“We are the only people brought to America as non-immigrants. We were brought against our will and in chains.” This is a common mantra of advocates of Critical Race Theory and the Black Lives Matter movements. The argument pervades much of the forced attendance and reading of CRT Trainings in corporate America, within the American educational system, and with all branches of the U.S. government. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent spreading this story to virtually everyone in American society today with the result that this belief is an accepted truth. It’s an old tactic. Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels once argued, "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it." The same charge can easily be made about current CRT advocates who claim Blacks were the only people brought to America in chains or against their will. In times past, when an accurate portrayal of colonial history was taught in our schools, children were familiar with the stories of countless individuals of white skin who were brought to our shores against their will — often in chains. Their stories are yet available in the works of authors such as Robert Louis Stevenson and Daniel Defoe, court records on both sides of the Atlantic, old movies such as “Captain Blood” and “Moll Flanders,” Acts of Parliament, and within the journals and letters of countless victims.
To begin, let’s first understand that the origins of white European slavery by Muslims and “people of color” preceded the arrival of African servants in Jamestown in 1619 by centuries. Muslim Berbers from North Africa conquered Spain in the 8th century. Following this success, North African slave raiders sacked villages as far north as Ireland and England to obtain white slaves. In 846 A.D Rome was sacked by Muslim armies who exacted tribute and slaves. The city’s massive walls, popular with tourists today, were built as a defense against African Muslim slave raiders who repeatedly launched raids in the area. For over a thousand years, Christians of Mediterranean Italy, France, and Greece feared enslavement by raiders from North Africa. Nor was this the only area where massive numbers of whites were enslaved by what today are called “people of color.” The word slave itself derives from the millions of Slavic men and women who were bought and sold over a millennium. Above the Black Sea, the Crimean Khanate is thought to have enslaved an estimated 2 million people. In a single massive raid in 1769, over 20,000 Slavs were seized and sold.1 For centuries, white Christian villagers in the Greek Islands and the Balkans were required to pay the devshirme — a tax in the form of their own children to non-white Muslim overlords. Across the Atlantic, even Americans were not immune from slave attacks. Barbary Coast pirates successfully preyed upon American shipping during the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, enslaving men and women during both our colonial and early national periods. Unfortunately, American history textbooks today seldom mention or place slavery in the context of world events taking place in Europe, Africa, and the Near East before or during the Exploration Period.
Prior to the recent claims of “white privilege” — which now dominates American race relations and which denies whites can ever be seen as victims — novels such as “Kidnapped” and “Moll Flanders” were popular books in America’s schools. These works by Robert Louis Stevenson and Daniel Defoe were based upon the real-life experiences of countless English, Scottish and Irish victims of 17th and 18th-century human trafficking operations. Kidnapping (also known as “spiriting”) was a huge industry in the British Isles at the time and it brought untold thousands of children and impoverished adults to the English colonies. One incident involving 4-year-old Adam Smith almost robbed the Scottish Enlightenment of its greatest thinker in 1727. Had he not been rescued from a spirit gang by an observant relative, the future author of The Wealth of Nations would likely have been shipped off to America as a slave laborer in the Chesapeake tobacco fields and capitalism would have lost its most ardent advocate. Spiriting was so common at this time that Parliament actually passed a law in 1618 permitting the capture and enslavement of 8-year-old boys and girls to help with a labor shortage in early Virginia. Later, the Transportation Law of 1718 codified the practice of arresting and sending vagrants and criminals to Britain’s North American colonies. It is never mentioned today that the death rates of such children transported to Jamestown were abysmal. Of 100 children transported to Jamestown in 1619 and others sent the next year, only 12 were still alive for the census taken there in 1625. 2
The practice of spiriting individuals against their will to the colonies continued unabated for well over 150 years. “In 1670, William Haverland, John Steward, William Thiene, Robert Bayley, and Mark Collins were each individually charged with spiriting hundreds of people yearly (up to the astonishing number of 800) to Barbados, Jamaica, and Virginia.” None of the men were prosecuted.3 Perhaps the best example of a white English child being sold into slavery was that of James Annesley, heir to five aristocratic titles, who was kidnapped at age 12 and shipped off from Dublin to America in 1725. 4
Shiploads containing this type of human cargo continued until 1774.
