The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism: The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy, and Capitalism in 17th Century North America and the Caribbean

by Gerald Horne

Chronicles how American culture - deeply rooted in white supremacy, slavery and capitalism - finds its origin story in the 17th century European colonization of Africa and North America, exposing the structural origins of American "looting"Virtually no part of the modern United States—the economy, education, constitutional law, religious institutions, sports, literature, economics, even protest movements—can be understood without first understanding the slavery and dispossession that laid its foundation. To that end, historian Gerald Horne digs deeply into Europe’s colonization of Africa and the New World, when, from Columbus’s arrival until the Civil War, some 13 million Africans and some 5 million Native Americans were forced to build and cultivate a society extolling “liberty and justice for all.” The seventeenth century was, according to Horne, an era when the roots of slavery, white supremacy, and capitalism became inextricably tangled into a complex history involving war and revolts in Europe, England’s conquest of the Scots and Irish, the development of formidable new weaponry able to ensure Europe’s colonial dominance, the rebel merchants of North America who created “these United States,” and the hordes of Europeans whose newfound opportunities in this “free” land amounted to “combat pay” for their efforts as “white” settlers. Centering his book on the Eastern Seaboard of North America, the Caribbean, Africa, and what is now Great Britain, Horne provides a deeply researched, harrowing account of the apocalyptic loss and misery that likely has no parallel in human history. The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism is an essential book that will not allow history to be told by the victors. It is especially needed now, in the age of Trump. For it has never been more vital, Horne writes, “to shed light on the contemporary moment wherein it appears that these malevolent forces have received a new lease on life.”

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Race, Politics, American History, The United States Of America, Economics

250 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 22, 2018

About the author

Dr. Gerald Horne is an eminent historian who is Chair of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston. An author of more than thirty books and one hundred scholarly articles and reviews, his research has addressed issues of racism in a variety of relations involving labor, politics, civil rights, international relations, war and the film industry.

Reviews

[Randall Wallace · Rating 4 out of 5]

What caused the slave trade of old still exists: “free trade, anti-monarchism, and a racially sharpened and class-based democracy.” The Glorious Revolution of 1688, opens the doors to an unfettered slave trade and disposed indigenes “while shouting from the rooftops about the ‘liberty’ and ‘freedom’ they were demanding”. But by 1776, the British had begun to grow tired of slavery and Native extermination while the colonists were just getting started. The American Revolution was but “an enslaver’s revolt” – not “give me liberty or give me death” but more like “give me the liberty to give death to the resident native population and those I choose to enslave.” Cromwell offers historians a “demo” for settler-colonialism in Drogheda, Ireland where Cromwell said, “Put them all to the sword” in 1649. 25,000 were killed, 1,000 civilians and tens of thousands shipped off to Barbados. After the “demo” England bring settler-colonialism to Virginia, where Nathaniel Bacon’s Rebellion in 1676 prepared the land for the greed of U.S. settler-colonialism. Interesting fact: “Europe only saw three years of complete peace in the 17th century.” Fear of the powerless victims was counter-intuitive but mandatory; all were taught that blacks and Native Americans would slit your throat in the night and rape your wife if they could. Once natives and blacks were “put in their place”, whites instead were now free to hypocritically slit throats and rape any non-white. Religion often split the settlers, but it was quickly noticed that race and whiteness didn’t. Brushing aside all thoughts of basic morals and the obvious teachings of Christ, Protestants and Catholics quickly joined forces to help seize the land in Maryland from the indigenes after the Glorious Revolution. Gerald mentions the “cross-class solidarity grounded in racial and economic solidarity” and the embodiment of the rags to riches American Dream in the stories of Mediterranean pirates of old, but quickly mentions their terrible history in abetting the Slave Trade. Roger Williams was a “progressive settler-colonialist” and he was banished for opposing the violent theft of indigenous land. But in his new home (the future Rhode Island), Roger “facilitated the enslavement of the indigenes” – the very peoples who had helped him and he had partly protected. I like everything Gerald writes, a really good book.

