1626: 1500 English men sold in Morocco.

1627: British West Indies, plantation slavery begins.

1627: New England, Virginia, massive deforestation by white slaves commences.

1628: Virginia. Samuel Mathews and William Claiborne submit a plan for the deforestation of Virginia and defeat of the Indians. Armed servants are suggested for use to guard forts. It is clear that there were so few free men in Virginia, that only arming servants and Indian allies could stave off slaughter at the hands of the Indians.

1628: New York. A Dutch census registers “270 souls.”

1629: England. Economic Contraction.

1629: Essex, England. A woman and three male companions are hanged for stealing food from a house.

1630: New England. Massachusetts Bay Company formed under Governor Winthrop.

1630: Barbados. Dutch Sephardic Jews begin trading heavily in Irish slaves.

1631: England. Economic Contraction.

1631-1645: Statutes at Large of Virginia did not discriminate between blacks and whites in bondage.

1632: New England. Village Militia organized as trainbands form the basis for the New England military with the rights to choose their own captain and officers. Males over 16 free or servant could serve.

1633: First Dutch Church in North America, indicating the commercial ‘plantation’ nature of the colony.

1634: Virginia. A white servant was crushed.

1635: At sea, the Betty of London threw overboard 51 of their 100 white slaves. 20 percent cargo loss was acceptable.

1636: London, Plague.

1636: New England. The General Court ruled that freemen and servants could be nominated as officers in trainbands but that servants may not vote.

1637: London, Plague.

1637: Ipswich, England, Riots.

1637: New England. The English war against the Pequod Indians is successful with a Captain Davenport distinguishing himself, and the name of the cannibal tribe later serving as the name for the ship in Herman Melville’s novel, Moby Dick.

1637: New England. A manifest of 191 immigrants included 34 slaves, primarily teenage boys. The typical immigrant family unit consisted of a father, a mother, two or three children and one or two servants. This may seem severe to modern eyes, but consider that as much as 90 out of 100 Virginia colonists were servants, most of whom would did within their first five years.

1637: October 17, New England. The unnamed wife of William Dyer gave birth to “that direfull Monster.” The Puritans were bent on having as many children as possible, with husbands expecting to go through multiple wives fathering their broods.

1637: New England. Of 53 servants shipped under one manifest, only 36 had names. Two of these named servants were John Pope and Isaac Hart.

1638: New York. Governor of New Holland declares slavery necessary.

1638: Massachusetts Court of Assistance, describes Gyles Player as “delivered up for a slave.”

1638: At sea, Thomas Rous describes that of 350 British slaves on board the ship he worked on, “we have throwen over board two and three in a daye for many dayes together.” Of the 350 slaves, only 80 arrived in America.

1638: New Sweden is established on the site of Wilmington, on the Delaware River. Over the next 17 years 11 vessels would transplant 600 Swedes and Finns to this colony, intended as a trading outpost for furs and tobacco.

1639: New England. Land speculation begins.

1640: Barbados (British West Indies), 25,000 slaves, 21,700 of whom were white.

1640: Virginia, servants at Berkeley’s Hundred was “perpetual.”

1640: Barbados and St. Christopher freed indentured servants are given two pounds sterling worth of sugar

instead of the land promised.

1640: Virginia. A law was passed extending the term of enslavement for servants who missed church services more than three times.

1640: Virginia. A slave owner accuses a number of his white servants of conspiring to run away, resulting in severe beatings and an additional seven years to be served in shackles. This established a precedent for the extension of servant indentures throughout the plantations.

1640: Virginia. Runaway servants are to be branded on the cheek with the letter R and to have one or both of their ears cut off.

1640: Virginia. The General Court of Virginia ruled that two servants guilty of conspiracy to runaway be whipped, branded, and sentenced to an additional seven years of labor in leg irons.

1640: New England. John Pope was censored for foolery with women (this would mean that his indenture would be extended for months or years). Isaac Hart was released from his indenture for good behavior.

1641: New England. The first Puritan code, The Body of Liberties stipulated four categories of slavery based on biblical scripture.

1642: Thomas Lechford describes church congregations as having varied charters. The church congregations were essentially the village / town government legislatures.

1643: New England. Servant John Pope was censored for earning excessive wages.

1643: New Jersey. Johan Printz (Governor, 1643-1653), expands and fortifies New Sweden as its military Governor. Peaceful coexistence, on the French model, is enjoyed with the Indians.

1643: New England and Virginia, coastal forests cleared.

1644: Jamestown, Virginia. An Indian uprising inflicts a great slaughter on the colonists, far in excess of the 1622 attack.

1645: New England. The General Court rules that servants having taken the military oath may vote for officers.

1646: British Caribbean. A white slave named Bolton agreed to take the blame for his master’s fraud in which he cheated colonial officials out of a shipment of cotton in return for a reduced term of servitude. Upon taking the blame both of Bolton’s ears were cut off, with his master emancipating him as agreed upon.

1647: Barbados, white female slaves working in field gangs.

1647: Virginia. Eighteen conspirators planning a servant revolt were tortured and hung after being betrayed by a fellow servant.

1647: New England. The General Court ruled that freemen exempt from military service may also vote in military elections.

1648: New England. The Cambridge Platform establishes that no church congregation has dominion over another.

