"White Cargo" does a deep historical dive into Colonial American slavery, (indentured servants), for "His Majesty's plantations".
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. It's believed that 300,000 Europeans were kidnapped and/or sold a bill of goods, (becoming "free willers"). These “free willers” contracted for oceanic passage to the New World by agreeing to indentured service for a promising future.
Approximately half would never survive their bondage. Indentured servants generally had a 7 - 14 year contract to toil away on the plantations. The multitudes that were "spirited away", (shanghaied), to America were routinely treated like animals with beatings, whippings, neck irons etc. Of course the "free willers" had no clue of the horrors that awaited them. They believed that America was the land of opportunity and as such would enjoy a prosperous, comfortable life, (once they paid for their passage via laboring in the fields). Nothing was further from the truth.
England referred to indentured servants as "chattels" and as such became the property of their new owner/master.
The first chattels (slaves) in Colonial America were white Europeans. A majority initially consisted of convicts from England and then a surge of Irish Catholics were "spirited away" to make room in Ireland for the burgeoning British and Scottish Protestant populations. Two days after the American Revolutionary War began the trafficking of white human cargo ended. King George III eventually settled at sending his miscreants and convicts to Australia and New Zealand, circa 1820.
Public education in the USA sanitized this cruel chapter in its pernicious beginnings. It's too bad -- as we generally learn from our past. But when history is whitewashed, (no pun intended), then no one is the wiser. As the saying goes, "ignorance is bliss".
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