[Reid tries to read · Rating 4 out of 5]

England has historically been quite familiar with the practice of slavery. When the Roman Empire was at its peak England was the hub of a slave trafficking network that supplied hundreds of thousands of slaves across the Empire, and by 1086 it was estimated that 10% of the entire English population was enslaved. This version of slavery was directly tied to war, with the defeated often becoming slaves. By the 1400s it had evolved into something new when the trade in African slaves became a prominent feature of the Portuguese and Spanish empires (to the point where, by the 1450s, around 10% of the population of the Iberian Peninsula was African slaves). By the 1490s the African slave trade began to expand more rapidly in response to Columbus’ landing in the Americas. For example, between 1500-1550 the Portuguese took at least 1,700 human captives as slaves out of Africa, and more than half of these ended up in Brazil. As early as 1530 there were Englishmen bringing enslaved Africans to Brazil and by 1555 African slaves were being brought to the British isles, but the systemic character of this trade was still gestating in its fetal stage. England was still second fiddle to the Portuguese and Spanish empires and their slave trading networks. Over a century later, in 1672, the Royal African Company was chartered to be the centerpiece of the British slave trade. The dissolving of this company after the Glorious Revolution led to the overall deregulation of the slave market; this decision led to not only increased merchant activity in the cruel commerce, but eventually to the creation of capitalism itself according to Horne.

In 1580 London settled its first colony in the Americans at Roanoke to directly compete with the Spanish. This spurred on more aggressive enslavement of Africans by the English to help support their North American settlements. England’s riches grew in the 1600s as they began emulating the Iberian slave trade and sacking Spanish colonies for their riches. Virtually unknown in the 1500s, by the 1600s there were hundreds of joint-stock trading companies in England. These encouraged investment and incentivized the accumulation of new forms of wealth. London began growing richer and richer as a result of these changes, and by 1600 the East India company was formed to facilitate colonial conquest of India (which provided a model for the eventual British invasion and settlement of Virginia). Combined with this, Russia and Britain had intertwined into a reciprocal relationship where, due to an increase of trade between the two, the growth of one nation facilitated the growth of the other. As Russia spread East (with their only real competition being that of China) England spread west towards the Americas and Africa (where their European competitors were much more fierce). All this growth, as well as increased competition between England and its Spanish and Ottoman rivals, propelled the powerful island to set up its first colony within the American mainland.

In 1607 the Virginia colony of Jamestown was established by the English Virginia Company. Since a large amount of the Caribbean was under Spanish control, colonizing Virginia was seen as a ‘path of least resistance’. Allowing for the rise of England in the New World, as well as within Europe itself, was a set of continuous conflicts between the faltering Spanish empire and the rising Dutch empire at the start of the 17th century. By bogging each other down, England was given an opening from which it could grab power and bolster its own ambitions. A third rival, France, was embroiled in vicious internal religious conflict that also prevented it from keeping its English rivals in check. These various circumstances and relative weaknesses of competitors made way for England’s rise to the most powerful nation on the planet throughout the 18th century. Although the creation of the Virginia colony would lubricate the gears of the slave trade, its impact was not immediate (nor was it without precedent. Slaves had been toiling on the American mainlands long before 1619). A 1625 Virginia census showed that there were only 23 Africans in the colony, and by 1627 there were only 10 African slaves offloaded that year compared to 80 European settlers. Europeans would have to become a minority before the seeds of “whiteness” would sprout and flower.

During the years following the foundation of Jamestown and the Virginia colony thousands of religious dissenters fled England to America. In the New World religious sectarianism was diminished as a symptom of necessity: settlers had to forgo religious differences in their struggle to genocide Indians, steal their lands, and subdue unruly slaves. Maryland is an example of this “religious tolerance” built on the back of colonial genocide. In the 1630s the colony of Maryland was founded by a Catholic, George Calvert, and subsequently became a haven for Catholics. George was given a charter by the British crown to found the colony despite his religion because they knew that the stakes of colonialism outweighed religious intolerance. Soon Maryland would be one of the first mainland colonies to codify slavery in law.

Among the religious dissenters that were expelled to the colonies were thousands of poor laborers who had partaken in nearly 100 food riots between 1600-1650. These starving masses were willing to be shipped into the war-zone that was the New World as indentured servants rather than be subjected to the conditions of the British isles. The position that these settlers lived through in ‘New England’ was precarious at best since they were surrounded by indigenous Americans who were hellbent on keeping their land from being stolen. This had 2 effects:
1. From 1616-1670 the American Indian population within the New England territories fell from 144,000 to around 30,000.
2. From 1630 to 1650 the status of the indigenous under the control of the ‘New Englanders’ shifted from contract workers to servants to perpetual slaves.

As early as 1640, courts in Virginia began constructing racial identities to determine who could be enslaved for life. Around the same time laws were passed in Virginia that explicitly “prevented Negroes from bearing arms”, furthering the solidification of the concepts of ‘race’ and ‘racial hierarchy’ through law in an attempt to subordinate black people to white settlers in the Americas. The stresses of being surrounded by external enemies (American Indians, rival European powers like the Dutch, etc.) and dealing with an internal dissident population of black slaves were ratcheted up by the fact that London did not view the mainland colonies as a particularly important concern when compared to their much more profitable Caribbean colonies (this view was to remain dominant in London until the mid 1700s). Without the feeling of consistent support from their British homeland, the mainland American colonists resorted to barbarity and the unifying concept of “whiteness” to survive. The barbarity of racism in the Americas was a reflection of the barbarity of religion taking place at the same time on the European continent thanks to the 30 years war. An example of this wanton cruelty could be seen in the sacking of Magdeburg in 1631, when a mass rape of women took place (30,000 of which were massacred).

