title: Brain–computer interface

text: In 2001, The OpenEEG Project was initiated by a group of DIY neuroscientists and engineers. The ModularEEG was the primary device created by the OpenEEG community; it was a 6-channel signal capture board that cost between $200 and $400 to make at home. The OpenEEG Project marked a significant moment in the emergence of DIY brain-computer interfacing.


title: Brain–computer interface

text: In 2010, the Frontier Nerds of NYU's ITP program published a thorough tutorial titled How To Hack Toy EEGs. The tutorial, which stirred the minds of many budding DIY BCI enthusiasts, demonstrated how to create a single channel at-home EEG with an Arduino and a Mattel Mindflex at a very reasonable price. This tutorial amplified the DIY BCI movement.


title: Brain–computer interface

text: Magnetoencephalography (MEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) have both been used successfully as non-invasive BCIs. In a widely reported experiment, fMRI allowed two users being scanned to play Pong in real-time by altering their haemodynamic response or brain blood flow through biofeedback techniques.


title: Brain–computer interface

text: fMRI measurements of haemodynamic responses in real time have also been used to control robot arms with a seven-second delay between thought and movement.


title: Brain–computer interface

text: In 2008 research developed in the Advanced Telecommunications Research (ATR) Computational Neuroscience Laboratories in Kyoto, Japan, allowed the scientists to reconstruct images directly from the brain and display them on a computer in black and white at a resolution of 10x10 pixels. The article announcing these achievements was the cover story of the journal Neuron of 10 December 2008.


title: Brain–computer interface

text: In 2011 researchers from UC Berkeley published a study reporting second-by-second reconstruction of videos watched by the study's subjects, from fMRI data. This was achieved by creating a statistical model relating visual patterns in videos shown to the subjects, to the brain activity caused by watching the videos. This model was then used to look up the 100 one-second video segments, in a database of 18 million seconds of random YouTube videos, whose visual patterns most closely matched the brain activity recorded when subjects watched a new video. These 100 one-second video extracts were then combined into a mashed-up image that resembled the video being watched.


title: Brain–computer interface

text: Motor imagery involves the imagination of the movement of various body parts resulting in sensorimotor cortex activation, which modulates sensorimotor oscillations in the EEG. This can be detected by the BCI to infer a user's intent. Motor imagery typically requires a number of sessions of training before acceptable control of the BCI is acquired. These training sessions may take a number of hours over several days before users can consistently employ the technique with acceptable levels of precision. Regardless of the duration of the training session, users are unable to master the control scheme. This results in very slow pace of the gameplay. Advanced machine learning methods were recently developed to compute a subject-specific model for detecting the performance of motor imagery. The top performing algorithm from BCI Competition IV dataset 2 for motor imagery is the Filter Bank Common Spatial Pattern, developed by Ang et al. from A*STAR, Singapore.


title: Brain–computer interface

text: Biofeedback is used to monitor a subject's mental relaxation. In some cases, biofeedback does not monitor electroencephalography (EEG), but instead bodily parameters such as electromyography (EMG), galvanic skin resistance (GSR), and heart rate variability (HRV). Many biofeedback systems are used to treat certain disorders such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), sleep problems in children, teeth grinding, and chronic pain. EEG biofeedback systems typically monitor four different bands (theta: 4–7 Hz, alpha:8–12 Hz, SMR: 12–15 Hz, beta: 15–18 Hz) and challenge the subject to control them. Passive BCI involves using BCI to enrich human–machine interaction with implicit information on the actual user's state, for example, simulations to detect when users intend to push brakes during an emergency car stopping procedure. Game developers using passive BCIs need to acknowledge that through repetition of game levels the user's cognitive state will change or adapt. Within the first play


title: Brain–computer interface

text: of a level, the user will react to things differently from during the second play: for example, the user will be less surprised at an event in the game if they are expecting it.


title: Brain–computer interface

text: A VEP is an electrical potential recorded after a subject is presented with a type of visual stimuli. There are several types of VEPs.


title: Brain–computer interface

text: Steady-state visually evoked potentials (SSVEPs) use potentials generated by exciting the retina, using visual stimuli modulated at certain frequencies. SSVEP's stimuli are often formed from alternating checkerboard patterns and at times simply use flashing images. The frequency of the phase reversal of the stimulus used can be clearly distinguished in the spectrum of an EEG; this makes detection of SSVEP stimuli relatively easy. SSVEP has proved to be successful within many BCI systems. This is due to several factors, the signal elicited is measurable in as large a population as the transient VEP and blink movement and electrocardiographic artefacts do not affect the frequencies monitored. In addition, the SSVEP signal is exceptionally robust; the topographic organization of the primary visual cortex is such that a broader area obtains afferents from the central or fovial region of the visual field. SSVEP does have several problems however. As SSVEPs use flashing stimuli to infer a user's intent, the user must gaze at one of the flashing or iterating symbols in order to interact with the system. It is, therefore, likely that the symbols could become irritating and uncomfortable to use during longer play sessions, which can often last more than an hour which may not be an ideal gameplay.


title: Brain–computer interface

text: Another type of VEP used with applications is the P300 potential. The P300 event-related potential is a positive peak in the EEG that occurs at roughly 300 ms after the appearance of a target stimulus (a stimulus for which the user is waiting or seeking) or oddball stimuli. The P300 amplitude decreases as the target stimuli and the ignored stimuli grow more similar.The P300 is thought to be related to a higher level attention process or an orienting response using P300 as a control scheme has the advantage of the participant only having to attend limited training sessions. The first application to use the P300 model was the P300 matrix. Within this system, a subject would choose a letter from a grid of 6 by 6 letters and numbers. The rows and columns of the grid flashed sequentially and every time the selected "choice letter" was illuminated the user's P300 was (potentially) elicited. However, the communication process, at approximately 17 characters per minute, was quite slow. The P300 is a BCI that offers a discrete selection rather than a continuous control mechanism. The advantage of P300 use within games is that the player does not have to teach himself/herself how to use a completely new control system and so only has to undertake short training instances, to learn the gameplay mechanics and basic use of the BCI paradigm.


title: Brain–computer interface

text: In a $6.3 million US Army initiative to invent devices for telepathic communication, Gerwin Schalk, underwritten in a $2.2 million grant, found the use of ECoG signals can discriminate the vowels and consonants embedded in spoken and imagined words, shedding light on the distinct mechanisms associated with production of vowels and consonants, and could provide the basis for brain-based communication using imagined speech.


title: Brain–computer interface

text: In 2002 Kevin Warwick had an array of 100 electrodes fired into his nervous system in order to link his nervous system into the Internet to investigate enhancement possibilities. With this in place Warwick successfully carried out a series of experiments. With electrodes also implanted into his wife's nervous system, they conducted the first direct electronic communication experiment between the nervous systems of two humans.<ref name="doi10.1001/archneur.60.10.1369|noedit"></ref>


title: Brain–computer interface

text: Another group of researchers was able to achieve conscious brain-to-brain communication between two people separated by a distance using non-invasive technology that was in contact with the scalp of the participants. The words were encoded by binary streams using the sequences of 0's and 1's by the imaginary motor input of the person "emitting" the information. As the result of this experiment, pseudo-random bits of the information carried encoded words "hola" ("hi" in Spanish) and "ciao" ("goodbye" in Italian) and were transmitted mind-to-mind between humans separated by a distance, with blocked motor and sensory systems, which has low to no probability of this happening by chance.Conscious Brain-to-Brain Communication in Humans Using Non-Invasive Technologies


title: Brain–computer interface

text: In the 1960s a researcher was successful after some training in using EEG to create Morse code using their brain alpha waves. Research funded by the US army is being conducted with the goal of allowing users to compose a message in their head, then transfer that message with just the power of thought to a particular individual. On 27 February 2013 the group with Miguel Nicolelis at Duke University and IINN-ELS successfully connected the brains of two rats with electronic interfaces that allowed them to directly share information, in the first-ever direct brain-to-brain interface.


title: Brain–computer interface

text: Researchers have built devices to interface with neural cells and entire neural networks in cultures outside animals. As well as furthering research on animal implantable devices, experiments on cultured neural tissue have focused on building problem-solving networks, constructing basic computers and manipulating robotic devices. Research into techniques for stimulating and recording from individual neurons grown on semiconductor chips is sometimes referred to as neuroelectronics or neurochips.


title: Brain–computer interface

text: Development of the first working neurochip was claimed by a Caltech team led by Jerome Pine and Michael Maher in 1997. The Caltech chip had room for 16 neurons.


title: Brain–computer interface

text: In 2003 a team led by Theodore Berger, at the University of Southern California, started work on a neurochip designed to function as an artificial or prosthetic hippocampus. The neurochip was designed to function in rat brains and was intended as a prototype for the eventual development of higher-brain prosthesis. The hippocampus was chosen because it is thought to be the most ordered and structured part of the brain and is the most studied area. Its function is to encode experiences for storage as long-term memories elsewhere in the brain.


title: Brain–computer interface

text: In 2004 Thomas DeMarse at the University of Florida used a culture of 25,000 neurons taken from a rat's brain to fly a F-22 fighter jet aircraft simulator. After collection, the cortical neurons were cultured in a petri dish and rapidly began to reconnect themselves to form a living neural network. The cells were arranged over a grid of 60 electrodes and used to control the pitch and yaw functions of the simulator. The study's focus was on understanding how the human brain performs and learns computational tasks at a cellular level.


title: Brain–computer interface

text: The idea of combining/integrating brain signals from multiple individuals was introduced at Humanity+ @Caltech, in December 2010, by a Caltech researcher at JPL, Adrian Stoica; Stoica referred to the concept as multi-brain aggregation. A provisional patent application was filed on January 19, 2011, with the non-provisional patent following one year later. In May 2011, Yijun Wang and Tzyy-Ping Jung published, ""A Collaborative Brain-Computer Interface for Improving Human Performance"", and in January 2012 Miguel Eckstein published, ""Neural decoding of collective wisdom with multi-brain computing"". Stoica's first paper on the topic appeared in 2012, after the publication of his patent application. Given the timing of the publications between the patent and papers, Stoica, Wang & Jung, and Eckstein independently pioneered the concept, and are all considered as founders of the field. Later, Stoica would collaborate with University of Essex researchers, Riccardo Poli and Caterina Cinel. The work was continued by Poli and Cinel, and their students: Ana Matran-Fernandez, Davide Valeriani, and Saugat Bhattacharyya.


