Reading Summary

CHAPTER 7

The Spirit of 1676: The Identity Politics of “Whiteness” and Prelude to Colonial Secession

The fatuous idea that the routing of the Pequots in the 1630s indicated smooth sailing for the settlers in what they called New England became even more foolish when war erupted once more in the mid-1670s.1 As ever, settlers were upset when evidence emerged that the French and the Dutch were selling “guns, powder, shot,” and trading and the like “with Indians to our great prejudice and strengthening and animating the Indians against us.” The authorities demanded that no boats be sold to indigenes, perhaps hampering their escape from enslavement and routing. Though the settlers had arrived in North America purportedly to enjoy religious liberty, indigenous religious liberty was curtailed, that is, “worship to their false Gods or to the Devil” was forbidden. Catholics too were restrained: “no Jesuit or spiritual or ecclesiastical person” was allowed to alight or any “ordained by the authority of the Pope” were allowed to “come within this jurisdiction.” They were to be barred initially, and if they came a “second time” they “shall be put to Death.” The death penalty for poisoning provided a foretaste of their real fears, while “firing and burning” was illuminatingly reproved.2

News then reached London of the “bloody Indian war from March till August 1676.” Highlighted was the allegation that if victims were “women, they first forced them to satisfie their filthy lusts and then murthered them.”3 Londoners focused not on the fact that their compatriots had invaded a foreign land and began to oust and enslave, giving rise to a fierce reaction but instead stressed “New England’s present sufferings under their cruel neighboring Indians.”4 The prominent Bostonian Increase Mather laid down a steady drumfire of propaganda against the indigenous, tracing their purported perfidy from “the year 1614 to the year 1675.”5

After European rule had been fastened firmly upon New England, it was conceded that indigenous “captive women and children were sold into slavery,” that is, “more than five hundred” were “sold into slavery from Plymouth alone” in what was termed “King Philip’s war.”6 Rationalizing this crime against humanity, the Plymouth elite, it was argued, averred that “the Sachem of Pascanacutt” was working with the “French against the English in New England.”7 Still, even after it appeared that an indigenous revolt had been quelled, one settler was still sweating about what a resident termed “many secret attempts … by evil minded persons to fire the town of Boston, tending to the destruction” of that rapidly growing urban center.8

It turns out that this deportation policy may have exported revolt. The “heathen prince” who perpetrated these “notorious and execrable murders and outrages” and sought to “totally destroy, extirpate & expel settlers” was to see his comrades sold into slavery, seemingly in

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Jamaica, which was akin to pouring boiling oil on a raging fire.9 Thus the “heathen malefactor, men, women and children” were “sentenced & condemned for perpetual servitude,”10 where they could then plot alongside ungovernable Africans. Jamaica also seemed to invite disaster when it accepted enslaved indigenes from Florida.11

Though nowadays there is a kind of silo and stovepipe approach, separating scrutiny of New England from examination of the Caribbean, this was not the case in 1676 in London. A pamphleteer saw parallels about what was unfolding in Barbados at the time of the indigenous rebellion due north. “Our fellow subjects,” it was concluded, be it north or south, “tasted of the same cup.”12

Both of these settlements had a problem, though in the longer run the more capacious mainland had more potential to purchase the allegiance of poor Europeans by fighting more indigenes—swept aside for the most part earlier in the Caribbean—taking their land, then redistributing it.

As matters evolved, that approach was taken with the third revolt faced by London, what has been called “Bacon’s Rebellion,” an assault on the colonial regime itself. (This revolt also underscores the asininity of assuming that under settler colonialism, a revolt from below targeting an elite is ipso facto righteous: as in this episode, what may be at issue is the subaltern raging against the presumed elite’s lassitude in dispossessing the designated racial “other.”)13

In August 1676 the declaration by Nathaniel Bacon and his co-conspirators assailed the governor “for having protected, favored and emboldened the Indians against His [Majesty’s] most loyal subjects.”14 Bacon’s band had been in a standoff with indigenes over the stealing of their land; there had been bloodshed and the thieves, unhappy with the perceived lack of support provided by the regime, rebelled.15 Bacon, the right-wing populist demagogue, established a template that still resonates in the successor regime, the United States. Of course, he issued a “Declaration in the Name of the People” charging that the governor had “protected, favoured and [em]boldened the Indians against His Majesties loyall subjects,” while those who opposed him were the actual “trayters.”16 Inevitably, he was able to mobilize hundreds for his ill-fated venture.17