The 17th century as a whole was one of the most violent periods of human history (the European, Chinese, Mughal, and Ottoman empires were warring with internal and external enemies throughout the entire period), but the rise of Oliver Cromwell in the 1640s escalated things. Cromwell was the embodiment of the growing English merchant class that had been born out of previous generations of English piracy. As such an embodiment, Cromwell not only challenged the monarchy at home but England’s Dutch rivals abroad. His mass murder of the Irish would eventually serve as a template for the mass murder of Native Americans around England’s settlements, and the brutal bloodletting of England’s intra-island conflict known as the English Civil War would eventually be directed externally to the Americas. Although most London-based merchants supported the monarchy during the civil war, those who traded with the English’s American settlements vehemently backed Cromwell. In return they expected support against the Crown’s own royal privateers. The civil war within England as well as the wars between the English and the Dutch (of which there were 3 between 1652-1674) were primarily for control of the African slave trade.

England was essentially a failed-state domestically during this long 17th century. Enclosures forced millions off their lands, harvests failed massively, plagues and famine spread, and those that could leave desperately tried to escape to the warzone of the New World. Through the 1650s the population of colonial settlements quadrupled from around 50,000 to 200,000. The speed at which the settler population grew was matched by the growth of the African slave population, which resulted in stricter and more coercive laws; white peoples’ fear of black slaves grew proportionately with the slave population.

England’s seizure of Jamaica from Spain in 1655 was a watershed moment in the trade of slaves and of colonization of the Americas. It occurred at a time when the dispossessed living in England’s failed state were looking for a better life, it helped propel Spain’s empire into a further downward trajectory, the sugar produced there greatly boosted London’s economic strength, and it led to another increase in the need for slave labor. This capture was a spiritual successor of Cromwell’s failed “Western Design'', which had intended to capture the island of Hispaniola for the benefit of merchants and settlers. English colonial settlers and merchants both benefited from the capture of Jamaica. First, the invasion itself stimulated the local New England economies as troops had to be fed and supplied. Once captured, Jamaica offered land to mainland settlers (only a few months after seizure the British government was encouraging “the people of New England to remove to Jamaica in convenient numbers.”) as well as a safety valve to deport unruly settlers/criminals. For merchants, Jamaica would doubtlessly need slaves which they could provide for a profit. Likewise, Cromwell and his forces were engaging in a bloodletting in the colony of Barbados that left many survivors landless and impoverished. Jamaica again would be used as a safety valve to release the pent-up tensions within Barbados.

Britain was becoming the master of the slave trade. This was exemplified in 2 important ways: one, the slave populations of the areas they controlled exploded (Jamaica’s number of slaves grew from 500 in 1661 to 42,000 in 1700); and two, their flexibility towards religious tolerance (for example, they were more accepting of Jews than Spain and Calvinist Huguenots than France) allowed them to build a broad pan-European project of whiteness to suppress this massive growth of slave labor. The lucrative nature of England’s colonies (for example: between the time England seized Jamaica to 1700, the value of sugar and tobacco imported from their North America and Caribbean colonies doubled) was addictive to the English merchant class. More and more the merchants wanted to squeeze out their Dutch and Spanish competitors. The Dutch colony of New Amsterdam (the precursor to modern day New York) was, therefore, an enticing option for the British to conquer. Not only did it have the largest population of urban slaves in North America, but the Dutch’s battles with the indigenous of the region had greatly weakened Dutch power in the area. Despite the fact that the Dutch tried to arm every single farm worker in New Amsterdam, the nation was simply too small to supply enough soldiers to fight off the natives whose land they were stealing. So, in 1664, the British enacted a peaceful takeover of New Amsterdam and the New Netherlands region. From the moment the British took over up to 1698 the African population of this colony would double. As Jamaica and New Netherlands required an ever expanding supply of slave labor, the Royal African Company’s monopoly on the English slave trade began to be undercut by merchants vying to stake their own claim in the bloody and heartless practice. The more these merchants pressed to break the monopoly, the closer they came to enacting the glorious revolution of 1688 and fully pushing the monarchy to the sidelines of British politics forever.