title: Brain–computer interface

text: In their current form, most BCIs are far removed from the ethical issues considered above. They are actually similar to corrective therapies in function. Clausen stated in 2009 that "BCIs pose ethical challenges, but these are conceptually similar to those that bioethicists have addressed for other realms of therapy". Moreover, he suggests that bioethics is well-prepared to deal with the issues that arise with BCI technologies. Haselager and colleagues pointed out that expectations of BCI efficacy and value play a great role in ethical analysis and the way BCI scientists should approach media. Furthermore, standard protocols can be implemented to ensure ethically sound informed-consent procedures with locked-in patients.


title: Brain–computer interface

text: The case of BCIs today has parallels in medicine, as will its evolution. Similar to how pharmaceutical science began as a balance for impairments and is now used to increase focus and reduce need for sleep, BCIs will likely transform gradually from therapies to enhancements. Efforts are made inside the BCI community to create consensus on ethical guidelines for BCI research, development and dissemination. As innovation continues, ensuring equitable access to BCIs will be crucial, failing which generational inequalities can arise which can adversely affect the right to human flourishing.


title: Brain–computer interface

text: The ethical considerations of BCIs are essential to the development of future implanted devices. End-users, ethicists, researchers, funding agencies, physicians, corporations, and all others involved in BCI use should consider the anticipated, and unanticipated, changes that BCIs will have on human autonomy, identity, privacy, and more.


title: Brain–computer interface

text: Recently a number of companies have scaled back medical grade EEG technology to create inexpensive BCIs for research as well as entertainment purposes. For example, toys such as the NeuroSky and Mattel MindFlex have seen some commercial success.


title: Brain–computer interface

text: A consortium consisting of 12 European partners has completed a roadmap to support the European Commission in their funding decisions for the new framework program Horizon 2020. The project, which was funded by the European Commission, started in November 2013 and published a roadmap in April 2015. A 2015 publication led by Dr. Clemens Brunner describes some of the analyses and achievements of this project, as well as the emerging Brain-Computer Interface Society. For example, this article reviewed work within this project that further defined BCIs and applications, explored recent trends, discussed ethical issues, and evaluated different directions for new BCIs.


title: Brain–computer interface

text: Other recent publications too have explored future BCI directions for new groups of disabled users (e.g.,)


title: Brain–computer interface

text: Some persons have a disorder of consciousness (DOC). This state is defined to include persons with coma, as well as persons in a vegetative state (VS) or minimally conscious state (MCS). New BCI research seeks to help persons with DOC in different ways. A key initial goal is to identify patients who are able to perform basic cognitive tasks, which would of course lead to a change in their diagnosis. That is, some persons who are diagnosed with DOC may in fact be able to process information and make important life decisions (such as whether to seek therapy, where to live, and their views on end-of-life decisions regarding them). Some persons who are diagnosed with DOC die as a result of end-of-life decisions, which may be made by family members who sincerely feel this is in the patient's best interests. Given the new prospect of allowing these patients to provide their views on this decision, there would seem to be a strong ethical pressure to develop this research direction to guarantee that DOC patients are given an opportunity to decide whether they want to live.


title: Brain–computer interface

text: These and other articles describe new challenges and solutions to use BCI technology to help persons with DOC. One major challenge is that these patients cannot use BCIs based on vision. Hence, new tools rely on auditory and/or vibrotactile stimuli. Patients may wear headphones and/or vibrotactile stimulators placed on the wrists, neck, leg, and/or other locations. Another challenge is that patients may fade in and out of consciousness, and can only communicate at certain times. This may indeed be a cause of mistaken diagnosis. Some patients may only be able to respond to physicians' requests during a few hours per day (which might not be predictable ahead of time) and thus may have been unresponsive during diagnosis. Therefore, new methods rely on tools that are easy to use in field settings, even without expert help, so family members and other persons without any medical or technical background can still use them. This reduces the cost, time, need for expertise, and other burdens with DOC assessment. Automated tools can ask simple questions that patients can easily answer, such as "Is your father named George?" or "Were you born in the USA?" Automated instructions inform patients that they may convey yes or no by (for example) focusing their attention on stimuli on the right vs. left wrist. This focused attention produces reliable changes in EEG patterns that can help determine that the patient is able to communicate. The results could be presented to physicians and therapists, which could lead to a revised diagnosis and therapy. In addition, these patients could then be provided with BCI-based communication tools that could help them convey basic needs, adjust bed position and HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning), and otherwise empower them to make major life decisions and communicate.


title: Brain–computer interface

text: People may lose some of their ability to move due to many causes, such as stroke or injury. Research in recent years has demonstrated the utility of EEG-based BCI systems in aiding motor recovery and neurorehabilitation in patients who have had a stroke. Several groups have explored systems and methods for motor recovery that include BCIs. In this approach, a BCI measures motor activity while the patient imagines or attempts movements as directed by a therapist. The BCI may provide two benefits: (1) if the BCI indicates that a patient is not imagining a movement correctly (non-compliance), then the BCI could inform the patient and therapist; and (2) rewarding feedback such as functional stimulation or the movement of a virtual avatar also depends on the patient's correct movement imagery.


title: Brain–computer interface

text: So far, BCIs for motor recovery have relied on the EEG to measure the patient's motor imagery. However, studies have also used fMRI to study different changes in the brain as persons undergo BCI-based stroke rehab training. Imaging studies combined with EEG-based BCI systems hold promise for investigating neuroplasticity during motor recovery post-stroke. Future systems might include the fMRI and other measures for real-time control, such as functional near-infrared, probably in tandem with EEGs. Non-invasive brain stimulation has also been explored in combination with BCIs for motor recovery. In 2016, scientists out of the University of Melbourne published preclinical proof-of-concept data related to a potential brain-computer interface technology platform being developed for patients with paralysis to facilitate control of external devices such as robotic limbs, computers and exoskeletons by translating brain activity. Clinical trials are currently underway.


title: Brain–computer interface

text: Each year, about 400,000 people undergo brain mapping during neurosurgery. This procedure is often required for people with tumors or epilepsy that do not respond to medication. During this procedure, electrodes are placed on the brain to precisely identify the locations of structures and functional areas. Patients may be awake during neurosurgery and asked to perform certain tasks, such as moving fingers or repeating words. This is necessary so that surgeons can remove only the desired tissue while sparing other regions, such as critical movement or language regions. Removing too much brain tissue can cause permanent damage, while removing too little tissue can leave the underlying condition untreated and require additional neurosurgery. Thus, there is a strong need to improve both methods and systems to map the brain as effectively as possible.


title: Brain–computer interface

text: In several recent publications, BCI research experts and medical doctors have collaborated to explore new ways to use BCI technology to improve neurosurgical mapping. This work focuses largely on high gamma activity, which is difficult to detect with non-invasive means. Results have led to improved methods for identifying key areas for movement, language, and other functions. A recent article addressed advances in functional brain mapping and summarizes a workshop.


title: Brain–computer interface

text: Flexible electronics are polymers or other flexible materials (e.g. silk, pentacene, PDMS, Parylene, polyimide) that are printed with circuitry; the flexible nature of the organic background materials allowing the electronics created to bend, and the fabrication techniques used to create these devices resembles those used to create integrated circuits and microelectromechanical systems (MEMS). Flexible electronics were first developed in the 1960s and 1970s, but research interest increased in the mid-2000s.


title: Brain–computer interface

text: Flexible neural interfaces have been extensively tested in recent years in an effort to minimize brain tissue trauma related to mechanical mismatch between electrode and tissue. Minimizing tissue trauma could, in theory, extend the lifespan of BCIs relying on flexible electrode-tissue interfaces.


title: Brain–computer interface

text: Neural dust is a term used to refer to millimeter-sized devices operated as wirelessly powered nerve sensors that were proposed in a 2011 paper from the University of California, Berkeley Wireless Research Center, which described both the challenges and outstanding benefits of creating a long lasting wireless BCI. In one proposed model of the neural dust sensor, the transistor model allowed for a method of separating between local field potentials and action potential "spikes", which would allow for a greatly diversified wealth of data acquirable from the recordings.


title: History of the Jews in Ukraine

text: The history of the Jews in Ukraine dates back over a thousand years; Jewish communities have existed in the territory of Ukraine from the time of the Kievan Rus' (late 9th to mid-13th century). Some of the most important Jewish religious and cultural movements, from Hasidism to Zionism, rose either fully or to an extensive degree in the territory of modern Ukraine. According to the World Jewish Congress, the Jewish community in Ukraine constitutes the third-largest in Europe and the fifth-largest in the world.


title: History of the Jews in Ukraine

text: Whilst at times it flourished, at other times the Jewish community faced periods of persecution and antisemitic discrimination. In the Ukrainian People's Republic (1917-1920), Yiddish was declared a state language, along with Ukrainian and Russian. At that time, the Jewish National Union was created and the community was granted an autonomous status. Yiddish was used on Ukrainian currency in this same period, between 1917 and 1920. Before World War II, slightly less than one-third of Ukraine's urban population consisted of Jews; they were the largest national minority in Ukraine. Ukrainian Jews consist of a number of sub-groups with distinct characteristics, including Ashkenazi Jews, Mountain Jews, Bukharan Jews, Crimean Karaites, Krymchak Jews, and Georgian Jews.


title: History of the Jews in Ukraine

text: In the westernmost area of Ukraine, Jews were mentioned for the first time in records in 1030. During the Khmelnytsky Uprising between 1648 and 1657, an army of Cossacks massacred and took into captivity large numbers of Jews, Roman Catholics and Uniate Christians. Recent estimates state that 15,000-30,000 Jews were killed or taken captive, and that 300 Jewish communities were completely destroyed.


title: History of the Jews in Ukraine

text: During the 1821 anti-Jewish riots in Odesa following the death of the Greek Orthodox patriarch in Constantinople, 14 Jews were killed. Some sources claim this episode as the first pogrom. At the start of 20th century, anti-Jewish pogroms continued to occur, leading to large-scale emigration. When Ukraine was part of the Russian Empire, antisemitic attitudes were expressed in numerous blood libel cases between 1911 and 1913. In 1915, the Russian imperial government expelled thousands of Jews from the Empire's border areas.


title: History of the Jews in Ukraine

text: During the conflicts of the Russian Revolution and the ensuing Russian Civil War, an estimated 31,071 Jews were killed in pogroms between 1918 and 1920. During the establishment of the Ukrainian People's Republic (1917–21), pogroms continued to be perpetrated on Ukrainian territory. In Ukraine, the number of civilian Jews killed by Petliura's forces during the period was estimated at between 35,000 and 50,000 to 100,000


title: History of the Jews in Ukraine

text: Pogroms erupted in January 1919 in the northwest province of Volhynia and spread to many other regions of Ukraine. Massive pogroms continued until 1921. The actions of the Soviet government by 1927 led to a growing antisemitism in the area.


title: History of the Jews in Ukraine

text: Total civilian losses during World War II and the German occupation of Ukraine are estimated at seven million. More than one million Soviet Jews, of them around 225,000 in Belarus, were shot and killed by the Einsatzgruppen and by their many local Ukrainian supporters. Most of them were killed in Ukraine because most pre-WWII Soviet Jews lived in the Pale of Settlement, of which Ukraine was the biggest part. The major massacres against Jews occurred mainly in the first phase of the occupation, although they continued until the return of the Red Army. In 1959 Ukraine had 840,000 Jews, a decrease of almost 70% from 1941 totals (within Ukraine's current borders). Ukraine's Jewish population continued to decline significantly during the Cold War. In 1989, Ukraine's Jewish population was only slightly more than half of what it was thirty years earlier (in 1959). During and after the collapse of Communism in the 1990s, the majority of the Jews who remained in Ukraine in 1989 left the country and moved abroad (mostly to Israel). Antisemitic graffiti and violence against Jews are still problems in Ukraine.


title: History of the Jews in Ukraine

text: By the 11th century, Byzantine Jews of Constantinople had familial, cultural, and theological ties with the Jews of Kyiv. For instance, some 11th-century Jews from Kievan Rus participated in an anti-Karaite assembly held in either Thessaloniki or Constantinople. One of the three Kyivan city gates in the times of Yaroslav the Wise was called Zhydovski (Judaic).


title: History of the Jews in Ukraine

text: In Halychyna ("Galicia"), the westernmost area of Ukraine, Jews were mentioned for the first time in 1030. From the second part of the 14th century, they were subjects of the Polish kings and magnates. The Jewish population of Galicia and Bukovina, part of Austria-Hungary, was extremely large; it made up 5% of the global Jewish population.


title: History of the Jews in Ukraine

text: From the founding of the Kingdom of Poland in the 10th century through the creation of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1569, Poland was considered one of the most diverse countries in Europe. It became home to one of the world's largest and most vibrant Jewish communities. The Jewish community in the territory of Ukraine-proper during the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth became one of the largest and most important ethnic minority groups in Ukraine.


title: History of the Jews in Ukraine

text: The Ukrainian Cossack Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky led a Cossack uprising, known as Khmelnytsky Uprising (1648–1657), under the premise that the Poles had sold them as slaves "into the hands of the accursed Jews." At that time it is estimated that the Jewish population in Ukraine numbered 51,325. An army of Cossacks massacred and took into captivity numerous Jews, Roman Catholics and Uniates in 1648–49.


title: History of the Jews in Ukraine

text: Recent estimates range from fifteen thousand to thirty thousand Jews killed or taken captive, and 300 Jewish communities totally destroyed. 3,000-6,000 Jews were killed by Cossacks in Nemirov in May 1648 and 1,500 in Tulczyn in July 1648.


title: History of the Jews in Ukraine

text: The Cossack Uprising and the Deluge left a deep and lasting impression on the Jewish social and spiritual life.


title: History of the Jews in Ukraine

text: In this time of mysticism and overly formal rabbinism came the teachings of Israel ben Eliezer, known as the "Baal Shem Tov", or "BeShT", (1698–1760), which had a profound effect on the Jews of Eastern Europe. His disciples taught and encouraged a new fervent brand of Judaism, related to "Kabbalah", known as Hasidism. The rise of Hasidism had a great influence on the rise of Haredi Judaism, with a continuous influence through its many Hasidic dynasties.


title: History of the Jews in Ukraine

text: A radically different movement was started by Jacob Frank in the middle of the 18th century. Frank's teachings were extremely unorthodox (such as purification through transgression, as well as adoption of elements of Christianity), and he was excommunicated along with his numerous followers. They eventually converted to Catholicism.


title: History of the Jews in Ukraine

text: The traditional measures of keeping the Russian Empire free of Jews were hindered when the main territory of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was annexed during the partitions of Poland. During the second (1793) and the third (1795) partitions, large populations of Jews were taken over by the Russian Empire, and Catherine the Great established the Pale of Settlement that included Congress Poland and Crimea.


title: History of the Jews in Ukraine

text: During the 1821 anti-Jewish riots in Odessa after the death of the Greek Orthodox patriarch in Constantinople, 14 Jews were killed. Some sources claim this episode as the first pogrom, while according to others (such as the "Jewish Encyclopedia", 1911 ed.) say the first pogrom was the 1859 riot in Odessa. The term became common after a wave of large-scale anti-Jewish violence swept southern Russian Empire, including Ukraine, between 1881 and 1884, after Jews were blamed for the assassination of Alexander II.


title: History of the Jews in Ukraine

text: In May 1882, Alexander III of Russia introduced temporary regulations called "May Laws" that stayed in effect for more than thirty years, until 1917. Systematic policies of discrimination, strict quotas on the number of Jews allowed to obtain education and professions caused widespread poverty and mass emigration. In 1886, an edict of Expulsion was applied to the Jews of Kyiv. In 1893–1894, some areas of Crimea were cut out of the Pale.


title: History of the Jews in Ukraine

text: When Alexander III died in Crimea on 20 October 1894, according to Simon Dubnow: "as the body of the deceased was carried by railway to St. Petersburg, the same rails were carrying the Jewish exiles from Yalta to the Pale. The reign of Alexander III ended symbolically. It began with pogroms and concluded with expulsions."


title: History of the Jews in Ukraine

text: Odessa became the home of a large Jewish community during the 19th century, and by 1897 Jews were estimated to account for some 37% of the population.


title: History of the Jews in Ukraine

text: Persons of Jewish origin were over-represented in the Russian revolutionaries leadership. However, most of them were hostile to traditional Jewish culture and Jewish political parties, and were loyal to the Communist Party's atheism and proletarian internationalism, and committed to stamping out any sign of "Jewish cultural particularism".


title: History of the Jews in Ukraine

text: Counter-revolutionary groups, including the Black Hundreds, opposed the Revolution with violent attacks on socialists and pogroms against Jews. There was also a backlash from the conservative elements of society, notably in spasmodic anti-Jewish attacks – around five hundred were killed in a single day in Odessa. Nicholas II of Russia himself claimed that 90% of revolutionaries were Jews.


title: History of the Jews in Ukraine

text: At the start of 20th century, anti-Jewish pogroms continued to occur in cities and towns across the Russian Empire such as Kishinev, Kyiv, Odessa, and many others. Numerous Jewish self-defense groups were organized to prevent the outbreak of pogroms among which the most notorious one was under the leadership of Mishka Yaponchik in Odessa.


title: History of the Jews in Ukraine

text: In 1905, a series of pogroms erupted at the same time as the Revolution against the government of Nicholas II. The chief organizers of the pogroms were the members of the Union of the Russian People (commonly known as the "Black Hundreds").


title: History of the Jews in Ukraine

text: From 1911 to 1913, the antisemitic tenor of the period was characterized by a number of blood libel cases (accusations of Jews murdering Christians for ritual purposes). One of the most famous was the two-year trial of Menahem Mendel Beilis, who was charged with the murder of a Christian boy (Lowe 1993, 284–90). The trial was showcased by the authorities to illustrate the perfidy of the Jewish population.


title: History of the Jews in Ukraine

text: From March to May 1915, in the face of the German army, the government expelled thousands of Jews from the Empire's border areas, which coincide with the Pale of Settlement.


title: History of the Jews in Ukraine

text: During the 1917 Russian Revolution and the ensuing Russian Civil War, an estimated 70,000 to 250,000 Jewish civilians were killed in the atrocities throughout the former Russian Empire in this period. In the territories of modern Ukraine an estimated 31,071 died in 1918–1920.


title: History of the Jews in Ukraine

text: During the establishment of the Ukrainian People's Republic (1917–1921), pogroms continued to be perpetrated on Ukrainian territory. In the Ukrainian People's Republic, Yiddish was an official language, while all government posts and institutions had Jewish members. A Ministry for Jewish Affairs was established (it was the first modern state to do so). All rights of Jewish culture were guaranteed. All Jewish parties abstained or voted against the Tsentralna Rada's Fourth Universal of 25 January 1918 which was aimed at breaking ties with Bolshevik Russia and proclaiming a sovereign Ukrainian state, since all Jewish parties were strongly against Ukrainian independence.


title: History of the Jews in Ukraine

text: In Ukraine alone, the number of civilian Jews killed during the period was estimated to be between 35,000 and 50,000. Archives declassified after 1991 provide evidence of a higher number; in the period from 1918 to 1921, "according to incomplete data, at least 100,000 Jews were killed in Ukraine in the pogroms." The Ukrainian People's Republic did issue orders condemning pogroms and attempted to investigate them. But it lacked authority to stop violence. In the last months of its existence it lacked any power to create social stability.


title: History of the Jews in Ukraine

text: Among the prominent Ukrainian statesmen of this period were Moisei Rafes, Pinkhas Krasny, Abram Revutsky, Moishe Zilberfarb, and many others. (see General Secretariat of Ukraine) The autonomy of Ukraine was openly greeted by the Ukrainian Jewish Volodymyr Zhabotinsky.


title: History of the Jews in Ukraine

text: Between April and December 1918 the Ukrainian People's Republic was non-existent and overthrown by the Ukrainian State of Pavlo Skoropadsky who ended the experiment in Jewish autonomy.


title: History of the Jews in Ukraine

text: The February 1917 revolution brought a liberal Provisional Government to power in the Russian Empire. On 21 March/3 April, the government removed all "discrimination based upon ethnic religious or social grounds". The Pale was officially abolished. The removal of the restrictions on Jews' geographical mobility and educational opportunities led to a migration to the country's major cities.