In contrast, the regime charged Bacon and the “five hundred persons” who joined him with being “warlike” and immersed in “treason and rebellion”—make that “high treason.” A “three hundred pounds sterling” reward was offered for information leading to his capture and conviction.18

Governor William Berkeley fled Jamestown for Accomac, where, said a subsequent analyst, he found the “last refuge of the loyal cause of Virginia,” which included “the best, wealthiest and most influential in the Colony.” Ironically, one of his supporters there included Daniel Jenifer, a Catholic, wed to Annie Toft, the “wealthiest and prettiest woman then living in the eastern shore of Virginia.”19

Bacon, it was said after the dust had cleared in 1677, “descended of an Ancient and Honourable family,” though as so often has been the case on this continent, he was able to rally numerous poorer Europeans across class lines. He was well traveled, having arrived in

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Virginia three years earlier and becoming part of the potent Privy Council. But when indigenes attacked his landholding, he was outraged, not only at them but what he thought was the pusillanimous response of the governor. So he chose to launch his own war. One critic charged that this “very hard drinker … died by imbibing or taking in too much brandy,” but it was more likely that he was actually drunk with dreams of power.20 The well-born young planter was, according to a twentieth-century commentator, “more interested in fighting Indians than reform.” This was a close call, in that half of his band fought indigenes and the other half fought the regime, torching Jamestown: the colony’s capital was torched.21 It was reported as “strange news from Virginia,” but as the continent evolved, it was not so strange at all.

Bacon may have been defeated militarily, but he won politically, not unlike his successors: the so-called Confederate States of America in 1865. Thousands of indigenes fled, opening more land; hundreds were sent into servitude in Bermuda.22 This occurred despite a treaty between “Virginia & the Pamunkey Indians,” involving “articles of peace” directing that these indigenes “shall not be sold as slaves.”23 This was one of many pacts between settlers and indigenes that would be ignored and violated.

The rebels wanted more land of the indigenous and demanded that London shed more blood and treasure to attain this goal. In response, London inched toward satisfying rebel demands, but that was insufficient to sate voracious appetites, which led directly to 1776. Still, after this uprising more and more planters began to see indentured servants, the presumed beneficiary of the revolt, with their fixed terms and asserted rights, as a liability and to see enslaved Africans as the future. In some ways, what transpired was that Virginia was further racialized, with Africans and indigenes being the prime victims, while poorer Europeans were satisfied at the latter’s expense,24 not least through the ongoing identity politics of constructing “whiteness.” Ironically, and as so often happened in centuries to come, some terribly misguided Africans aligned with the settlers led by Bacon against the indigenes, when history suggests their interests would have been better served by executing a diametrically opposite strategy of alignment with Native Americans.

The settler elites were in a bind. Indigenes were rebelling to the north and Africans to the south. Concessions to the latter, particularly in Virginia, seemed to be beyond consideration, though seizing the land of the indigenes may have been the highest priority. In that context, winning over other Europeans was, minimally, the “least bad” option and provided the fewest complications. Six years after Bacon revolted, the authorities in Bacon’s settlement were in a familiar position: “I have bad news,” it was reported. “The peace of the Colony” was “endangered by unruly and tumultuous persons” and “lest the infection should spread further, orders have been issued to the commanders of the militia in each county to … be in continual motion, by which vigilance we have some hope that the growth of insurrection may be prevented.”25

It was also in 1682 that policymakers in Jamestown recognized that a statute passed mere months earlier had not “had its intended effect”; thus “the better preventing” of “such insurrections by Negroes or slaves” was formulated. However, to attain this desperately desired goal, there would have to be more concessions to Europeans of various classes.26 As

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this trend became manifest, there was both a huge leap in the number of enslaved and a concomitant increase in statutes seeking to shape and regulate their behavior.27 This was accompanied by a growth in wealth, which then paved the way for a unilateral declaration of independence in 1776.

