2010, Norton, NY, 258 pages

Birthright is a meticulously researched and artfully narrated account of one English family’s savagery to others and to its own. Ekirch paints a searing portrait of south-eastern Ireland, a land of Irish Catholics ruled by savage English lords who displaced them with Scots and English, clear cut the forests, kidnapped and raped even the richest women, beat, extorted, murdered and sold the poor—and sold the poor, and sold the poor, and sold the occasional rich boy…

The kidnapping of James Annelsey formed the basis for at least four novels, including ones by DeFoe, Scott and Stevenson, and gave some English lords a chance to demonstrate that they were not all animals. A heroic butcher and some honorable lords came to the aid of a boy in need on various occasions. However, the system of English litigation and patrimony proved stronger than courts, judges, advocates, admirals, morality and even the King, and James Annelsey was never granted his birthright after 20 years of litigation, when he died from complications of a respiratory condition contracted while toiling on—and escaping from three times—a forested plantation in Delaware over 13 years.

As an academic the author does pay lip service to the false myth that only blacks were enslaved, by claiming that they were enslaved in worse conditions than whites and that whites were not slaves but servants. This slave-servant semantic is more than terminology, and even though Ekirch passes on the lie to stay under the PC radar, he sets the record straight with quote after quote after quote of English and Irish calling themselves slaves [which black slaves rarely did, referring to themselves habitually as servants.] There was no difference between a servant and a slave. The only thing that made black servant fortunes worse than white slave fortunes was that they usually were owned for life where about half of white slaves survived their bondage, often to die maimed and in poverty. Black servant children could and were sold. However, white slaves also had their children sold, by law.

The author traces the story of little Jemmy first being cast off and neglected by his father in favor of a whore who did not like him. His father than died and his uncle had him kidnapped and sold. It was well known in Ireland and England that indentures, convicts and kidnapping victims shipped to the American plantations rarely survived to return. He documents well the fact that white slaves in the Delaware valley in 1727 outnumbered blacks by at least 2,500 to 50! And that those who escaped or had worked off their terms were often maimed and were not even given the tools to work as a fee laborer after their term of service.

Birthright tells a sad story with no happy ending. The narrative abides by the standard American lie that only blacks were slaves, when in fact they numbered a few among a sea of exploited whites. But the actual quotes and facts extracted from period documents tell the truth and exposes our greatest lie.