European Serfs and Slaves

There are probably tens of millions of Americans who are descended from European slaves without even knowing it.

The first slaves imported into the American colonies were 100 European children . They arrived during Easter, 1619, four months before the arrival of a the first shipment of African slaves. See White Cargo (P. 76). Others came in their wake. Most of them died still children.

There were tens of thousands of Europeans slaves in the Americas, victims of a century-long practice, stretching from Europe to the New World, Boston to Barbados, and which largely predated both the black slave trade and American independence.

Until the Eighteenth Century, there were more caucasian slaves than Africans, in the Chesapeake.

Also, many free Africans bought and owned caucasian slaves. In a famous case, Anthony Johnson, an so-called free black, became a successful planter himself; he bought and sold slaves, Africans and Europeans. (Pp. 169-71)

Indentured Servants

Mainstream histories refer to these laborers as indentured servants, not slaves, because many agreed to work for a set period of time in exchange for land and rights.

Yet in reality, indenture was enslavement, since slavery applies to any person who is bought and sold, chained and abused, whether for a decade or a lifetime. Many early settlers died long before their indenture ended or found that no court would back them when their owners failed to deliver on promises. And many never achieved freedom or the American dream they were seeking. See NY Times http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/27/books/review/Lau-t.html.

The indentured servitude of Europeans was comparable in most respects to the slavery endured by Africans. Voluntary indentures arriving in colonial America from Britain were sold on the block, subjected to backbreaking work on plantations, poorly fed and clothed, savagely punished for any disobedience, forbidden to marry without their master’s permission, and whipped and branded for running away.

Indentures were not always voluntary: tens of thousands of convicts, beggars, homeless children and other undesirable English, Scottish, and Irish lower class were transported to America against their will to the Americas. Indentured contracts virtually amounted to a life sentence at hard labor on the plantation of some upper class absentee landlord. Some convicts asked to be hanged rather than be sent to Virginia.

Many, maybe most European slaves died before they had served seven years broken down by rigours of hard work. They were sorely used and poorly fed. For running away, even for lesser infractions, they were not just savagely whipped; also, their sentences were extended for years, which often worked out to life. Sick and dying European slaves were tossed aside, abandoned. Those that get “freed” had nothing more no money, no food, no shelter.

Many of the European slaves were brought from Ireland, where the law held that it was “no more sin to kill an Irishman than a dog or any other brute.” (P. 141) Indeed, because the Irish reputation for rebellion was so bad, it was illegal in the 1650s to import an Irishman into Massachusetts. (P. 150)

The “indentured servants” were considered chattels, property. Their owners bequeathed them in their wills. For instance it is stated in the will of Abraham Coombs, of Maryland, dated December 26th, 1684: “I give and bequeath to my dear and loving wife all my servants, being two boys and one woman servant together with all my stock of hogs.”

In 1655, the Angel, bound for Virginia, was hit by a storm. The statement of loss reported: “Amongst the goods saved were three servants valued at £30 who were disposed of in Barbados.” (P. 109)

Kidnappings on the British Isles

There was a huge business in European enslavement. As early as 1618, people began to disappear, especially around English ports. Women were arrested with illegal warrants and shipped to Virginia. European slave traffic became a lucrative business. Slavers eventually scoured England for victims. Kidnapping became a national scourge.
Sometimes, the slavers literally tore children from the arms of their parents.

According to the book European Cargo: “. . . No child from either the town or the surrounding countryside seems to have been safe from the merchants’ agents. They operated openly and with impunity. When parents who had lost their children came looking for them in the town, their elation at finding them still incarcerated awaiting embarkation was short lived on their discovery that they were powerless to bring their children home. . . .” (Pp. 237-38)

The kidnappers were paying off the local judges. Most parents could not afford to pay for the food their children had consumed while prisoners. That’s right! The parents had to pay for that. They had to watch in impotent horror as their children were marched aboard slave ships and sent away to the colonies forever.

