Hoffman - They Were Slaves - The Untold History Of The Enslavement Of Whites In Early America (1993).pdf - Books - The9

T HEY W ERE W HITE AND T HEY W ERE S LAVES

The Untold History of the Enslavement of Whites in Early America

Michael A. Hoffman II

http://www.hoffman-info.com

Introduction

“They were of two sorts, first such as were brought over by masters of ships to be sold as servants.

Such as we call them my dear,’ says she, ‘but they are more properly called slaves.” —Daniel Defoe,

Moll Flanders

This is a history of White people that has never been told in any coherent form, largely because

most modern historians have, for reasons of politics or psychology, refused to recognize White slaves

in early America as just that.

Today, not a tear is shed for the sufferings of millions of our own enslaved forefathers. 200 years of

White slavery in America have been almost completely obliterated from the collective memory of the

American people.

Who wants to be reminded that half—perhaps as many as thirds—of the original American colonists

came here, not of their own free will, but kidnapped, shanghaied, impressed, duped, beguiled, and

yes, in chains?... we tend to gloss over it... we’d prefer to forget the whole sorry chapter... “(Elaine

Kendall, Los Angeles Times, Sept. 1, 1985).

A correct understanding of the authentic history of the enslavement of Whites in America could have

profound consequences for the future of the races: “We cannot be sure that the position of the earliest

Africans differed markedly from that of the white indentured servants. The debate has considerable

significance for the interpretation of race relations in American history” (Eugene D. Genovese, Roll,

Jordan Roll: The World the Slaves Made, p. 31).

Most of the books on White labor in early America are titled with words like “White indentured servi-

tude,” White “bondservants,” White “servants” etc. It is interesting that White people who were bound

to a condition of what became in many cases permanent chattel slavery unto death, are not referred

to as slaves by Establishment academics.

With the massive concentration of educational and media resources on the negro experience of

slavery the unspoken assumption has been that only Blacks have been enslaved to any degree or

magnitude worthy of study or memorial. The historical record reveals that this is not the case, how-

ever. White people have been sold as slaves for centuries.

White Slavery in Ancient & Medieval Europe

Among the ancient Greeks, despite their tradition of democracy, the enslavement of fellow Whites—

even fellow Greeks—was the order of the day. Aristotle considered White slaves as things. The Ro-

mans also had no compunctions against enslaving Whites who they too termed “a thing” (res). In his

agricultural writings, the first century B.C. Roman philosopher Varro labeled White slaves as nothing

more than “tools that happened to have voices” (instrumenti vocale). Cato the Elder, discoursing on

plantation management, proposed that White slaves when old or ill should be discarded along with

worn-out farm implements.

Julius Caesar enslaved as many as one million Whites from Gaul, some of whom were sold to the

slave dealers who followed his victorious legions (William D. Phillips, Jr., Slavery from Roman Times

to the Early Transatlantic Trade, p.18).

In A.D. 319 the “Christian” emperor of Rome, Constantine, ruled that if an owner whipped his White

slave to death “he should not stand in any criminal accusation if the slave dies; and all statutes of limi-

tations and legal interpretations are hereby set aside.”

The Romans enslaved thousands of the early White inhabitants of Great Britain who were known as

“Angles,” from which we derive the term “Anglo-Saxon” as a description of the English race. In the

sixth century Pope Gregory the First witnessed blond-haired, blue-eyed English boys awaiting sale in

a slave market in Rome. Inquiring of their origin, the Pope was told they were Angles. Gregory replied,

“Non Angli, sed Angeli” (“Not Angles, but Angels”).

When the Franks conquered the Visigoths in southern Gaul huge numbers of Whites entered the

slave markets. “After Charlemagne’s conquest of Saxony, during which many pagan Saxons were en-

slaved, he set up a network of parish churches. To provide for the maintenance of the priest and the

church, those living in the parish were to donate a house and land as well as a male and female

(Saxon) slave to the church for every 120 people in the parish” (William Phillips. p. 52).

Arabs and the Traffic in White Slaves

The trade in White slaves was one of the few sources of foreign exchange for western European

powers in a period when the East produced the goods that Europeans could not procure elsewhere.

The sale of White slaves to Asia and Africa was one of the few sources of gold for European treasur-

ies.

From the eighth to the eleventh century France was a major transfer point for White slaves to the

Muslim world, with Rouen being the center for the selling of Irish and Flemish slaves.

“At the same time that France was a transfer point for slaves to the Muslim world, Italy was occupy-

ing much the same position... Venetians (were)... selling slaves and timber across the Mediterranean.

The slaves were usually Slays brought across the Alps... The Venetians were the earliest successful

Italian sea traders and because profits on (slave) trade with the Muslims were lucrative, they resisted

efforts to stop them. In return for their exports of timber, iron and (White) slaves, they brought in orien-

tal luxury products, mainly fine cloths...” (William Phillips, pp. 62-63).

