Customer Reviews

White Cargo: The Forgotten History of Britain's White Slaves in America

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The plight of millions of American slaves has been overlooked by historians for far too long. Slavery in the Americas was not limited to black Africans nor were the depredations inflicted on non-African slaves.

This well-documented, scholarly expose of white slavery is a must-read for historians and civil-rights advocates, many of whom will be surprised by how widespread this practice was. The practice of indenture was well-known, but the fact that bondage often lasted until the end of life is not. I found this work to be simultaneously heartbreaking, infuriating, and riveting in content.

My husband's sixth-great-grandmother and her son were sold on the block in Charleston, but whenever we tell this story, other people actually try to "correct" us with, "No, she was an indentured servant, not a slave." (Not true). This long-overdue work is a memorial to the nameless individuals who died in bondage as well as an expose of a practice too long forgotten and ignored by American history textbooks. Five stars.

This book's authors take a new look at a very old subject. As you probably know by now, WHITE CARGO equates the experience of indentured servants with slaves in colonial America. While this may initially strike some people (me included) as a mere polemic, this book makes its case convincingly.

The book starts with discovery of the body of a teenaged European boy in Maryland in 2003. The remains date back to the 1600s, and he is found in a mound of trash. But who was this kid? And why was his body disposed of so unceremoniously?

Walsh and Jordan tell the story of this anonymous indentured servant, and the hundreds of thousands of others like him, from both sides of the Big Pond. The first group of them arrived in 1619, and most of them were kids swept up from the streets of London. "Society's sweepings" were shipped west and made into indentured servants.

As their stories unfold, the authors accumulate the evidence and arguments that show that both indentured servants and slaves were stripped away of virtually all civil rights and reduced to mere property. Further, the privations visited upon indentured servants (abuse, shortened lifespans, overwork) are so hair-raising, it's surprising this argument hasn't been made so convincingly long before 2008.

This book is vital, it's engaging, and it's news to me. (See also Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II.)

This is a Great Book!
As a Boy from the Caribbean my Grandparents taught me about African slavery and Irish slavery and my ancestry. Being like many Afro-Caribbean people (especially people from Montserrat, the Virgin Islands, Trinidad, and Barbados) I have African ancestry as well as Irish and Scottish Ancestry just as Colin Powell, singer Rhianna and many others.
When I moved to the States I always wondered why they didn't Also teach Irish Slavery in school. I understand that African-Americans endured slavery for longer in addition the being treated as second class citizens but never understood why both are not taught. I assume since America was founded by the British the history books were "edited" not to mention this time in history or "edited" to use lighter language like "indentured servants" instead of slaves.
This is a must read for all history buffs.

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.

In their book White Cargo, authors Jordan and Walsh re-explore a perspective that has enjoyed very little support in American history books. Although repetitive at times, this book is quite interesting and overall, an easy read for history buffs.

The socio-economic stratification of America's first white settlers is clearly outlined and links are made to their origins in Jacobean Britain. The focus of this book is on the business of transporting criminals to the King's American colonies and the manipulation of British colonial laws to allow for their unspeakably cruel handling. The primary motive being colonial land acquisition and profits to be made from it. The masterminds are ex-military leaders whose previous career was with Oliver Cromwell's infamous ethnic cleansing tirades (Irish-Catholic genocide). With backing from London's wealthiest merchants, these retired soldiers created a business that enjoyed enormous profits for centuries.

If in fact, the laws defining the difference between chattels & slaves appear blurred (or unrecognized), it isn't because the authors are a "Marxist throwback to the 60's & 70's" ~ its because the laws WERE unclear at that point in history. And, it is quite obvious that colonial courts clearly favored the gentried elite.

Many shocking facts re: colonial social mores and the holding of slaves (Anglo & African) are described. The sheer number of petty criminals transported to America, particularly Virginia, against their will, is appalling. These numbers, if accurate, would mean that the majority of white Americans with family roots in the mid-Atlantic, are indeed decendents of chattel slaves.
As a history/sociology teacher in Virginia, I enjoyed the proximity of details in this book. Although not written in academic format, White Cargo consolidates many scholarly facts. In doing so (and perhaps unwittingly), it provides a basis for what has become known as the modern prison industrial complex.