Sadly, few personal records exist of those who were kidnapped in the British Isles and who were shipped off as white slaves to America. Historians rely heavily upon articles in English papers, which serve as the main sources of information. These notices mostly involved upper-class children or those who were rescued when kidnappers were caught. As kidnapping was a misdemeanor offense, it was not only very common but also highly profitable. Frequent attempts to pass stronger legislation routinely failed in Parliament because aristocrats wanted to be rid of indigent children. Moreover, just as some African chiefs grew rich in the sale of captured slaves for the transatlantic crossing, wealthy English aristocrats also benefited from acting behind the scenes. Some judges were even paid for each child they condemned to slavery. In the year 1670 alone, an estimated ten thousand whites were kidnapped from England and shipped to Britain’s North American and Caribbean colonies.5 Unlike the meticulous boat records kept by Atlantic slave ship captains, it’s hard to know exactly how many white children were enslaved and sent to the colonies. As most of the children were poor vagabonds whose absence did not elicit concern — indeed, laws encouraged their removal — estimates of their numbers are hard to come by. The practice often occurred privately between ship captains and spirit gangs for hundreds of years. It is worth noting that England similarly continued using “press gangs” to enslave English men for the needs of the British navy well into the early nineteenth century. This practice, extended to kidnapping American seamen from U.S. merchant ships, later served as a major cause of the War of 1812.
It must be remembered that huge numbers of destitute men, women, and children flooded into English cities as a result of Britain’s Enclosure Movement in the 17th and 18th centuries. This was the age of the “dismal economists” like Thomas Malthus and David Riccardo who advocated against giving any aid to the poor because they would simply have more children resulting in even greater poverty! Riccardo’s “Iron Law of Wages” argued the poor should never be paid more than subsistence wages. At a time in England when social class meant everything, little help was offered to the indigent. Indifference to the poor — who comprised one-third to one-half of the British population — led to two other large groups being expatriated to America against their will. The first were indigent persons guilty of no crime and the second were those convicted of petty crimes.
All too often, for much of the colonial era, Britain’s poorest subjects were simply coerced or cajoled into slavery. Poor households receiving public assistance that had new children born into the family were told to turn older children over “for transportation” or be cut off from welfare. Faced with such a choice, many parents condemned their own children to live as slaves in America. Similarly, conditions in England’s poor houses were so miserable that often a majority of those living there died from disease, being overworked, or from malnourishment. Faced with such a life, some residents were coerced into signing themselves into slavery in America.
A third group that was sent unwillingly to the New World were criminals. British court records document that over 50,000 British criminals were sentenced to years of slavery in America. James Oglethorpe even founded the colony of Georgia as a penal colony for this very purpose. The shipping of convicts to America took place early in the 17th century and was given greater impetus after Parliament enacted the Transportation Law of 1718. In Land of the Free: Criminal transportation to America, R. J. Clarke notes:
Not many people know that between 1718 and 1775 over 52,000 convicts were transported from the British Isles to America, mainly to Maryland and Virginia, to be sold as slaves to the highest bidder. It is reckoned that transported convicts made up a quarter of the British immigrants to colonial America in the 18th century . . . According to the vicar of Wendover, transportation served the purpose of ‘draining the Nation of its offensive Rubbish’. 6
Their trip across the Atlantic was one of great misery and often death. Even in the 1770s, when conditions had been improved for the convicts, testimony revealed the sordid nature of the transportation business.
Duncan Campbell, the transportation contractor for ships leaving London during the final years of transportation to America, told a House of Commons committee that, by the time they had reached America, ‘rather more than a Seventh Part of the Felons died, many of the Gaol Fever, but more of the Small Pox’.
Although it was in the captains’ interest to make sure the convicts survived the voyage so they could receive their share of the sale proceeds, the convicts on board ship in many cases were treated worse than slaves. The captains had more reasons for trying to make sure the slaves survived. The death of a slave was a more material loss than the death of a convict. Slaves commanded a much higher price. Slaves were more attractive to potential buyers than convicts. They were more trustworthy as they didn’t have a criminal record. . .
Once the ships arrived at their destination, the convicts were lined up on deck to be inspected by potential buyers. Any convicts who were left over after the sale were sold in bulk at a cheap price to dealers who were known as soul-drivers. The soul-drivers chained the convicts together and herded them inland to the backcountry like oxen or sheep. They sold the convicts singly or in groups as they passed each settlement. This method meant that small planters and farmers who were unable to travel to the ports where the convict auctions took place were still able to buy convict workers . . .