The stereotype from Establishment consensus history is of the Muslim slaver herding chained

Blacks through the desert. In fact, for seven hundred years, until the fall of Muslim Spain, those being

herded were first and foremost overwhelmingly White:

“Before the tenth century the Muslims generally bought Christian Europeans as slaves... By the

tenth century, Slavs became the most numerous imported group... during the late Middle Ages, until

the fall of Granada in the late fifteenth century, most slaves of the... Muslims were Christians from the

northern kingdoms...” (William Phillips, p. 69).

“In the vast lands of the eastern European steppes from the eighth to the twelfth century, there was

a well-developed slaving network... Slavs and Finns, called saqaliba (slaves) indiscriminately by the

Muslims, entered the Muslim world by these Caspian and Black sea routes.” (William Phillips, pp. 63-

64).

The fate of the hundreds of thousands of White slaves sold to the Arabs was described in one

Spanish text as “atrocissima et ferocissima” (most atrocious and harsh). The men were worked to

death as galley slaves. The women, girls and boys were used as prostitutes.

White males had their genitals mutilated in castration attempts—bloody procedures of incredible

brutality which most of the White men who were forced to submit did not survive, judging from the

high prices White eunuchs commanded throughout the Middle Eastern slave markets.

Escape from North Africa and the Middle East was almost impossible and those White slaves who

were caught trying to flee were punished by having their noses and ears cut off, or worse.

Early Muslim texts provide insights into the extent to which the Arabs identified Europeans with

slavery, classified White slaves as animals and even produced learned racist disquisitions on the

supposed merits of emasculated East European slaves. In his ninth century treatise on beasts, The

Book of Animals, the Muslim scholar Jahiz writes:

“Another change which overcomes the eunuch: of two slaves of Slavic race, who are... twins, one

castrated and the other not, the eunuch becomes more disposed toward service, wiser, more able,

and apt for various problems of manual labor... All these qualities you find only in the castrated one.

On the other hand, his brother continues to have the same native torpor, the same lack of natural tal-

ent, the same imbecility common to slaves, and incapacity for learning a foreign language.” (Charles

Verlinden, The Slave in Medieval Europe, vol. 1, p. 213).

Whites were also enslaved in Russia and I do not refer here to serfdom which was a later develop-

ment: “Knowledge of the existence of slavery in early modern Russia is not widespread. Many people

know of the existence of serfdom, and confuse the two” (Richard Hellie, Slavery in Russia, 1450-

1725, p. xvii).

The White Russian Muscovites were enslaved both by northern European raiders as well as mas-

sive slave-catching operations launched by the Mongols and the Ottoman empire. Russians also en-

slaved each other to such an extent that in 1571 an official Slave Chancellery was established which

formally codified White slavery as a Russian institution. (Hellie, p. 118).

Viking Slavers

In the ninth century the Vikings sold tens of thousands of Whites to the Arabs of Spain. According to

Michael Wood’s book In Search of the Dark Ages:

“An Arab traveler of the time who came to Spain remarked on the great numbers of European

slaves in harems and in the militia. The palace of the Emir of Cordoba in particular had many White

girls... Of these unfortunate people the Vikings were undoubtedly a major source of supply... The Ar-

abs in Spain saw the long-term potential of this trade, and as early as the 840s sent a diplomatic mis-

sion to Scandinavia to put it on an organized basis.”

“The most westerly component of the early medieval slave trade in Europe was the British Isles. In

the eleventh century the Vikings were active slave traders in Ireland... From Ireland the Vikings took

the slaves to be sold in Muslim Spain and Scandinavia, and even to be transported into Russia; some

may have been taken as far as Constantinople and the Muslim Middle East...” (William Phillips, p. 63).

“The Norwegian slave trader was an important enough figure to appear in the 12th century tale of

Tristan... Icelandic literature also provides numerous references to raiding in Ireland as a source for

slaves...

“Norwegian Vikings made slave raids not only against the Irish and Scots (who are often called Irish

in Norse sources) but also against Norse settlers in Ireland or the Scottish Isles or even in Norway

itself... Slave trading was a major commercial activity of the Viking Age... (Ruth Mazo Karras, Slavery

and Society in Medieval Scandinavia, p. 49). The children of White slaves in Iceland were routinely

murdered en masse (Karras, p. 52).

White Slavery in Early America

David Brion Davis writing in the New York Review of Books, Oct. 11, 1990, p. 37 states:

“As late as the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, continuing shipments of white slaves, some of

them Christians, flowed from the booming slave markets on the northern Black Sea coast into Italy,

Spain, Egypt and the Mediterranean islands... From Barbados to Virginia, colonists.., showed few

scruples about reducing their less fortunate countrymen to a status little different from that of chattel

slaves... The prevalence and suffering of white slaves, serfs and indentured servants in the early

modern period suggests that there was nothing inevitable about limiting plantation slavery to people of

African origin.”