In the late seventeenth century the grandee of Virginia, William Byrd, amassed almost thirty thousand acres—at the expense of indigenes. He switched entirely to deploying enslaved African labor in the 1680s in the aftermath of Bacon’s revolt. Slapping taxes on this troublesome property not only raised revenue for internal improvements but also was designed to restrain the possibility of a slave rebellion. As the number of enslaved Africans rose, the number of European servants declined. From 1680 to 1720, the slave population of the Chesapeake increased at a rate twice that of the European population, tending to jeopardize the life expectancy of the latter. It was in the 1690s that the term “white” began to replace “Christian” and free,” with this trend continuing through the twenty-first century. As shall be seen, the “Glorious Revolution” of 1688 also meant the imminent decline of the Royal African Company under the thumb of the monarch, the continuing rise of merchants, and a spectacular increase in the number of enslaved Africans, along with the resultant wealth and secessionist urges.28

Byrd encountered difficulties with enslaved Africans and he was not singular. In the fall of 1687 there was the “discovery of a Negro Plot” in the “Northern Neck” of the colony that included the “d[e] stroying and killing” of settlers, with the “design” of “carrying it through [to] the whole Colony.” In jujitsu-like fashion, Africans had begun plotting as funerals unwound: then they met in “great numbers” to plot “their Evil … [and] wicked purposes.”29

There was an implicit—if not explicit—racial bias in the colonial project from its inception, the oppression of poorer Europeans notwithstanding. When Africans, indigenes, and poorer Europeans began to rebel simultaneously, simple survival meant concessions to one of these groups. In this context, scuttling the aspirations of Africans and indigenes versus assuaging poorer Europeans seemed to be the only viable options given the momentum of settler colonialism, which in any case meant more settlers, presumably European.

For as those at the summit of Virginia society were worrying about the “growth of insurrection,” in neighboring Carolina settlers were warned to be on guard against “the Negro Slaves,” whose “labour” was of “plenty” benefit but “whose service doubles … [in]security,” meaning settlers’ security, particularly if a “foreigner should attempt to invade them,” which in the seventeenth century was a constant threat. This observer had noticed that “several families have transported themselves from the ports of Barbados” northward, but it was unclear if this great trek would save them.30 Yet, despite the clear and present danger presented by being in close proximity to a disproportionate number of angry Africans, the chief executive in Jamaica continued to call for “ordering us supplies of Negroes at reasonable rates.”31 At least for a while the authorities continued to ship disgruntled Europeans to the Caribbean, whose presence could prove to be unsettling. Just before “ordering” more “supplies of Negroes,” complaints emerged about “great abuses in the spiriting away of children” to the Caribbean to toil and be exploited. This was a “very sad story,” it was said, though—tellingly—those

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victimized were denoted as “whites,” supplanting the identity of “Christian.”32 Complaints continued to roll in to Whitehall about the “frequent abuses” of involving a “sort of people called spirits, in seducing many of His Majesties Subjects to go on Shipboard [where] they have been seized and carried by force to His Majesties Plantations in America.” This rough handling of poorer Europeans in crossing the Atlantic could sour them tremendously. But upon arriving and facing the distinct possibility of uprisings spearheaded by Africans and indigenes that did not make careful distinctions between and among Europeans, a racial solidarity could be forged: the elite had devised a race-based despotism driving these recent arrivals into the arms of these same elites, particularly after the poorer settlers were granted certain concessions.33

The unsuitability of religion as the primary politics of identity was exposed when advocates for Africans and indigenes in the Caribbean began “suing for their admission into the Church” and clamoring in what was considered a “persuasive” manner for “the instructing and baptizing of the Negroes and Indians for our plantations.”34 It was easier to convert Africans into Christians than to somehow make them “white.”

But this process was not uncomplicated. Subsequently, London sought to form an exclusively “white” settlement—that is, Georgia—which would evade the issue of furious Africans, but this did not work very well, not only because of smuggling of slaves but also because it only reintroduced the nettlesome matter of class contradictions among poorer and wealthier Europeans. Nonetheless, this project pushed out indigenes over time which was a goal of settlers, irrespective of the source of labor.