title: History of the Jews in Ukraine

text: One week after the 25 October / 7 November 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, the new government proclaimed the "Declaration of the Rights of the Peoples [Nations] of Russia," promising all nationalities the rights of equality, self-determination and secession. Jews were not specifically mentioned in the declaration, reflecting Lenin's view that Jews did not constitute a nation.


title: History of the Jews in Ukraine

text: In 1918, the RSFSR Council of Ministers issued a decree entitled "On the Separation of Church from State and School from Church", depriving religious communities of the status of juridical persons, the right to own property and the right to enter into contracts. The decree nationalized the property of religious communities and banned their assessment of religious tuition. As a result, religion could be taught or studied only in private.


title: History of the Jews in Ukraine

text: On 1 February 1918 the Commissariat for Jewish National Affairs was established as a subsection of the Commissariat for Nationality Affairs. It was mandated to establish the "dictatorship of the proletariat in the Jewish streets" and attract the Jewish masses to the regime while advising local and central institutions on Jewish issues. The Commissariat was also expected to fight the influence of Zionist and Jewish-Socialist Parties. On 27 July 1918 the Council of People's Commissars issued a decree stating that antisemitism is "fatal to the cause of the ... revolution". Pogroms were officially outlawed. On 20 October 1918 the Jewish section of the CPSU (Yevsektsia) was established for the Party's Jewish members; its goals were similar to those of the Jewish Commissariat.


title: History of the Jews in Ukraine

text: In contrast with the Bolshevik government's official policy of equality among citizens, antisemitism remained deeply entrenched in the political and social ideologies of the tsarist counterrevolutionaries, especially among paramilitary groups such as the Black Hundreds. These far-right militias espoused a doctrine of Christian monarchism that frequently manifested itself in the incitement and organization of pogroms against Russian Jews. In fact, the official slogan of the Black Hundreds was "Bei Zhidov," meaning 'Beat the Jews.' Thus, during the Russian Civil War that followed the 1917 Revolution, the Jews became a crucial site of the conflict between the revolutionary Reds and the counterrevolutionary Whites, particularly in the contested territory of Ukraine. The Bolsheviks' official opposition to antisemitism -- coupled with the prominence of Jews such as Leon Trotsky within the Bolshevik ranks -- allowed the Christian nationalist movements of both the White Army and the emergent Ukrainian National Republic to link Ukrainian Jews to the despised communism. These connections, combined with the well-established cultural tradition of antisemitism among Russian peasantry, provided ample justification for the Whites to inflict extreme violence upon Ukraine's Jewish population. Between 1918 and 1921, almost all of the approximately 2,000 pogroms carried out in Ukraine were organized by White Army forces. During these pogroms, several eyewitnesses reported hearing counterrevolutionary milita members expound slogans such as, "We beat the Yids, we beat the Commune", and "This is the answer to the Bolsheviks for the Red Terror." Recent studies hold that about 30,000 Jews were killed directly in these pogroms, while another 150,000 died from wounds sustained during the violence.


title: History of the Jews in Ukraine

text: The pogroms which erupted in January 1919 in the northwest province of Volhynia spread during February and March to the cities, towns, and villages of many other regions of Ukraine. After Sarny it was the turn of Ovruch, northwest of Kyiv. In Tetiev on 25 March, approximately 4,000 Jews were murdered, half in a synagogue set ablaze by Cossack troops under Colonels Kurovsky, Cherkowsy, and Shliatoshenko. Then Vashilkov (6 and 7 April). In Dubovo (17 June) 800 Jews were decapitated in assembly-line fashion. According to David A. Chapin, the town of Proskurov (now Khmelnitsky), near the city of Sudilkov, "was the site of the worst atrocity committed against Jews this century before the Nazis." Massive pogroms continued until 1921.


title: History of the Jews in Ukraine

text: On 15 February 1919, during the Ukrainian-Soviet war, Otaman Ivan Semesenko initiated a pogrom Proskurov in which many Jews were massacred on Shabbat (parashah Tesaveh) from three p.m. until next Sunday (?Saturday). Semesenko claimed that the pogrom was in retaliation for a previous Bolshevik uprising, which he believed was led by Jews.


title: History of the Jews in Ukraine

text: According to the pinqasim record books those murdered in the pogrom included 390 men, 309 women and 76 children. The number of wounded exceeded 500. Two weeks later Order 131 was published in the central newspaper by the head of Directorate of Ukraine. In it Symon Petliura denounced such actions and eventually executed Otaman Semesenko by firing-squad in November 1919. Semesenko's brigade was disarmed and dissolved. This event is especially remarkable for being used to justify Sholem Schwarzbard's assassination of the Ukrainian leader in 1926. Although Petliura's direct involvement was never proven, Schwartzbard was acquitted in light of revenge. The series of Jewish pogroms in various places around Ukraine culminated in the Kyiv pogroms of 1919 between June and October of that year.


title: History of the Jews in Ukraine

text: In July 1919, the Central Jewish Commissariat dissolved the kehillot (Jewish Communal Councils). The kehillot had provided a number of social services to the Jewish community.


title: History of the Jews in Ukraine

text: From 1919 to 1920, Jewish parties and Zionist organizations were driven underground as the Communist government sought to abolish all potential opposition. The Yevsektsiya Jewish section of the Soviet Communist party was at the forefront of the anti-religious campaigns of the 1920s that led to the closing of religious institutions, the break-up of religious communities and the further restriction of access to religious education. To that end a series of "community trials" against the Jewish religion were held. The last known such trial, on the subject of circumcision, was held in 1928 in Kharkiv. At the same time, the body also worked to establish a secular identity for the Jewish community.


title: History of the Jews in Ukraine

text: In 1921 many Jews in the newly formed USSR emigrated to Poland, as they were entitled by a peace treaty in Riga to choose the country they preferred. Several hundred thousand joined the already numerous Jewish minority of the Polish Second Republic.


title: History of the Jews in Ukraine

text: On 31 January 1924 the Commissariat for Nationalities' Affairs was disbanded. On 29 August 1924 an official agency for Jewish resettlement, the Commission for the Settlement of Jewish Toilers on the Land (KOMZET), was established. KOMZET studied, managed and funded projects for Jewish resettlement in rural areas. A public organization, the Society for the Agricultural Organization of Working Class Jews in the USSR (OZET), was created in January 1925 to help recruit colonists and support the colonization work of KOMZET. For the first few years the government encouraged Jewish settlements, particularly in Ukraine. Support for the project dwindled throughout the next decade. In 1938 OZET was disbanded, following years of declining activity. The Soviets set up three Jewish national raions in Ukraine as well as two in the Crimea – national raions occupied the 3rd level of the soviet system, but were all disbanded by the end of World War II.


title: History of the Jews in Ukraine

text: The cities with the largest populations of Jews in 1926 were Odessa, 154,000 or 36.5% of the total population; Kyiv, 140,500 or 27.3%; Kharkiv, 81,500 or 19.5%; and Dnipropetrovsk, 62,000 or 26.7%. In 1931 Lviv's Jewish population numbered 98,000 or 31.9%, and in Chernivtsi, 42,600 or 37.9%.


title: History of the Jews in Ukraine

text: On 8 April 1929 the new Law on Religious Associations codified all previous religious legislation. All meetings of religious associations were to have their agenda approved in advance; lists of members of religious associations had to be provided to the authorities. In 1930 the Yevsektsia was dissolved, and there was now no central Soviet-Jewish organization. Although the body had served to undermine Jewish religious life, its dissolution led to the disintegration of Jewish secular life as well; Jewish cultural and educational organizations gradually disappeared.


title: History of the Jews in Ukraine

text: When the Soviet government reintroduced the use of internal passports in 1933, "Jewish" was considered an ethnicity for these purposes.


title: History of the Jews in Ukraine

text: The Soviet famine of 1932–1933 affected the Jewish population, and led to a migration from the shtetls to the overcrowded cities.


title: History of the Jews in Ukraine

text: As the Soviet government annexed territory from Poland, Romania (both would be incorporated into the Ukrainian SSR after World War II) and the Baltic states, roughly two million Jews became Soviet citizens. Restrictions on Jews that had existed in the formerly independent countries were now lifted. At the same time, Jewish organizations in the newly acquired territories were shut down and their leaders were arrested and exiled. Approximately 250,000 Jews escaped or were evacuated from the annexed territories to the Soviet interior prior to the Nazi invasion.


title: History of the Jews in Ukraine

text: In 1921, Crimea became an autonomous republic. In 1923, the All-Union Central Committee passed a motion to resettle a large number of the Jewish population from Ukrainian and Belarusian cities to Crimea, 570,400 families. The plan to further resettle Jewish families was again confirmed by the Central Committee of the USSR on 15 July 1926, assigning 124 million roubles to the task and also receiving 67 million from foreign sources.


title: History of the Jews in Ukraine

text: The Soviet initiative of Jewish settlement in Crimea was opposed by Symon Petliura, who regarded it as a provocation. This train of thought was supported by Arnold Margolin who stated that it would be dangerous to set up Jewish colonies there.


title: History of the Jews in Ukraine

text: The Soviets twice sought to establish Jewish autonomy in Crimea; once, in the 1920s, with the support of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, and secondly, in 1944, by the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee.


title: History of the Jews in Ukraine

text: The total number of civilians who died during the war and the German occupation of Ukraine is estimated to be as high as seven million, this estimate includes over one million Jews who were shot and killed by the Einsatzgruppen and local Ukrainian collaborators in various regions of Ukraine.


title: History of the Jews in Ukraine

text: The total number of Jews who were killed in the Holocaust in Eastern Ukraine, or the Ukrainian SSR (within its 1938 borders), is estimated to be slightly less than 700,000 out of a total pre-Holocaust Jewish population of slightly over 1.5 million. Within the borders of Modern Ukraine, the death toll is estimated to be around 900,000.


title: History of the Jews in Ukraine

text: Ukraine had 840,000 Jews in 1959, a decrease of almost 70% from 1941 (within Ukraine's current borders). Ukraine's Jewish population declined significantly during the Cold War. In 1989, Ukraine's Jewish population was only slightly more than half of what it was thirty years earlier (in 1959). The overwhelming majority of the Jews who remained in Ukraine in 1989 left Ukraine and moved to other countries (mostly to Israel) in the 1990s during and after the collapse of Communism.


