Abstract
In the fall of 1649 on the docks of a large slave trading port, sailors strained, sweated, and swore through their work, hauling cargo, hoisting sails, and mending rigging, making ready for a voyage to the colonies. As the sailors prepared to weigh anchor, a crowd of parents gathered along the shoreline, grieving for their children who had been kidnapped and brought aboard the ship. As their children struggled for breath in the suffocating stench and stifling heat of the ship’s hold, the parents grew despondent, desperate to redeem their children from a future of death-dealing labor in the scorching fields of the English Chesapeake or Caribbean. A sympathetic witness noted that when the slave ship began to sail into the distance, the parents followed along the water’s edge, “crying and mourning for their children’s redemption from slavery” (Bullock, 1649 , pp. 13–14; Harlow, 1923 , p. 300; Linebaugh & Rediker, 2000 , p. 110).
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Allen, T. (1997). The invention of the White race (Vol. 2). New York: Verso.
Amussen, S. (2007). Caribbean exchanges: Slavery and the transformation of English society. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.
Anstey, R. (1975). The Atlantic slave trade and British abolition. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press.
Aptheker, H. (1989). Abolitionism: A revolutionary movement. Boston, MA: Twayne Publishers.
Aronowitz, A. A., & Peruffo, M. (2001). Smuggling and trafficking in human bondage: The phenomenon, the markets that drive it, and the organizations that promote it. Turin: United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute.
Baily, C. (1663). A true and faithful warning unto the people and inhabitants of Bristol. London.
Bales, K. (1999). Disposable people: New slavery in the global economy. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Bales, K. (2004). New slavery: A reference handbook. Denver, CO: ABC-CLIO.
Bales, K. (2005). Understanding global slavery. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Bales, K. (2007). Ending slavery: How we free today’s slaves. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Basu, A. K. (2002). Targeting child labor in debt bondage: Evidence, theory and policy implications. Florence: UNICEF.
Beckles, H. M. (1989). White servitude and black slavery in Barbados, 1627–1715. Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press.
Beckles, H. M. (1990). A “riotous and unruly lot”: Irish indentured servants and freemen in the English West Indies, 1644–1713. William and Mary Quarterly, 47, 503–522.
Beckles, H. M. (1995). The concept of ‘White Slavery’ in the English Caribbean during the early seventeenth century. In J. Brewer & S. Staves (Eds.), Early modern conceptions of property. London: Routledge.
Beckles, H. M. (2001). The hub of empire: The Caribbean and Britain in the seventeenth century. In N. Canny (Ed.), The origins of empire: The Oxford history of the British Empire. New York: Oxford University Press.
Bender, T. (1992). The anti-slavery debate: Capitalism and abolitionism as a problem in historical interpretation. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Birch, T. (1742). The state papers of John Thurloe (Vol. 4). London: Woodward.
Blackburn, R. (1997). The making of new world slavery: From the baroque to the modern, 1492–1800. New York: Verso.
Blackmon, D. (2008a). Slavery by another name: The re-enslavement of Black people in America from the Civil War to World War II. New York: Doubleday.
Blackmon, P. (2008b). Rethinking poverty through the eyes of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. International Studies Review, 10, 179–202.
Bliss, R. M. (1994). Revolution and empire: English politics and the American colonies in the seventeenth century. New York: Manchester University Press.
Blomely, N. (2007). Making private property: Enclosure, common right and the work of hedges. Rural History, 18, 1–21.
Blum, W. (1995). Killing hope: US military and CIA interventions since World War II. Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press.
Bredlinger, I. A. (2007). To be silent would be criminal: The antislavery influence and writings of Anthony Benezet. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press.
Brown, C. L. (2006). Moral capital: Foundations of British abolitionism. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.
Bullock, W. (1649). Virginia impartially examined and left to public view. London.
Chatterjee, I. (2005). Abolition by denial: The South Asian example. In G. Campbell (Ed.), Abolition and its aftermath in Indian Ocean Asia and Africa: Studies in slave and post-slave societies and cultures. New York: Routledge.
CSUCS. (2006). Child soldiers and disarmament, demobilization, rehabilitation and reintegration in West Africa: A survey of programmatic work on child soldiers in Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. London: Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers.
Dankers, J., & Sluyter, P. (1680). Journal of a voyage to New York. New York: Long Island Historical Society (Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms, 1966).
Davis, D. B. (2006). Inhuman bondage: The rise and fall of slavery in the New World. New York: Oxford University Press.
Donoghue, J. (2004). Unfree labor, imperialism, and radical republicanism in the Atlantic world, 1630–1661. Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas, 1, 47–68.
Donoghue, J. (2010). ‘Out of the Land of Bondage’: The English revolution and the Atlantic origins of abolition. American Historical Review, 115 (October 2010).
Drescher, S. (1977). Econocide: British slavery in the era of abolition. Pittsburg, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press.
Drescher, S. (1987). Capitalism and anti-slavery: British mobilization in comparative perspective. New York: Oxford University Press.
