An extraordinary life: descendant welcomes biography of woman ‘gifted’ to Queen Victoria

Chris Osuh, the Guardian

A girl called Àìná was captured by an African king and later taken to England to become Sarah Forbes Bonetta, protege of the imperial monarch.

When she was seven years old, Bayo Randle’s great-great-grandmother Sarah Forbes Bonetta was presented to Queen Victoria at Windsor Castle as a “diplomatic gift” from an African king.

Victoria would go on to pay for Bonetta’s education, approve her marriage to one of west Africa’s wealthiest men, and become godmother to her eldest daughter.

But while Victoria took a genuine interest in Bonetta’s welfare, making the orphan a royal protege and meeting with her over the years, their relationship was part of a bigger agenda.

Now, as a biography is published – Becoming Sarah Forbes Bonetta: A Yorùbá Woman in Queen Victoria’s Court – Randle has spoken of his family history.

“I don’t think a human being, who has agency, could be ‘gifted’ from one to another, but had she not been gifted to Queen Victoria, would I be here today?” said Randle, a British-Nigerian barrister from London.

The new book, by a Canadian academic, Prof Henry Lovejoy, charts how Bonetta was brought to England by Frederick Forbes, of the Royal Navy’s West Africa Squadron, which was set up to enforce the abolition of the transatlantic trade.

Read the full article here.

Read about the history of kidnapping Africans for enslavement. Consider the story of how black Americans came to Britain to fight slavery.

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