American History

Table of Contents

Introduction: In the Shadow of the Myth

Chapter 1: A Place for the Unwanted: Elizabethan adventurers dreamed of an American empire that would give them gold and glory. Others saw the New World as a dumping ground for England’s unwanted poor.

Chapter 2: The Judge’s Dream: A highwayman who became Lord Chief Justice planned to colonise American with criminals. He began to empty England’s gaols and set a precedent.

Chapter 3: The Merchant Prince: The mastermind behind the first successful English colony in America was reputedly Britain’s richest man. He kept a fledgling Virginia going and paved the way for the first white slaves.

Chapter 4: Children of the City: The Virginia Company wanted youngsters to work in the tobacco fields. The burghers of London wanted rid of street children. So a bargain was struck and hundreds of children were transported.

Chapter 5: The Jagged Edge: The New World was a magnet for the poor. To get there, they had to mortgage their labour in advance. They were not to know that they had contracted into slavery and might die in bondage.

Chapter 6: `They are not Dogs’: Virginia was run by planters who pushed through laws that relegated “servants” and “apprentices” to the status of livestock. Notionally they had rights but planters were literally allowed to get away with murder.

Chapter 7: The People Trade: IN the 1603s, almost 80,000 people left England for the Chesapeake, New England and the Caribbean, most of them indentured servants. A ruthless trade in people developed in which even a small investor could make money.

Chapter 8: Spirited Away: Untold numbers were kidnapped or duped onto America-bound ships and sold as servants. The “spiriting” business became as insidious and organized as the cocaine racket today. Even magistrates took a cut of the proceeds.

Chapter 9: Foreigners in Their Own Land: Ethnic and religious cleansing in Ireland became a model for Native Americans being cleared from the Chesapeake. During the Cromwell era, still more were displaced and Ireland became a major source of slaves for the New World.

Chapter 10: Dissent in the North: During the 1650s, Scotland fought shy of transporting its unwanted to any English colony. Then religious and political dissent were made punishable by transportation to the Americas. Sometimes more died on the way than ever reached the New World.

Chapter 11: The Planter from Angola: The idea that Africans were Virginia’s first slaves is revealed as a myth through the story of one who became a planter himself and went on to own whites as well as blacks.

Chapter 12: ‘Barbadosed’: In the 1640s, Barbados became the boom economy of the New World. The tiny island’s sugar industry would outperform all its rivals in profits – and in its ruthless use of slave labour.

Chapter 13: The Grandees: A planter aristocracy emerged in the Chesapeake. Its members dealt in men, land and influence, creating dynasties that dominated America for centuries. But stories of brutality deterred would be settlers from emigrating.

Chapter 14: Bacon’s Rebellion: The planters’ nightmare of a combined uprising by blacks and whites came true when a charismatic young aristocrat turned an Indian war into a campaign against his own class, the English grandees. Swearing never again, the grandees set out to divide the races.

Chapter 15: Queen Anne’s Golden Book: Bogus promises of free land persuaded hordes of Europeans to sel up and leave for America. They began a nightmare journey that left some so impoverished they sold their children to pay the fare. But some outfoxed their exploiters.

Chapter 16: Disunity in the Union: Scottish clansmen were sold as servants in the Americas while their chieftains were allowed a comfortable exile in France – two different fates for Jacobites after 1715. Merchants made fortunes selling clansmen in six different colonies.

Chapter 17: Lost and Found: The tide of kidnaping continued under the Hanoverians. In two famous instances, victims returned, as if from the dead, to denounce their abductors. One claimed to be heir to an earldom, kidnapped by the man who stole his birthright.

Chapter 18: ‘His Majesty’s Seven-Year Passengers’: After 1718, England subsidised the convict trade and America was deluged with British jailbirds. Paranoia grew, with soaring crime rates and epidemic blamed on convicts. Only employers were happy: a convict servant was half the price of an African slave.

Chapter 19: The Last Hurrah: Having won their liberty in the War of Independence, Americans had no intention of allowing their country to serve as a penal colony ever again. Britain had other plans and an astonishing plot was born.

It is significant that two journalists wrote this extremely important book. Many professional historians don’t want much attention paid to white slavery for fear that it will take something away from black slavery or make whites feel less compassion for black slaves. That is foolish. People must realize that anyone could (and still can) fall into bondage under whatever name if the circumstances are right. Other books that covered similar subject matter (but received little attention) are:

1) The Forgotten Cause of the Civil War: A New Look at the Slavery Issue by Lawrence R. Tenzer. Shows that white slavery was present in the antebellum American South and played an important role in increasing the tensions between North and South that led to the American Civil War.

2) Legal History of the Color Line: The Rise And Triumph of the One-drop Rule by Frank W. Sweet. Shows that American slave status was not truly based on “race” but on maternal descent from a female slave, regardless of race or color.

3) Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race by Matthew Frye Jacobson. Shows how ruling planters created anti-black racism and white supremacy in order to divide the labor force and secure the help of lower class whites in putting down slave rebellions and fighting Indians.
Rating: 5 / 5