The Slave Trade

“that, I decided, was what it meant to be a slave: your past didn’t matter, in the present, you were invisible and you had no claim on the future.” Lawrence Hill

Photo by British Library on Unsplash

PREAMBLE

In their book, “White Cargo,” Don Jordan and Michael Walsh deliver a deep historical dive into Colonial American slavery(indentured servants), for “His Majesty’s plantations.”

For 170 years — 1606 -1776 — England meted out this new lucrative reality by ridding itself and neighboring countries of its drunkards, dregs, vagabonds, criminals, and urchins.

It’s believed that 300,000 Europeans were kidnapped and/or sold a bill of goods, (becoming “free-willers”).

These “free willers” contracted for oceanic passage to the New World by agreeing to indentured service for a promising future.

Approximately half would never survive their bondage. Indentured servants generally had a 7–14-year contract to toil away on the plantations.

The multitudes that were “spirited away,” shanghaied,” to America, were routinely treated like animals with beatings, whippings, neck irons, etc. Of course, the “free-willers” had no clue of the horrors that awaited them.