We Have a Word For That, Pt. 1

The whole Irish slave meme is bizarre and predictably has a lot more bite in the US than in Ireland. The odd time it pops up, people are just puzzled by the comparison between indentured servitude and life long brutal slavery – if anything, comparing the two makes the former seem milder. Liam Hogan is a great burster of bubbles on it: https://twitter.com/Limerick1914

‘I have wondered about that plenty, thinking, when S.C. was 80% black, how in God’s name did white people keep from getting straight murdered all the time? I mean, “by using inhumanly savage violent repression,” obviously, but even so I thought there would be more “whoops, the plantation house caught on fire and nobody could get out mumble because people were standing outside in a circle armed with hoes and axes mumble.”’

When I read this, one of the speculations that came into my mind was that slaves might have been deterred from conspiring against slave-owners by fear that the conspiracy would be betrayed from within.

Then I searched the Web for the phrase ‘resistance to slavery’, and found several websites discussing it.

Following is some of the information I found here:
http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/tserve/freedom/1609-1865/essays/slaveresist.htm

‘The most spectacular, and perhaps best-known, forms of resistance were organized, armed rebellions. Between 1691 and 1865, at least nine slave revolts erupted in what would eventually become the United States. The most prominent of these occurred in New York City (1712), Stono, South Carolina (1739), New Orleans (1811), and Southampton, Virginia (Nat Turner’s 1831 rebellion). Numerous other conspiracies were thwarted before they could be fully realized, including Gabriel Prosser’s (Richmond, VA, 1800) and Denmark Vesey’s (Charleston, SC, 1822). Slaves commandeered weapons, burned and looted properties, and even killed their masters and other whites, but whites were quick to exact a brutal revenge. In the bloodiest American revolt, Nat Turner and several hundred comrades killed sixty whites. Over 100 enslaved were killed, either in the combat or as retribution for the uprising. Another thirteen slaves were hanged, along with three free blacks. If the measure of a revolt’s success was the overthrow of slavery, then none of these revolts succeeded. Ultimately, the only rebellion that succeeded in overthrowing slavery in the Americas was the Haitian Revolution. Slave rebellions in colonial America and the United States never achieved such widespread success; however, the importance of rebellion cannot be overstated. The constant specter of physical violence reminded whites that slavery would never go unchallenged; the possibility of “another Haiti” loomed large, especially in the nineteenth-century American South.’

In the middle of that paragraph are references to two of ‘numerous’ conspiracies that were thwarted. I looked them up, and, indeed, what happened in both cases was that the conspiracy was betrayed from within, which adds plausibility to my original speculation.

On the issue of slave resistance and directing violence towards their masters and abusers, I’ve been enjoying (well, maybe not the right word; perhaps “consumed by”) the TV series Underground, about a group of slaves in the 1850s making a perilous journey north towards freedom. It’s got some problems of plot and tone (and in particular the subplots about white characters often feels completely beside the point) but one of the reasons I enjoy it is that it’s not afraid to be schlock, and in fact embraces that mode. This allows the story to be more than an honorable narrative of misery, but an engrossing, exciting tale of powerless people taking control of their lives (while also being very straightforward about the horrors of slavery).

Anyway, the reason I’m mentioning this is that one of the plot points near the end of the first season is that the plantation owner hangs a slave who had tried to escape, who is the son of his housekeeper and mistress (obviously not the right word here, but the show does argue that the two have a complex relationship in which the woman has some kind of power over her owner, even though – as exemplified by the murder of her son – ultimately the power lies with him), with whom he also has two younger children, though the murdered man was not, I think, his son. In the next episode, we see that the mother is still tending the house, and even taking care of the master’s newborn baby from his wife. It boggled my mind to think that anyone would believe they could trust their lives and the lives of their family to anyone they had hurt so badly, and though in the show that faith turns out to be gratifyingly misplaced, I wonder how common these attitudes were in real life.

I know that one of the narratives that white slaveowners spun to protect themselves from the reality of what they were doing was that black people don’t feel pain and sorrow the way white people do. But nevertheless, was it still possible for them to destroy families and brutalize their slaves, and not fear for their lives in retribution? Or was it, as Belle writes, that that fear was sometimes validated, but no one talked about it?