title: History of the Jews in Ukraine

text: Such new immigrants to Israel included artists, such as Marina Maximilian Blumin and street artist Klone, as well as activists, such as Gennady Riger and Lia Shemtov.


title: History of the Jews in Ukraine

text: In 1989, a Soviet census counted 487,000 Jews living in Ukraine. Although discrimination by the state all but halted very soon after Ukrainian independence in 1991, Jews were still discriminated against in Ukraine during the 1990s. For instance, Jews were not allowed to attend some educational institutions. Antisemitism has since declined. According to the European Jewish Congress, as of 2014, there are 360,000–400,000 Jews in Ukraine.


title: History of the Jews in Ukraine

text: During the 1990s, some 266,300 Ukrainian Jews emigrated to Israel as part of a wave of mass emigration of Jews from the former Soviet Union to Israel in the 1990s. The 2001 Ukrainian Census counted 106,600 Jews living in Ukraine (the number of Jews also dropped due to a negative birthrate). According to the Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs Minister of Israel, early 2012 there were 250,000 Jews in Ukraine, half of them living in Kyiv.


title: History of the Jews in Ukraine

text: Since 2005, two Ukrainian rabbis, Rabbi Moshe Reuven Azman and Rabbi Yaakov Bleich claim to be the Chief Rabbi of Ukraine.


title: History of the Jews in Ukraine

text: In November 2007, an estimated 700 Torah scrolls previously confiscated from Jewish communities during the Soviet Union's Communist rule were returned to Jewish communes in Ukraine by the state authorities.


title: History of the Jews in Ukraine

text: The Ukrainian Jewish Committee was established in 2008 in Kyiv with the aim of concentrating the efforts of Jewish leaders in Ukraine on resolving the community's strategic problems and addressing socially significant issues. The Committee declared its intention to become one of the world's most influential organizations protecting the rights of Jews and "the most important and powerful structure protecting human rights in Ukraine".


title: History of the Jews in Ukraine

text: In the 2012 Ukrainian parliamentary elections, All-Ukrainian Union "Svoboda" won its first seats in the Ukrainian Parliament, garnering 10.44% of the popular vote and the fourth most seats among national political parties; This led to concern among Jewish organizations both inside and outside Ukraine who accused "Svoboda" of openly Nazi sympathies and being antisemitic. In May 2013, the World Jewish Congress listed the party as neo-Nazi. "Svoboda" itself has denied being antisemitic.


title: History of the Jews in Ukraine

text: Since the February 2014 ending of the Euromaidan protests unrest has gripped southern and eastern Ukraine, and this escalated in April 2014 into the ongoing War in Donbas.


title: History of the Jews in Ukraine

text: In April 2014, leaflets were distributed by three masked man as people left a synagogue in Donetsk (the biggest city in Donbas) ordering Jews to register to avoid losing their property and citizenship "given that the leaders of the Jewish community of Ukraine support the Banderite junta in Kyiv and are hostile to the Orthodox Donetsk Republic and its citizens". While many speak of a hoax (concerning the authorship of the tracts) which took on international proportions, the fact that these flyers were distributed remains undisputed.


title: History of the Jews in Ukraine

text: Due to the growing 2014 Ukrainian unrest, Ukrainian Jews making aliyah from Ukraine reached 142% higher during the first four months of 2014 compared to the previous year. 800 people arrived in Israel over January–April, and over 200 signed up for May 2014. On the other hand, chief rabbi and Chabad emissary of Kyiv Rabbi Jonathan Markovitch claimed late April 2014 "Today, you can come to Kyiv, Dnipro or Odessa and walk through the streets openly dressed as a Jew, with nothing to be afraid of".


title: History of the Jews in Ukraine

text: In August 2014, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported that the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews is organizing chartered flights to allow at least 150 Ukrainian Jews, to immigrate to Israel in September. Jewish organizations within Ukraine, as well as the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, the Jewish Agency for Israel and the Jewish community of Dnipropetrovsk, have arranged temporary homes and shelters for hundreds of Jews who fled the War in Donbas in eastern Ukraine. Hundreds of Jews have reportedly fled the cities of Luhansk and Donetsk, and Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein stated (in August 2014) that more Jews may leave for Israel if the situation in eastern Ukraine continues to deteriorate.


title: History of the Jews in Ukraine

text: In 2014 the Jews Ihor Kolomoyskyi and Volodymyr Groysman were appointed Governor of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast and Speaker of the Parliament respectively. Groysman became Prime Minister of Ukraine in April 2016.


title: History of the Jews in Ukraine

text: Ukraine elected its first Jewish president in the 2019 presidential election where former comedian and actor of the TV series "Servant of the People," Volodymyr Zelensky won over incumbent Petro Poroshenko.


title: History of the Jews in Ukraine

text: In February 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine, the Israeli Embassy stayed open on the Sabbath to facilitate the evacuation of an estimated 200,000 Jews from Ukraine. A total of 97 Jews chose to flee Ukraine for Israel. In addition, 140 Jewish orphans have fled from Ukraine to Romania and Moldova. 100 Jews fled from Ukraine to Belarus in order to prepare for their eventual move to Israel On 2 March 2022, the Jewish Agency for Israel reported that hundreds of Ukrainian Jewish war refugees sheltering in Poland, Romania and Moldova were scheduled to leave for Israel by the following week. On March 13, 2022, 600 Jews fleeing from Ukraine went to Israel, and by March 21, 2022, the number was 12,000. As of 23 March, more than 15,200 Ukrainian refugees arrived in Israel, of whom only 4,200 would have otherwise been eligible for citizenship As of 7 April 2022 the number of Jews from Ukraine who have gone up to Israel is reported to be 10,000. As of 4 May 2022 12,500 Jews have been evacuated from Ukraine.


title: History of the Jews in Ukraine

text: As of 2012, Ukraine had the fifth-largest Jewish community in Europe and the twelfth-largest Jewish community in the world, behind South Africa and ahead of Mexico. The majority of Ukrainian Jews live in four large cities: Kyiv (about half of all Jews living in Ukraine), Dnipro, Kharkiv and Odessa. Rabbis Jonathan Markovitch of Kyiv and Shmuel Kaminetsky of Dnipro are considered to be among the most influential foreigners in the country. Opened in October 2012 in Dnipro, the multifunctional Menorah center is probably one of the biggest Jewish community centers in the world.


title: History of the Jews in Ukraine

text: There is a growing trend among some Israelis to visit Ukraine on a "roots trip" to follow the footsteps of Jewish life there. Among the places of interest Kyiv is usually mentioned, where it is possible to trace the paths of Sholem Aleichem and Golda Meir; Zhytomyr and Korostyshiv, where one can follow the steps of Haim Nahman Bialik; Berdychiv, where one can trace the life of Mendele Mocher Sforim; Rivne, where one can follow the course of Amos Oz; Buchach – the path of S.Y. Agnon; Drohobych – the place of Maurycy Gottlieb and Bruno Schulz.


title: Rowan

text: The rowans ( or ) or mountain-ashes are shrubs or trees in the genus "Sorbus" of the rose family, Rosaceae. They are native throughout the cool temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere, with the highest species diversity in the Himalaya, southern Tibet and parts of western China, where numerous apomictic microspecies occur. The name "rowan" was originally applied to the species "Sorbus aucuparia" and is also used for other species in "Sorbus" subgenus "Sorbus".


title: Rowan

text: Formerly, when a wider variety of fruits were commonly eaten in Europe and North America, "Sorbus" was a domestically used fruit throughout these regions. It is still used in some countries, but "S. domestica", for example, has largely vanished from Britain, where it was traditionally appreciated. Natural hybrids, often including "S. aucuparia" and the whitebeam, "Sorbus aria", give rise to many endemic variants in the UK.


title: Rowan

text: The traditional names of the rowan are those applied to the species "Sorbus aucuparia", "Sorbus torminalis" (wild service-tree), and "Sorbus domestica" (true service-tree).


title: Rowan

text: The Latin name "sorbus" was borrowed into Old English as "syrfe". The name "service-tree" for "Sorbus domestica" is derived from that name by folk etymology.


title: Rowan

text: The Latin name "sorbus" is from a root for "red, reddish-brown" (PIE "*sor-/*ser-"); English "sorb" is attested from the 1520s in the sense "fruit of the service tree", adopted via French "sorbe" from Latin "sorbum" "service-berry".


title: Rowan

text: "Sorbus domestica" is also known as "whitty pear", the adjective whitty meaning "pinnate". The name "mountain-ash" for "Sorbus domestica" is due to a superficial similarity of the rowan leaves to those of the ash, not to be confused with "Fraxinus ornus", a true ash that is also known as "mountain ash". "Sorbus torminalis" is also known as "chequer tree"; its fruits, formerly used to flavour beer, are called "chequers", perhaps from the spotted pattern of the fruit.


title: Rowan

text: The name "rowan" is recorded from 1804, detached from an earlier rowan-tree, rountree, attested from the 1540s in northern dialects of English and Scots. It is often thought to be from a North Germanic source, perhaps related to Old Norse "reynir" (c.f. Norwegian "rogn", Danish "røn", Swedish "rönn"), ultimately from the Germanic verb "*raud-inan" "to redden", in reference to the berries (as is the Latin name "sorbus").


title: Rowan

text: Various dialectal variants of "rowan" are found in English, including "ran", "roan", "rodan", "royan", "royne", "round", and "rune".


title: Rowan

text: The Old English name of the rowan is "cwic-beám", which survives in the name quickbeam (also quicken, quicken-tree, and variants). This name by the 19th century was reinterpreted as connected to the word witch, from a dialectal variant "wick" for quick and names such as wicken-tree, wich-tree, wicky, and wiggan-tree, giving rise to names such as witch-hazel and witch-tree.


title: Rowan

text: The tree has two names in Welsh "Cerdinen" and "criafol". Criafol may be translated as "The Lamenting Fruit", likely derived from the Welsh tradition that the Cross of Christ was carved from the wood of this tree, and the subsequent association of the Rowan's red fruit with the blood of Christ.


title: Rowan

text: The Old Irish name is "cairtheand", reflected in Modern Irish "caorthann". The "arboreal" "Bríatharogam" in the "Book of Ballymote" associates the rowan with the letter "luis", with the gloss "delightful to the eye ("li sula") is "luis", i.e. rowan ("caertheand"), owing to the beauty of its berries". Due to this, "delight of the eye" (vel sim.) has been reported as a "name of the rowan" by some commentators.