In 1667 though, these Merchants were still chomping at the bit to break into the slave trade to a greater degree. Through their trade in African slaves, slavery in the Americas became the fulcrum which the British economy rested on. Commodities like sugar, cotton, and tobacco had to be transported by sea, which required the building of more ships back in England; ships also had to be built to defend the ports, waterways, and settlements as well. All of this boosted the shipbuilding industry, requiring the employment of more wage laborers. Their wages could then be spent on sugar, beets, shoes, bread, and other provisions, thus indirectly enriching other industries. In total, this system was being built by the labor of the black slaves in the New World. By 1670 the populations of slaves on the Caribbean had grown so large, and they themselves had grown so rebellious, that many colonists began “escaping” to the mainland to colonies like South Carolina. South Carolina enacted a “Fundamental Constitution” that stated: “every freeman of (South Carolina) shall have absolute power and authority over his Negro slaves, or what Opinion or Religion so ever.”. The revolts in Jamaica were even more numerous and violent than Barbados, again leading to more colonists leaving the islands for the mainland. Even though more revolts and war with the Dutch (who the English feared were inciting and arming the slaves) led to more fear/hatred of the slaves, the merchants class’ insatiable greed for enslavement could not be subdued.

In August of 1676 Nathanial Bacon and fellow conspirators launched a rebellion on the American mainland against the British colonial government of Jamestown in Virginia. In Bacon’s words: “(The British government has) protected, favored and emboldened the Indians against His (Majesty’s) most loyal subjects.”. Bacon’s rebellion was formed from a coalition of poor white settlers and African slaves as an attempt to force the government’s hand in helping them force more Native Americans off their land and into the possession of the settlers. Although the rebellion was suppressed its energy and goals lived on. For the colonial governments, fighting Indigenous peoples and suppressing slave revolts was hard enough; white indentured servants revolting was too much to handle. Out of these three groups, black people, American Indians, and European servants, it is no surprise which one was pacified with concessions and which other two were met with violence. The aftermath of the rebellion brought less reliance on indentured labor and more reliance on slave labor to supplant them (between 1680 to 1720 the slave population of the Chesapeake increased at a rate twice that of the European population) while increasing the rate that indigenous land was stolen. By 1690, the term “white” had begun replacing “Christian” when describing European settlers.

After the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the inevitably subsequent deregulation of the slave trade, Britain’s Caribbean colonies could no longer be the main absorbers of enslaved Africans, who spilled over into the mainland colonies. The revolution was a turning point for forces already in motion; merchants had long been encroaching into the Royal African Company’s slave trade, but now they had fully shoved that barrier aside for good. As was already historically patterned, more slaves led to more paranoia and slave uprisings, which led to harsher measures against the enslaved. Numbers of slaves had grown so drastic that compromises were becoming permanent. White servants were entrusted with “keeping an eye” on slaves, and soon “Irish servants” were to be inducted into the broadening umbrella of whiteness. Similarly, in Jamaica just before the Glorious Revolution (1681), laws were passed that required cattle owners to have a certain number of white men per cattle pen and to “encourage the importation of white servants”. In Maryland by 1681 laws were passed preventing European women from bearing so-called bastard children with black slaves. Next, even “free negroes” were banned from testifying in any court cases. South Carolina, a colony of Barbados, too implemented the island's harshest slave laws after the floodgates of slaves opened from the Glorious Revolution (examples included the searching of all slaves’ dwellings every 14 days “for fugitive or runaway slaves… (and) stolen goods.”. Unsurprisingly, any runaway or mutinying slave was to be punished by the death penalty, which their masters were to be given a monetary recompense for, thus incentivizing even the master class to be as draconian as possible. All these laws, and many others, were implemented with the conscious plan to both dehumanize black slaves while giving a legal and material basis (through jobs as slave overseers and through “free land”) for white servants to police the slaves. Hereafter, the dual threat of slave rebellions and foreign armies was enough to encourage a constant inflow of white people and the creation of a “whiteness” project, undergirded with material benefits, in order to keep down unruly slaves.

[Zach Carter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dr. Horne picks up the timeline from The Dawning of the Apocalypse to the arrival of The Apocalypse—that is, the success of the merchant class in the “Glorious Revolution” of 1688 (finishing what they started in the 1640s) was actually the dawning of the apocalypse for indigenes and Africans. He brilliantly lays out the turn of events in the construction of cross-class (and religion) coalitions, what Marx calls “the secret of primitive accumulation,” the true nature of Bacon’s Rebellion, and the irony in self-described “radicals” supporting the likes of Cromwell and the Glorious Revolution. It paves the path directly to 1776, covered in The Counter Revolution of 1766.

