The Cambridge History of America and the World

The first volume of The Cambridge History of America and the World examines how the United States emerged out of a series of colonial interactions, some involving indigenous empires and communities that were already present when the first Europeans reached the Americas, others the adventurers and settlers dispatched by Europe's imperial powers to secure their American claims, and still others men and women brought as slaves or indentured servants to the colonies that European settlers founded. Collecting the thoughts of dynamic scholars working in the fields of early American, Atlantic, and global history, the volume presents an unrivalled portrait of the human richness and global connectedness of early modern America. Essay topics include exploration and environment, conquest and commerce, enslavement and emigration, dispossession and endurance, empire and independence, new forms of law and new forms of worship, and the creation and destruction when the peoples of four continents met in the Americas.

‘A Very Difficult Troublesome Affair’: Some Unlikely Help for the Pretender

In April 1746, only weeks after th e decisive defeat of the Jacobite army at Culloden, a British warship, HMS Triton, stopped the Gordon, a suspicious-looking ship off Scotland's northwestern coast, near Skye. The strange craft proved to have been taken over on a voyage to America by its human cargo of Irish indentured servants – men, women and children – some 113 souls, with the intention of joining the Stuart rebel forces in Scotland. After taking the servants as prisoners, Captain Brett of the Triton had to confront the question of how to clear his ship of the unwelcome guests, a dilemma that included such questions as ownership, jurisdiction, claims to compensation, and lines of authority. After weeks of frustration, all was finally resolved by the discharging the bulk of the prisoners to Carrickfergus Castle. Brett was able to resume his naval duties, and most of the servants were soon back on their way to a life in the colonies. This incident, minor as it was in itself, is a possibly unique example of political expression by members of the Irish underclass during the Jacobite insurrection of 1745.

Artificial Slaves in the Renaissance and the Dangers of Independent Innovation

This chapter discusses how Renaissance stories of the golem of Prague, of Paracelsus’s homunculus, and of a talking brass head built by a natural philosopher in Robert Greene’s play Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay show the fears and hopes embedded in that culture’s reactions to human invention—as well as an ambivalence to the idea of slavery, for intelligent objects are almost uniformly proxies for indentured servants. Moreover, the tales examined in this chapter about artificial servants foreshadow our modern ambivalence about our innate technological abilities. The power of their technological promise is countervailed by fears that these products of our own ingenuity will overwhelm us.

Escaping Local Risk by Entering Indentureship: Evidence from Nineteenth-Century Indian Migration

Of the millions of Indians who migrated internationally in the long nineteenth century, over one million went as indentured servants in a massive South-South migration. I test how price volatility in origin markets in India affected out-migration under indentureship contracts from 1873–1916 to four major destinations around the world. Using new, unique district-level flows calculated from roughly 250,000 individual records, I show that indentureship take-up is consistent with migrating to escape local price volatility.

Afterword: Reflections on the Motley Crew as Port City Proletariat

This essay reflects on the workers in Atlantic and Indian Ocean port cities who made possible the rapidly expanding system of global capitalism between 1650 and 1850. In all of the ports treated in this volume, a mixture of multi-ethnic, male and female, unskilled, often unwaged laborers collectively served as the linchpins that connected local hinterlands (and seas) to bustling waterfronts, tall ships, and finally the world market. Although the precise combination of workers varied from one port to the next, all had an occupational structure in which half or more of the population worked in trade or the defense of trade, for example in shipbuilding/repair, the hauling of commodities to and from ships, and the building of colonial infrastructure, the docks and roads instrumental to commerce. This “motley crew” – a working combination of enslaved Africans, European/Indian/Chinese indentured servants, sailors, soldiers, convicts, domestic workers, and artisans – were essential to the production and worldwide circulation of commodities and profits.

Semisweet

The presidential kitchen employed a number of free African Americans who worked side-by-side with enslaved people and indentured servants. After Emancipation, African Americans dominated the White House kitchen staff, and upon several occasions, the entire culinary workforce. These cooks come to the White House due to professional merit they possess, not the happenstance of being enslaved by the incumbent president. Still, these cooks faced a number of challenges and barriers, inside and outside of the White House, due to racial prejudice. The chapter chronologically profiles James Wormley, Lucy Fowler, Laura "Dollie" Johnson, Alice Howard, John Moaney and Zephyr Wright. These profiles indicate how they overcame various racial challenges. This chapter includes recipes for Pedernales River Chili, and President Eisenhower's Old-Fashioned Beef Stew.