It is important to recognize that the aftermath of Bacon’s Rebellion, which brought less reliance on indentured labor, more taking of indigenous land, and more enslaved African labor, was not a radical departure from past praxis—it represented a deepening of past praxis. With the taking of Jamaica in 1655 and the coming of the sugar boom, there had been a concerted effort to dragoon more Africans and relieve the burden on small Barbados by attracting Europeans from there to this bigger island. The establishment of South Carolina in 1670 also deepened this pattern, particularly in the ouster and enslavement of indigenes, which had been a typical practice by settlers for some decades. And yes, soon after arriving in Carolina these erstwhile Barbadians were busily ratifying “an act to prevent runaways.”35

Such practices established a cross-class alliance between and among European settlers, who bonded on the basis of “racial identity politics”—that is, “whiteness” and “white supremacy”—and the looting of all those not so endowed. This practice extended to 1776 and its aftermath, and arguably had its latest expression, at least in terms of underlying premise and intent, in the United States in November 2016. Post-1676, it was evident that settlements, and the new nation that succeeded them, were being constructed as a “white man’s country,” effectively the first apartheid state, a formidable hurdle that even progressive Euro-Americans have found difficult to overcome.

OTHER TRENDS WERE UNWINDING simultaneously that were favorable to colonial settlement. With the halting of the Ottoman Turks at the gates of Vienna,36 Western Europeans

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could worry less about being overrun and thus could direct more resources to settler colonialism. Moreover, with the precipitous decline of their Muslim foe, they could worry less about their nationals being seized and sold into slavery and, consequently, could expend more time and effort in seizing and enslaving Africans in the Americas. With the erosion of Ottoman influence, the importance of maintaining a salient religious identity declined in importance, facilitating the companion rise of “race”—or “whiteness”—as an identity, which undergirded settler colonialism based on dispossession of indigenes and enslavement of Africans.

This epochal setback for the Ottomans occurred in 1683 but was still being celebrated well after the fact, indicative of its importance. A Londoner, indicating the Pan-Christian importance of this defeat, hailed the “prevalence of the Christian arms against the infidels” who “for many years have deluged the once flourishing part of Europe with blood,” as if the victory was not the Habsburgs’ alone.37

Even before 1683 there were signals that the Ottomans were in decline. From a certain perspective, when the sultan created the office of the “Chief Black Eunuch” during this tumultuous era, this elevation of an African was an ironic sign of weakness and impotence. In the late sixteenth century, they had challenged Portugal in Mozambique—and flopped. Persia had tied down the Ottomans for the first few decades of the seventeenth century, meaning that well before 1683 the Western Europeans had been freed up to devastate Africa and the Americas with little worry about being attacked from the rear. Even before 1683, the Ottomans had been diverted by a Tatar-Cossack alliance, which weakened this sprawling empire further and, objectively, strengthened those to their west. Their youth levy, the recruiting of Christian men to be Janissaries, had all but ceased by the middle of the seventeenth century, freeing more of this faith to join the free-for-all in Africa and the Americas. In the two decades before 1683, the Ottoman-Habsburg frontier was quiet, reassuring those to the west.

The 1683 setback was thus a culmination of ongoing trends, made all the more powerful by the exclamation point formed in Vienna. This ignominious defeat was of great psychological importance for the Habsburgs and the whole of Europe. The tide of Ottoman conquest seemed to be receding, and it was not until 1917 with the Bolshevik Revolution that such an existential threat manifested, albeit this time on more systemic and ideological—as opposed to religious —grounds. By 1686 the Ottomans’ grip on Buda was loosened. Then in 1688, as London was undergoing the transformative “Glorious Revolution,” the Ottomans were losing Belgrade, signaling an era of declension that extended at least until the early eighteenth century. As this empire declined and a competitor in London rose, France began to replace England as the Ottomans’ dominant trading partner. Egypt was the largest province of the Ottoman Empire and, from its strategic location on the main trade routes, the richest. But by the end of the eighteenth century, this rule was in dire jeopardy and by then the once proud Ottomans were en route to becoming a virtual protectorate of London. The Treaty of Karlowitz in 1699 marked the beginning of the end for the Ottoman Empire, though it was able to hang on to a semblance of power until the end of the First World War. But for our purposes here, the lessening of pressure on Western Europe—London particularly—meant that 1699 was also a defeat for Africa and the Americas.38

