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

• Publisher:   NYU Press
• Number Of Pages:   320
• Publication Date:   2008-03-08
• ISBN-10 / ASIN:   0814742963
• ISBN-13 / EAN:   9780814742969

"This vividly written book tells the tale from both sides of the Atlanticâ¦meticulously source and footnoted—but is never dry or academic...Jordan and Walsh offer an explanation of how the structures of slavery—black or white—were entwined in the roots of American society. They refrain from drawing links to today, except to remind readers that there are probably tens of millions of Americans who are descended from white slaves without even knowing it."
—New York Times Book Review

ÂWith information gleaned from contemporary letters, journals and court archives, White Cargo is packed with proof that the brutalities usually associated with black slavery were, for centuries, also inflicted on whites.Â
ÂDaily Mail

ÂAn eye-opening and heart-rending story.Â
ÂThe Times (London)

White Cargo is the forgotten story of the thousands of Britons who lived and died in bondage in BritainÂs American colonies.

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, more than 300,000 white people were shipped to America as slaves. Urchins were swept up from LondonÂs streets to labor in the tobacco fields, where life expectancy was no more than two years. Brothels were raided to provide Âbreeders for Virginia. Hopeful migrants were duped into signing as indentured servants, unaware they would become personal property who could be bought, sold, and even gambled away. Transported convicts were paraded for sale like livestock.

Drawing on letters crying for help, diaries, and court and government archives, Don Jordan and Michael Walsh demonstrate that the brutalities usually associated with black slavery alone were perpetrated on whites throughout British rule. The trade ended with American independence, but the British still tried to sell convicts in their former colonies, which prompted one of the most audacious plots in Anglo-American history.

This is a saga of exploration and cruelty spanning 170 years that has been submerged under the overwhelming memory of black slavery. White Cargo brings the brutal, uncomfortable story to the surface.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.)

password: gigle.ws

NEWER EBOOKS

Aerodata International No.4 - Messerschmitt 109E

Vintage Aviation Publications Ltd | 1978 | ISBN: 0905469356 | English | 26 Pages | PDF | 4,9 MB about this ebook

John Peterson - Historical Muscat

Publisher: Brill | 2006-11-15 | ISBN: 9004152660 | PDF | 152 pages | 20.99 MB An examination of the historical environment of Muscat, the capital of Oman, and the damage sustained by the citys historical legacy since 197. It includes a historical gazetteer of Muscat and its environs and numerous maps and photographs. Please appreciate my work to rock these links: Note 1: If you can not open the downloaded file, and your Adobe Reader reports on the damaged file, then your Adobe Reader. about this ebook

Martin Travers - European Literature from Romanticism to Postmodernism: A Reader in Aesthetic Practice

Publisher: Continuum International Publishing | 2006-06-15 | ISBN: 0826490980 | PDF | 368 pages | 17.83 MB European Literature from Romanticism to Postmodernism is an anthology of key theoretical writings by the major representatives of the schools and movements of recent European literature. Each chapter is devoted to one particular school of movement from within the broad body of literature, from romanticism, realism and modernism though to the literature of political engagement of the 1920s and 1930s, and the more recent initiative of postmodernism. about this ebook

Götter, Gräber und Gelehrte: Roman der Archäologie

Rowohlt Verlag Gmbh | 2008 | ISBN: 3498009354 | 527 pages | PDF | 16,5 MB Der Weltbestseller «Götter, Gräber und Gelehrte» (Gesamtauflage: über 5 Millionen Exemplare) gilt als Wegbereiter des modernen Sachbuchs in Deutschland. C. W. Ceram erzählt darin die Geschichte der Archäologie als packenden, hochinformativen Tatsachenroman. Von Europa über den Vorderen Orient bis in die Neue Welt folgt er den Spuren der großen Forscher und Abenteurer. about this ebook

Aerodata International No.8 - Boeing B-17G Flying Fortress

Vintage Aviation Publications Ltd | 1979 | ISBN: 090546550 | English | 24 Pages | PDF | 6,27 MB about this ebook

Infantry Tank Mk. II Matilda (Armor Profile 15)

Profile Publications | 1967 | ISBN: N/A | English | 12 Pages | PDF | 5,7 MB about this ebook

T.3 Christie (Armour in Profile 4)

Profile Publications | 1967 | ISBN: N/A | English | 12 Pages | PDF | 5,7 MB about this ebook

The Battle for Britain: Citizenship and Ideology in the Second World War

Publisher: Routledge | 1992 | ISBN 041501722X | PDF | 151 pages | 14.3 MB The Battle for Britain takes an innovative look at the impact of World War II on British ideology and social policy. This book successfully debunks common assumptions about the national spirit of 1939-1945, and analyzes the often contradictory forces influencing the formation of postwar social democratic ``consensus'' and the expansion of social citizenship under a welfare state. about this ebook

Christians and Jews: In the Twelfth Century Renaissance

Publisher: Routledge | 1995 | ISBN 0415000122 | PDF | 207 pages | 15 MB The twelfth century was a period of rapid change in Europe. The intellectual landscape was being transformed by new access to classical works through non-Christian sources. The Christian church was consequently trying to strengthen its control over the priesthood and laity and within the church a dramatic spiritual renewal was taking place. about this ebook

Midget Submarines of the Second World War (Shipshape)

Caxton Editions | 2003 | ISBN: 1840675217 | English | 134 Pages | PDF | 130,1 MBFeatures include: - an in-depth text by the leading author in the field, covering the development and operational history of the human torpedoes, submersibles and midget submarines of Italy, Germany, Japan and Great Britain. - data tables, operational summaries and a collection of illustrations including rare Italian photographs - a separate set of large-scale plans for modelmakers of the British X-Craft and the German Seehund. about this ebook

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

Hyperlink code: