slave migrations

So much of ancient migration patterns was determined by the slave trade that it should not have surprised Mikki that slavery played a crucial part in later migrations, too, and continues to shape the modern world via human trafficking and sex slavery from Eastern Europe and South East Asia.

“The discovery of the New World of North and South America and the need for cheap labor started a huge migration of slaves -- forcibly, of course,” says Mikki, “and while the Latin Conquistadors were plundering Africa of its peoples, shipping them off in chains and working them as slaves in South American plantations the British were plundering their own people, shipping off the surplus poor in chains and working them as slaves in North America and the West Indies.”

“This is something I did not know,” says Mikki, “and it shocked me to learn that one of my ancestors was a convicted felon who evaded execution in the Old Country by transportation and worked as a slave alongside kidnapped Negroes on the tobacco plantations of Virginia.”

“In 1701 the Calendar of Colonial State Papers records 25,000 slaves in Barbados of which 21,700 were white,” says Mikki. “There was absolutely no doubt that the white people shipped to the New World were intended to be slaves.”

“The only protests at that time were against black slavery in England because nobody knew what was happening to the whites shipped off to the colonies,” says Mikki, “and when confronted the Solicitor General of England expressed the view in 1729 that slavery of Africans was lawful in England.”

“It took until 1760 for the first organized campaign against slavery -- the Anti-Slavery Society founded by Granville Sharp -- to get up and active,” says Mikki. “Exposure of black slavery actually helped end white slavery.”

“In 1757 the Aberdeen businessmen and magistrates who were kidnapping poor white people and selling them to plantation owners in the colonies were exposed for their involvement in the white slave trade.”

“Because those running the country had more than a vested interest in perpetuating slavery,” says Mikki, “it took forty more years before any action was taken.”

“There was no universal suffrage in those days,” explains Mikki. “Only the rich and powerful had the right to vote and if you had no means of support you were fodder for the cannons of war or the plantations of the New World.”

Read more by Mikki on this issue:

a nation built on white slavery

globalized slavery

whitewashing slavery

Britons never will be slaves?

so you think you’re a slave?

Tobacco and America's Convict Past

out of sight, out of mind

digging up your ancestors

is slavery the human condition?

the ghosts of slavery

kidnapped children

black v white slavery

Anglo Slavery

lies, felons, slave-drivers and profiteers

the ghosts of slavery

Mikki points out that anyone who is familiar with the horrors of the Industrial Revolution and the earlier enslavement of hundreds of thousands of innocent poor people from England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales -- who, before convict transportation and black slavery, were kidnapped, sold and shipped in chains to the New World colonies to be worked as slaves in perpetuity from the early 1600s to the early 1700s -- knows that poverty and overpopulation leads to slavery and gross civil abuses.

“Even those not familiar with British colonial history feel intuitively threatened by masses of immigrants coming into their country, taking their jobs, undercutting their wages, creating housing shortages and generally lowering the standard of living of ordinary people while increasing that of the rich and powerful,” says Mikki. “All of the good work done by the slave abolitionists and the Trade Unions is now being undone, and the ghosts of slavery are coming back to bite us.”

“There was never any consideration given to paying the kidnapped people for their labor or freeing them -- it was slavery for life,” says Mikki. “And the role of the Scots in the slave trade, both white and black, is particularly damning.”

“Scottish highland chiefs -- like their counterparts in Africa -- actually colluded with slavers and shippers to sell off their surplus populations,” says Mikki, “and venal justices, usurers and landlords in Edinburgh also colluded with them by using devious debt, tenancy and vagrancy schemes to more or less legalize kidnapping, shipment and perpetual slavery of innocent people in the New World.”

“It wasn’t until 1757 -- 130 years after white slavery to the New World commenced -- that a number of Aberdeen businessmen and magistrates were exposed for their involvement in the white slave trade.”

“By then, the African slave trade had become far more profitable than the white slave trade, and free white settlement was the norm after the 1776 Revolution,” says Mikki. “So, the bulk of white people being sent to the New World just before the 1776 Revolution were convicted criminals, petty or otherwise, mostly political dissidents, and they were not particularly welcomed by the plantation owners because of their bad character or attitude.”

“So popular were black slaves that the British gentry even wanted them as household servants, and when slave markets openly trading in Negro slaves actually appeared in London and Liverpool the awful reality of slavery was brought right into the heart of the nation. Slave markets were the norm the the USA, but they had not been seen in England since the Roman Empire!"

“As with immigration today, the native English population was horrified at the sight and plight of the black slaves within their midst,” says Mikki, “but mostly they resented that the gentry were buying these slaves in order to avoid paying a wage to a local person.”

“The activists expressed economic as well as moral outrage against slavery in England and the colonies,” says Mikki, “and in this sort of climate it wasn't surprising that the American Revolution of 1776 took place, separating the old and the new world.”

Read more by Mikki on this issue:

a nation built on white slavery

globalized slavery

whitewashing slavery

Britons never will be slaves?

so you think you’re a slave?

Tobacco and America's Convict Past

out of sight, out of mind

digging up your ancestors

is slavery the human condition?

kidnapped children

black v white slavery

slave migrations

Anglo Slavery

lies, felons, slave-drivers and profiteers

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:

a nation built on white slavery

globalized slavery

whitewashing slavery

Britons never will be slaves?

so you think you’re a slave?

Tobacco and America's Convict Past

out of sight, out of mind

digging up your ancestors

is slavery the human condition?

the ghosts of slavery

kidnapped children

slave migrations

Anglo Slavery

lies, felons, slave-drivers and profiteers

time to return to ireland?

Regan and her husband left Northern Ireland in December 1992 to get away from the ‘troubles’ only to face the same ‘troubles’ in London – as well as new ‘troubles’ with Islamic immigrants – and expects a massive migration back to Ireland if things worsen in England.

“We left Northern Ireland because we were fed up with it all and wanted a better life for our children," says Regan. "We moved first to London and would you believe that we fell foul of the IRA terrorists, aka freedom fighters, there, too!"

"When we arrived at the airport we were waiting for a bus into town and noticed an unaccompanied suitcase in a corner," says Regan. "Knowing that it could very well have been a bomb, we ran back into the airport, notified the authorities and wasted money catching a taxi so that we could get out of the area quick smart!"

"A week later, we had settled down into our new home and my husband was happy in his new job, the kids loved London, and our new neighbors were quiet and minded their own business and all was well," says Regan "Then, in the middle of the night, I think it was on Christmas Eve, the telephone rang."

"Since only our families knew our new telephone number I immediately thought the worst – my father had died, or something like that," sighs Regan, "and when an Irish male voice came on the line when I picked up the telephone and said 'hello' my heart sank."

"I didn't recognize the voice and when the guy said something about 'the deed being done' I wondered what on earth he was talking about," says Regan. "And then he asked to speak to Paddy and it dawned on me then that he had called a wrong number -- or the people who had the telephone number before us had not told him they had disconnected."

"The caller apologized for waking me and the next morning I heard about a bomb going off in Oxford Street," says Regan. "The coincidence was uncanny and my husband and I mooted whether or not to tell the police but decided against it because -- well, we'd left Northern Ireland to get away from this sort of stuff, and being Irish ourselves we might have been seen as suspects and gone onto some data base."

"Anyway, at the rate London is becoming Londonistan it won't be long before the emigration trail will be reversed – we'll all be begging Ireland to take us back in!" laughs Regan. "But it's no laughing matter, really. Our government has let us down badly."

“We have enough trouble with the Catholics and the Protestants at each other’s throats without adding the Moslems to the mix.”

Read more by Regan:

Irish troubles

cementing global ties

the right to live in peace

catholics vs. protestants

bigoted neighbors

Irish sectarian conflict