Every time I think I'm done with Virginia history, I get dragged back in. But here's why Northam referring to the "20. and Odd Negroes" of 1619 is so problematic: An historiographical thread. 1/
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Of course there are plenty of historians (and plenty of historical evidence) countering that kind of position. Winthrop Jordan and his unthinking decision (1968). Mike Guasco's Slaves and Englishmen (2014) really destroys that mythology. 12/
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Guasco showed that the English knew A LOT about slavery when they ventured into the Atlantic. They wanted enslaved people in Virginia, the Caribbean, and elsewhere. There was no assumption of indentured servitude for Africans in 1619 in VA. 13/
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Though some Africans were able to come to private arrangements with slaveholders early on, those arrangements became less and less possible QUITE QUICKLY. 14/
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John Coombs has done quite a bit of work on this, hopefully his book will be out soon. Another book on this Ibram Kendi's Stamped from the Beginning. 15/
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While mid-twentieth-century historians were wrestling in good faith with the question of legal status of early Africans in the English Atlantic, there has been so much work done since then. The Africans-as-servants narrative is no longer tenable. 16/
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The "20. and Odd Negroes" of 1619 were not intended to be servants. (See both Sluiter and Thornton on this in the WMQ.) 17/
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When Northam said this morning that those people were servants, he was not engaging an earlier historiography. He was engaging a narrative of white innocence, of Virginian innocence, a narrative that slavery wasn't that bad. 18/
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Northam joins a long line of people who want to maintain white innocence about race and slavery by equating slavery and indentured servitude. That's a bad idea, esp since this year white Virginians has an opportunity to honestly confront a pretty horrifying past. 19/
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TL;DR: the Africans who arrived in Virginia in 1619 were not indentured servants. Saying they were deliberately effaces the long and violent history of slavery in Virginia and elsewhere. fin/
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I don't think this narrative makes them seem innocent. Quite the opposite. Realizing they needed a tighter labor system, they knowingly invented an evil, inhumane, and racist structure to do so.
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well yes, that's what *historians* think, but emphasizing fluidity and calling enslaved people servants is absolutely an aspect of a popular narrative of white innocence.
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