title: Rowan

text: The more common Scots Gaelic name is caorunn () which appears in numerous Highland place names such as Beinn Chaorunn in Inverness-shire and Loch a’chaorun in Easter Ross. Rowan was also the clan badge of the Malcolms and McLachlans. There were strong taboos in the Highlands against the use of any parts of the tree save the berries, except for ritual purposes. For example, a Gaelic threshing tool made of rowan and called a buaitean was used on grain meant for rituals and celebrations.


title: Rowan

text: In the Canadian provinces of Newfoundland and Labrador and Nova Scotia, this species is commonly referred to as a "dogberry" tree.


title: Rowan

text: In German, "Sorbus aucuparia" is known as the "Vogelbeerbaum" ("bird-berry tree") or as "Eberesche". The latter is a compound of the name of the ash tree ("Esche") with what is contemporarily the name of the boar ("Eber"), but in fact the continuation of a Gaulish name, "eburo-" (also the name for a dark reddish-brown colour, cognate with Greek "orphnos", Old Norse "iarpr" "brown"); like "sorbus", "eburo-" seems to have referred to the colour of the berries; it is also recorded as a Gaulish name for the yew (which also has red berries), see also "Eburodunum (disambiguation)".


title: Rowan

text: Rowans are mostly small deciduous trees 10–20 m tall, though a few are shrubs. Rowans are unrelated to the true ash trees of the genus "Fraxinus", family Oleaceae. Though their leaves are superficially similar, those of "Sorbus" are alternate, while those of "Fraxinus" are opposite. Rowan leaves are arranged alternately, and are pinnate, with (7–)11–35 leaflets. A terminal leaflet is always present. The flowers are borne in dense corymbs; each flower is creamy white, and 5–10 mm across with five petals. The fruit is a small pome 4–8 mm diameter, bright orange or red in most species, but pink, yellow or white in some Asian species. The fruit are soft and juicy, which makes them a very good food for birds, particularly waxwings and thrushes, which then distribute the rowan seeds in their droppings. Due to their small size the fruits are often referred to as berries, but a true berry is a simple fruit produced from a single ovary, whereas a pome is an accessory fruit.


title: Rowan

text: Rowan is used as a food plant by the larvae of some Lepidoptera species; see Lepidoptera that feed on "Sorbus".


title: Rowan

text: The best-known species is the European rowan "Sorbus aucuparia", a small tree typically 4–12 m tall growing in a variety of habitats throughout northern Europe and in mountains in southern Europe and southwest Asia. Its berries are a favourite food for many birds and are a traditional wild-collected food in Britain and Scandinavia. It is one of the hardiest European trees, occurring to 71° north in Vardø in Arctic Norway, and has also become widely naturalised in northern North America.


title: Rowan

text: The greatest diversity of form as well as the largest number of rowan species is in Asia, with very distinctive species such as Sargent's rowan "Sorbus sargentiana" with large leaves 20–35 cm long and 15–20 cm broad and very large corymbs with 200–500 flowers, and at the other extreme, small-leaf rowan "Sorbus microphylla" with leaves 8–12 cm long and 2.5–3 cm broad. While most are trees, the dwarf rowan "Sorbus reducta" is a low shrub to 50 cm tall. Several of the Asian species are widely cultivated as ornamental trees.


title: Rowan

text: North American native species in the subgenus "Sorbus (Sorbus)" include the American mountain-ash "Sorbus americana" and Showy mountain-ash "Sorbus decora" in the east and Sitka mountain-ash "Sorbus sitchensis" in the west.


title: Rowan

text: Numerous hybrids, mostly behaving as true species reproducing by apomixis, occur between rowans and whitebeams; these are variably intermediate between their parents but generally more resemble whitebeams and are usually grouped with them (q.v.).


title: Rowan

text: Rowans are excellent small ornamental trees for parks, gardens and wildlife areas. Several of the Asian species, such as White-fruited rowan ("Sorbus glabrescens") are popular for their unusual fruit colour, and Sargent's rowan ("Sorbus sargentiana") for its exceptionally large clusters of fruit. Numerous cultivars have also been selected for garden use, several of them, such as the yellow-fruited "Sorbus" 'Joseph Rock', of hybrid origin. They are very attractive to fruit-eating birds, which is reflected in the old name "bird catcher".


title: Rowan

text: The wood is dense and used for carving and turning and for tool handles and walking sticks. Rowan fruit are a traditional source of tannins for mordanting vegetable dyes. In Finland, it has been a traditional wood of choice for horse sled shafts and rake spikes.


title: Rowan

text: The fruit of European rowan ("Sorbus aucuparia") can be made into a slightly bitter jelly which in Britain is traditionally eaten as an accompaniment to game, and into jams and other preserves either on their own or with other fruit. The fruit can also be a substitute for coffee beans, and has many uses in alcoholic beverages: to flavour liqueurs and cordials, to produce country wine, and to flavour ale. In Austria a clear rowan schnapps is distilled which is called by its German name "Vogelbeerschnaps", Czechs also make a rowan liquor called "jeřabinka", the Polish Jarzębiak is Rowan-flavoured vodka, and the Welsh used to make a rowan wine called "diodgriafel".


title: Rowan

text: Rowan cultivars with superior fruit for human food use are available but not common; mostly the fruits are gathered from wild trees growing on public lands.


title: Rowan

text: Rowan fruit contains sorbic acid, and when raw also contains parasorbic acid (about 0.4%-0.7% in the European rowan), which causes indigestion and can lead to kidney damage, but heat treatment (cooking, heat-drying etc.) and, to a lesser extent, freezing, renders it nontoxic by changing it to the benign sorbic acid. They are also usually too astringent to be palatable when raw. Collecting them after first frost (or putting in the freezer) cuts down on the bitter taste as well.


title: Rowan

text: In Sami mythology, the goddess Ravdna is the consort of the thunder-god Horagalles. Red berries of rowan were holy to Ravdna, and the name "Ravdna" resembles North Germanic words for the tree (for example, Old Norse "reynir").


title: Rowan

text: In Norse mythology, the goddess Sif is the wife of the thunder god Thor, who has been linked with Ravdna. According to "Skáldskaparmál" the rowan is called "the salvation of Thor" because Thor once saved himself by clinging to it. It has been hypothesized that Sif was once conceived in the form of a rowan to which Thor clung.


title: Rowan

text: The European rowan ("Sorbus aucuparia") has a long tradition in European mythology and folklore. It was thought to be a magical tree and give protection against malevolent beings. The tree was also called "wayfarer's tree" or "traveller's tree" because it supposedly prevents those on a journey from getting lost. It was said in England that this was the tree on which the Devil hanged his mother.


title: Rowan

text: British folklorists of the Victorian era reported the folk belief in apotropaic powers of the rowan-tree, in particular in the warding off of witches. Such a report is given by Edwin Lees (1856) for the Wyre Forest in the English West Midlands. Sir James Frazer (1890) reported such a tradition in Scotland, where the tree was often planted near a gate or front door.


title: Rowan

text: According to Frazer, birds' droppings often contain rowan seeds, and if such droppings land in a fork or hole where old leaves have accumulated on a larger tree, such as an oak or a maple, they may result in a rowan growing as an epiphyte on the larger tree. Such a rowan is called a "flying rowan" and was thought of as especially potent against witches and black magic, and as a counter-charm against sorcery. In 1891, Charles Godfrey Leland also reported traditions of rowan's apotropaic powers against witches in English folklore, citing the "Denham Tracts" (collected between 1846 and 1859). Rowan also serves as protection against fairies. For example, according to Thomas Keightley mortals could safely witness fairy rades (mounted processions held by the fairies each year at the onset of summer) by placing a rowan branch over their doors.


title: Rowan

text: In Neo-Druidism, the rowan is known as the "portal tree". It is considered the threshold, between this world and otherworld, or between here and wherever you may be going, for example, it was placed at the gate to a property, signifying the crossing of the threshold between the path or street and the property of someone. According to Elen Sentier, "Threshold is a place of both "ingress" (the way in) and "egress" (the way out). Rowan is a portal, threshold tree offering you the chance of 'going somewhere ... and leaving somewhere."


title: Rowan

text: In Newfoundland, popular folklore maintains that a heavy crop of fruit means a hard or difficult winter. Similarly, in Finland and Sweden, the number of fruit on the trees was used as a predictor of the snow cover during winter, but here the belief was that the rowan "will not bear a heavy load of fruit and a heavy load of snow in the same year", that is, a heavy fruit crop predicted a winter with little snow.


title: Rowan

text: However, as fruit production for a given summer is related to weather conditions the previous summer, with warm, dry summers increasing the amount of stored sugars available for subsequent flower and fruit production, it has no predictive relationship to the weather of the next winter.


title: Rowan

text: In Malax, Finland the reverse was thought. If the rowan flowers were plentiful then the rye harvest would also be plentiful. Similarly, if the rowan flowered twice in a year there would be many potatoes and many weddings that autumn. And in Sipoo people are noted as having said that winter had begun when the waxwings ("Bombycilla garrulus") had eaten the last of the rowan fruit.


title: Rowan

text: In Sweden, it was also thought that if the rowan trees grew pale and lost colour, the autumn and winter would bring much illness.


title: Rowan

text: References to the rowan fruit's red color and the flowers' beauty are common in Celtic music. For example, the song "Marie's Wedding" contains the verse


title: Rowan

text: J. R. R. Tolkien's novel "The Two Towers" employs rowans as the signature tree for the Ent, Quickbeam. The forest of Fangorn, where Quickbeam and other Ents live, is populated with numerous rowans that were said to have been planted by male Ents to please the female Entwives. Quickbeam declares his fondness for the tree by saying that no other "people of the Rose ... are so beautiful to me," a reference to the rowan's membership in the family Rosaceae.