Dubois, L. (2004). A colony of citizens: Revolution and slave emancipation in the French Caribbean. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.
Dunn, R. (1984). Servants and slaves: The recruitment and employment of labor. In J. Greene, P. Jack, & J. R. Pole (Eds.), Colonial British America: Essays in the new history of the early modern era. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Elliot, J. H. (2006). Empires of the Atlantic world: Britain and Spain in America, 1492–1830. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Eltis, D. (1987). Economic growth and the ending of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. New York: Oxford University Press.
Eltis, D., Behrendt, S. D., Richardson, D., & Klein, H. S. (1999). The Trans-Atlantic slave trade: A database on CD-ROM. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Engerman, S., & Solow, B. (2004). British capitalism and Caribbean slavery: The legacy of Eric Williams. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Faust, D. G. (2008). This republic of suffering: Death and the American Civil War. New York: Knopf.
Fierce, M. C. (1996). Slavery revisited: Blacks and the southern convict lease system, 1865–1933. Brooklyn, NY: Africana Studies Research Center.
Francis, D. J. (2007). ‘Paper protection’ mechanisms: Child soldiers and the International protection of children in Africa’s conflict zones. Journal of Modern African Studies, 45, 207–231.
Galenson, D. (1981). White servitude in colonial America: An economic analysis. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Goldman, M. (2005). Imperial nature: The World Bank and struggles for social justice in the age of globalization. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Grandin, G. (2006). Empire’s workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the rise of the new imperialism. New York: Metropolitan Books.
Greene, J. P. (2007). Colonial history and national history: Reflections on a continuing problem. William and Mary Quarterly, 64, 235–250.
Griffiths, P. (2008). Lost Londons: Change, crime, and control in the capital city, 1550–1660. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Guasco, M. (2007). To ‘doe some good upon their countrymen’: The paradox of Indian slavery in early Anglo-America. Journal of Social History, 41, 389–411.
Hahn, S. (2003). A nation under our feet: Black political struggles in the rural south from slavery to the great migration. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Hair, P., & Law, R. (2001). The English in Western Africa to 1700. In N. Canny (Ed.), The origins of empire: British overseas enterprise to the close of the seventeenth century. New York: Oxford University Press.
Harlow, V. (1923). A history of Barbados 1625–1685. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Harvey, D. (2005). The new imperialism. New York: Oxford University Press.
Harvey, D. (2007). A brief history of neoliberalism. New York: Oxford University Press.
Henning, W. W. (1823). March 1642–1643, Act XXVI. Being a collection of all the laws of Virginia from the first session of the legislature, in the year 1619: Vol. I, 1619–1620. New York: R. & W. & G. Bartow.
Hill, C. (1972). The world turned upside down: Radical ideas during the English revolution. New York: Viking.
ILO. Retrieved from http://www.ilo.org/global/Themes/Forced_Labour/lang--en/index.htm.
ILO-IPEC (1998). Trafficking in children for labour exploitation including child prostitution in the Mekong Sub-region: A research report. In: International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour. Bangkok: International Labor Organization.
Jackson, M. (2009). Let this voice be heard: Anthony Benezet, Father of Atlantic abolitionism. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Jefferson, J. C. (1888). Middlesex county records (Vol. 3). London: Middlesex County Record Society.
Johnson, C. (2004). The sorrows of empire: Militarism, secrecy, and the end of the republic. New York: Metropolitan Books.
Johnson, R. C. (1970). The transportation of vagrant children from London to Virginia, 1618–1622. In H. S. Reinmuth (Ed.), Early Stuart studies: Essays in honor of David Harris Willson. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Jordan, W. (1961). The influence of the West Indies on the origins of New England slavery. William and Mary Quarterly, 18, 243–250.
Kennedy, G. (2008). Diggers, levellers, and agrarian capitalism: Radical political thought in seventeenth century England. Plymouth, MA: Lexington Books.
Kinser, S. (2007). Overthrow: America’s century of regime change from Hawaii to Iraq. London: Times Books.
Klein, N. (2007). The shock doctrine: The rise of disaster capitalism. New York: Metropolitan Books.
Kornbluth, P. (2004). The Pinochet File: A declassified dossier on atrocity and accountability. New York: New Press.
Lai, W. L. (1993). Indentured labor, Caribbean sugar: Chinese and Indian migrants to the British West Indies, 1838–1918. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Linebaugh, P. (2008). The Magna Carta Manifesto: Liberties and commons for all. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Linebaugh, P. L., & Rediker, M. (2000). The many-headed hydra: Sailors, slaves, commoners, and the hidden history of the revolutionary Atlantic. Boston, MA: Beacon.
Mancini, M. G. (1996). One dies, get another: Convict leasing in the American South, 1866–1928. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press.
Mapping of Corruption and Governance Measurement Tools in Sub-Saharan Africa (2008). Report of Transparency International: The global coalition against corruption.
Meier, G. M. (2005). Biography of a subject: An evolution of development economics. New York: Oxford University Press.
Menard, R. R. (2001). Migrants, servants, and slaves: Unfree labor in colonial British America. Aldershot, England: Ashgate.