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars. Excellent primer on the foundational history of the US and the central role of slavery and dispossession in the settler colonialist project of white American settlements. Highly recommend.

[Jena Laycraft · Rating 3 out of 5]

Despite Horne’s wonderful research and interesting factual content, the writing is disorganized, jumping from fact to fact, place to place, and backwards and forwards in years. Horne casts a wide net, which unfortunately doesn’t allow him the depth to provide any explanations or analysis since he is preoccupied with covering an extremely wide geographical and political area (America’s colonies (including the English, French, and Spanish) plus Algiers and the Turks). I am not sure if this book was written for an academic audience or meant to be more accessible because the language often slips in quality (“marks the onset of the dawning of the apocalypse” (178), “Africans were not greeting him with sweets and candies” (94), and “to confront the ugly reality [of white supremacy and capitalism] would induce a persistent sleepiness interrupted by haunted dreams, so thus far this unsteadiness has prevailed.” (191) While trying to infuse his writing with poetic turns of phrases, his meaning can become very unclear.

He also mentions certain details that demand explanation or citation, but does not (on page 12 he notes that ‘some disguised young women’ were part of the military, which definitely seems to require a source).

I am ultimately not sure if the fault lies with Horne, who has received praise from a variety of notable historians, or with the publisher. The book reads like a manuscript (or even in some parts, a first draft) that has yet to be edited. Perhaps it is the editors that are to blame for this. While the book holds a lot of potential, but, in actuality, it is very mess to read.

[Degenerate Chemist · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is another strong entry from Horne that examines the birth of whiteness and identity politics the are based on the notion of race. This book explains so much about US culture.

This book argues that the Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism was accelerated by the Glorious Revolution of 1688. How? The Royal Africa Company was held by the British monarchs until that point. The GR was prompted by the rising merchant class in part to open up access to the slave trade. This was disguised behind cries for "liberty" and "freedom."

Slavery and capitalism rose hand in hand. Racial identities rather than religious identities became the glue that held society together giving rise to white supremacy. And centuries later we are still dealing with the aftermath.

[Eve Ottenberg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Capitalism and Slavery
The world is awash in the blood of innocents. Nothing makes this clearer than Gerald Horne’s recently published “The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism,” which puts the genocide of indigenous Americans at about 90 percent of their population’s total. The book also estimates that from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries nearly 13 million Africans and five million indigenous Americans were enslaved by Europeans in the new world, a predicament that proved fatal for many of them. He refers to “the three Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Slavery, white supremacy and capitalism,” while throughout this volume, he relates the construction of a new racial identity, whiteness, and white identity politics.

To read more of this review, please go to; http://www.eveottenberg.com/blog.htm

[Jeremy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dr. Gerald Horne brings about a great synthesis of the three-headed dragon of slavery, white supremacy, and capitalism, and how each played into one another and was impacted by the other. The roots of all three stem from the economic as merchant capitalism sought production expansion and settler expansion to escape the commons. A good book to read alongside this is Liberalism: A Counter History, which showcases how liberal thought has never been about liberty for all but for a minority (aka the propertied class). Both books mention the fact that slavery as an economic system skyrocketed after the overthrow of despotic governments/monarchies, and this could only be the case if slaves (which mostly were people of color due to the primitive weaponry) were not seen as people but as a commodity).

Horne states that the idea of "whiteness" has class-conscious inception on the part of the ruling class in order to evade slave revolts, as during the time there were Europeans (Irish) that were also enslaved. This promotion of European slaves to the "white race" in terms of race stunted the revolutionary fervor and aided in the continuation of black slavery.

The slave trade's deregulation in 1688 led to an immense increase in activity around such trade, boosting agricultural output for a world market, fueling capitalism and innovation in the process. Profit rates were extraordinary due to the enormous amount of appropriated surplus value of the slaves, meaning there was a drastic influx of investors into such a business. Though this business saw great success for agricultural capitalists, the threat of revolt led to the movement of capital and settlers from areas like Barbados and the islands of Jamaica into mainland America, leading to the expanded settlements in Georgia and other southern states.

This land expansion also meant that Native Americans needed to be displaced, leading to many conflicts between settlers and indigenous groups. Bacon's rebellion, often thought of as a rebellion against tyranny and despotism, was ultimately a rebellion for the purpose of stealing land from the Native Americans. Referring back to Liberalism: A Counter History, this style of thinking (land appropriation for the purpose of capitalist accumulation aka primitive accumulation) was given legitimacy by John Locke, defending dualistic thought of the domination of humans over nature. Failure to "better" the land meant that it was okay the steal such land, and argument used for Manifest Destiny.

