black v white slavery
Mikki claims that successive governments in Britain and America have conveniently concentrated so much on the black slave trade that very few people are even aware that there was such a thing as white slavery.“White slavery was either not taught in schools at all or it is brushed over with the 'indentured servant' lie,” says Mikki. “This is despite white slavery in the New World being a frequent subject of parliamentary debate as early as 1656 when the selling of whites in slavery was seen as being a threat to the liberties of all Englishmen.”
“Also, in 1659 a petition to parliament described in detail the deplorable way in which white slaves were treated in slave ships,” says Mikki. “They were locked below deck amongst horses not only for two weeks or more while the ship was still in port but also for the entire voyage.”
“They were chained from their legs to their necks and cramped with 300 others,” says Mikki, “but sometimes the ship's master, for greater profit, would crowd as many as 600 into the hulks.”
“The ship’s master did not care that half of these people or more would die before reaching their destination,” says Mikki. “At that time there were no trade goods in England to send back to the colonies -- it was either empty ships or white slave ships.”
“The first slaves in the American colonies were white slaves, slaves for life, including any children they had,” says Mikki, “and the white slave trade was a far more extensive operation than the black slave trade ever was.”
“It involved hundreds of thousands of unfortunate white men, women and children stretching back to the 1600s and the kidnappings even continued well after the Revolution.”
“White slaves were worth far less than Negroes in the New World,” says Mikki. “They did not last very long in the new climate and, having paid more for a black slave, the planters treated them better than whites.”
“Even the Negroes recognized this and showed contempt for the whites worse off than themselves.”
“The wealth and status of America’s oldest families was gained entirely on the back of slaves, white and black,” says Mikki, “but primarily white slaves because they laid the foundations of the nation long before the first Negro slave stepped onto North American soil.”
“The only white settlers who prospered and left many ancestors were the slave traders and the pre-Revolution convicts and the post-Revolution indentured servants,” says Mikki. “Both the convicts and the indentured servants served their time and then took full advantage of black slave labor up to 1860, when slavery moved back to being white again.”
“Waves of poor starving white immigrants following the Irish Potato famine were worked virtually as slaves in America,” says Mikki. “So black slavery, taken into context, was merely a blip in the history of the settlement of the New World – the real burden we face is the shame of enslaving our own people.”
Read more by Mikki on this issue:
Labels: America, Barbados, barbary coast, convict transportation, England, freedom, indentured servitude, Ireland, Jamestown, kidnapping, Scotland, slavery, slaves, west indies, white slavery
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