Slaves and Englishmen. Michael Guasco
Slaves and Englishmen
THE EARLY MODERN AMERICAS
Peter C. Mancall, Series Editor
Volumes in the series explore neglected aspects of
early modern history in the western hemisphere.
Interdisciplinary in character, and with a special
emphasis on the Atlantic World from 1450 to 1850,
the series is published in partnership with the
USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute.
SLAVES
ENGLISHMEN
HUMAN BONDAGE IN THE EARLY MODERN ATLANTIC WORLD
MICHAEL GUASCO
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
PRESS PHILADELPHIA
Copyright © 2014 University of Pennsylvania Press
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher.
Published by
University of Pennsylvania Press
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Guasco, Michael, 1968–
Slaves and Englishmen : human bondage in the early
modern Atlantic world / Michael Guasco. — 1st ed.
p. cm. — (Early modern Americas)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8122-4578-3 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Slavery—Atlantic Ocean Region—History.
2. Slavery—United States—History—Colonial period,
ca. 1600–1775. 3. Slavery—Great Britain—History.
4. Atlantic Ocean Region—History—17th century.
5. United States—History—Colonial period, ca. 1600–1775.
6. Great Britain—Colonies—America—History—17th
century. I. Title. II. Series: Early modern Americas.
HT867.G83 2014
306.3′62—dc23
2013024699
For Suz
CONTENTS
______________
Introduction. The Problem of Slavery in Pre-Plantation America
Chapter 1. The Nature of a Slave: Human Bondage in Early Modern England
Chapter 2. Slaves the World Over: Early English Encounters with Slavery
Chapter 3. Imaginary Allies: Englishmen and Africans in Spain’s Atlantic World
Chapter 4. Englishmen Enslaved: The Specter of Slavery in the Mediterranean and Beyond
Chapter 5. “As Cheap as Those Negroes”?: Transplanting Slavery in Anglo-America
Chapter 6. Slavery before “Slavery” in Pre-Plantation America
INTRODUCTION
______________
The Problem of Slavery in Pre-Plantation America
Perhaps it is best to begin with the familiar: In 1619, a Flemish privateer called the White Lion dropped anchor off Point Comfort at the eastern extremity of the English settlement in Virginia. Captain Jope and his men had suffered greatly on their return voyage from the West Indies and when the ship arrived in the Chesapeake the pirates were short on palatable food and potable water. It may be that Jope and his men had been at sea longer than anticipated or that his provisions had spoiled as a result of exposure to rough weather or rotted as a result of improper storage. These things happen. Of course, Jope and his men could also have been unusually hungry and thirsty because of the extra mouths they had stored away somewhere in the belly of their ship, for one Englishman reported that on board were “not any thing but 20. and odd Negroes, w[hich] the Governo[r] and Cape Marchant bought for victualle.”1 By the time he departed, Jope had fresh provisions and water and had reduced the number of mouths on board by striking a bargain with the leaders of the English settlement, an exchange that resulted in the first documented arrival of African peoples in Virginia. For Captain Jope and his men, it was clear sailing as they set out for familiar European waters. For the colonists and the newly purchased Africans, not to mention the historians who have studied both, matters quickly became much more complicated.
Almost a generation later, another story unfolded: In the wake of the Pequot War in New England in 1637, Massachusetts officials ordered seventeen Pequot Indians—fifteen boys and two women—to be sent out of New England. English Puritans had taken hundreds of captives in the wake of their triumphs in battle at Mistick and the Great Swamp. Subsequently, they put some Pequot men to death and divided the survivors among the English soldiers, their Narragansett allies, or assigned them to the Connecticut and Massachusetts colonies. The seventeen women and boys, however, were placed on board the Salem-built craft of Captain Peirce and earmarked for sale in the remote English colony of Bermuda. For some reason, Captain Peirce missed his landing and continued on to the West Indies. Once there, Peirce landed his cargo on the tiny Puritan outpost off the coast of Nicaragua at Providence Island where, by a stroke of the Providence Island Company’s pen, English officials transformed the rebel Pequots into “cannibal negroes,” condemned to serve out their lives in slavery in Anglo-America’s first true slave society.2
Twenty years later, a third, almost certainly less well-known event occurred in the English Atlantic: During the late 1650s, Parliament received two petitions on behalf of more than seventy Englishmen claiming that they were “freeborn people of this nation now in slavery” in Barbados. In response, Parliament conducted a brief debate, although some members protested that the petitions had been introduced through irregular channels. Those who were directly implicated by