Perhaps we are really entering a "post-racial," atmosphere in which more reality can be injected into the very narrow confines of the propaganda offered since WWII, in regards to the "issues" about which we can speak. A broader view---and like getting one's own history back, or at least a sliver of it.

This book is extraordinary and very upsetting indeed. Children were actually stolen along with adults who were carted off to America by the British.
Many Irish people were among them. I read the book, lent it to my son, and when he didn't return it, I bought another copy. Be warned, however, there is a book of fiction also titled White Cargo. You can tell them apart because the nonfictional book has the subtitle "The Forgotten History
of Britain's White Slaves in America."

The first time I heard about the "Indenture servants" and white slaves was in London. Some American, Jamaican and Irish friends told me about their story.

The story of whites slaves (from Britain and France) has been told earlier by scholars like Eric Williams ( "Capitalism and Slavey" and "From Colombus to Castro" and J A Rogers ( Sex and Race Vol II and III, and "Africa gift to America").

It was the first time I knew about their story in history books. Don Jordan and Michael Jordan did a great job, this book is focused on Britain white slaves and the research is deep and sound.

They bring new facts we didn't know like for example:

- Portugueses were the first to get rid o the vagrants childs in their East indies colonies.

- Britain expelled some convicts in Africa (South Africa).

- The first black slaves in the USA (1619), were in facts wars prisoners. The british bucaneers kidnapped them into some Portuguese Slave boats. At this moment Portuguese were waging a colonial war against the Congo kingdom in Africa. The AFrican prisoners were sold in the new world.

This subject concerning of whites slaves is generally hidden in European history. The French scholar Gabriel Debien said in 1951 that the white slaves traffic was the foundation of Black slavery. The capital driven from their traffic allowed the Franch trade slavers to destroy Africa.He was talking of course of the French "engagés" ( French equivalent of Indentured servants)

Eric Williams said it in "Capitalism an Slavery", the kidnappers of vagrants, childs and Prostitutes in Bristol and London earned their first pounds into the Indentured servant and convicts traffic.

I recommend this book to everyone who is interested in the history of slavery into the new world.

Jordan and Walsh "don't beat around the bush", white slavery is the foundation of black slavery in the new world. The last one was justified upon racial prejudice. And these white slaves were sold by the European monarchs and merchants...Williams an Rogers said it in the 1940's


They also describe the process which made the first black servants ( The first blacks in the USA were treated like indentured servants see: J A Rogers and Michael A Gomez) into perpetual slaves...

La vérité finit toujours par vaincre : Truth will always win

I bought this book originally for history class cause I had to read it. Once I started I couldn't put it down...

It's good to see another addition to the few books on the transportation of convicts to North America. But like its predecessors, this book pretty much ignores the law. It describes all white forced servants as being slaves. In doing so, it somehow assumes that the law was a sham.
In law, there was a great gulf between indentured labourers and convicts. The latter were transported as a condition of their pardons from death sentences. As a consequence, they remained attainted until their sentences were served. Attainted persons were unable to hold property, sue in the courts or give evidence. That became a matter of great significance in New South Wales, which succeeded North America as the convict dumping ground.
In analysing indentured and convict workers as slaves, the authors blur the legal difference between them. Wittingly or otherwise, they adopt the essentially Marxist analysis of law which ended among legal historians with the publication of EP Thompson's Whigs and Hunters (1978). Until then, Marxists assumed that the law was merely a ruling class plot and that its pretensions to the rule of law were merely a mask for class preference. Famously, Thompson claimed at the end of his book that the rule of law was, without qualification, a Good Thing. At the least, it was to be taken seriously.
So for an old legal historian like me, this new book is a curious historical relic, a throwback to the age of the 60s and 70s.
Isn't it time for a North American legal historian to take the law of convicts seriously? 50000 convicts were transported to North America. In practice they may well have been treated as slaves. How did that practice meld with the law? What did the courts say when the sales of convict labour were tested, or when convicts tried to give evidence?
3 out of 5 because it tells an important story in a compelling fashion. But, my, the analysis is weak.