title: Drew Barrymore filmography

text: Drew Barrymore is an American actress and producer. She is the recipient of numerous accolades, including a Golden Globe and a Screen Actors Guild Award, as well as five Emmy Award nominations and a BAFTA nomination. She achieved fame as a child actress with her role in "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial". Following a highly publicized childhood marked by drug and alcohol abuse, she released an autobiography "Little Girl Lost". She appeared in several successful films, such as "Charlie's Angels", "Never Been Kissed", "Poison Ivy", "Boys on the Side", "Mad Love", "Batman Forever", "Scream" and "Ever After". She starred with Adam Sandler in three films, "The Wedding Singer", "50 First Dates" and "Blended". Other films included "Firestarter", "Never Been Kissed", "Donnie Darko", "Riding in Cars with Boys", "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind", "", "Fever Pitch", "Music and Lyrics", "Going the Distance", "Big Miracle", and "Miss You Already". She also starred in her directorial debut film "Whip It". She won a SAG Award and a Golden Globe for her role in "Grey Gardens". She starred in the Netflix series "Santa Clarita Diet" and currently hosts the syndicated talk show "The Drew Barrymore Show".


title: Black British people

text: Black British people are a multi-ethnic group of British citizens of either African or Afro-Caribbean descent. The term "Black British" developed in the 1950s, referring to the Black British West Indian people from the former Caribbean British colonies in the West Indies (ie, the New Commonwealth) now referred to as the Windrush Generation and people from Africa, who are residents of the United Kingdom and are British.


title: Black British people

text: The term "black" has historically had a number of applications as a racial and political label and may be used in a wider sociopolitical context to encompass a broader range of non-European ethnic minority populations in Britain. This has become a controversial definition. "Black British" is one of various self-designation entries used in official UK ethnicity classifications.


title: Black British people

text: Black residents constituted around 3 per cent of the United Kingdom's population in 2011. The figures have increased from the 1991 census when 1.63 per cent of the population were recorded as Black or Black British to 1.15 million residents in 2001, or 2 per cent of the population, this further increased to just over 1.9 million in 2011. Almost 97 per cent of Black Britons live in England, particularly in England's larger urban areas, with most (over a million) Black British living in Greater London.


title: Black British people

text: The term "Black British" has most commonly been used to refer to Black people of New Commonwealth origin, of African descent. For example, Southall Black Sisters was established in 1979 "to meet the needs of black (Afro-Caribbean and African) women" as well as to support the needs of Asian women. Note that "Asian" in the British context usually refers to people of South Asian ancestry. "Black" was at the time inappropriately used to mean "non-white British".


title: Black British people

text: In the 1970s, a time of rising activism against racial discrimination, the main communities so described were from the British West Indies and the Indian subcontinent. Solidarity against racism and discrimination sometimes extended the term at that time to the Irish population of Britain as well.


title: Black British people

text: Several organisations continue to use the term to be inclusive even though Black people find it offensive, such as the Black Arts Alliance, who extend their use of the term to Latin Americans and all refugees, and the National Black Police Association. The official UK Census has separate self-designation entries for respondents to identify as "Asian British", "Black British" and "Other ethnic group". Due to the Indian diaspora and in particular Idi Amin's expulsion of Asians from Uganda in 1972, many British Asians are from families that had previously lived for several generations in the British West Indies or the Comoros.


title: Black British people

text: The 1991 UK census was the first to include a question on ethnicity. As of the 2011 UK Census, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA) allow people in England and Wales and Northern Ireland who self-identify as "Black" to select "Black African", "Black Caribbean" or "Any other Black/African/Caribbean background" tick boxes. For the 2011 Scottish census, the General Register Office for Scotland (GOS) also established new, separate "African, African Scottish or African British" and "Caribbean, Caribbean Scottish or Caribbean British" tick boxes for individuals in Scotland from Africa and the Caribbean, respectively, who do not identify as "Black, Black Scottish or Black British". In all of the UK censuses, persons with multiple familial ancestries can write in their respective ethnicities under a "Mixed or multiple ethnic groups" option, which includes additional "White and Black Caribbean" or "White and Black African" tick boxes in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland.


title: Black British people

text: "Black British" was also a term for those Black and mixed-race people in Sierra Leone (known as the Krio) who were descendants of migrants from England and Canada and identified as British. They are generally the descendants of black people who lived in England in the 18th century and freed Black American slaves who fought for the Crown in the American Revolutionary War (see also Black Loyalists). In 1787, hundreds of London's black poor (a category that included the East Indian seamen known as lascars) agreed to go to this West African colony on the condition that they would retain the status of British subjects, live in freedom under the protection of the British Crown, and be defended by the Royal Navy. Making this fresh start with them were some white people (see also Committee for the Relief of the Black Poor), including lovers, wives, and widows of the black men. In addition, nearly 1200 Black Loyalists, former American slaves who had been freed and resettled in Nova Scotia, and 550 Jamaican Maroons also chose to join the new colony.


title: Black British people

text: There is evidence of people with African (largely North African) ancestry in Roman Britain. A craniometric study of 22 individuals from Southwark, Roman London, found that four of them appeared to be of likely African ancestry, and isotopic analysis of their bones suggested childhoods spent in a climate warmer than Roman Britain. Analysis of autosomal DNA from four individuals from Roman London found that one had North African ancestry, with brown eyes and dark brown or black hair. Bone isotopes suggested that this individual, a male aged over 45 years, had spent his childhood in the London region. The Ivory Bangle Lady whose rich burial was found in York also had cranial features that hinted at an admixed white/black ancestry. Her sarcophagus was made of stone and also contained a jet bracelet and an ivory bangle, indicating great wealth for the time.


title: Black British people

text: There is written evidence of the presence in Roman Britain of residents from Romanised North Africa, a region on the coast of modern Algeria, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia. The inscriptions suggest that most of these inhabitants were involved with the military. Some were in the upper echelons of society, however the population of these regions were largely Berber people, rather than black Sub-Saharan Africans.


title: Black British people

text: According to the "Augustan History", North African Roman emperor Septimus Severus supposedly visited Hadrian's Wall in 210 AD. While returning from an inspection of the wall, he was said to have been mocked by an "Ethiope" soldier holding a garland of cypress-boughs. Severus ordered him away, reportedly being "frightened" by his dark skin colour and seeing his act and appearance as an omen. The "Ethiope" is written to have said: "You have been all things, you have conquered all things, now, O conqueror, be a god."


title: Black British people

text: In 2013, a skeleton was discovered in Fairford, Gloucestershire, which forensic anthropology revealed to be that of a Sub-Saharan African woman. Her remains have been dated between the years 896 and 1025. Local historians believe she was likely either a slave or a bonded servant.


title: Black British people

text: Early in the 16th century, Catherine of Aragon likely brought servants from Africa among her retinue when she travelled to England to marry Arthur, Prince of Wales; she would go on to marry his younger brother Henry VIII. A black musician is among the six trumpeters depicted in the royal retinue of Henry VIII in the Westminster Tournament Roll, an illuminated manuscript dating from 1511. He wears the royal livery and is mounted on horseback. The man is generally identified as the "John Blanke, the blacke trumpeter," who is listed in the payment accounts of both Henry VIII and his father, Henry VII. A group of Africans at the court of James IV of Scotland, included Ellen More and a drummer referred to as the "More taubronar". Both he and John Blanke were paid wages for their services. A small number of black Africans worked as independent business owners in London in the late 1500s, including the silk weaver Reasonable Blackman.


title: Black British people

text: When trade lines began to open between London and West Africa, persons from this area began coming to Britain on board merchant and slaving ships. For example, merchant John Lok brought several captives to London in 1555 from Guinea. The voyage account in Hakluyt reports that they: "were tall and strong men, and could wel agree with our meates and drinkes. The colde and moyst aire doth somewhat offend them."


title: Black British people

text: During the later 16th century as well as into the first two decades of the 17th century, 25 people named in the records of the small parish of St. Botolph's in Aldgate are identified as "blackamoors." In the period of the war with Spain, between 1588 and 1604, there was an increase in the number of people reaching England from Spanish colonial expeditions in parts of Africa. The English freed many of these captives from enslavement on Spanish ships. They arrived in England largely as a by-product of the slave trade; some were of mixed-race African and Spanish, and became interpreters or sailors. American historian Ira Berlin classified such persons as Atlantic Creoles or the Charter Generation of slaves and multi-racial workers in North America. Slaver John Hawkins arrived in London with 300 captives from West Africa. However, the slave trade did not become entrenched until the 17th century and Hawkins only embarked on three expeditions.


title: Black British people

text: Jacques Francis, who has been described as a slave by some historians, but described himself in Latin as a ""famulus"", meaning servant, slave or attendant. Francis was born on an island off the coast of Guinea, likely Arguin Island, off the coast of Mauritania. He worked as a diver for Pietro Paulo Corsi in his salvage operations on the sunken "St Mary" and "St Edward" of Southampton and other ships, such as the "Mary Rose", which had sunk in Portsmouth Harbour. When Corsi was accused of theft, Francis stood by him in an English court. With help from an interpreter, he supported his master's claims of innocence. Some of the depositions in the case displayed negative attitudes towards slaves or black people as witnesses.


title: Black British people

text: In March 2019 two of the skeletons found on the "Mary Rose" were found to have Southern European or North African ancestry; one found to be wearing a leather wrist-guard bearing the arms of Catherine of Aragon and royal arms of England is thought to possibly be Spanish or North African, the other, known as "Henry" was thought to also have similar genetic makeup. Henry’s mitochondrial DNA showed that his ancestry may have came from Southern Europe, the Near East, or North Africa, although Dr Sam Robson from the University of Portsmouth "ruled out" that Henry was black or that he was sub-Saharan African in origin. Dr Onyeka Nubia cautioned that the number of those on board the "Mary Rose" that had heritage beyond Britain was not necessarily representative of the whole of England at the time, although it definitely was not a "one-off". It is thought they are likely to have travelled through Spain or Portugal before arriving in Britain.


title: Black British people

text: Blackamoor servants were perceived as a fashionable novelty and worked in the households of several prominent Elizabethans, including that of Queen Elizabeth I, William Pole, Francis Drake, and Anne of Denmark in Scotland. Among these servants was "John Come-quick, a blackemore", servant to Capt Thomas Love. Others included in parish registers include Domingo "a black neigro servaunt unto Sir William Winter", buried the xxviith daye of August [1587] and "Frauncis a Blackamoor servant to Thomas Parker", buried in January 1591. Some were free workers, although most were employed as domestic servants and entertainers. Some worked in ports, but were invariably described as chattel labour.


