with black history in Britain, in this lesson starter for use with KS3 pupils.
Historian Tony Warner shows how black history can be found in UK towns and cities. Here, he explains how in the 1700s, the busiest trading areas of most British cities had a high proportion of coffee houses.
The popularity of coffee coincided with one of the darkest episodes in Britain's history, and Tony shows how there was also an increasing demand for sugar and tobacco, with British economic power relying on Triangular Trade, which included slave trading.
Tony also explains how docklands, rivers or canals are often rich hunting grounds for evidence of connections with Africa and the Caribbean,