Transportation of European Slaves:

George Selwyn, Member of Parliament, visited a slave ship preparing to sail from England to Maryland in 1767 and he wrote:

“I went on board and all the horror I had an idea of is short of what I saw this poor man in chained to a board in a hole not above 16 feet long, more than fifty with him, a collar and padlock about his neck and chained to five of the most dreadful creatures I ever looked on.” (Pp. 250-51)

Another caucasian slave crossing is described thus: “There is on board these ships terrible misery, stench, fumes, horror, vomiting, many kinds of sea-sickness, fever, dysentery, headache, heat, constipation, boils, scurvy, cancer, mouth rot, and the like, all of which comes from old and sharply salted food and meat, also from very bad and foul water, so that many die miserably . . . . Children from 1 to 7 years rarely survive the voyage.” (Pp. 222-23)

Posters and, later in the Chesapeake’s history, newspapers announced the arrival of the latest cargo of servants. Potential buyers could read of the ages, gender and skills of those arriving and of when to clamber on board to inspect the human goods for themselves.” (P. 119)

A London weaver (1758) who observed a sale of caucasian slaves in Williamsburg described in the following words: “They all was set in row, near 100 men and women and the planter come down the country to buy . . . I never see such parcels of poor wretches in my life some almost naked and what had clothes was as black as chimney sweeps, and almost starved by the ill-usage of their passage by the captain, for they are used no better than many negro slaves and sold in the same manner as horses or cows in our market or fair.” (P. 253)

Relations European and African Slaves:

According to Lerone Bennett, Jr.: “Not only in Virginia but also in New England and New York, the first Blacks were integrated into a forced labor system that had little or nothing to do with skin color. That came later. But in the interim, a fateful 40-year period of primary importance in the history of America, Black men and women worked side by side with the first generation of Caucasians, cultivating tobacco, clearing the land, and building roads and houses.” (P. 170)

Professor Audrey Smedley, states that: “Early references to blacks reveal little clear evidence of general or widespread social antipathy on account of their colour.” She says, “Records show a fairly high incidence of co-operation among black and caucasians servants and unified resistance to harsh masters.”

William Eddis, England’s Customs Surveyor in Annapolis, reckoned that African slaves were better treated than Europeans on the plantations because they were more valuable, a lifelong property, whereas European servants mostly had a term to their service. Planters exercised ‘an inflexible severity’ over caucasian servants, he said. ‘Generally speaking, they groan beneath a worse than Egyptian bondage.’ . . .” (Pp. 256-57)

The Invention of the “White” Race Ideology

In 1676, there was a huge slave rebellion in Virginia. African and caucasian slaves burned Jamestown to the ground. Hundreds died. The planters feared a re-occurence. Their solution was to divide the races against each other, thereby creating “a buffer of dupes” between them and “the blacks”.

They instilled a sense of superiority in the Europeans and degraded the Africans. Laws deprived Africans of rights in property, voting, family and in court. Those who owned Africans as slaves were even forbidden to free them. Europeans were given new rights; their masters could not whip them naked without a court order.

“. . . And the notion of a ‘white race’ was invented and promoted. Hitherto, the English had never applied the white colour to distinguish its race. Europeans were unti that time generally known as Red peoples whereas the Africans were known by their historic name as the Moors. European servants whose daily condition was little different from that of Africans, were taught that they belonged to a superior people.”

The races were given different clothing. Living quarters were segregated for the first time. But the “whites” were still slaves. White slavery continued, even multiplied into the next century. (P. 212)

Conclusion: All of us are in this thing together no matter the colour of your skin. Today, the common enemy is the race racketeers that manipulate and victimize every weak and poor while tricking them by a “divide and rule strategy” into an “I-better-than-you mentality”. While they re-enslave all.

See

White Cargo: The Forgotten History of Britain’s White Slaves in America (New York, New York University Press, 2008)