title: Black British people

text: The African population may have been several hundred during the Elizabethan period, and historian Michael Wood noted that Africans in England were "mostly free... [and] both men and women, married native English people." Archival evidence shows records of more than 360 African people between 1500 to 1640 in England and Scotland. Reacting to the darker complexion of people with biracial parentage, George Best argued in 1578 that black skin was not related to the heat of the sun (in Africa) but was instead caused by biblical damnation. Reginald Scot later associated black skin with witchcraft, describing (in his book "Discoverie of Witchcraft") an unprepossessing devil in 1584 as having "horns on his head, fire in his mouth, a tail, eyes like a bison, fangs like a dog, claws like a bear, "a skin like a Niger" and a voice roaring like a lion"; historian Ian Mortimer stated that such views "are to be noted at all levels of society". Views on Black people were "affected by preconceived notions of the Garden of Eden and the Fall from Grace." In addition, in this period, England had no concept of naturalization as a means of incorporating immigrants into the society. It conceived of English subjects as those people born on the island. Those who were not were considered by some to be incapable of becoming subjects or citizens.


title: Black British people

text: In 1596, Queen Elizabeth I issued letters to the lord mayors of major cities asserting that "of late divers blackmoores brought into this realm, of which kind of people there are already here to manie...". While visiting the English court, Casper Van Senden, a German merchant from Lübeck, requested the permission to transport "Blackamoores" living in England to Portugal or Spain, presumably to sell them there. Elizabeth subsequently issued a royal warrant to Van Senden, granting him the right to do so. However, Van Senden and Sherley did not succeed in this effort, as they acknowledged in correspondence with Sir Robert Cecil. In 1601, Elizabeth issued another proclamation expressing that she was "highly discontented to understand the great number of Negroes and blackamoors which (as she is informed) are carried into this realm", and again licensing van Senden to deport them. Her proclamation of 1601 stated that the blackamoors were "fostered and powered here, to the great annoyance of [the queen's] own liege people, that covet the relief, which those people consume". It further stated that "most of them are infidels, having no understanding of Christ or his Gospel".


title: Black British people

text: Studies of African people in early modern Britain indicate a minor continuing presence. Such studies include Imtiaz Habib's "Black Lives in the English Archives, 1500–1677: Imprints of the Invisible" (Ashgate, 2008), Onyeka's "Blackamoores: Africans in Tudor England, Their Presence, Status and Origins" (Narrative Eye, 2013), Miranda Kaufmann's Oxford DPhil thesis "Africans in Britain, 1500–1640", and "Black Tudors: The Untold Story" (Oneworld, 2017).


title: Black British people

text: Britain was involved in the tri-continental slave trade between Europe, Africa and the Americas. Many of those involved in British colonial activities, such as ship's captains, colonial officials, merchants, slave traders and plantation owners brought black slaves as servants back to Britain with them. This caused an increasing black presence in the northern, eastern, and southern areas of London. One of the most famous slaves to attend a sea captain was known as Sambo. He fell ill shortly after arriving in England and was consequently buried in Lancashire. His plaque and gravestone still stand to this day. There were also small numbers of free slaves and seamen from West Africa and South Asia. Many of these people were forced into beggary due to the lack of jobs and racial discrimination. In 1687, a "Moor" was given the freedom of the city of York. He is listed in the freemen's rolls as "John Moore – blacke". He is the only black person to have been found to date in the York rolls.


title: Black British people

text: The involvement of merchants from Great Britain in the transatlantic slave trade was the most important factor in the development of the Black British community. These communities flourished in port cities strongly involved in the slave trade, such as Liverpool and Bristol. Some Liverpudlians are able to trace their black heritage in the city back ten generations. Early black settlers in the city included seamen, the mixed-race children of traders sent to be educated in England, servants, and freed slaves. Mistaken references to slaves entering the country after 1722 being deemed to be free men are derived from a source in which 1722 is a misprint for 1772, in turn based on a misunderstanding of the results of the Somerset case referred to below. As a result, Liverpool is home to Britain's oldest black community, dating at least to the 1730s. By 1795, Liverpool had 62.5 per cent of the European Slave Trade.


title: Black British people

text: During this era, Lord Mansfield declared that a slave who fled from his master could not be taken by force in England, nor sold abroad. However, Mansfield was at pains to point out that his ruling did not comment on the legality of slavery itself. This verdict fueled the numbers of Blacks who escaped slavery, and helped send slavery into decline. During this same period, many former American slave soldiers, who had fought on the side of the British in the American Revolutionary War, were resettled as free men in London. They were never awarded pensions, and many of them became poverty-stricken and were reduced to begging on the streets. Reports at the time stated that they "had no prospect of subsisting in this country but by depredations on the public, or by common charity". A sympathetic observer wrote that "great numbers of Blacks and People of Colour, many of them refugees from America and others who have by land or sea been in his Majesty's service were... in great distress." Even towards white loyalists there was little good will to new arrivals from America.


title: Black British people

text: Officially, slavery was not legal in England. The Cartwright decision of 1569 resolved that England was "too pure an air for a slave to breathe in". However, black African slaves continued to be bought and sold in England during the eighteenth century. The slavery issue was not legally contested until the Somerset case of 1772, which concerned James Somersett, a fugitive black slave from Virginia. Lord Chief Justice William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield concluded that Somerset could not be forced to leave England against his will. He later reiterated: "The determinations go no further than that the master cannot by force compel him to go out of the kingdom." Despite the previous rulings, such as the 1706 declaration (which was clarified a year later) by Lord Chief Justice Holt on slavery not being legal in Britain, it was often ignored, with slaveowners arguing that the slaves were property and therefore could not be considered people. Slave owner Thomas Papillon was one of many who took his black servant "to be in the nature and quality of my goods and chattel".


title: Black British people

text: Black people lived among whites in London in areas of Mile End, Stepney, Paddington, and St Giles. After Mansfield's ruling many former slaves continued to work for their old masters as paid employees. Between 14,000 and 15,000 (then contemporary estimates) slaves were immediately freed in England. Many of these emancipated individuals became labelled as the "black poor", the black poor were defined as former slave soldiers since emancipated, seafarers, such as South Asian lascars, former indentured servants and former indentured plantation workers. Around the 1750s, London became the home to many Blacks, as well as Jews, Irish, Germans and Huguenots. According to Gretchen Gerzina in her "Black London", by the mid-18th century, Blacks accounted for somewhere between 1% to 3% of the London populace. Evidence of the number of Black residents in the city has been found through registered burials. Some black people in London resisted slavery through escape. Leading Black activists of this era included Olaudah Equiano, Ignatius Sancho and Quobna Ottobah Cugoano. Mixed race Dido Elizabeth Belle who was born a slave in the Caribbean moved to Britain with her white father in the 1760s. In 1764, "The Gentleman's Magazine" reported that there was "supposed to be near 20,000 Negroe servants."


title: Black British people

text: John Ystumllyn (c. 1738 - 1786) was the first well-recorded black person of North Wales. He may have been a victim of the Atlantic slave trade, and was from either West Africa or the West Indies. He was taken by the Wynn family to their Ystumllyn estate in Criccieth, and christened with the Welsh name John Ystumllyn. He was taught English and Welsh by the locals, became a gardener at the estate and "grew into a handsome and vigorous young man". His portrait was painted in 1750s. He married local woman Margaret Gruffydd in 1768 and their descendants still live in the area.


title: Black British people

text: It was reported in the Morning Gazette that there was 30,000 in the country as a whole, though the numbers were thought to be "alarmist" exaggerations. In the same year, a party for black men and women in a Fleet Street pub was sufficiently unusual to be written about in the newspapers. Their presence in the country was striking enough to start heated outbreaks of distaste for "colonies of Hottentots". Modern historians estimate, based on parish lists, baptismal and marriage registers as well as criminal and sales contracts, that about 10,000 black people lived in Britain during the 18th century. Other estimates put the number at 15,000. In 1772, Lord Mansfield put the number of black people in the country at as many as 15,000, though most modern historians consider 10,000 to be the most likely. The black population was estimated at around 10,000 in London, making black people approximately 1% of the overall London population. The black population constituted around 0.1% of the total population of Britain in 1780. The black female population is estimated to have barely reached 20% of the overall Afro-Caribbean population in the country. In the 1780s with the end of the American Revolutionary War, hundreds of black loyalists from America were resettled in Britain. Later some emigrated to Sierra Leone, with help from Committee for the Relief of the Black Poor after suffering destitution, to form the Sierra Leone Creole ethnic identity.


title: Black British people

text: In 1731 the Lord Mayor of London ruled that "no Negroes shall be bound apprentices to any Tradesman or Artificer of this City". Due to this ruling, most were forced into working as domestic servants and other menial professions. Those black Londoners who were unpaid servants were in effect slaves in anything but name. In 1787, Thomas Clarkson, an English abolitionist, noted at a speech in Manchester: "I was surprised also to find a great crowd of black people standing round the pulpit. There might be forty or fifty of them." There is evidence that black men and women were occasionally discriminated against when dealing with the law because of their skin colour. In 1737, George Scipio was accused of stealing Anne Godfrey's washing, the case rested entirely on whether or not Scipio was the only black man in Hackney at the time. Ignatius Sancho, black writer, composer, shopkeeper and voter in Westminster wrote, that despite being in Britain since the age of two he felt he was "only a lodger, and hardly that." Sancho complained of "the national antipathy and prejudice" of native white Britons "towards their wooly headed brethren." Sancho was frustrated that many resorted to stereotyping their black neighbours. A financially independent householder, he became the first black person of African origin to vote in parliamentary elections in Britain, in a time when only 3% of the British population were allowed to vote.


title: Black British people

text: Sailors of African descent experienced far less prejudice compared to blacks in the cities such as London. Black sailors would have shared the same quarters, duties and pay as their white shipmates. There are some disputes in the estimation of black sailors, conservative estimates put it between 6% and 8% of navy sailors of the time, this proportion is considerably larger than the population as a whole. Notable examples are Olaudah Equiano and Francis Barber.


title: Black British people

text: With the support of other Britons, these activists demanded that Blacks be freed from slavery. Supporters involved in these movements included workers and other nationalities of the urban poor. Black people in London who were supporters of the abolitionist movement include Cugoano and Equiano. At this time, slavery in Britain itself had no support from common law, but its definitive legal status was not clearly defined until the 19th century.


title: Black British people

text: During the late 18th century, numerous publications and memoirs were written about the "black poor". One example is the writings of Equiano, a former slave who became an unofficial spokesman for Britain's Black community. His memoir about his life entitled "The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano".