{"id":376184,"date":"2026-10-18T10:32:11","date_gmt":"2026-10-18T10:32:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/376184\/"},"modified":"2026-10-18T10:32:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-18T10:32:11","slug":"an-extraordinary-life-descendant-welcomes-biography-of-woman-gifted-to-queen-victoria-colonialism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/376184\/","title":{"rendered":"An extraordinary life: descendant welcomes biography of woman \u2018gifted\u2019 to Queen Victoria | Colonialism"},"content":{"rendered":"

When she was seven years old, Bayo Randle\u2019s great-great-grandmother Sarah Forbes Bonetta was presented to Queen Victoria<\/a> at Windsor Castle as a \u201cdiplomatic gift\u201d from an African king.<\/p>\n

Victoria would go on to pay for Bonetta\u2019s education, approve her marriage to one of west Africa\u2019s wealthiest men, and become godmother to her eldest daughter.<\/p>\n

But while Victoria took a genuine interest in Bonetta\u2019s welfare, making the orphan a royal protege and meeting with her over the years, their relationship was part of a bigger agenda.<\/p>\n

Now, as a biography is published \u2013 Becoming Sarah Forbes Bonetta: A Yor\u00f9b\u00e1 Woman in Queen Victoria\u2019s Court<\/a> \u2013 Randle has spoken of his family history.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think a human being, who has agency, could be \u2018gifted\u2019 from one to another, but had she not been gifted to Queen Victoria, would I be here today?\u201d said Randle, a British-Nigerian barrister from London.<\/p>\n

Bayo Randle, Bonetta\u2019s great-great-grandson, is a barrister in London. Photograph: Martin Godwin\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

The new book, by a Canadian academic, Prof Henry Lovejoy, charts how Bonetta was brought to England by Frederick Forbes, of the Royal Navy\u2019s West Africa Squadron, which was set up to enforce the abolition of the transatlantic trade.<\/p>\n

Born in 1843 in \u00d2k\u00e8-\u00d2d\u00e0n, south-west Nigeria, Bonetta<\/a> was originally called \u00c0\u00ecn\u00e1. Her family was killed in 1848 when her town was attacked by King Ghezo of Dahomey\u2019s forces.<\/p>\n

Bonetta, then five, is believed to have been captured by the agodji\u00e9 \u2013 the all-female regiment depicted in the Hollywood movie The Woman King<\/a> \u2013 and held at King Ghezo\u2019s court.<\/p>\n

The book by Henry B Lovejoy. Photograph: supplied<\/p>\n

In 1850, Forbes went to Dahomey \u2013 which is now Benin<\/a> \u2013 to petition Ghezo to sign an anti-slavery treaty. The mission failed but Forbes asked Ghezo if he could take Bonetta to England.<\/p>\n

Bonetta would go on to live a life of renown, becoming one of the most artistically represented and widely reported African women of her time. But she was never truly free.<\/p>\n

Lovejoy\u2019s book describes how, before Forbes arrived in England with her \u2013 giving her his own name and that of his ship, the Bonetta \u2013 he petitioned for her to be \u201cthe property of the crown\u201d.<\/p>\n

This meant Bonetta was \u201ceffectively indentured to Queen Victoria until age 19\u201d under the post-abolition legal structures, Lovejoy said. Bonetta was then married off to James Pinson Labulo Davies, a merchant and philanthropist, of whom she would write: \u201cI don\u2019t feel a particle of love for him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lovejoy\u2019s research for the website liberatedafricans.org<\/a>, developed with Kartikay Chadha, documents how, after abolition, more than 700,000 Africans \u201cliberated\u201d from enslavers were forced into indentures of up to 14 years \u201cto pay for the cost of their own freedom\u201d by governments including Britain\u2019s.<\/p>\n

Lovejoy claims Bonetta was at the elite end of this bonded labour system, \u201ceducated to be a missionary who would Christianise Africa\u201d. In her lifetime her image was exploited as imperial iconography, promoting the idea that British colonialism of Africa was a \u201ccivilising mission\u201d.<\/p>\n

Bonetta was a famous figure in 19th-century England. Photograph: Alamy<\/p>\n

Lovejoy, of the University of Colorado Boulder, said: \u201cSarah\u2019s imagery was used to project the idea of the queen\u2019s benevolence \u2013 at a time when \u2018liberated\u2019 Africans are being forced into indentures.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, when Bonetta attended the 1858 wedding of Queen Victoria\u2019s daughter, the Princess Royal, American abolitionists saw it as proof that Victoria, then the most powerful woman on Earth, believed in equality.<\/p>\n

For Randle, a plaster bust of Bonetta sculpted in 1851 by Benedetto Pistrucci, the Royal Mint\u2019s chief engraver, symbolises the story\u2019s \u201cduality\u201d. Randle saw it last year after Lovejoy had tracked it down to a private family collection in his research.<\/p>\n

\u201cWho gets to see what their great ancestor looked like as a child, the cultural markings on her face? That is amazing. But at the same time it was a bust prepared for phrenological purposes, within a racist framework, where [Bonetta] was shown as an \u2018excellent specimen\u2019,\u201d Randle said.<\/p>\n

Randle first learned his family history from his father, Adekunle Randle, a retired lawyer. The family still has the engraved goblet and plate that Queen Victoria gave to Bonetta\u2019s daughter, Victoria, who, with the queen\u2019s help, was educated at Cheltenham ladies\u2019 college.<\/p>\n

Lovejoy\u2019s book challenges the myths that Bonetta was a Yoruba princess, that she herself was Queen Victoria\u2019s goddaughter, and that she spent most of her life in England.<\/p>\n

Randle, 37, who maintains his family\u2019s ancestral ties with \u00d2k\u00e8-\u00d2d\u00e0n, welcomes research into Bonetta, who was a gifted linguist, musician, travel writer, educator and leading woman in 19th-century Lagos, until her death from tuberculosis in Madeira in 1880, aged 37.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhether [Lovejoy\u2019s] book is comfortable for me is beside the point,\u201d Randle said. \u201cIt\u2019s for the advancement of knowledge and how we learn from the past. Where the real discomfort lies is in what [Bonetta] was the symbol of, what she was used for.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut it would be a mistake to paint her story as entirely tragic,\u201d he added. \u201cMy great-great-grandmother was very capable, courageous and dignified through adversity \u2013 through the trauma of losing her family, being displaced, and changing like a chameleon to fit into a culture so alien from what she\u2019d known, she thrived. She is an early example of Black Britain.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When she was seven years old, Bayo Randle\u2019s great-great-grandmother Sarah Forbes Bonetta was presented to Queen Victoria at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":376185,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":["post-376184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=376184"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376184\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/376185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=376184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=376184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=376184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}