After the passing of the Act, transportation became the main punishment at the courts’ disposal. From May 1718 to the outbreak of the American War of Independence in 1775, over 70 percent of those who were found guilty at the Old Bailey were sentenced to be transported, compared with less than one percent in the period from 1700 to March 1718. 7
Not surprisingly, Britain’s North American colonies resisted British attempts to send convicts as slaves to their shores. Ben Franklin was among those who resented Britain’s emptying its jails by sending criminals to America. He suggested that America should export rattlesnakes to England in return. He said that the British practice was ‘an insult and contempt, the cruellest perhaps that ever one people offered another; and would not be equal’d even by emptying their jakes on our tables’. Britain, moreover, would get the better of the trade, “… without equal Risque of the Inconvenien-cies and Dangers, For the Rattle-Snake gives Warning before he attempts his Mischief; which the Convict does not.”8
A fourth source of white slaves who were brought to Britain’s North American colonies were those tens of thousands of Irish and Scottish Catholics who were subject to the deportation orders by England’s Protestant Puritan government. Beginning in the 1630s but especially following the failed Irish revolt of 1641, England’s Protestant dictator, Oliver Cromwell, subjugated the Irish with a devastating series of repressive measures. Ireland’s Catholic population was disposed of their lands and an estimated one-fourth of the island’s population perished from war, famine, and disease. Cromwell sought to depopulate the island through means of ethnic cleansing — by removing Catholics to the British sugar islands of Barbados, Jamaica, to other possessions in the Lesser Antilles, and to New England — and replacing them with Protestants. As a result, over 100,000 Irish men, women, and children were thus sent off as slaves to Britain’s colonies in the New World.9 By 1655, over half the white population of Barbados were white slaves.
A fifth class of white slaves shipped to the colonies were English political prisoners. The famous Hollywood actor, Errol Flynn, became an established star with his 1935 role as one such slave in the classic film Captain Blood. Shipping political prisoners as slaves to Britain’s North American colonies was a common punishment meted out to the losers in England’s many wars. “Of the Scottish troops captured at the Battle of Worcester more than 600 were shipped to Virginia as slaves in 1651. The rebels of 1666 were sent as slaves to the colonies as were the Monmouth rebels of 1685 and the Jacobites of the rising of 1715.”10
Often, social justice historians describe such persons as ‘temporary’ slaves who were released after ten or twenty years. Most of these political prisoners, however, died in slavery due to the harsh conditions they were subjected to. “Of 1300 Cavaliers enslaved in Barbados almost all of them died in slavery.”11 This practice was continued by England as late as 1746.
Most current textbooks describe indentured servitude as generally a temporary period of forced labor where individuals voluntarily negotiated contracts with masters before their embarking to America. This view, however, neglects the huge number of “servants” who were involuntarily sent as slave laborers to the colonies. Within this group were not only criminals and political prisoners, but vagrants, indigents, religious dissenters, and lewd persons. Often, these ‘undesirables’ had little or nothing to say about the terms of their service or the conditions under which they were to labor. As a result, they are more correctly described as slaves. Even for those who voluntarily placed themselves in temporary servitude to others, the practice was replete with abuse and exploitation. The great mass of Britain’s poor was condemned to work either as ‘wage slaves’ in the early industrial factories and mines of Britain or were given the opportunity to sign on as indentured servants to work on plantations in America. Mostly illiterate, they found verbal promises not realized in either the contract or practice. “Before the American Revolution, it was the primary conduit by which European migrants arrived in North America and the Caribbean” and there were “plenty of ways” in which passage to the English colonies was anything but voluntary.”12 According to estimates, “…between one-half and two-thirds of all white immigrants to the British colonies between the Puritan migration of the 1630s and the Revolution came under indenture.”13 Moreover, abuse of these servants was common both before and after their arrival in America. Women servants who were sold, for example, were not allowed to marry or become pregnant during periods of service. Knowing this, some masters deliberately impregnated female servants so as to add years of labor to their service. Worse, bastard children out of wedlock were forced to serve for a period of 31 years of labor! This odious practice continued in Virginia until 1765 when the legislature reduced the period to a mere 21 years of age for boys and 18 years for girls.14 True, the children of Black female slaves were condemned to a life of slavery, but we must remember that this was still the norm for many whites seized during this same time by North African and Eastern European Muslims.
A sixth group of “voluntary” servant-slaves was the large number of German family groups that came to America so destitute that ship captains literally sold them as slaves to the highest bidder upon their arrival. Called “redemptioners” for their original hope of having the cost of their passage paid by relatives or friends in Pennsylvania, most sadly discovered that there was no such relief. As a result, they ended up being confined on ships below deck in Philadelphia for weeks until they could be sold. Family units were routinely broken up as a result. Few personal accounts of the tens of thousands of such emigrants survive. Jacob Mittleberger’s description and advice to his fellow Germans to “stay home” is one such account. He described the many injustices the families experienced in their journey and how families were separated for life upon their arrival in Pennsylvania.
