Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

The Forgotten History of Britain's White Slaves in America
American Thinker ^ | July 28, 2017 | Janet Levy

Posted on 08/02/2017 2:39:28 PM PDT by Jan_Sobieski

Slavery in America, typically associated with blacks from Africa, was an enterprise that began with the shipping of more than 300,000 white Britons to the colonies. This little known history is fascinatingly recounted in White Cargo (New York University Press, 2007). Drawing on letters, diaries, ship manifests, court documents, and government archives, authors Don Jordan and Michael Walsh detail how thousands of whites endured the hardships of tobacco farming and lived and died in bondage in the New World.

Following the cultivation in 1613 of an acceptable tobacco crop in Virginia, the need for labor accelerated. Slavery was viewed as the cheapest and most expedient way of providing the necessary work force. Due to harsh working conditions, beatings, starvation, and disease, survival rates for slaves rarely exceeded two years. Thus, the high level of demand was sustained by a continuous flow of white slaves from England, Ireland, and Scotland from 1618 to 1775, who were imported to serve America's colonial masters.

These white slaves in the New World consisted of street children plucked from London's back alleys, prostitutes, and impoverished migrants searching for a brighter future and willing to sign up for indentured servitude. Convicts were also persuaded to avoid lengthy sentences and executions on their home soil by enslavement in the British colonies. The much maligned Irish, viewed as savages worthy of ethnic cleansing and despised for their rejection of Protestantism, also made up a portion of America's first slave population, as did Quakers, Cavaliers, Puritans, Jesuits, and others.

Around 1618 at the start of their colonial slave trade, the English began by seizing and shipping to Virginia impoverished children, even toddlers, from London slums...

(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...


TOPICS: Conspiracy; Education; History; Reference
KEYWORDS: 1618; america; black; slavery; white
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-6061-64 next last
To: Timpanagos1

Then you must not have read the rest of the article where it explained the financial reasons why Africans were treated better than the original European Slaves...


21 posted on 08/02/2017 3:15:10 PM PDT by Jan_Sobieski (Sanctification)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 18 | View Replies]

To: Jan_Sobieski

At around the same time, the Dutch also had white slavery in New York state.


22 posted on 08/02/2017 3:15:15 PM PDT by jimmygrace
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Jan_Sobieski

Indentured servnts weren’t slaves. They served for seven years then were free. They wern’t considered property and their descendants weren’t bound in perpetutity.


23 posted on 08/02/2017 3:15:21 PM PDT by Hugin (Conservatism wiithout Nationalism is a fraudEm)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Tac Double Tap

Just what I was going to say, and my ancestors were Irish. Yo! I want my reparations! And I’m sick of taking it from the man! Yo, where is my affirmative action??


24 posted on 08/02/2017 3:15:52 PM PDT by GrandJediMasterYoda (Trump: Greatest POTUS of all time solely for preventing Satan from taking office.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: Hugin

You are incorrect and obviously did not read the article either. Please read this historically accurate article before responding foolishly...


25 posted on 08/02/2017 3:17:46 PM PDT by Jan_Sobieski (Sanctification)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 23 | View Replies]

To: Jan_Sobieski

While it was a poorly written article using far too many words, I read it all and understand the financial aspects of buying and selling human beings. However, it is absurd to claim that African slaves were treated better than anyone.

Heck, the article touches on conditions for the European slaves in 1618. Blacks were held in slavery in this country until 1865.

From where I sit, perhaps just three miles down the street from here, sycophants of the Confederacy sold the children of black slaves to the highest bidder.

I have read no accounts of 19th century Europeans having their children sold off to the highest bidder down in the markets of New Orleans.


26 posted on 08/02/2017 3:26:12 PM PDT by Timpanagos1
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 21 | View Replies]

To: fhayek; Telepathic Intruder
Just to clarify:

The British outlawed the slave TRADE in 1807. This just about coincided with the abolition of the slave trade in the US constitution (20 years after the constitution went into effect).

Slavery wasn't outlawed in the empire until 1833.

27 posted on 08/02/2017 3:27:42 PM PDT by j. earl carter
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 15 | View Replies]

To: Boomer

“Did black slaves also have a 2 year estimated life span once they reached the “new world” like the white slaves did?”

Very True! They don’t teach a lot of detail in schools today. Case in point, having traveled our Country and visited many Museums while working as a road tech for over 3 decades.

Here’s one you won’t hear in a modern classroom.

Often times, .... when the Irish were brought to the Property of residence, the Property Owners could take nothing for granted. Irish slaves had to be instructed as to the correct way to use a Staircase. At first, - sometimes the slave would try to go up the stairs using / all their arms and legs. Similar to the way a dog might go up and down the stairs. These people never saw a staircase before. The Property owners would have to take the time, and teach them how to use the stairs, and keep upright while traversing the steps.
Yeah, it’s all there in the diaries and journals that have been preserved over the years. There are a lot of interesting details out there, ...... at least there used to be.


28 posted on 08/02/2017 3:31:01 PM PDT by EnglishOnly (Fight all out to win OR get out now.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 14 | View Replies]

To: Hugin
Indentured servnts weren’t slaves. They served for seven years then were free.

Read up on the very first legal chattel slave in the British North American colonies and get back to me. His name was John Casor. He was an indentured servant sued by his master for his labor, for life.

29 posted on 08/02/2017 3:34:52 PM PDT by RegulatorCountry
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 23 | View Replies]

To: Jan_Sobieski

White people need to bitch and moan more.


30 posted on 08/02/2017 3:36:08 PM PDT by Chgogal (Sessions recused himself for shaking an Ambassador's hand. Shameful!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Timpanagos1

Was that a yes or a no? I’m trying to figure out if whites or blacks had it worse as slaves since both were used.

Did black slave have a 2 year average lifespan as slaves in the new world like white slaves did?


31 posted on 08/02/2017 3:38:38 PM PDT by Boomer (I'm offended by political correctness.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 17 | View Replies]

To: Tac Double Tap

What’s not well known is that the often forcible removal of Children from their families and moved to the British colonies such as Canada, Australia, New Zealand etc, continued right up until the mid 20th century. These children would be aquire (bought) and put on farms to work until they were grown. No pay, nobody looked in to see what the living conditions were like and on and on. They we known as home children


32 posted on 08/02/2017 3:39:49 PM PDT by firedoggy111 (Books, Articles on the Spanish Civil War)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: Boomer

It’s very un-PC to note that African slaves were regarded as exotic and something of a status symbol in the early colonial era, and, as well, they were property for life with obligation to provide food and shelter. In general they received less harsh treatment than indentured servants from the British Isles and Ireland, who were not property, they were bound out for a term and so they were worked very hard to get the most out of them. Then, there’s the genetic resistance to mosquito-borne diseases such as malaria, that killed off indentured servants rather rapidly, whereas Africans tend to have some heritable resistance due to a gene mutation, the same mutation that leads to Sickle Cell Anemia. As always, it’s a far more complicated story than the ideologues are willing to admit, but to wrap it up the historically correct answer rather than the politically correct one is that Africans had a better survival rate, which is why they came to be preferred.


33 posted on 08/02/2017 3:45:19 PM PDT by RegulatorCountry
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 31 | View Replies]

To: Timpanagos1

https://www.irishcentral.com/news/8000-irish-died-while-building-the-new-basin-canal-in-new-orleans-231020191-237786681


34 posted on 08/02/2017 3:45:24 PM PDT by Eagles6
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 26 | View Replies]

To: Jan_Sobieski

I highly recommend “The Fatal Shore”, a book about Australia Penal colony.


35 posted on 08/02/2017 3:45:37 PM PDT by HippyLoggerBiker (Always carry a flagon of whiskey in case of snakebite and furthermore always carry a small snake.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Jan_Sobieski

Other than that some indentured servants served longer, nothing in the article contradicts what I posted. Of course many died before their time was up, and conditions were brutal. Many free settlers died of starvation and disease also. Still that’s not the same as having your children and their children made property in perpetuity.


36 posted on 08/02/2017 3:48:04 PM PDT by Hugin (Conservatism wiithout Nationalism is a fraud.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 25 | View Replies]

To: Jan_Sobieski

Many Irish were enslaved. German Hessian soldiers were drafted in Germany and sold to England to fight the Colonists.


37 posted on 08/02/2017 3:49:42 PM PDT by mountainlion (Live well for those that did not make it back.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Timpanagos1

The only way that is REMOTELY true is the fact that someone who paid for a slave would be quite careful to beat them within an inch of death but not kill them as it meant a lost investment, while conscripts were free.

But even with that sliver of truth the statement is still laughably false.


38 posted on 08/02/2017 3:52:08 PM PDT by ALongRoadAhead
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 10 | View Replies]

To: Eagles6

At this moment, I can see where that canal once existed.

In an hour, I will be down where sugar cane plantations once existed.

Both were bacj breaking work and the yellow fever and malaria did not give a damn what color you were.


39 posted on 08/02/2017 3:57:25 PM PDT by Timpanagos1
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 34 | View Replies]

To: Timpanagos1
Both were bacj breaking work and the yellow fever and malaria did not give a damn what color you were.

I beg to differ regarding malaria.

40 posted on 08/02/2017 3:59:12 PM PDT by RegulatorCountry
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 39 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-6061-64 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson