Steve King's Ignorant Tweet reminded me of this: How The British Reinvented Slavery

[tulipsandroses]

It's almost an hour long. But really informative. I was born in Jamaica. The way I learned the history of " Coolies" in Jamaica when I was younger, was that they came as indentured servants after slavery was abolished in Jamaica. Admittedly, I was a child at the time. At the time I thought it was always voluntary and life was great. When I got older, and more curious about things. I learned differently.


[link:

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Here's an article that talks about it if you can't bear to sit for an hour

Britain and Australia's hidden history of Indian slavery

by Vinil Kumar
17 June 2020
Indian indentured slavery should be remembered as one of British and Australian capitalism’s historical atrocities. The indenture system, as it is commonly called, existed between 1834 and 1920, during which time about 2 million Indians were transported to 19 colonies across the British empire, and to some French and Dutch territories. More than 400,000 were taken to both Mauritius and Malaysia, 240,000 to what was then British Guiana, 150,000 to Natal (now part of South Africa), 145,000 to Trinidad and Tobago and more than 60,000 to Fiji. The mass displacement created a substantial diaspora, with Indian migrants and their descendants approaching half the population in some countries.

By the turn of the 19th century, the international slave trade had become less central to British capitalism. The Haitian revolution, a mass uprising of slaves against French colonialism, showed the threat slavery could pose to colonial rule. There were mounting calls for the trade to be banned, which Britain and the United States did in 1807. The abolition of slavery across the British empire followed in 1833. But abolition created a shortage of cheap labour for the sugar plantations of the British Caribbean and other developing colonies across the empire. Without a new supply, the profits of these plantations and the sugar industry were in jeopardy. Among the profiteers was the Australian-based Colonial Sugar Refining Company (CSR), which had to find cheap labour for the Fijian sugarcane fields it would come to dominate.

“Indenture” was an attempt to quench this thirst for labour while tiptoeing around the new legal restrictions on slavery. The system was based on an agreement (girmit), which each labourer would enter into for five years. They would leave India to work for a small wage for an employer. When the contract expired, they could return home at their own expense, or extend their indenture for a further five years, after which they would be granted free return passage for themselves and their immediate family.

The British plunder of India had left vast regions impoverished and famine-struck for decades. Young men (and some women) from these areas were approached by local recruiters offering work and the promise of fortune. They were taken to local recruitment depots for medical checks and to finalise a written agreement. Calcutta and Madras (Kolkata and Chennai) became the main departure ports.
The seemingly consensual and paid nature of indenture allowed the British government and many historians subsequently to argue that the system was nothing like slavery. Reality tells a different story. The low regard for Indian indentured labourers was reflected by the derogatory term “coolies”, which was associated with the Urdu word “kuli”, meaning slave. Deception was rife in recruitment. Thumbprints were used to sign agreements because many couldn’t read or write. Historian Brij Lal recounts the complaints during a 1907 strike at CSR’s Labasa plantation in Fiji. Khani Zeman, one of the labourers, insisted that he was illiterate at the time of recruitment. “Nor did we even put our thumb-marks to any paper”, nor had any agreement been read to him, he said.

[link:https://redflag.org.au/node/7231|

[Solly Mack]

1. K&R

[JoeOtterbein]

2. K n R

(w/tears and shame)

[pat_k]

3. I don't understand what point King was attempting to make.

I just don't.

If Kamala's father's ancestry includes persons who were enslaved, there's a good chance his ancestry also includes one or more slave owners. Even an idiot like King ought to know that slave owners generally believed they had a right to rape the women they enslaved.

His tweet did do me a bit of "good" -- it prompted me to do a little reading on the history of Jamaica. My knowledge on the subject is vague. I found what seems to be a decent overview here. Vinil Kumar's article fills some gaps (and I'm sure the brief summary has many other gaps).

[JI7]

6. It's something a lot of racist people are spewing to blur the differences between black

people who have the blood of slave owners and White people whose family were slave owners.


And from that to claim there is no racism .

[pat_k]

10. The twisted thinking boggles the mind.

It would be nice if books like Slavery by Another Name and White Fragility could be mandatory reading (or listening) for anyone who claims ours is not a racist nation and anyone who is so blind they can claim, with a straight face, that America affords "equal opportunity."

There is much of our history that many, many, people -- including myself -- are ignorant of.

If I've learned anything it is that we all have racial bias -- all of us. In a sense, that fact is liberating. No reason to be defensive. When you start from the understanding that we all have biases, your job is just to find them. The effort allows you to take a more realistic look at our world and how racist, sexist, ageist and other attitudes are maintained -- even by the most well-meaning people. And when you see more clearly, you can be part of the solution.

[tulipsandroses]

9. My guess he was being an ass and probably just parroting stupid propaganda

he saw on Facebook or other stupid RW internet sites. He doesn't say it in his tweet But there is a lot of nonsense out there regarding her heritage. She's not really black. Funny how racists decide when they want you to be black and when they don't want you to be black to suit their narrative. Other propaganda claiming that Kamala said her family left India to own black slaves in Jamaica or some crap like that. Which of course is false.

Facts be damned for these folks. They live in a fact free bubble where nuance, history do not exist. Indians that arrived in Jamaica did not own slaves. Which is what the article and the video I posted is about. They are obsessed with whether or not she is the descendant of slaves. Ignorant of the fact that her Indian ancestors could very well have been indentured servants - which at the time was another form of slavery for the British.

My point being, if you are so obsessed about whether or not she is a descendant of slaves. It could have been on either side of her family. But to understand that, one would have to be interested in facts and details. Things often, overlooked by these folks. If it doesn't fit on a meme, a tweet, face book post. Its not real.

I'm willing to bet, he was alluding to some of this idiocy.

[MustLoveBeagles]

4. K&R

[brush]

5. The US didn't abolish slavery in 1807. Why is that in there?

[TreasonousBastard]

7. It abolished the importation of slaves, which ended up only strengthening the domestic slave trade.

[Caliman73]

11. The US ended the importation of slaves 1807.

All in all, I think that of the 10,000,000 slaves sent from Africa only 388,000 slaves were actually brought directly from Africa to the US. HOWEVER, there were 4,000,000 Black slaves in the US by the start of the Civil War, which means that over 90% of slaves were bred and born here. We were actually a slave exporting country.

[mopinko]

8. irish indentured.

tho the white wing misuses the irish situation, the truth is we were slaves, too.
lords arranged from victims of the "famine", which was actually a genocide, to work off their passage to america.

we werent tortured, but we did the most dangerous jobs. and if you got injured, you couldnt work off your debt, and you went to debtors prison.
we didnt come in chains, but we came in coffin ships. my grandparents on both sides came in steerage. we were lucky. everyone who got on the boat got off the both on their feet.
they didnt steal our children, but many were given up for adoption because you couldnt feed a family w/o a real job. and if you were single and pg, you went to a home, and they took your baby.
i dont know how prevalent rape of irish women was, but dont doubt there was plenty of it when they were poor and powerless and trapped in a foreign land.

the brits were fuckers who enslaved ppl w a pen instead of a whip.
i tell ppl my ancestors came in chains made of paper.

[peggysue2]

12. Just going to mention the same thing

The Irish were considered subhuman on many levels. Their Catholic faith didn't help the cause. To her dying day, Nana hated the English, as did my great-aunts. My nana's stories as a young woman didn't really hit home until I grew into my own adulthood. I did some research and was appalled.

Everything you mention here is historically accurate. Our ancestors were the lucky ones. They survived. And multiplied.

Revenge of the generations.