Many parents must sell and trade away their children like so many head of cattle; … because, on account of their great poverty, most of these families after reaching the land are separated from each other and sold far away from each other, the young and the old. And the saddest of all this is that parents must generally give away their minor children without receiving a compensation for them; inasmuch as such children never see or meet their fathers, mothers, brothers or sisters again . . . 15
What can be taken away from an accurate understanding of colonial labor today?
First, there is a need for the truth to be told — both in our schools and in the culture at large. It should be recognized that white slavery formed the basis of Black slavery in America. The hated “fugitive slave laws” which are mentioned in all history texts today were first based upon the capture of runaway white slaves. For several decades in the early 1600s, the same laws applied to persons of both races. The current trend is to say that African slavery began in 1619 when a Dutch ship sold a few Africans as laborers to the English settlers at Jamestown. In reality, their status was no different from the hundreds of thousands of Europeans who were sold as involuntary indentured servants at this same time. We should be clear about the status of these first Africans in Virginia. They were involuntary indentured servants—just like many of the whites who arrived there that decade. Some of those Africans—Anthony Johnson being the most famous—went on to own both white and black servants themselves. Legally, Blacks were able to own whites as laborers until 1670 when a law was passed preventing their owning “Christians.”16 And it wasn’t until 1662 that biological and racial slavery became codified in Virginia law—43 years after their first arrival at Jamestown. If BLM advocates and Hannah Nicole-Jones of the 1619 Project wish to include the Africans who arrived in 1619 as slaves, then history books should similarly account for the vast numbers of whites who were involuntarily transported to Britain’s American colonies as slaves, too.
A second truth is non-whites have a much longer history of enslaving whites than white Europeans have of enslaving “people of color.” North African, Arab, and Turkish armies were engaged in enslaving Europeans from the 8th until the 19th century! This lengthy record is rarely mentioned in any American history textbook today. Nor are Native Americans immune from the institution of slavery. They also enslaved whites — just as they enslaved one another. Although most books today make clear that Columbus enslaved Native Americans, few mention the fact that Native American Carib cannibalism and Aztec and Inca human sacrifice influenced how Europeans came to view the indigenous people of the Americas.
A third lesson from the study of this period is the fact that until the American Revolution outlawed a titled nobility of aristocrats and ensured religious freedom, the world was rife with class, religious, ethnic, and racial privilege. BLM advocates who today think in terms of only race ignore the fact that world history is synonymous with class, gender, racial, ethnic, and religious distinctions. Despite the practice of slavery in the southern states, after the Revolution America led the world in extending democratic practices and in ending class privilege. Even as North African Muslims and others in Africa and Asia openly practiced slavery, many Americans helped lead the attack upon the institution of slavery and we stationed our navy off the coast of Africa to help stop the trade. History records that African chiefs were not happy with American and British attempts to stop the practice. A simple question is to ask BLM activists to identify the Harriett Beecher Stowe’s or any of the numerous white anti-slavery societies amongst the Bantu, Ibo, or the other African societies in Africa at this time. History, of course, does not record abolitionist societies among Africans, Arabs, Mayans, Turks, Muslims, Han Chinese, or Hindus. Moreover, in those rare cases in America today where individuals are charged with the crime of enslaving others, it’s always a person of color whose contemporary culture still sees nothing wrong with the institution.17 The truth is that virtually every major society in the world in 1800 was much more undemocratic and much more racist, sexist, and classist than the United States. This fact is rarely mentioned in our history textbooks today and is never acknowledged by BLM activists and their allies. Much is made of England’s end of slavery in 1833, but few sources point out that the British East India Company was exempt from the law, thereby permitting over ten million slaves to exist without respite in that British colony. When this fact is taken into account, America’s success in abolishing slavery should be given much greater credence.
Fourth – it is vitally important to recognize that only white Americans fought a devastating war that saw the loss of 750,000 deaths to free people of another race from slavery.18 Slave rebellions are common throughout history, but the American Civil War marked the first and possibly the only time a people fought a war to free another people of a different race from bondage! Through deliberate omission, few books ever make this distinction known to readers.
Fifth – it should be noted that all the areas in the world today that tolerate slavery and caste oppression are populated by non-whites. Today, 400 million Indian Dalit’s face conditions remarkably similar to that of slavery in India. Popularly known as “Untouchables,” they are condemned to lives of drudgery and discrimination within their own nation. As a result of Indians bringing caste prejudices with them to the United States, legislation against caste discrimination has recently been added by some states to the list of protections covered under the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964. Perhaps not surprisingly, African and Haitian immigrants are sometimes convicted in the U.S. for their enslavement and oppression of fellow immigrants. (see footnote 17) Mexican and Asian cartels are also well known for their human trafficking and enslavement of persons of their own race in America today. In contemporary Africa, an estimated nine million slaves suffer under harsh conditions. White churchgoers and American anti-slavery societies today continue their historic effort to purchase and free Black African slaves from their Black and Arab oppressors. Whites apparently are no longer enslaving persons of other races, but other races continue the practice of slavery within our culture as well as their own. Much of this abysmal record of oppression, of course, is never covered by the mainstream media because it doesn’t fit in with their penchant of looking everywhere for examples of white racism and supremacy.