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Also a defeat for Africa and the Americas was the negotiation of a 1675 pact between London and the Ottomans, which was reaffirmed in 1809 and not terminated until 1924, an indicator of its potency. There were special provisions on what was to occur if “Corsairs of Tunisia and Barbary … plundered and pillaged” traveling English subjects and, indeed, “molest” them. Provisions included what to do “if any Englishman should turn Turk”; the broad expanse of this accord included Alexandria. Strikingly, the exceedingly important pact was titled the “Final Treaty of Capitulations.”39 The Lord Protector had sent his forces into the Mediterranean decades earlier to chastise corsairs, but even with this “capitulation,” the emergent mainland republic would still be dogged by these marauders into the nineteenth century.40

Just as in the twentieth century certain Englishmen chose to ally with Moscow, Londoners “turning Turk” had been a persistent problem in the seventeenth century. Expediting the redemption of English slaves held by the Algerians and Tunisians, an emotionally wracking matter, drove London’s negotiators.41 It was New England’s Cotton Mather who moaned that this form of captivity perpetrated by the “hellish Moors”—presumably setting to the side what was befalling indigenes and Africans in his backyard—was “the most horrible … in the world.”42 With pressure eased on London from due south and the east, the Crown could more easily plunder and pillage Africa and the Americas.

In any case, redemption of the enslaved English was big business. Again, the enslavement of the English did not tend to lead to abolitionism, at least in the short term. Interestingly, London’s man in Constantinople, Paul Rycaut, who was involved in seeking to rescue these bonded compatriots, was also an investor in the African Slave Trade.43

THE ENSLAVING OF LONDONERS in the Mediterranean, which was ongoing in the late seventeenth century, gave England more direct experience in both the brutality and profitability of bondage, with the latter factor materializing as dominant in shaping the ongoing assault on Africa.

By 1666 Emmanuel D’Aranda was telling Londoners about the dastardly “Turks” and “how the Christian slaves are beaten at Algiers.” He spoke eloquently of runaways, resistance, and cruelty in a way that mirrored what Englishmen were then inflicting on the enslaved Africans in the settlements.44

By 1677, as slave ships began heading toward West Africa more systematically, London sought accord with the “Duan of the Noble City of Tunis.” There was mutual agreement that there would be “no seizure of any ships of either party at sea or in port”; ordinary seamen taken by Tunis were “to be made slaves” but not “merchants or passengers”—a raw class distinction. Slaves escaping Tunis by jumping aboard departing ships were to be treated as indifferently as seamen.45 That a similar treaty with Tunis was negotiated a few years earlier46 suggested that memories were short, filing systems inadequate, or words were insufficient to undermine a deep-seated practice.

In 1675 London once more was accusing Tunis and Algiers of conspiring to “rob” her subjects, and it was demanded that “all such English as have been taken and made slaves …

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shall be immediately set free.”47 In 1676, as settlements were on fire in New England, Virginia, and Barbados alike, it was Tripoli’s turn to agree that London’s shipwrecks were not to be made a North African prize, “nor the men made slaves.” There was a concession, however: “all slaves to be secured” when London’s vessels arrived, but “if they escape[d],” they were not to be returned, reducing the viability of trade relations between the two, insofar as it encouraged a bonded labor force to engineer capital flight.48 By 1682 it was Algiers’ turn to agree to a new wrinkle in such bilateral pacts, that is, London was “not obliged to redeem … subjects now in slavery,” with no distinction drawn between merchants and ordinary seamen.49

Algiers, more than other North African sites, seemed to be a preoccupation of Londoners, including the diarist Samuel Pepys. Just as the African Slave Trade received a new birth of freedom with the royal restoration, he had gone to a local tavern “to drink” and there he bumped into “many sea commanders” in whose company “we spent till four o’clock telling stories of Algiers and the manner of the life of the slaves there.”50 Contrary to inked pacts, a cross-class coalition had emerged led by Thomas Betton, who had a controlling interest in an “ironmongers company” and who left “in trust an enormous sum … for the redemption of Christian slaves in Barbary.”51

But again, mere words were not sufficient to erode lucrative practice. New Englanders too fell victim to African enslavement,52 which could bond them closer to London. Or, alternatively, it could give rise to secession on the premise that London was not capable of protecting them, given this burgeoning empire’s necessity to compromise with the Ottomans in order to outflank European rivals.

