Albion's Southwestern Seeds -- Roman Slavery To Virginia Slave Trade

Reading along in Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America (1989) by David Hackett Fischer. The second folkway is that of "South of England to Virginia,", i.e. a/k/a the Chesapeake region of the New World Atlantic coast.

In the section titled "The Cradle of Virginia: The South of England," pp. 241 - 43 Hackett states:

During the early middle ages slavery had existed on a large scale throughout Mercia, Wessex and Sussex, and had lasted longer there than in other parts of England. Historian D.J.V. Fisher writes that "the fate of many of the natives was not extermination but slavery." (5) This was not merely domestic bondage, but slavery on a larger scale. During the eighth and ninth centuries, the size of major slaveholdings in the south of England reached levels comparable to large plantations in the American South. When Bishop Wilfred aquired Selsey in Sussex, he emancipated 250 slaves on a single estate. Few plantations in the American South were so large even at their peak in the nineteenth century. (6) Serfdom also had been exceptionally strong in this region. Painstaking analysis of the Domesday book by historical geographers has shown that the proportion of servi was larger in Wessex than in other parts of England. (7)

By the time of American colonization, both slavery and serfdom were long gone from this region. But other forms of social obligation remained very strong in the seventeenth century. A smaller part of the population were freeholders in the south and west of England than in East Anglia. (8)

Which set me wondering why so. Which naturally leads one to Rome as all roads will. Even prior to the Roman colonization of Britain they were trading with southwestern Britain, principally for iron, tin and copper, as well as the gold in Wales. Mining is almost always slave labor. Rome is characterized as one of the 5 historical slave-based economies (interestingly, to me, at least, one of the reasons the staunch republican, Lucius Vorenus, in the HBO Rome series (2005 - 2007) gives for supporting Julius Caesar's coronation as dictator for life is that the soldier believes Caesar when he says he will create jobs - work, for the Roman citizens, which they are starved for, since almost all the labor is performed by slaves. This is a further irony since Caesar's conquests were responsible for so many affordable slaves in the markets.) As well, all around the Mediterranean, post the 'fall' of Rome, slavery remained intact through the 18th century -- it was particularly strong in the 15th century, prior to Colombo's first voyage to the New World.

So I went looking, and this is what I found: Rome conquered the southwest of Britain first, and stayed there the longest, and built the most extensive network of villas and markets there. Thus the extensive and persistent practice of slavery, serfdom and then other forms of class-social subservience. This might also, then, explain why this region was most connected, and thus loyal to the English kings and throne. This is the region of the Cavaliers, and these are the same elite families that settled Virginia, many of whom are still in positions of ownership, power and wealth today.

History provides many painful pleasures in the revelation of the persistence of cultural identity and folkways.