Ultimately, as James Baldwin states, America is a land funded and promulgated by economic racism and has never come to grips with this fact, at best turning a blind eye to the ongoing impacts of slavery on a significant percentage of the population and at worst intentionally discriminating against people of color to ensure their economic exclusion and a continued nation of white supremacy (for more on this read Settlers).

[Wolgraugorimilir · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good book.

This was very useful for me because I’ve absorbed a lot of this information through ~culture at large~ but have never specifically studied it.

So now that I’ve read this, my knowledge about those thorny topics: slavery, racism, capitalism, and white supremacy - is much better grounded in history.

Alas, academic writing. I can’t stand it. I was looking up five words a page. Oh well. It’s probably good for me to flex those close reading muscles.

Check out this book to learn about North African Jewish Pirates, African/indigenous Maroon settlements, and How Much The English Hate Catholics.

[JRT · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book provides an extremely thorough account of European colonialism during the 16th and 17th Centuries. Horne details how English settlers in the Americas ushered in capitalism by acting on their avaricious desire to replace the Monarchy as the ones to control Native American land expropriation and African enslavement. This book also explains how the religious classifications that divided Europeans coalesced into the hardened “racial” category of “whiteness,” for the purpose of ensuring the long term feasibility of race-based land theft and enslavement. Excellent book!

[tps · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book reads like the publishers at Monthly Review fed all his other books into a Markov chain. I get that academics have to play the game and make money, but this was atrociously written compared to his other books. Just read the Counterrevolution of 1776 instead.

[David Hollingsworth · Rating 4 out of 5]

The title of this book tells you exactly what it is about. It covers the 17th century through the lens of the codification of white supremacy, colonialism, and slavery. Horne makes the interesting argument that before the 17th century North America & the Caribbean were societies with racism, but during this century white supremacy went from a prominent feature of the European colonial project to its fundamental building block.

Before anything else, I have to say that I absolutely would NOT recommend this book to anyone not already familiar with the events of the 17th century. It doesn't really explain the historical events of this time period, but rather makes reference to them so that Horne can make his various arguments. Mixed with his verbose vocabulary and unorganized layout, this book is simply terrible as an introductory text. I came in not knowing much, but I'm a historian, so I was able to muddle through by doing supplemental research and figuring out which parts I could pay less attention to so that I didn't drive myself crazy trying to fully digest every single sentence. Even then, though, this book was a struggle to get through.

With that said, it was certainly a worthwhile struggle! Horne makes a number of interesting points. Aside from the main argument I talked about above, there are other, overlapping claims. One is that European colonization wasn't a smooth process, in large part due to constant resistance from the Indigenous, African, and lower class Europeans who were being used to enrich European elites. Before the advent of "whiteness", things were a battleground where these groups would collaborate with each other to resist European hegemony, as well as use the rivalries between different European countries to their advantage. European elites constantly struggled with how to handle this precarious instability, and in many cases their short-sighted "solutions" often made their troubles worse. Essentially, they painted themselves into a corner where they had to make peace with one of these groups in order to prevent complete crisis of the colonial project. This is where "whiteness" came from.

There are so many other interesting related ideas that emerge from this, too. For example, Horne makes the point that the Enlightenment was less a noble step forward in European open-mindedness and more a philosophical necessity to unite Europeans. The lessening of tensions between Catholics vs Protestants, the liberal individualism that moved Europeans away from the concept of monarchical divinity, the lessening (but by no means erasure) of anti-Semitism, and other such positive aspects of the Enlightenment had less to do with genuine good will and more to do with furthering a pan-European unity to help fortify against the challenges of colonization. This created a cross-class collaboration among Europeans that, as I mentioned above, laid the foundations for whiteness.

Overall, I finished this book surprised by all the things I've learned, and impressed by Horne as a historical thinker. I also finish it exhausted by how inaccessible this was for someone like me who knew very little about the 17th century going in. My recommendation for reading Horne is to only read his works about topics you're already at least somewhat familiar with. I'm excited to check out his Counter-Revolution of 1776 book after this. However, I won't ever again use him as a starting point for learning about something new, and I recommend y'all don't, either.

[C · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Coming slowly into view, like a film dissolve, not a snapshot, was an identity politics of "whiteness" that has persisted stubbornly into the twenty-first century" (Chapter 5, section starting RETROSPECTIVELY, THE TAKING, Kindle loc 2005).