But it was not just New Englanders who were victimized. London-based Thomas Phelps was also captured, then managed to escape “after a most miserable slavery.” Properly abased, he conceded that after experiencing a “most miserable slavery … now I know what liberty is,” an admission that did not seem to impress his fellow Londoners, who continued enslaving Africans. It was an “Algerine” ship with “Turkish colours…. Aboard her was an ancient Moor who had been a slave in England and spoke good English.” His “Negro taskmasters … gave us severe chastisement for our mistakes and lapses,” he admitted woundingly. This did not push him toward abolition, though he confessed, “I have been several times in the West Indies and have seen and heard of divers inhumanities and cruelties practiced there” comparable to what he endured and saw in North Africa. There were “eight hundred Christians of all nations, two hundred and sixty whereof are English,” languishing on the Barbary Coast.53

Similarly, New Englanders being enslaved by Africans seemed to do little to sour these settlers on enslavement; to the contrary, it seemed to ignite an opposing reaction. This hypocrisy caught the attention of U.S. Senator Charles Sumner many years later, when he railed against this “inconsistency” among Euro-Americans: “using their best endeavors for the freedom of their white people” but busily enslaving others. He declaimed, “Every word of reprobation which they fastened upon the piratical slaveholding Algerians” somehow “return[ed] in eternal judgment against themselves.”54

Tunis haunted the dreams of many an English subject. John Ogilby noticed “black and white slaves of both sexes” there in 1670. “The people of Tunis,” he told Londoners, are “Moors,

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Jews and slaves of several nations, taken by their pyrates in the Mediterranean.”55 Temporarily, London was able to gain a foothold in Tangier in the 1660s and from there

press both Spain and the Ottomans. This led to a 1666 accord with the “Prince of West Barbary.”56 However, when London’s bastion in North Africa crumbled, the Crown’s essential weakness was revealed.

Once again, London sought to disarm Madrid diplomatically by signing a “treaty for the composing of differences” and “restraining of depredations and establishing of peace in America.” But one did not have to be a cynic to be utterly dismissive of these noble words.57

Complicating such a strategy was the behavior of North Africans influenced by Turkey. For in sailing southward to Africa, Europeans ran the risk of becoming what they intended for others: slaves.58 This is what befell the English merchant identified simply as “Mr. T. S.,” taken prisoner in Algiers and then carted inland. There he encountered a “trader in slaves” who declaimed, “Who will buy a Christian?” The humbled merchant correctly found this to be a “grievous change of fortune, in so short a time as a year to be reduced from that honourable Estate, in which my Father left me, to the lowest Misery, to a slave, to be sold as a beast, in a strange country, where I had no friends.” That is, he endured the fate suffered by too many Africans, though this commonality did not seem to reduce the sceptered isles’ fondness for enslaving others. “T. S.” was bought by a Spanish woman. But he thought he had a trump card: “The Moors … and the Arabs do hate the Turks,” he reported.59

When Europeans had to worry less about becoming slaves when sailing to Africa, they were freed to sail southward and enslave even more Africans. The Christian disunity— Protestant versus Christian—was not helpful in barring Africans’ enslavement of Europeans and, instead, allowed them to manipulate the two sects to their detriment, not least in the 1670s.60 The elongated era of discovery61 and exploration provided rich opportunities to snatch and enslave Europeans in any case. On the other hand, it allowed European travelers to exacerbate tensions between and among Moslems—Turks and Persians, Sunnis and Shias— that kept them decidedly off balance.62

In the 1670s, as London was battling indigenes in New England, settlers in Virginia, and enslaved Africans in Barbados, they were also fighting in North Africa. The King’s men “utterly destroyed them all,” it was reported boastfully: “Turks and Moors slain” was the result, “to the great astonishment of the Turks.” Sir John Narbrough, Admiral of the Fleet in the Mediterranean, asserted, “I fired about one hundred shot into the city of Tripoli.”63

London was also encountering friendly Moslems in South Asia, and when seeking to compete with the Dutch in what was called the “East Indies”—or today’s Indonesia— something similar occurred. Complicating this expansion was what had been irksome at the same time in West Africa; that is, the idea that merchants were too fixated on their own business to see the big picture, which required a strong hand of the state—in this case, the Crown. “England may be said to be rich or strong, as our strength or riches bears a proportion with our neighbors,” particularly the “French, Dutch,” Spanish et al. “And consequently whatever weakens or depopulates them, enriches and strengthens England,”64 a lodestar that argued for a bolstering of London’s long-term policy, stretching back to the sixteenth century, of

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an entente with the Ottomans, which was designed to weaken Madrid. But how could this occur if so many Londoners were determined to fight the Ottomans? An executive committee of the ruling class was required—that is, the firm hand of the state—to administer in the long-term interests of that ruling class. Weakening an absolutist monarch and settling intra-class disputes via the mechanism of republicanism was the remedy pursued in 1688—and then with more determination in North America in 1776.

