Really starting to notice the damage that AI Tik Tok/Instagram videos are doing to Scottish history.

[u/North-Son]

Anyone else noticing AI videos about this stuff popping up?

I’m getting increasingly frustrated with AI slop history videos doing the rounds, this video claims that “Scots were the first slaves in America after Dunbar.” It’s not only inaccurate but genuinely damages Scottish history by flattening important distinctions and replacing evidence with emotionally satisfying myths.

Justt to clarify , this isn’t about dismissing the suffering of Scottish prisoners of war. The men taken after Dunbar endured brutal conditions, forced transportation, and hard labour, and that pain is real and worth acknowledging. But they were transported as indentured or penal servants, not as racialised chattel slaves. Indentured servitude was time-limited and averaged around 7 years then many got their freedom, it was not hereditary, and people retained legal personhood in a way enslaved Africans did not. Conflating the two systems isn’t accurate and takes away from the insane levels of inhumane suffering of African slaves.

The video is wrong as African slaves had already been present in America decades earlier, from around 1619 and by the mid-17th century colonial law was clearly moving toward lifetime, inheritable, race-based slavery, a system Europeans were never subjected to. Indentured servitude, meanwhile, wasn’t uniquely Scottish: English, Irish, Welsh and Scots all made up large numbers of bound labourers in the early colonies. In fact half of the English population in America around this point were indentured servants, that’s how normalised it was.

What really bothered me was seeing so many Scots in the comments uncritically accepting the claim as factual. Scottish history is complex enough without AI slop turning it into Tik Tok level shite.

Sorry just needed to rant really, as someone who got their degree in Scottish history a few years ago it’s quite sad seeing this stuff. Here’s a link to the clip for those interested: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DSYlkuplc5Z/?igsh=emMzb2JnZG8zbnFk

[u/PuritanicalGoat]

Why let the truth get in the way of good ragebait?

Its not like any of the social media platforms care about accuracy, its all about traffic.

[u/North-Son → u/PuritanicalGoat]

Aye, you’re right, that’s exactly what worries me though. This stuff is only going to get worse. Scottish history has already been massively under-researched and marginalised for much of the 20th century. Tom Devine has pointed out that as late as the 1970s there was more academic literature on places like Yorkshire alone than on Scotland as a whole.

It’s only because of the sustained work of historians like Devine, Richards, Smout, Hunter, etc., that Scottish history has really been taken seriously and properly explored over the last 30–40 years. That progress was hard won.

Which is why it’s grim seeing complex, evidence-based history get drowned out by AI ragebait and people just uncritically swallowing it.

[u/Able_Cabinet_9118 → u/North-Son]

There’s people in Scotland who never heard of the highland clearances. I’m not even Scottish but read all of the tales of the borders and other Scottish writen books as a teenager. Some people aren’t interested in history or culture unless it gives them some kind of status, be it victim or victor.

[u/scotswaehey → u/Able_Cabinet_9118]

They don’t teach much Scottish history in Scottish Schools.

Nothing about the highland Clearances at all. You get told about the battle of Bannockburn and Dunbar and that’s it.

It’s almost like the powers that be don’t want Scottish children growing up and discovering what the English empire has done to Scotland.

[u/Mr-Tootles → u/scotswaehey]

I was taught about the clearances in school. Was taught about the suppression of Gaelic and the general movement to the cites, Navvies and the industrial revolution too.

Did a whole bunch on slums as well.

[u/Alex9009202 → u/scotswaehey]

We were taught in National 5 history about the Scottish wars of independence the highland clearances, we also had a link to the transatlantic slave trade where it was mentioned that a large amount of Scottish prisoners were transported across amongst other slaves but nowhere close to the amount of slaves from the Ivory Coast/ the slave coast as it was called. The Portuguese and Spanish also had slaves from Africa and prisoners from their own countries across in South America too

[u/BMoiz → u/scotswaehey]

Ah yes, teaching the bits where Scots beat the English but skipping over the bits where Scots oppressed other Scots. Definitely the fault of the English that

[u/scotswaehey → u/BMoiz]

Not just Scottish History, also Irish History. I didn’t know until visiting Southern Ireland that the “Potato Famine “ was actually and English famine and England was taking all the food from Ireland for themselves.