When I first started reading Gerald Horne's later published though chronologically preceding book "The Dawning of the Apocalypse" I found myself lost in the weeds of the historical panorama he puts into play as he walks readers through the long centuries of settler colonialism and slavery that began the apocalypse of capitalism, colonialism, and the modern world system. After feeling out of my depths I decided to do a survey history of European history to understand what historical forces and developments he was describing that led up to and influenced the colonization of the Americas and the enslavement of millions of Africans. Something the above quote mentions is that race wasn't just at the beginning, it developed throughout the concomitant processes and historical twists and turns that led to the apocalypse outlined and fleshed out by Horne's incredibly detailed yet fast paced and never dull historical writing. In "The Dawn of the Apocalypse" Horne references the work of Geraldine Heng, who wrote "The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages"; Heng's book provides a great historical and theoretical framework that complements Horne's New World history. In Heng's book the reader learns all about the historical conditions and contexts of the racialization of Jews, Muslims, Black Africans, and other groups such as the Roma (who like enslaved Africans and their descendants in the US were also enslaved with a rule of Partus Sequiter Ventrem, children of an enslaved mother inheriting the condition).

Horne pulls off something incredible in this book and the others in the series (Long 16th century Dawn, 17th century The Apocalypse, 18th century "Counter Revolution of 1776", and the most recent "The Counter Revolution of 1836); he provides relatively short books (save the last in the series which numbers around 600 pages) that provide a truthful disillusionment of American history in the widest sense, going beyond the date of 1619 further back to when enslaved Africans were brought to the American mainland in the 1500s and the Caribbean before that; he also provincializes both the Americas, Europe, and the settlers who are all in precarious and ever-changing situations that were never, and are still not, predetermined.

I highly recommend this book and the rest of the series, yet as its a survey with it's own framing and limitations, I also recommend the following books and articles that I've found helpful in understanding the history from multiple perspectives and angles, including financial history which Horne has recognized as very important.


• Jacob Carruther's "MDW NTR Divine Speech: A Historiographical Reflection of African Deep Thought from the time of the Pharaohs to the Present"
• G.E.M. de Ste. Croix's "The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World"
• Geraldine Heng's "The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages"
• Neil Price's "The Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings"
• Cedric Robinson's "Black Marxism" and "An Anthropology of Marxism"
• All of Sylvia Wynter's work, particularly "1492: A New World View" and "New Seville and the Conversion Experience of Bartolomé de Las Casas"
• Andrew David Edwards' article "The American Revolution and Christine Desan's New History of Money"
• Jakob Feinig's article "Notes on Monetary Institutions in State and Class Formation Processes" (on early US capitalist and state formation, constrasting with Tilly's idea of the fiscal-military state (oft-cited by Ruth Wilson Gilmore); also check out Feinig's book Moral Economies of Money)
• Jakob Feinig and Diren Valayden's article "Humanization as Money: Modern Monetary Theory and the Critique of Race" (on Locke's racialization of non-european peoples and the his ideology of capitalism that caught on vs. a Fanon & Freire inspired idea of rehumanizing money & democracy through MMT)

[Claire · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the second I've read of Horne's 17th Century trilogy, and I don't know if it reads easier because it is better written or because I am now more familiar with the matter. But easier it does read, although the complexity of the exploration remains.

My historical background is minimal--required courses early on. If I had another lifetime I'd start a degree and delve into historical methods of research and writing. Instead I just read. But the point is the difference between what I learned and this book. I studied US history in a silo and European in another. Horne relates the two, and it is enlightening. I didn't even nod to Caribbean history, but it is a major actor.

My thinking about the economics of the slave trade had been limited to "free labor." Horne expands them to a rising merchant class in competition with royal companies, investors seeking profit, countries seeking wealth to cover their war debts. And of course more wars to safeguard "their" sources of wealth. And weapons development.

And there are moments of understatement that I just had to pause over. For example:
"Invading a territory and seeking to enslave the current residents is a guarantee for a lengthy insecurity” (58). And “Indigenes did not accept the thesis propounded by future ‘radicals’ in North America that their ouster from their land was a step forward for humanity” (120).

[Edgar · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author overwhelmingly delivers a captivating and enthralling narrative history of the forces surrounding the displacement of masses of Africans and other indigenous populations under the forces of a nascent capitalism. From his vantage point, we weave an intricate fabric of the confluence of various factors that resulted in what we see as American values. This arguably contingent process of narrative forming of the platitudes of religious and political freedoms reveals, beneath its surface, an underbelly of rapacious and unbridled greed by a select few who benefited greatly from this heinous reorganization of human society.
Aside from the shocking tales of oppression, it in interesting to visit the cornerstones of american empire through an alternate historical lens, after all - being a black man, I see comrades, and victims- Though i also see a rallying cry for resistance, a cry for union amongs africans, as the only way to claw back the humiliating loss of cultural heritage sense of purpose and belonging, and ultimately, freedom to craft a more dignified future for black people.

