“James, I see that you cited cases when whites and blacks fought together against the plantation aristocrats. Obviously, based on the divisive results, there was a method of separating the English slaves from the African slaves. Can you describe how this was accomplished?”
-Audrey
The Age Old Race Card
I can reconstruct the playing off of the various segments of the slave population against one another most completely in Virginia. Each colony [which was a charter for ‘planting’ people in plantations] had its own unique trajectory, with Maryland following a generation behind Virginia in most things. We are working from a mixed social base, as there was no policy of separating slaves by race known to be in force in Virginia from the 1620s-40s, when blacks were first introduced as slaves, indentured servants and freemen in very small numbers, ranging from 20-300 in all of Virginia, which had a population in excess of 10,000 through much of this period.
1. Black freemen could own black, Indian and mixed-race slaves, but not white slaves.
2. English speaking blacks from Barbados were segregated as house servants, with the English servants made to sleep in the barn with the livestock. This basic division would be maintained between House and Field once American servitude had become entirely a matter of managing blacks, and is maintained today between management and labor.
3. Once open mixed-race revolt occurred in 1676 free blacks were no longer permitted to go about armed and the following other measures were gradually enacted.
4. Increasing numbers of blacks were brought in at great expense as they had taken up arms against their masters at a rate of 10-20% whereas the English, Scottish and Irish slaves revolted at rates ranging from 30-70%.
5. Blacks were sought directly from Africa, so that there would be no common language to enable the lower classes to unite. The single best measure that a beleaguered elite can take against slave rebellion is to import lower class replacement labor who speak a different language from the indigenous servile population.
6. These slaves were quartered separately from the white slaves in segregated barracks.
7. These African slaves were sought to be as ethnically mixed as possible, in order to limit their cooperation across tribal and language barriers.
8. Where white slaves were denied the privilege of sex, and had their indentures extended and children sold, if caught, blacks, being expensive to ship, were encouraged to reproduce on the plantation, causing poor whites to resent blacks as the favorites of their masters. It was more economic to replace white labor with kidnapped children from age 8-14, rather than nurture these creatures through an uncertain childhood. The financial burden of child servant rearing was such that whites indentured at birth had 31 year terms whereas those indentured at 14 had but 7 year terms. Blacks of course, expensive to ship, and not ready for work until age 5, were held for life [often abandoned to die of starvation in old age] in order to recoup the investment of childhood.
9. More white slaves were permitted to work off their indenture as opposed to being continually charged with crimes [such as eating when starved and crying when whipped] that would extend their term of service. The large scale slave economy dictated that such individuals, without property and assets and who had to carry freedom papers, were socially vulnerable and would have to seek employment with the elite as overseers, supervising work they knew oh too well.
10. Free whites were forced by law and threat of indenture or fine, to act as slave-catchers.
11. In areas such as Maryland, where slave plantations were so dominant as to make a free living almost impossible, slave catchers were rewarded monetarily by statute and with advertised bonuses for the capture of any slave or servant of any race, which established a generally feeling of antipathy towards those held in bondage, who were increasingly black and mixed-race.
12. Restrictions on freedom for blacks were established, up to and including bans on masters freeing their own slaves.
13. The “one drop” rule, which determined that any person with more than a 1 in 17 parts sub-Saharan African ancestry was entirely black, served to preclude the rise of an intermediary mixed-race population [such as in Haiti] and continue racial polarization via the belief that African blood was a social taint and that the spread of this moral corruption must be maintained by denying free or intermediary status to mixed-race people. This was done for the same reason and to the same effect as the current Leftist dogma that pure European ancestry constitutes an ineradicable moral taint, and may be cured by interbreeding.
14. Semantics developed to support ideas of servitude. Eventually the term “Negro” came to be understood as indicating an un-free person, followed by bondsmen and servant [which could be an un-free person of any race]. Slave was a term used with bitterness [in the same way “victim” is used today] among the un-free [black and white] to describe their condition, while the elite tended to avoid or minimize the use of this term until after Emancipation, at which point it was judiciously applied by the elite to indicate a formerly and exclusively black state of bondage.
Maintaining the division of the races into antagonistic force pools to be mobilized along the lines of opinion and belief shaped by the elites is a crucial aspect of domestic statesmanship. Where existing divisions are insufficient, diverse populations must be infused into the social strata to insure the necessary division of the Lower Will.
“Irish of all ages rounded up in a massive slave-catching initiative that removed five out of every six Irish persons from their homeland”
>Does that sound remotely plausible to you?
It does seem rather high, could you dedicate a post to this specifically? Thanks!
Cromwell and his sons attempted to depopulate Ireland through these measures. Ironically some of these 'Irish" would have been descended from Anglo-Saxon slave boys sold by the Norman conquerors 400 years earlier. The numbers are wildly disputed by Irish and British sources, with the five in six ratio being the high end of the Irish argument. Keep in mind that the population was much smaller in the 1600s than 200 years later. I'm sure this estimate also factors in war casualties and does not include Irish who sided with the English.
Do we want our potatoes diced or shredded for breakfast, my dear guest?
I was working from a source that had otherwise been accurate but was biased. The British line that it didn't happen is likewise hard to swallow. I would not be surprised to find out—if it is possible—that about half of the island's population was slain, dispossessed or shipped into bondage during the 1640s and 50s [it has also been happening in the 1630s]. Whatever the number is, I suspect—knowing the Irish mentality—that for every one shipped out in bondage, two died fighting and another starved to death in the back country.