Morgan, E. (1975). American slavery – American freedom: The ordeal of colonial Virginia. New York: Norton.
Morgan, K. (2007). Slavery and the British Empire: From Africa to America. New York: Oxford University Press.
Nanwani, S. (2008). Holding multilateral development banks to account: Gateways and barriers. International Community Law Review, 10, 199–226.
Nzongola-Ntalaja, G. (2002). The Congo: From Leopold to Kabila: A people’s history. New York: Zed Books.
O’Callaghan, S. (2000). To hell or Barbados: The ethnic cleansing of Ireland. Channel Islands: Brandon.
Oshinsky, D. (1996). “Worse than Slavery”: Parchman farm and the ordeal of Jim Crow Justice. New York: New Press.
Paige, J. (1984). The letters of John Paige, London merchant, 1648–58. London: London Record Society.
Palmer, C. A. (1998). The worlds of unfree labour: From indentured servitude to slavery. Aldershot, England: Variorum.
Patriquin, L. (2004). The agrarian origins of the Industrial Revolution in England. Review of Radical Political Economics, 36, 196–216.
Patterson, O. (1982). Slavery and social death: A comparative study. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Peet, R. (2003). Unholy trinity: The IMF, World Bank, and WTO. New York: Zed Books.
Perkins, J. (2005). Fair trade for all: How trade can promote development. New York: Oxford University Press.
Perkins, J. (2008). The secret history of the American empire. New York: Plume.
Pestana, C. G. (2004). The English Atlantic in an age of revolution. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Rediker, M. (2007). The slave ship: A human history. New York: Viking.
Reynolds, D. (2005). John Brown, abolitionist: The man who killed slavery, sparked the Civil War, and seeded civil rights. New York: Knopf.
Rodgers, N. (2007). The Irish in the Caribbean, 1641–1837: An overview. Irish Migration Studies in Latin America, 5, 145–156.
Roediger, D. (2000). The wages of Whiteness: Race and the making of the American working-class. New York: Verso.
Sage, J., & Kasten, L. (2006). Enslaved: True stories of modern day slavery. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Salinger, S. V. (1997). Labor, markets, and opportunity: Indentured servitude in early America. Labor History, 38, 311–338.
Slaughter, T. P. (2008). The beautiful soul of John Woolman, apostle of abolition. New York: Hill & Wang.
Smith, A. E. (1947). Colonists in bondage: White servitude and convict labor in America, 1607–1776. New York: Norton.
Snodgrass, M. E. (2007). The underground railroad: An encyclopedia of people, places, and operations. New York: Sharpe.
Steinfeld, R. (1991). The invention of free labor: The employment relationship in English and American law and culture, 1350–1870. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.
Stiglitz, J. (2003). Globalization and its discontents. New York: Norton.
Stout, H. S. (2006). Upon the altar of freedom: A moral history of the Civil War. New York: Viking.
Teunissen, J. J., & Akkerman, A. (2005). Helping the poor? The IMF and low-income countries. Leiden: FONDAD.
Thirsk, J. (1985). The agrarian history of England and Wales, Vol. 5, 1640–1750: Agrarian Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Thompson, E. P. (1991). Customs in common: Studies in traditional popular culture. New York: New Press.
Tilly, C. (1981). As sociology meets history. New York: Academic Press.
Tomlins, C. (2001). Reconsidering indentured servitude: European migration and the early American labor force, 1600–1775. Labor History, 42, 5–43.
Turner, T. (2007). The Congo wars: Conflict, myth and reality. New York: Zed Books.
UNICEF. (2002). East Asia and the Pacific regional office, adult wars, child soldiers: Voices of children involved in armed conflict in the East Asia and Pacific region. Bangkok: UNICEF.
Virginia Magazine of History and Biography (1898–1899).
Waldman, P. (2000, October 27). Pipeline project in Myanmar puts Cheney in spotlight. Wall Street Journal.
Weiner, T. (2007). Legacy of ashes: The history of the CIA. New York: Doubleday.
Williams, E. (1994). Capitalism and slavery. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press (originally published in 1944).
Winthrop, J. (1630). A model of Christian charity. Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 7, 31–48 (Boston, MA: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1838).
Wood, A. (2006). Fear, hatred and the hidden injuries of class in early modern England. Journal of Social History, 39, 803–826.
Wood, E. M., & Wood, N. (1997). A trumpet of sedition: Political theory and the rise of capitalism, 1509–1688. New York: New York University Press.
Woods, N. (2006). The globalizers: The IMF, the World Bank, and their borrowers. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2010 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Donoghue, J. (2010). Child Slavery and the Global Economy: Historical Perspectives on a Contemporary Problem. In: Garbarino, J., Sigman, G. (eds) A Child's Right to a Healthy Environment. The Loyola University Symposium on the Human Rights of Children, vol 1. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-6791-6_11
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-6791-6_11
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-4419-6789-3
Online ISBN: 978-1-4419-6791-6
eBook Packages: MedicineMedicine (R0)