That was not all. While grappling with fellow “Christians” on the one hand, London also found it necessary to ally with them on the other hand, an alliance that could and probably did facilitate the emergence of a synthetic “whiteness.” During this era an agreement was made directing that “no subjects” of London “shall be bought or sold or made slaves” with the proviso that if any of the King’s vessels arrived in Algiers, “public proclamation shall be immediately made to secure the Christian Captives, and if after that any Christians whatsoever make their escape on Board any of the said ships of war, they shall not be required back again.”65 Though returning of fugitive enslaved Africans was to be an animating issue post- 1776, no such requirement was demanded for European Christians post-1676.66

But weakening the Dutch most notably was not easy because of the perception that this power was more forthcoming to the increasingly important Iberian Jewish community, which had found refuge in Rotterdam and Amsterdam. After arriving in London’s various settlements, there was an upgrade for these migrants over Inquisitorial Spain—an anti-Semitic society—but Barbados and Jamaica particularly were societies that harbored anti-Semitism, which was not helpful either in constructing “whiteness,” forestalling slave revolts, or barring foreign invasion. There was also a perception in London that the Ottomans had embraced this oft- persecuted Jewish community to England’s detriment. At issue was the enslavement of London’s subjects in Algiers, “upwards of 1500” was the claim in 1680. There they endured a “poor supply of bread and water for their food” along with “hundreds of blows on their bare feet.” Then there was the “frequent forcing of Men and Boys by their execrable Sodomy, also their inhumane abuses” then “forced [on] the bodies of women and girls, frequently attempting sodomy on them also.”

But more shocking in these allegations was the purported responsible party in Algiers. The “promoters of all the inhumane usage of Christians are principally the Jews” was the inflammatory charge. “The owners thereof are for a great part Jews,” who were “the constant buyers of … the English captives” and the “chief instigators of the Turks and Moors.” It was the “Jews who [e]nhance the price of Christian souls by buying them” and “then exacting sums for their redemption.” They were the ones who “stir up the Turks and Moors so to beat and abuse poor captives.” Worse, it was said, “the Jews in Algiers have too great correspondency with and countenance from the Jews here in England and that by their means it is that they in Algiers have always lists of all our English ships, especially of the fleets coming from any of His Majesties Plantations abroad.”67

Whether this be deemed just another bigoted screed in a London that countenanced anti- Semitism or a symptom of a larger problem, the ultimate direction was clear. Facing real antagonists in New England, Virginia, and Barbados, London could hardly confront another in

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North Africa and, assuredly, if anti-Semitism were decreased by dint of forging a synthetic “whiteness,” colonialism itself would be strengthened so that real antagonists—particularly in New England and Barbados—could be better fought. There was an implicit admission that the Ottomans were doing a better job of appealing to the Jewish community, as had been the case for the Dutch for some time. In any event, this condemnation of the Jewish community for their alleged role in North Africa was not solitary.68

This condemnation was a reflection of a wider bigotry that made the oft-stated distinction between an anti-Semitic society and a society with anti-Semitism not as meaningful as it appeared at first glance. Thus, like the mainland, Barbados was not opposed to settling those from the Jewish community, not least because of a concern about “whiteness” and overawing an African majority. Yet from 1680 to 1780 a blatantly unfair taxation was levied on the Jewish community, draining their wealth and perhaps making some not as grateful to England as might have been imagined.69 It was hardly consolation and likely helped to galvanize anti-Semitism that as of 1678 policymakers in Barbados were mulling over “an act for preventing dangers which may happen from ‘Popish Recusants.’”70

Across the Caribbean Sea in Port Royal, Jamaica, a haven for pirates, there was a growing Jewish population, an outgrowth of the ouster of Iberians from Recife in 1654. Even before the Cromwell takeover of the island in 1655, those fleeing the Inquisition had flocked to Jamaica, with a Jewish community 1,500 strong as early as 1611. By 1680, Boston had a population of about 6,000, while that of Port Royal was 7,500 and that included about a hundred Jewish families.71