Haiti wasn’t the only successful slave revolt in the Americas, the Jamaican Maroons led by Queen Nanny were recognized as effectively independent around Nanny Town in the Blue Mountains in the early 18th century following successful armed resistance.

I think I have commented about this before, but I started reading a history book called Caledonia Australis by Don Watson, which is the story of the settlement of a part of Gippsland in Victoria by Scottish migrants. I read the first part which was about the displacement of the Highland Scots, and then I started reading the next bit about the Scottish settlement in Australia and the violent displacement of Indigenous Australians, including massacres.

Then I realised that the area the book is about is part of Victoria where my Scottish grandfather’s parents had a family farm.

I think up until then I had never really thought of the role of my own ancestors in the violence towards and killing and displacement of Indigenous Australians.

I had read about the history, but never really thought about my own ancestors. It was really confrontational reading, and I ended up putting the book away to read another time. I still haven’t finished it. I remember reading it on the train and a friend’s mother was sitting near me and asked what the book I was reading was about, and I mumbled something about it being about the incongruity of things.

There has been quite a lot of history writing in Australia which has tried to restore to history how Indigenous people fought back against white settlers, such as The Frontier Wars. Before this there was a narrative of Indigenous people “dying out”, or not fighting against white settlement.

From a history website about resistance to slavery:

“As an African American female, I do not recall being taught the myriad day-to-day attempts of resistance that African and African American slaves carried out while enslaved. I was, however, taught that the only forms of resistance the African and African American slaves displayed were running away occasionally and the ability of some slaves, who were house slaves, to learn to read and write.
….
I was under the misconception that African and African-American slaves were very docile and submissive to their oppressors.

I felt ashamed of my African ancestors because to me, they didn’t fight back enough. As a child, I wanted the topic of slavery for African slaves in the Americas to be mentioned as little as possible. Just think about this situation for a minute. I was ashamed of my heritage because of what I was being taught at school about slaves.

Many questions would cloud my mind. For example, if slaves were docile then, why were they shackled by chains? This question would follow me into my undergraduate years where I discovered the answers to such curious questions. I was determined to teach others about what I had discovered. My self-esteem increased greatly because I had learned of the great and strong people I had descended from. It is extremely important, to me, that I give my students the needed information about the resistance to enslavement of African and African -American slaves in the Americas.
….
There were different intensity levels of resistance that slaves epitomized. A common day-to-day passive rebellion of slaves was, for example, pretending to be sick in order to lessen the workload. Some slaves would make themselves vomit while complaining of stomach pains. Others would pretend to suffer from food poisoning in which they would become delirious and dizzy. Some female slaves even pretended to be pregnant in order to be assigned light work duty. Slaves often destroyed property like crops and tools. They organized work slowdowns in the fields. Slaves also used the “Sambo” stereotype to their advantage by appearing to be “stupid” to elude punishments once subtle forms of resistance were revealed to their masters. As mentioned by some historians, slave masters would often complain that slaves had little intelligence and that they could barely complete a day’s work. Slave masters also complained that slaves were incapable of comprehending or remembering orders.

Other forms of day-to-day rebellion of slaves were the refusal to bow down to slave masters and the refusal to relinquish their African culture. Although the acculturation of the African slave into the African -American slave was evident, the African heritage survived through the folklore, stories, music, and songs passed down through many generations of slaves.

It is also my desire that this curriculum unit will examine the extreme forms of slave resistance such as arson, self-mutilation, suicide, and murder of slave masters and mistresses. According to William T. Harris, Remarks Made During a Tour Through the United States of America in the Years 1817,1818, and 1819, slaves often assaulted, robbed, poisoned, and murdered whites in desperate hopes of receiving their freedom.1 There were reported cases, in newspapers, that slaves were unruly and that they killed livestock. Slaves also burned plantation buildings and damaged equipment in retaliation of the harsh treatments they were receiving.