1649: Virginia. The chief source of labor, up to and including this year, was of kidnapped whites out of England, mostly children.

1649: Carolina. English enslaved by Indians as metal worker.

1649: London. A man returns to England, claiming that his indenture was extended to nine years was extremely cruel, and that all of those servants who are sent to Virginia are sold as slaves, whereas they had been induced to sign on as apprentices. The life of an apprentice was cruel and brutal, but did not I England include the master’s ability to sell an apprentice as pure chattel for whatever terms he negotiated, effectively worsening and extending the term of enslavement. This would be no different than contracting to travel to another nation to work for a fixed term as an unpaid janitorial intern, only to be sold to a brothel or military contractor for an extended term.

1649: Barbados. A servant’s insurrection is put down and an annual day of Thanksgiving is proclaimed.

Circa 1650: Virginia, Lancaster County records of wills, “Lands, goods & chattels, cattle, monies, negroes, English servants, horses, sheep and household stuff” sold together as property.

1650: August 27, Edward Bland discovers evidence of English living in the interior as captives.

1650: Barbados, most female field hands were white.

1650: Virginia. The colony receives an average of 3,000 indentured servants per year. The most reliable estimate has determined that 6% of these people survived their indenture and became independent citizens, the others dying, escaping or living out their lives of toil under extended indentures.

1651: Virginia, 600 Scottish POWs from the Battle of Worchester were sold into slavery.

1652: London, England, February, Parliament decrees that begging or vagrancy crimes punishable by enslavement.

1652: Barbados, 13,000 cavaliers captured at Worchester, Exeter and Ilchester sold into and died in slavery.

1652: New England. The Massachusetts legislature in another of a series of expansions in military participation declared that “all Scotsman, Negers & Indians inhabiting with or servants to the English…” would be required to serve in the military.

1654: London, England, Parliament decrees that judges will receive 50% of the profits from the sale of children, with a smaller percentage going to the king.

1654: Swedes take a trading post-fort from the Dutch.

1654: Francis Yeardley’s traitors visit Roanoke, evidence of white survivors.

1654: Barbados. Henry Whistler in his Journal of the West India Expedition referred to the white servants as “rubbish, rogues and whores.”

1655: New Jersey. Dutch conquer New Sweden with 317 soldiers without firing a shot, with the Dutch fielding about 60 men, which indicates a plantation economy staffed by unfree labor [probably Finns] with only 10% of the population armed on the Swedish side and a similarly low muster of about 5% on the Dutch side.

1655: September 11, London, England. puritan protector, Henry Cromwell, declares that all young Irish women are to be captured and sold into colonial slavery.

1655: September 18, London, England. Henry Cromwell orders the shipment and sale of 1,500 Irish boys to Jamaica and Barbados.

1655: October, London, England. The Council of State approved Irish enslavement resulting in 100,000 Irish shipped to the West Indies.

1655: Edinburg, Scotland, minister James Scott is interrupted in his sermon by four teenagers whom he has burned behind the ears, whipped through the streets, and sold into slavery.

1655: Half of the population of Barbados was white slaves called “redlegs.”

1655: Middlesex county, Virginia. A slave master confesses “That he hath most uncivilly and inhumanly beaten a (white) female with great knotted whipcord—so that the poor servant is a lamentable spectacle to behold.” Also a white servant was chained to a shop door and whipped bloody.

Circa 1655: Plymouth, New England. Nicholas Weekes killed his servant by cutting off his toes. Marmaduke Pierce beat his servant boy to death with a rod and was not punished by authorities. Mister Latham, starved his fourteen-year-old servant boy, beat him and left him to die out in the snow.

1656: New England. Isaac Hart convicted of stealing a cow.

1656: New England. The Massachusetts legislature ruled that blacks and Indians could no longer serve in the militia and set restrictions on the military vote.

1656: London, England, February, Cromwell orders 1,200 poor English women sold to the plantations.

1656: London, England, March, Cromwell orders 2,000 “young women of England” transported to Jamaica for enslavement.

1656: British West Indies, Colonel William Brayne wrote to authorities in England, noting that British Masters routinely hung and burned white slaves as a means of punishment. He urged the importation of black slaves, “As the planters would have to pay much for them, they would have an interest in preserving their lives, which was wanting in the case of [white slaves]…” Note: British slaves were sold in advance to individual planters. The captains were only responsible for deaths that occurred in the first half of the voyage and then would eliminate rations in the second half of the voyage, trying to save as much food expense as possible.

1657: Italy. Englishmen sold in Venice to Turkish masters as sex slaves, valued for their pink complexions.

1657: Barbados, Richard Ligon witnesses the sale of a white woman and a pig, weighed on the same scale. The woman was sold for six pence a pound. Claims that white servants are treated more harshly and worked harder than black servants.

1658: New England. Isaac Hart convicted of stealing a cow.

1659: London, a witnesses for the Parliamentary Petition stated that the slave children were “all the way locked up under decks…amongst horses.” These children were chained by their legs and necks.

1659: London, Parliament debates the practice of selling British whites into slavery in the New World.

1659: Mixed gender gangs of women and men were marched through Newgate, chained together by the neck, to Blackfriars Stairs, where they were sold into slavery.

1659: March 25, London, England. English Parliament rules enslavement of political dissidents legal.