Alas the fundamentally misguided decision to conflate the plight of its subjects with the history of racialised chattel slavery, while no doubt helping to garner greater media attention an… WHITE CARGO THE FORGOTTEN HISTORY OF BRITAIN’S WHITE SLAVES IN AMERICA. Mainstream histories refer to these laborers as indentured servants, not slaves, because many agreed to work for a set period of time in exchange for land and rights. Excerpts from wills, stating how white servants should be passed down along with livestock and furniture, say more than any textbook explanation could. Benjamin Franklin is one of the few good guys. It is a story that is as unloved and it is, unlovely; yet Jordan and Walsh bring the institution, its victims and its compelling consequences to life in this fascinating, layman-friendly read. “White Cargo,” which was first published in Britain last year, has a refreshing sense of distance and neutrality. If anything, Jordan and Walsh offer an explanation of how the structures of slavery black or white were entwined in the roots of American society. And many never achieved freedom or the American dream they were seeking. Don Jordan and Michael Walsh, both of whom have made documentaries and both of whom live in London, retell that familiar tale although the victims here are not Africans but English, Irish and Scottish people, sent to the colonies largely against their will in the 17th and 18th centuries. In White Cargo, a wealthy American, Wendell Catledge, is yachting off of the coast of Colombia when he is attacked by pirates and his wife and daughter are kidnapped and end up … "White Cargo" does a deep historical dive into Colonial American slavery, (indentured servants), for "His Majesty's plantations". Presumably he had been a slave, since his body had not been properly buried, but thrown into the basement of a home near Annapolis, “in a hole under a pile of household waste.” He was northern European, probably British, one of tens of thousands of victims of a century-long practice, stretching from Boston to Barbados, that treated whites as slaves and that largely predated both the black slave trade and American independence. More by luck than judgment he manages to …
... Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010. “White Cargo” is the history of pre-Revolutionary white indentured servitude in North America. Directed by Ray Selfe. There are kidnapping victims of the kind written about in Daniel Defoe’s “Colonel Jack,” and a tumultuous ocean voyage that may have inspired Shakespeare’s writing of “The Tempest.”.
A totally new group of characters set in one of the most impossible places on Earth (I lived there as a young anthropology student in the early 1970's) which is in the Amazon Jungle. Quotations from 17th- and 18th-century letters, diaries and newspapers lend authenticity as well as color. If that's enough for you this is worth watching once but only once. 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. Despite the heaviness of the subject matter, their playful way with words and love of literary allusion come through. The authors take care to quote African-American sources and clearly state that they have no wish to play down the horrors of the much larger black slave trade that followed. This slave trade, which the authors say was often “dressed up in bright humanitarian clothes” for the public, later extended to beggars, Gypsies, prostitutes, dissidents, convicts and anyone else who displeased the upper classes. “White Cargo,” which was first published in Britain last year, has a refreshing sense of distance and neutrality. Many early settlers died long before their indenture ended or found that no court would back them when their owners failed to deliver on promises. Albert is a bumbling civil servant, who dreams that he is a Bond-like secret agent. The authors are not only historians, but also natural storytellers with a fine sense of drama and character. Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2008. White Cargo brings the brutal, uncomfortable story to the surface.
They refrain from drawing links to today, except to remind readers that there are probably tens of millions of Americans who are descended from white slaves without even knowing it. The authors argue, however, that slavery applies to any person who is bought and sold, chained and abused, whether for a decade or a lifetime. He gets involved in a plot to smuggle young women out to the Middle East. White Cargo is another of Stuart Woods fertile imagination.
Its condemnation is aimed at both American planters and the English elite, who were blinded by greed, arrogance and a desire to get rid of their “society’s sweepings.” Horribly, one of the first groups sent to America was made up of street children, ages 8 to 16, who arrived in 1619. This vividly written book tells the tale from both sides of the Atlantic. “White Cargo” begins with the discovery of a 17th-century skeleton in Maryland in 2003; it turned out to be that of a boy, about 16 years old, who had suffered from tuberculosis and injuries consistent with hard labor.
Audience Reviews for White Cargo Oct 11, 2014 Silly jungle junk but Hedy is ravishing.
Every schoolchild recognizes certain images of this nation’s darker side: slaves kidnapped from their native lands, shipped in disease-ridden holds, traded like animals, and then whipped and worked on America’s plantations. The authors take care to quote African-American sources and … What little discussion there is about this forgotten bit of American history is sometimes linked to those with ulterior political motives, usually interested in delegitimizing current-day discourse about race or the teaching of black history. Founders like George Washington do not fare particularly well, but Sir John Popham and Oliver Cromwell come off worse.
I do not doubt that the authors’ hearts were in the right place and I’m convinced that White Cargo had the potential to be an important and accessible work about the broad history of unfree labour in British America and the exploitation of the poor and the vulnerable.
“White Cargo” is meticulously sourced and footnoted which is wise, given its contentious material but it is never dry or academic. With David Jason, Hugh Lloyd, Imogen Hassall, Tim Barrett.