Female slaves were often given the job of cook for their slaveholders. These slaves would sometimes poison the food that they prepared for their masters. Slaves would create concoctions from different herbs and plants and put them into the food of their masters in which resulted in death for some slave owners. These slave cooks would grind up glass in food and they would prepare meals with other harmful items in them.2

In order not to work for their masters, slaves would practice self-mutilation. They would chop off their fingers, hands, toes, feet, arms or legs. Also, some slaves committed suicide by jumping out of windows, taking poison, drowning themselves, and partaking in hunger strikes.

During the time that slavery existed in the Americas, groups of slaves would join together to plan escapes. When slaves lived near swamps, impenetrable forests, or near frontier areas, they often banded together in such mass efforts. These rebel slaves were called maroons. Throughout the Americas, African slaves would run away and hide out in swamps, mountains, and or the deep forest for long periods of time ranging from days to years. These maroon societies would manage to elude capture long enough to establish communities apart from the slave plantations. The maroons would often plan attacks on plantations. At these attacks, the maroons would burn crops, steal livestock and tools, murder slavemasters, and invite other slaves to join their communities. “A nest of runaway negroes was discovered last week in the fork of the Alabama and Tombecke Rivers…they had two cabins and were about to build a fort.””

http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1998/1/98.01.03.x.html

It seems to me that the antebellum white South Carolinians lived much like the ancient Spartans, in constant fear of slave rebellion.

And I believe SC established the Citadel for the purpose of training officers for the state militia…for the purpose of putting down slave revolts. VMI has a similar origin story, iirc.

Pub Editor’s mention of Sparta reminds me of the now aged but still very good article by Paul Cartledge, ‘Rebels and Sambos’, that drew on comparative evidence (Haiti, southern USA) to try explain the remarkable absence of slave revolts in classical antiquity. Sparta was an exceptional case, since the Messenians were a single conquered people, retaining some degree of collective identity, traditions etc.; hence, permanent threat. Most ancient slaves, like most modern ones, came from variety of ethnic and linguistic backgrounds, forced to communicate in language of owners, need to make imaginative leap to conceive of themselves in terms of new identity of ‘slave’ to find common ground with other slaves – and in face of consistent violence, control, surveillance etc.

Henry, I wouldn’t deny they were at times racialised and subjected to racism, although I think they were primarily oppressed for being culturally peculiar, poor, and Catholic. I just don’t believe(at least by my reading of some recent trends in the research, and this includes all European immigrant groups) that they were seen as not white. They were always white, just a lower order within the white race. My impression of a lot of the “becoming white” lit is that it is using contemporary frames* to cram people into racial categories that make little sense in their historical context (ie this has been put forward by people like Barbara fields, Kevin kenny, Nell painter, Thomas A. Guglielmo )

*then again I think the way we talk about race today is nonsensical, so I’m probably biased to this position.

@18 We’re probably going to spin our wheels until we understand what we mean by ‘racism’. It seems that it is used more broadly here than a pseudo-scientific, pseudo-naturalistic doctrine about inheritable differences in moral temperament and cognitive ability between groups conceived of as deeply different as a result of evolutionary and genetic history. Racism can mean simply the practice of “thingifying” others, treating them as mere means or instruments or obstacles. It can mean certain kinds of revulsion. It can imply the existence of degraded groups whose belonging to a social order is not seen as necessary (unlike for example Untouchables who are necessary for the ritual purity of Brahmins) but who are rather whose belonging is contingent and can be withdrawn, i.e. they live under permanent threat of expulsion such as Jews and Moors being expelled from Spain or Africans being sent back to Africa.

@RNB

> they live under permanent threat of expulsion such as Jews and Moors being expelled from Spain or Africans being sent back to Africa.

What about whites in South Africa or, formerly, Rhodesia?

I was referring to subordinate and ghettoized or exploited groups whose membership or belonging is treated as contingent. This differs from other subordinate groups who are seen to have a necessary place in the social order. This also may not get at what is distinctive about racism, though Lawrence Hirschfeld has suggested that it does. The issue of land expropriation for redistribution to war veterans, however demagogic, should not be confused with expulsion, at any rate. Idi Amin’s treatment of those with Asian ancestry was from what I understand an expulsion and may have been racist .

