And the white "slaves" and indentured economic servants, if they survived, could look forward to freedom.
The plantation owners could not tie down whites to the soil forever; but the colonial laws did just that to the blacks.
Absolutely wrong, td. The South Carolina and Virginia slave codes specified, for example, only Africans and those of African slave birth could be slaves.
Jake I am very aware that there were indentured servants from the British Isles. I am talking about the slaves that were white.
Specifically the original street urchins and the Irish. Cromwell decimated the Irish population thru slavery. This is just fact. No contracts with the owners. They were bought and paid for.
Truly. Check out the research in White Cargo. It's worth the read. And please bear in mind that the white slave trade does not in any way diminish the existence of the African slave trade.
I am not arguing one versus the other. Both existed.
Both white and black slave trade shows the depraved indifference to human life and the human soul by the traders and many of the original settlers of the colonies. Sadly although we have evolved in the west, many nations still practice slavery to this day.
And the USA to her credit as a " nation still in Huggies " because she is still so young, came to her senses and abolished slavery in less than 300 years after the first settlements in the colonies.
The reason I come at slavery from such a different angle is that our education system that I went thru didn't have a "political" agenda attached to it.
Not only did we learn about slavery in the Americas but slavery world wide past and present. Slavery practiced by First Nations. Native Americans owning other tribesmen and women and owning blacks. Slavery that had blacks owning blacks.
To this day I can't wrap my mind nor my heart how anyone who could claim to be a person that walked with the Lord could buy and own another human being.
Quick link for you. Oh and by the way Cromwell was a bloody bastard who was responsible for most of the misery to the Irish at that time.
"Strangely though, the history of Irish and ‘white’ slavery is by and large ignored in the American educational curriculum today.
In his article, John Martin writes “The Irish slave trade began when James II sold 30,000 Irish prisoners as slaves to the New World. His Proclamation of 1625 required Irish political prisoners be sent overseas and sold to English settlers in the West Indies. By the mid 1600s, the Irish were the main slaves sold to Antigua and Montserrat. At that time, 70 percent of the total population of Montserrat were Irish slaves.”
“Ireland quickly became the biggest source of human livestock for English merchants. The majority of the early slaves to the New World were actually white.”
Martin writes how at the hands of the British, the Irish population plummeted due to the slave trade of the 17th century.
“During the 1650s, over 100,000 Irish children between the ages of 10 and 14 were taken from their parents and sold as slaves in the West Indies, Virginia and New England. In this decade, 52,000 Irish (mostly women and children) were sold to Barbados and Virginia.
Another 30,000 Irish men and women were also transported and sold to the highest bidder. In 1656, [Oliver] Cromwell ordered that 2000 Irish children be taken to Jamaica and sold as slaves to English settlers.”
Martin goes on to explain that for some reason, the Irish slaves are often remembered as ‘indentured servants.’ However, in most cases during the 17th and 18th centuries, they were no more than “human cattle.”
“...the African slave trade was just beginning during this same period,” writes Martin. “It is well recorded that African slaves, not tainted with the stain of the hated Catholic theology and more expensive to purchase, were often treated far better than their Irish counterparts.”
During the late 1600s, writes Martin, African slaves were far more expensive than their Irish counterparts - Africans would sell for around 50 sterling while Irish were often no more than 5 sterling.
The Irish were further exploited when the British began to “breed” Irish women - or girls, sometimes as young as 12 - with African males.
“These new “mulatto” slaves brought a higher price than Irish livestock and, likewise, enabled the settlers to save money rather than purchase new African slaves.
This practice of breeding Irish females with African men went on for several decades and was so widespread that, in 1681, legislation was passed “forbidding the practice of mating Irish slave women to African slave men for the purpose of producing slaves for sale.” In short, it was stopped only because it interfered with the profits of a large slave transport company."
Irish are the forgotten white slaves claims expert - IrishCentral.com