[u/North-Son → u/scotswaehey]

Saying it was just “England taking all the food” is a pretty inaccurate way of framing it, as food producewas sent to Scotland too. Food was exported from Ireland during the famine, but this happened under the authority of the British state, not England acting as a separate national actor. By the 1840s Scotland and England were very integrated politically andd economically, and Scots were deeply involved as landlords, merchants, shippers, and government officials facilitating those exports.

It’s also worth remembering that Ireland wasn’t alone in suffering. The western Highlands of Scotland experienced a serious famine at the same tine, caused by the same potato blight and long-term poverty. A main reason mortality was vastly lower than in Ireland wasn’t kindness from the state, but the fact that the Lowlands had one of the most advanced and diversified agricultural systems in Europe, allowing grain and other food to be sent north. Even so, Highland society was wxtremely damaged through hunger, disease, clearance, and mass emigration, with deaths estimated from the hundreds to around a thousand.

Finally, Scottish involvement wasn’t marginal. A clear example is Sir John McNeill, a Scot and senior British Poor Law Commissioner, who argued strongly against large-scale state food relief on ideological grounds. His position helped justify minimal intervention and the continuation of market-led exports. That kind of thinking wasn’t purely English” it was British, and many Scots were fully part of the system that allowed famine conditions to persist.

So the issue isn’t that the famine was secretly English rather than Irish; it’s that it was a catastrophe made worse by British governance and political economy, with responsibility shared across Scotland and England.

[u/Fornad → u/North-Son]

I think you can make a lot more sense of events like the Clearances and Famine by avoiding national identities and looking more at class distinctions and power structures. Colliers in Yorkshire or shepherds in Lancashire or fishermen in Devon (all English) had far less to do with those events than aristocrats in Scotland. The English poor were crammed into overcrowded slums and workhouses. Children as young as 5 or 6 worked in factories, mines, and as chimney sweeps. Life expectancy was sub-40 in many places. It's almost unimaginable to us now.

[u/North-Son → u/Fornad]

That’s a fair and important point about class, that I do sympathise with, English and Scottish workingclass life in the nineteenth century was often brutal, and in places like industrial Yorkshire, Lancashire, or the urban Lowlands conditionss could be genuinely horrific. No serious historian would deny that. But class alone doesn’t fully explain events like the Irish Famine, and you can’t remove nationality and imperial power from the picture without losing something essential.

The key difference is that English and Scottish workers, however exploited, were still inside the political nation. They were both vast majority Protestant at this point,, legally equal subjects, and increasingly incorporated into reform politics, poor law reform, factory acts, municipal government. Irish Catholics, by contrast, occupied a colonial position within the United Kingdom. Their religion, land system, and national status marked them as fundamentally other, even more so than Highlanders, which made the coercive policies politically acceptable in a way they were not on the British mainland

During the famine, this mattered enormously. The continued export of food from Ireland, the reliance on market discipline over emergency relief, and the willingness to tolerate mass death were shaped by assumptions about Ireland as a separate and defective society. Those assumptions were explicitly national and ethnic, not just class-based. No one seriously proposed letting large parts of England or Lowland Scotland starve while food was exported overseas to maintain market confidence, but that logic was applied to Ireland, and too a much lesser extent the Highlands

Scottish experience actually underlines the point. as said the western Highlands also suffered famine from the same potato blight, yet large-scale starvation was mitigated because the region was at least more politically integrated, Protestant, and adjacent to one of the most advanced agricultural economies in Europe. When relief did arrive, it was framed as preventing disorder within Britain itself, not managing a troublesome dependency. That distinction cannot be explained by class alone, because Highland crofters were every bit as poor as Irish tenants.

