They Were White and They Were Slaves

The Untold History of White Slavery in Early America

They Were White and They Were Slaves: The Untold History of the Enslavement of Whites in Early America by Michael A. Hoffman II is a controversial and extensively documented examination of the largely forgotten history of white indentured servitude and outright slavery in colonial America — a history that challenges the conventional narrative that slavery in America was exclusively a Black experience.

Drawing on colonial records, court documents, and contemporary accounts, Hoffman argues that tens of thousands of white Europeans — many of them Irish, Scottish, and English — were transported to the American colonies under conditions of forced labor that differed little from chattel slavery.

What This Book Covers

• The transportation of white convicts, political prisoners, and the poor to American colonies as forced laborers
• The conditions of white indentured servitude — brutal, often lifelong, and legally enforced
• The Irish slave trade — the mass deportation of Irish men, women, and children to the Caribbean and American colonies
• Legal distinctions (and lack thereof) between white indentured servants and Black slaves in early colonial law
• The role of British merchants, colonial planters, and the Crown in profiting from white forced labor
• How this history was suppressed and why it remains largely absent from mainstream historical accounts
• Primary source documentation from colonial records and contemporary observers

Why This Book Is Controversial — and Why It's Read

This book occupies contested historical territory. Critics argue that it minimizes the unique horror of Black chattel slavery; supporters argue it recovers a suppressed chapter of working-class white history. Whatever your perspective, the primary source documentation Hoffman presents raises genuine historical questions about the full scope of forced labor in early America — questions that deserve serious engagement.

Who This Book Is For

• Researchers studying colonial American labor history and indentured servitude
• Historians of the Irish diaspora and the Irish experience in the Americas
• Anyone examining the full history of forced labor and slavery in the Western world
• Readers interested in alternative and revisionist perspectives on American history

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