In retrospect, to the extent that the Iberian Jewish community wound up in North Africa— tales of captivity aside—this was a wise maneuver, in that it gave them a window into neighboring Spain, which, as the citadel of anti-Semitism, had to be watched carefully. Besides, the Ottomans, undeterred by their setback in Vienna, had made overtures to what became Germany, which also had jurisdiction over a sizable Jewish community.72

DURING THIS ENTIRE ERA, London was squabbling with the usual competitors, especially the Dutch, about who would become the leader in enslaving Africans. As early as 1672, most of the enslaved in Virginia had arrived directly from Africa and were never seasoned in the Caribbean.73 This coincided with the organizing of the Royal African Company, which marked a heightened aggressiveness by those in Liverpool and Bristol whose lifework was enslaving Africans. But suggestive of how the merchants were ascending even as the Crown-dominated RAC was organized, as early as 1679 privately owned vessels already were becoming more prominent in the odious commerce.74

Thus by 1670 Dutch traders in West Africa were carping per usual: “Blacks often quarreled with us,” they grumbled, “They are constantly troublesome.” Still, it was conceded, “every year we buy there 2,500 to 3,000 sometimes more slaves…. The Negroes who are bought in that area are bad and stubborn and often kill themselves.”75

A few years after Bacon’s revolt, King Philip’s War and Barbadian unrest had shaken the entire colonial project, a Dutchman, Heerman Abramsz, was at Sekondi along the Gold Coast,

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grumbling that the “English have crept in” and “in spite of promises to the contrary, the natives have allowed this,” which was “quite contrary to their earlier promises”; in fact, “they trade every day with English, Portuguese and other ships and so we decided to abandon this lodge. The English had already abandoned theirs in 1650.” His countrymen had preceded his fellow Western Europeans: “We even saw ourselves compelled, because of the bad behavior of the Blacks, to abandon the place in 1648.” The “rowdiness” of Africans, he groused, indeed, the “nature of all the Blacks” meant they tended to “only stick to their promises as long as they see advantage in them; and so welcomed in 1648 the English.” The “wars which the Blacks so often start for trifling reasons” meant that “trade is stopped” and “especially since musket and gunpowder have been introduced, things have become much worse”; that is, “the natives have become more war-like.” As a consequence, “the whole Coast has come into a kind of state of wars. This started in the year 1658”; thus “slaves were very easy to get by on the Gold Coast, because of the wars. In Arder, on the contrary, the slave trade was entirely stopped because of war.” This was tragic, Abramsz thought, given the “great importance of the slave trade.”76

By 1684, the consensus was that “most of these Negroes remaining were brought here on the Gold Coast and are consequently inclined towards running away and seeking their freedom.”77

By 1686 there was caviling about how “high-handed” Africans had become.78 The next year there were protests indicating that the intended enslaved had become “not all that polite” and destroyed the Dutch flag. This was a “serious matter and the English and the French” were “quite happy about it.” The Dutchman concluded that “our presence in this country is no longer brooked.”79

By 1688 the notion was afloat that “Negroes are so bold as to compete in their trade even with the Company, trading on board of those interloper ships even when they are guarded.” By 1688, not least because of the manipulation and arbitrage of Africans, there was a commercial competition, in particular with the English, which led to “innumerable squabbles.” To that point, said one Dutchman with irritation, “the slave trade has well progressed but these days it seems to slow off a little as a result of the lack of wars in the interior.”80 And yes, fomenting wars would definitely resolve this nettlesome problem.

Just as colonialism, colonial merchants, and the wealth they generated—based on dispossession and enslavement—helped to propel the beheading of a king, the rise of Cromwell and the ultimate weakening of the Crown also catapulted the “Glorious Revolution” of 1688. At issue here, inter alia, was the demand of merchants that the Crown unfairly dominated the African Slave Trade not only to their detriment but to the detriment of the nation and of rights generally, including the rights of the demos. Their cause was to prevail and lead future generations of “Marxists” and “radicals” to hail the resultant growth of the productive forces. However, this “victory” was a staggering blow to Africans and Native Americans: it was the dawning of the apocalypse.

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