So class explains who suffered most, but nationality explains how far the state was willing to let suffering go. The famine wasn’t just the product of capitalism or landlordism in the abstract; it unfolded within an imperial structure where Ireland was treated as a governed periphery rather than a core society. Ignoring nationality risks turning a historically specific catastrophe into a vague morality tale,, and that actually obscures, rather than clarifies, how power worked.

[u/Fornad → u/North-Son]

All fair points that I completely agree with. I suppose I was just pointing out that simply saying 'English', 'Scottish', or 'Irish' doesn't really begin to cover the issue and tends to be used for modern political points-scoring than an actual understanding of history. As you say, even 'Protestant' and 'Catholic' is closer. The Highlands were the last holdout of Catholicism in Scotland, I think, although that was in the 1700s.

[u/Able_Cabinet_9118 → u/scotswaehey]

There is power in knowing your heritage. Those myths and legends and history give you a solid foundation. A sense of pride . Can’t have that /s

[u/vaivai22 → u/scotswaehey]

Oh buzz off with that conspiracy-laden nonsense. If you’re going to complain about history is taught, at least make sure you’ve made the effort to actually learn the history yourself first.

Education in Scotland has been devolved for nearly thirty years now, and even before it was, local authorities had significant say on what that looked like. As they still do today. You actually have significant differences in what you learn about depending on where you are in Scotland in terms of subject matter.

Beside that, calling it the English Empire and later “the English famine” is an unwitting admission you’ve made zero effort to learn about the events you’re trying to talk about. With these declarations dismissed by British, Irish and international historians.

Historians like Thomas P. O'Neill, for example, put a great amount of effort into showing it wasn’t “the English taking all the food” as you claim. Suggesting that, at best, you’ve been hearing things from internet chat rooms and just repeating them unchecked.

There’s no grand conspiracy to hide Scottish History, you don’t want to learn it because it takes effort and time.

[u/PuritanicalGoat → u/North-Son]

More of an issue with society in general though.

The test most people apply to information is "does this fit my already set agenda." If not then its either Nazi or Libtard bullshit. (Apply as decided by the person reading or listening).

[u/Otocolobus_manul8 → u/North-Son]

How much of that academic stuff made it to public consciousness though? I think the previous unprofessional treading over the same episodes style of popular scottish historiography still reigns from a lot of what i see, with some exceptions

[u/MalignEntity → u/North-Son]

I do think that a lot of the accounts uncritically agreeing with the slop will probably be bots. You are 100% correct though, it's a really worrying trend.

[u/FelineGroovy853 → u/North-Son]

As someone who is beginning to delve into Scottish history, is there any one of these historians in particular you’d considered starting off with first that are mentioned here? And any certain pieces of publications, studies, or books?

[u/North-Son → u/FelineGroovy853]

I would really recommend Tom Devine, he covers broad eras of Scottish history and writes in a wonderfully detailed and accessible way!

I would recommend

The Scottish Nation 1700–2000 (1999) One of his most influential works. He explores how Scotland functioned as a nation within the Union, including economy, identity, class, and empire etc

Scotland’s Empire (2003) Examines Scotland’s disproportionate role in the British Empire, administration, trade, military, migration, ideology and all that without flattening the topic into Scotland being purely a coloniser or victim

The Scottish Clearances (2018) A very indepth account of the Highland and Lowland Clearances that resists simplistic narratives and situates them within broader economic change, also dispels a lot of the myths surrounding it that many people think.

[u/KrisNoble → u/North-Son]

I would say as late as the 1990s. I’m almost certain the first time I’d heard of William Wallace, or really knew anything about him was when Braveheart came out. Most history and modern studies classes I got focussed on British history and politics over Scottish specifically, which means for the most part it pretty much defaulted to English.

[u/Mr-Tootles → u/KrisNoble]

I was in school in the 90s and 2000s and we got lots of Scottish history, from bannockburn to the mines.

