1. The origin of the English/American gang slavery of Africans was in 1599, in the uninhabited Bermuda Islands. Tropical tobacco grown by Africans enslaved in the Bermudas sold for its own weight in gold in London in the early 1600s. Prior to this ludicrously profitable Bermudas slave tobacco plantation, England had celebrated its abolition of slavery for the past one thousand years, “the air in England is too free for a slave to breathe in.” The Bermudas tobacco slavery was a hard u-turn for the English, abolitionists for a millenium to gang slavery in one year, 1599.
That profound sea-change was entirely kept a secret, as it remains to this day. The only scholarly description of the Bermudas sea-change that I could find was by the historian W. Frank Craven, writing in a 1937 Journal of Southern History. Ultimately, this unknown singular event in the uninhabited Bermudas will lead to the largest, most productive slave empire in human history.
2. Tobacco gang slavery in the 1599 Bermudas, England’s unknown original sin, is the hidden story in Shakespeare’s 1611 The Tempest, also known as The Mystery Play. Several prominent Shakespeare scholars have written that there has never been a satisfactory explanation of the strange story of Prospero told in The Tempest (Northrup Frye, Colin Still, many others).
However, no scholar nor historian has ever before noticed that the unknown development of the Bermudas gang slavery, begun in 1599, is a parallel story in the 1611 The Tempest, concealed within the main story, underground. Prospero, the main character in The Tempest, represents the first English slavemaster of all-time, the one who broke the glorious thousand year reign of freedom.
3. Just one time does The Tempest explicitly reveal that is about gang slavery. At the end of the play, the Boatswain says of the ship, which is the same ship Prospero claims he controls from his islands, that it has, ” all clapped under hatches,” “roaring, shrieking, howling, jingling chains, and moe (sic) diversity of sounds, all horrible.”
From this single line it is obvious that the ship in The Tempest is clearly a slave ship, with Africans chained in the hold. This one line about roaring, shrieking, howling, jingling chains locked below is the key to understanding the real meaning in The Tempest. No scholar nor director could be found who has ever before commented on this foundational line at the end of the play, out of more than 100 different scholars and directors studied.
wow. This report makes me want to read the Harry Mulisch Book The Last Call again. The literal translation of the Title of the book in Dutch is HIgh Times. I wonder if I will find any buried secrets that I had overlooked the first and second time that I read the book. The play the Tempest plays a key role in the Mulisch book Last Call.
One might wonder why I would think that there would be hidden aspects to the story in this book. The answer is because in the book The Assault (De Anschlag, iirc) had two profound hidden aspects.
Reality bites. This is a savage, eye opening, and disturbing essay.
Thank you.
The end of slavery coincided with the rise of fossil fuels for energy. Before fossil fuels all energy came from wind, water, the burning of wood and the muscles of mammals. As fossil fuels dwindle slavery will likely return.
It will grow but it never went away:
According to the latest Global Estimates of Modern Slavery (2022) from Walk Free, the International Labour Organization and the International Organization for Migration:
49.6 million people live in modern slavery – in forced labour and forced marriage
Roughly a quarter of all victims of modern slavery are children
22 million people are in forced marriages. Two out of five of these people were children
Of the 27.6 million people trapped in forced labour, 17.3 million are in forced labour exploitation in the private economy, 6.3 million are in commercial sexual exploitation, and nearly 4 million are in forced labour imposed by state authorities
The Covid-19 pandemic has exacerbated the conditions that lead to modern slavery
Migrant workers are particularly vulnerable to forced labour.
Source: Global Estimates of Modern Slavery: Forced Labour and Forced Marriage, Geneva, September 2022
https://www.antislavery.org/slavery-today/modern-slavery/
See also:
https://www.walkfree.org/what-is-modern-slavery/
And thank you, anonymous donor, for this eye opening essay!
When times get tough, slavery will return to provide personal net energy for some,but negative net energy for those enslaved.
The predominant tools of the collapsing future will be the ubiquitous garden hoe for the slaves, and guns for their masters.
Will you choose for yourself and your family to accept the cruelty of slavery, or will you be the master who relishes inflicting death & pain to control others?
Bob Shaw Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
My local city, Glasgow – in so far as a city that takes a two-hour ferry crossing and three hours of driving to get to can be local – grew rich on slavery. There are still hints of it in the statues, mansions and street names, like Jamaica Street and Virginia Street or the 62 named after slaveowners.
Glasgow City Council actually issued a formal apology in 2022.
I had no idea. JFC
“Glasgow’s wealth was directly built on the profits generated by enslaved labor in the Caribbean and American colonies, primarily through the trade of tobacco, sugar, and cotton. During the 18th and 19th centuries, the city became a global hub for these commodities, with merchants known as “Tobacco Lords” accumulating vast fortunes by monopolizing produce grown on plantations worked by enslaved Africans in Virginia, North Carolina, and Maryland.
This wealth fueled the city’s explosive growth and physical transformation, financing the construction of grand Georgian architecture, merchant houses, and public institutions in areas like the Merchant City. Key landmarks such as the Gallery of Modern Art (formerly the townhouse of tobacco trader William Cunninghame) and major thoroughfares like Buchanan Street, Glassford Street, and Jamaica Street were funded by or named after individuals who profited from the slave economy.
The economic impact was so profound that historians argue without slavery, Glasgow would not exist in its modern form; the city expanded from just 13 streets to a major metropolis largely due to capital derived from the transatlantic slave trade. Research indicates that the city’s prosperity was so deeply entrenched in this system that 40 out of 79 lord provosts or mayors from 1636 to 1834 were connected to the Atlantic slave trade, and the University of Glasgow itself benefited from approximately £200 million (in today’s money) in gifts and bequests from slave-owning benefactors.”
And to think that tobacco and sugar are not in the slightest essential crops.
To some people those are the most essential products.
“My hatred is concentrated against those, who, after one thousand years of equality, introduced slavery into the world again.” Alexis Tocqueville Democracy In America p.333
The greatest slavery is the slavery to one’s ego.
The ultimate solution to all slavery is NTHE.
How about a challenge? Research history of slavery.
“Keep it real.” – Paul Mooney