Tobacco and America's Convict Past
In accordance with the official story of America's glorious past, Mikki was expecting to find pilgrims and martyrs in her ancestry, but instead she found a convicted felon who evaded execution in the Old Country by transportation and worked as a slave alongside kidnapped Negroes on the tobacco plantations of Virginia."Bearing in mind that many Americans can only trace their ancestors back to the 1800s, I'm just happy to have found my ancestor, and don't feel any shame about it,” says Mikki, “but I do feel anger about the lies our government fed to us about our glorious past and kept us in complete ignorance about our convict past -- and now I can understand better why tobacco has suddenly become such a dirty word."
"If the smokers of 18th century Europe knew that the stuff they tamped into their pipes was related to the misery and death of slaves, felons or otherwise, on the tobacco plantations of the New World -- as well as the evil doings of slave-drivers and profiteers -- this knowledge may have changed the history of smoking," says Mikki. "More likely, though, their attitude would be the same as today's motorists who know full well that the stuff they pump into their vehicles is related to the death of our troops and innocent civilians in Iraq -- as well as the evil doings of our political masters and related war profiteers and oil barons -- and rather than changing history by changing their habits they'd choose, instead, to ignore the evils happening in far away places."
"After 1775, when transportation to the old American colonies ceased -- and commenced in the new colonies in Australia, for the purpose of nation building rather than as enslavement for the enrichment of others -- the Founding Fathers and esteemed citizens just buried their dirty past,” says Mikki, “and by that I don't mean their ties to England but the fact that so many of them were engaged in white slavery, either as tobacco planters, traders or shippers or as transported felons working on the plantations."
"Many of these so-called esteemed citizens would have changed their names -- accounting for why so many Americans can't trace their ancestors -- and those that didn't would have concocted fanciful stories about their past or would have remained shamefully silent (like my family did)."
"Ancestry just wasn't talked about until recent times, was it?" asks Mikki. "I guess past generations had an inkling that their roots were tarnished in some way, and that's why the shameful silence was perpetuated and the glorious birth of the colonies was romanticised to such an extent that we all thought we were related to sweet little Pilgrims. Pah!"
"The South has long had to bear the guilt of Negro slavery, but how many of us know about the white slave trade that continued well after 1775?” asks Mikki. “It was a system euphemistically called 'indentured servitude' by which English, Scottish, Irish and Welsh citizens were swept off the streets and workhouses (for no other reason than failure to find work) and transported to the colonies and enslaved.”
“And how many of us know that a lot of these unfortunates before 1775 were actually convicted felons with death sentences commuted to transportation to America to work as slaves on tobacco plantations?" asks Mikki. "The shipping merchants gained more money by passing these felons off as 'indentured servants' and although they acted unscrupulously towards the slave buyers in the white slave markets, they actually did the felons a favor because 'indentured servants' tended to survive their slavery a lot better than the known felons."
"I can understand that those whose ancestors died or lived miserable lives on the old tobacco plantations may now wish to wipe the industry off the face of the earth, but they're 400 years too late in their stop-smoking campaign."
"I can't see how denying today's smokers a small pleasure is going to put right an old evil," says Mikki. "As far as I know, no slaves are working in the tobacco industry today."
"These people should open their eyes and hearts to what's happening in other industries -- especially the offshore global industries profiting from war and slave labor -- and spare their descendants the horror of discovering that their ancestors (that's the anti-smoking brigade of today) stood by and did nothing while enjoying gas-guzzling automobiles and cheap shoes and clothes made from slave labor."
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Labels: America, convict past, slavery, tobacco
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