A sixth takeaway from an accurate appraisal of America’s past is the help it would bring to fostering an honest discussion of race in America today. It does little to deliberately distort history when it is more accurate to illustrate similar experiences between racial groups. For example, an honest discussion of race relations today should note that our nation not only helped lead the world in ending class privilege and slavery but in the effort to provide equal opportunity for all. To accomplish this, a white majority culture passed laws allowing for legal discrimination against all white males through means of affirmative action. This legal discrimination has continued for over 60 years and it seems likely will always be the norm in America. Unfortunately, by today’s woke standards, Slavic immigrants whose ancestors suffered from oppression and slavery for centuries longer than the U.S. tolerated Black slavery are today viewed as oppressors and they continue to face oppression and discrimination by the very color of their skin.
Seventh, European whites should receive credit for not only ending slavery throughout the world but in ending racial discrimination. This legacy is without parallel. Where in history has an aristocratic or upper class or racial group discriminated against itself to help the less fortunate? Rather than celebrate our unique historical contributions toward equality for all, however, today’s Progressives and social justice warriors refuse to acknowledge such measures. As a result, skeptics of their motives might see their intent, not as an attempt to accurately portray the past, but rather as one to destroy our system of government and replace it with a more authoritarian one. It would appear that they are largely succeeding in this.19
American ideals and founding documents have served to continually move our system of government toward ways that provide equal opportunity for all. Whether it is called the “American Dream” or some other name, our nation continues to draw millions of people of color to our shores – legally and illegally. The world knows that America is not a racist nation. Having come so far to provide equality to all citizens, we cannot tolerate the Left’s current attempts to reinstitute racial segregation or force all individuals into racial groups as either “victims” or “oppressors.” This is especially so when the Left bases its claims upon false historical narratives.
“Facts are stubborn things,” John Adams once argued. The average family income of Indian Americans now exceeds the average income of whites by over $50,000.20 Nigerian family income and that of many other groups of “people of color” also exceeds the average income of Americans of English and Irish descent. Entire industries – whether its Mexican trafficking cartels or Chinese entrepreneurs helping pregnant women to have their babies born within the United States – have made fortunes off the “American Dream.”
It is only when all groups — especially the activists within Black Lives Matter and racial hucksters such as Ibram Kendi and Robin DeAngelo — accept the true nature of America’s past and present that any real American racial healing can occur.
Accessed 12-20-2021.
Independent History and Research Company, 1992), 73. See also Anna Suranyi
“link" p 147.)
Penal Policy and ‘Superfluous’ Populations", Downloaded from: Brill.com
12/25/2021.
History Press) From: https://www.thehistorypress.co.uk/articles/the-land-of-the-
free-criminal-transportation-to-america/ .
Virginia. Virginia Humanities, (14 Dec. 2020). Web. 22 Dec. 2021
Kidnapping in Aberdeen’s Servant Trade.” The William and Mary Quarterly 74,
no. 3 (2017): 437–66. https://doi.org/10.5309/willmaryquar.74.3.0437.
Labor in America, 1607-1776 (Chapel Hill, 1947), p. 336.
Theo Eben (Philadelphia, John Jos McVey, 1898), 25–31.
Legendary Marxist African Independence Leader Se’kou Toure Convicted of
Enslaving a Girl in Texas” (American Thinker: Jan. 14, 2019). Of Black
Somali immigrants trafficking Minnesota girls as sex-slaves across the
18 Jennie Cohen. “Civil War Deadlier than Previously Thought?”
https://www.history.com/news/civil-war-deadlier-than-previously-thought.
group see Joshua Washington, “BLM — A Righteous Cause or Communism in
a Black Face?” American Thinker, October 6, 2020.
Indians Rise,” Institute for Family Studies, December 17, 2021.
American Thinker, September 17, 2020. Americans of English and Scottish
descent are actually ranked near the bottom of the list—85th and 77th out of 98
ethnicities.
The writer has been a social studies educator, founder of Rho Kappa--the National Social Studies Honor Society--and a former Elementary School Principal of the Year in Lee County, Florida. He may be reached at: jsbovee@aol.com.
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