L. Ruchames in “The Sources of Racial Thought in Colonial America,” states that “the slave trade

worked in both directions, with white merchandise as well as black.” ( Journal of Negro History, no. 52,

pp. 251-273).

In 1659 the English parliament debated the practice of selling British Whites into slavery in the New

World. In the debate the Whites were referred to not as “indentured servants” but as “slaves” whose

“enslavement” threatened the liberties of all Englishmen. (Thomas Burton, Parliamentary Diary: 1656-

59, vol. 4, pp. 253-274).

Foster R. Dulles in Labor in America quotes an early document describing White children in colonial

servitude as “crying and mourning for redemption from their slavery.”

Dr. Hilary McD. Beckles of the University of Hull, England, writes regarding White slave labor,

“...indenture contracts were alienable... the ownership of which could easily be transferred, like that of

any other commodity... as with slaves, ownership changed without their participation in the dialogue

concerning transfer.” Beckles refers to “indentured servitude” as “White proto-slavery” ( The Americas,

vol. 41, no. 2, p. 21).

In the Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series; America and West Indies of 1701, we read of a

protest over the “encouragement to the spiriting away of Englishmen without their consent and selling

them for slaves, which hath been a practice very frequent and known by the name of kidnapping.”

(Emphasis added). In the British West Indies, plantation slavery was instituted as early as 1627. In

Barbados by the 1640s there were an estimated 25,000 slaves, of whom 21,700 were White.

(“Some Observations on the Island of Barbados,” Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, p.

528). It is worth noting that while White slaves were worked to death in Barbados, there were Carib-

bean Indians brought from Guiana to help propagate native foodstuffs who were well-treated and re-

ceived as free persons by the wealthy planters.

Of the fact that the wealth of Barbados was founded on the backs of White slave labor there can be

no doubt. White slave laborers from Britain and Ireland were the mainstay of the sugar colony. Until

the mid-1640s there were few Blacks in Barbados. George Downing wrote to John Winthrop, the co-

lonial governor of Massachusetts in 1645, that planters who wanted to make a fortune in the British

West Indies must procure White slave labor “out of England” if they wanted to succeed. (Elizabeth

Donnan, Documents Illustrative of the History of the Slave Trade to America, pp. 125-126).

“...white indentured servants were employed and treated, incidentally, exactly like slaves... “(Morley

Ayearst, The British West Indies, p. 19).

“The many gradations of unfreedom among Whites made it difficult to draw fast lines between any

idealized free White worker and a pitied or scorned servile Black worker... in labor-short seventeenth

and eighteenth-century America the work of slaves and that of White servants were virtually inter-

changeable in most areas.” (David R. Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of

the American Working Class , p. 25).

In the Massachusetts Court of Assistants, whose records date to 1633, we find a 1638 description of

a White man, one Gyles Player, as having been “delivered up for a slave.”

The Englishman William Eddis, after observing White slaves in America in the 1770s wrote, “Gener-

ally speaking, they groan beneath a worse than Egyptian bondage” ( Letters from America, London,

1792). Governor Sharpe of the Maryland colony compared the property interest of the planters in their

White slaves, with the estate of an English farmer consisting of a “Multitude of Cattle.”

The Quock Walker case in Massachusetts in 1 783 which ruled that slavery was contrary to the

state Constitution, was applied equally to Blacks and Whites in Massachusetts.

Patrick F. Moran in his Historical Sketch of the Persecutions Suffered by the Catholics of Ireland , re-

fers to the transportation of the Irish to the colonies as the “slave-trade” (pp. 343-346).

The disciplinary and revenue laws of early Virginia (circa 1631-1645) did not discriminate Negroes

in bondage from Whites in bondage. (William Hening [editor], Statutes at Large of Virginia , vol. I, pp.

174, 198, 200, 243, 306. For records of wills in which “Lands, goods & chattels, cattle, moneys, ne-

groes, English servants, horses, sheep and household stuff” were all sold together see the Lancaster

County Records in Virginia Colonial Abstracts , Beverly Fleet, editor).

Lay historian Col. A.B. Ellis, writing in the British newspaper Argosy (May 6, 1893): “Few, but read-

ers of old colonial State papers and records, are aware that between the years 1649-1690 a lively

trade was carried on between England and the plantations, as the colonies were then called, in politi-

cal prisoners... where they were sold by auction to the colonists for various terms of years, sometimes

for life as slaves.”

Sir George Sandys’ 1618 plan for Virginia referred to bound Whites assigned to the treasurer’s of-

fice to “belong to said office for ever.” The service of Whites bound to Berkeley’s Hundred was

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