Slave owners often owned large numbers of slaves and hired them out in gangs for work on various projects. The problem was that slaves were capital assets, so projects like the canal work during the Mississippi Bubble and later were just too deadly to risk one’s slaves on. The work was generally done by Irish immigrants who only had themselves as capital. They died in droves. This might account for the stories about Irish slaves. I gather that life in British occupied Ireland was pretty crappy.

There were lots of slave rebellions, but mainly in areas where there might be some place to flee to. Once the rebellion started, the rebels had to move before the slave owners rallied enough forces to put the rebellion down. If you were in the tidelands, it was plantations for miles and miles. If you were in a border area, you might flee to the hills, to Florida, to the swamps or to a free state. During the war of 1812, the British explicitly recruited slaves as soldiers for their army, and they got a lot of takers. The British knew a good fifth column when they saw one.

If you look through history, about 10% of the population can often oppress the other 90% if the 10% is organized along military lines as a systematic military caste to oppress the 90%. (Less than 10% and it can’t be maintained — Haiti had way less than 10% trying to rule the island.)

This is what was done in the American South. It was martial law *all the time*, and all the white Southern males were expected to participate: drafted if necessary — to kill, torture, or beat any escaped or rebellious slaves. The white population was heavily armed and trained.

“It seems to me that the antebellum white South Carolinians lived much like the ancient Spartans, in constant fear of slave rebellion.”
Precisely. (The Spartan elite also was a bit more than 10% of the population.)

Most of the states in the US with slavery had a *much smaller* percentage of enslaved people, which makes it much, much easier to oppress them. It is actually very hard to keep 80% of the population in slavery, and South Carolina had to become a state under constant and active martial law with a huge military caste in order to maintain it. It is not so hard to keep 20% of the population in slavery.

Kaleberg, true, but the “irish slaves” narrative in its contemporary form (and I do tend to think its prevelance is overplayed) seems to be coming from white nationalists as a means to undermine African American claims of oppression. It doesn’t refer to the position of the irish in industrialising America, but more specifically to indentured servitude in the Caribbean in the mid 17th century.
I agree with your larger point though. The “slaves myth” as it existed in irish nationalist rhetoric historically , generally wasn’t making any meaningful comparison between black chattel slavery and the irish position (not because it would have been seen as inaccurate, but because it wouldn’t have had much cultural resonance). Claims to irish “slavery” would have been tied up with the relationship with England, and narratives of dispossession, exile, oppression and banishment.
Afaik You’re right that, for an emigrant in 19th century America, this would have been the cultural context. This is the historian Kirby Miller’s argument, that poor, Catholic irish emigrants and the society they left adopted a cultural motif of emigration as forced exile from their country(even when it was a choice, albeit a bad one) , and built it around historical folk narratives of banishment and exile at the hands of the English (rather than what primarily seemed to be the cause of their leaving, changes in land inheritance norms and a changing economy that left significant numbers redundant).
It was partly encouraged by a growing nationalist elite to shore up their position, partly adopted by families to paper over tensions within families and hide the real reasons for the emigrant leaving , and partly used in the new country to build collective solidarity in the disorientating circumstances they found themselves in .
Thats his argument anyway (as far as I remember it), and it has received a good bit of pushback. My understanding is that the “irish slaves” myth as used now (primarily on Twitter it seems) is mainly coming from white nationalists, which (as I said above) doesn’t seem particularly noteworthy.. to me anyway.

“But I’m sure 12 minutes ago somewhere, some white immigrant somewhere just got his citizenship. Would you say he benefited materially from chattel slavery? Because I wouldn’t.”

Let’s say 12 years instead of 12 minutes, deal?

In those 12 years, if that white immigrant never got arrested just for being alive; had no problem being served at a restaurant; didn’t get denied jobs due to his/her ethnicity; had equivalent health outcomes to other white people; was not questioned when voting; took up residence anywhere s/he wanted; obtained a mortgage; was not ignored at a hospital emergency room; or visited the White House, yeah, s/he benefited from slavery and its companion, racism.

Because with the exception of the white house visit, every single one of my black friends has had those issues. Every single one.