WHITE BONDAGE



Two journalists, Don Jordan and Michael Walsh, have written an account of what they call "The Forgotten History of Britain's White Slaves in America". "Forgotten" is over-stating the case somewhat as a number of books on Colonial-era America and indeed on Slavery have previously covered this subject. Indeed the lengthy and decent bibliography at the end of the book is testament to this, including such books as Edmund Morgan's "American Slavery, American Freedom" and Peter Kolchin's

WHITE BONDAGE



Two journalists, Don Jordan and Michael Walsh, have written an account of what they call "The Forgotten History of Britain's White Slaves in America". "Forgotten" is over-stating the case somewhat as a number of books on Colonial-era America and indeed on Slavery have previously covered this subject. Indeed the lengthy and decent bibliography at the end of the book is testament to this, including such books as Edmund Morgan's "American Slavery, American Freedom" and Peter Kolchin's "American Slavery". What is perhaps novel about Jordan and Walsh's book is that its audience is the general reader, and it covers this issue, as far as possible, separately from the issue of African slavery in the Americas.



At heart, the reasons for slavery, in it's purest form (African slavery) and in the form it took with regard to white Britons (Bondage, indentured servitude) was the requirement of those who plundered the land from it's Natives for labour. Without a source of labour the landlords of the New World would have been unable to turn a profit, and in the initial stages of colonization this labour was generally that of white Britons. "Recruitment" came in a manner of forms, labourers were persuaded to indenture them-selves for a period to pay for their voyage, children were kidnapped, and prisoners were offered transportation to the colonies in lieu of the hangman's noose. Another source was Ireland, Cromwell in particular loosened up the new world labour market with infusions of Irishmen and woman during his bloody conquest of that ill-starred Isle. An interesting point that the authors touch on tangentially is the fact that those Britons who were put into bondage in the New World were viewed by the elites of the time as an almost separate race, a feeling that went furthest in the case of the catholic Irish peasants. Their inferior nature is made crystal clear by the rhetoric ("Scum" "Dregs" etc) applied to them.



The book focuses primarily on the experience of Virginia and Barbados, though not to the exclusion of other parts of the new world. Unsurprisingly given that the book is written by journalists, there is ample anecdotal material, but not to the exclusion of more general observations and historical background. The experience of those dislocated was horrific: the voyage from Britain was generally a grotesque ordeal. Beatings, abuse and murder were not unusual, their labour was extracted in the most brutal conditions. Those who had indentured themselves for a period of years were often cheated out of their freedom when their "contracts" expired, and almost certainly out of whatever their dues should have been in terms of land and money. It wasn't until the later 17th century that their position began to improve with the exception of those transported for "crimes". Slavery and bondage at that point became to be strongly associated with race and Africa the chief source of it's supply.



I had a few doubts about this book before I read it, but there is no attempt on the author's behalf to minimize the plight of African slaves who after all probably out numbered the variety of Britons in bondage by a ratio of about 50 to 1, had far less chance of becoming free and carried the burden of slavery well beyond the point when they were formally freed in 1863. In short, a more than competent but less than comprehensive history, that touches upon many issues regarding coerced white labour in the Britain's North American Colonies in the context of a general account of that era.