[Brian Mcquaid · Rating 5 out of 5]

Horne describes in eloquence the economic, cultural, and political trends which structure the world as we know it. His arguments interlock and are well-grounded in thorough research. Horne's history in this book brilliantly shows how settler colonialism is/was not inevitable. He displays countless times the contradictions upon which various European empires are founded. He understands colonial settlements and fronts in America and Africa as war zones in which African and indigenous people violently disrupted European expansion. I learned a great deal from this text, and it has altered the way I understand history. This book is absolutely relevant today when forming and acting upon politics that seek to unsettle capitalism. My one complaint would be Horne bounces around geographically and temporally within chapters. Most of the time I understand how all the historical examples fit into his arguments, but a few times I do not. Despite this, I still highly recommend this book to anyone seeking a better understanding of modern history.

[Gina · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's a lot of information and I don't have any doubts that Horne has a great understanding of the subject matter. What is lacking is clarity for those who are reading to learn more.

I enjoyed the kind of scabrous glee that excoriates everyone profiting from or tolerating the slave trade. There is no attempt and justification and that feels good. However, there is so much going on with the different slavers and routes and islands and countries in contention, and often there were references made that could have used some explanation.

I understand that this may have been inspired by the author's previous book, and perhaps reading that would have made more things fall into place.

As it was, one of my strongest impressions, relating to the creation of whiteness, was that if the Dutch and the French and the English and the Spanish were all equally likely to abuse, exploit and enslave, then what other aspects of culture matter. The invention of whiteness is the circling around of the worst trait.

[Anthony · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Despite a subsequent coloration of ‘liberalism,’ what became Rhode Island was also land confiscated from the Indigenous, exposing the contradictions of ‘progressive settler colonialism.” (50)

“Soon the Europeans were to be clothed in the protective cloak of ‘whiteness,’ while the Africans and Indigenes were to be devoid not only clothes but rights, demarcated as permanent outsiders, notably in North America.” (79)

Good read, Though I thought Dr.Horne’s “Counter-Revolution of 1776” was a bit better and more insightful. I had read The Counter-Revolution of 1776 first, and this book seems to rehash much of the former. Nonetheless the 2 books pair well together, and it would make sense to read them in a chronological order.

[Josh · Rating 4 out of 5]

The English Civil War in the 1640s and the “Glorious Revolution” of 1688 were the first of the bourgeois revolutions that would topple most the feudal monarchies throughout the next century. But far from being a step forward for humanity and advancing “rights and freedom”, it unleashed the rapacious greed of the ascendant English merchant class with “apocalyptic” consequences for millions of Africans and indigenous people who lives were stolen for profit.

[inês ‧₊☽◯☾₊‧]

This is so good. I mean really good. This is something I would do as a historian and the best part is that you can tell the research behind it. What makes me insanely mad is that I'm using this for an essay and my professor highly criticized this book, we know why- it's called white-privileged-social democrat institution. And now I'm supposed to say that this is bad, barely explained and ideological. You know what's ideological? western europe's whole historiography. bye.

[Ella · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some of it was really good but it felt repetitive. Most was written in unaccessible language which is the bane of non-fiction. The message was IMPORTANT, but normal people can't read this and fully understand what is going on, nevertheless feel engaged to keep reading after the first couple chapters.

[Plainerchair · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though hard to read with some flipping back and forth through years, it lead me to rethink the white washing of pirates, the Caribbean and many other parts of history that encompassed slavery. Will need to read again to fully grasp some events!

[Brett Bosley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good. Maybe not as good as Counter-Revolution of 1776 (it was a little jumbled and repetitive in places), but still very good. Connecting events between 17th century England with the Caribbean and North America is the meat of it. They don't teach this stuff in school.

[Taylor · Rating 2 out of 5]

There's a better book in all this great research. Many interesting threads that are never really tied together.

[Chrissie De Clerck-Szilagyi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent information, but difficult to slog through.

[Bob · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quick read , especially after reading “The Counter Revolution of 1776” , since certain ideas and phrases are repeated, his style takes awhile to get used to.

[Annie · Rating 4 out of 5]

some really persuasive and incisive arguments and then also lots of contradictions and moments where it seemed like he had forgotten he wrote the same paragraph 30 pages prior

[Mills College Library]

306.36209 H8154 2017

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although I agree with most of his argument, the early parts of this seem jumbled and a bit all over the place. The latter sections are better, more coherent less polemic and more reasoned.

[Gail Johnson, Ph.D · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow! This is the first book I have read that truly discusses slavery. The reading resources listed in this book is extensive.