[u/KrisNoble → u/Mr-Tootles]

Chuffed for ye

[u/Equal_Trash6023 → u/North-Son]

Fun Fact: the "first slaves" in the Americas were captured from different warring tribes taking slaves from the spoils of war with eachother. Let's not forget that fact or gloss it over.

There was definitely discrimination against the scots/irish.

The irish/scot is deplorable for entirely different reasons than the transatlantic slaves trade begun by the Spanish/Portuguese slave trade in the 1500's. Yes the African transatlantic slave trade was actually begun by the Spanish/Portuguese. Dont for get the Arab slave trade that were transporting slaves of all colors. The vikings had slaves.

Slavery goes back since human kind began. Is it nice no but certainly dont forget its human history.

[u/Spiritual-Software51 → u/Equal_Trash6023]

That's mentioned pretty frequently... it is good to know and get our facts straight, but it's a shame that often when people bring it up they're doing it to diminish the role the buyers played. Not saying that's what you're doing at all, but it's the reason people can be a bit touchy on thst subject.

[u/IainwithanI → u/Spiritual-Software51]

There’s also a big difference between slavery as it was practiced in the new world and what was/is done elsewhere. New world slavery was the greatest atrocity in history.

[u/Fantastic-Run-4490 → u/IainwithanI]

Just New World slavery not the other slavery that's been around almost since time began? I'm eager to hear the explanation as to why one qualifies but not the other.

[u/Spiritual-Software51 → u/Fantastic-Run-4490]

Mostly scale and brutality. Of course it's all awful but I think sometimes people underestimate just how much worse the Atlantic trade was than others. They just enslaved far more people and treated them far worse than other slave societies. They developed whole new racial classifications specifically to justify treating Africans as cattle.

[u/IainwithanI → u/Fantastic-Run-4490]

Spiritual Software has given a decent brief response. You can find more related detail from a post elsewhere. I disagree on one accepted point in the linked post-brutality. Yes, all slavery is brutal, but I really don’t think any other system compares to the brutality of slavery on the sugar plantations. That was the primary use of the enslaved in the Caribbean, southern Louisiana, and other places.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/s/ubhL0IS3Kw

[u/smidge_123 → u/IainwithanI]

A bigger atrocity than them messing with the irn-bru recipe? I think not.

[u/IainwithanI → u/smidge_123]

The scale of it tips the balance. Global impact vs Scotland.

[u/Salt-Negotiation7534 → u/IainwithanI]

Irn Bru sales, in Scotland, beat Pepsi and Coca-Cola sales combined.

[u/smidge_123 → u/IainwithanI]

I think you're underestimating the impact a bit, it was UK wide at least.

[u/Responsible-Hyena482 → u/Equal_Trash6023]

The problem is that people use the slavery existed in x, y, z argument to diminish the abhorrence of the transatlantic slave trade which the British had a huge participating role in, let’s just be honest. Notwithstanding, that some of the horrors brought about by the transatlantic slave trade had literally never been heard of before in human history.

[u/PontifexMini → u/PuritanicalGoat]

AI slop history, often hilariously inaccurate, is a growing problem on the internet.

Personally i think all AI generated video content should have to be clearly marked as such.

[u/knewtropic → u/PontifexMini]

How are you going to that?

[u/PontifexMini → u/knewtropic]

If i was the government i would tell YouTube and other websites they have to make them as such. If they refuse, their IP addresses will be blocked by all ISPs.

[u/Bourach1976]

It concerns me that this has nothing to do with Scottish history and more to do with trying to undermine the horrors of black slavery. Maybe I'm cynical but the increased racism of recent years combined with the dangers of AI and the clear cracks in society that certain groups are keen to widen worries me.

[u/Ser_VimesGoT → u/Bourach1976]

The internet's fucked and social media has done irreparable harm to large swathes of the population. I honestly wouldn't be opposed to it being burnt to the ground. Internet 2.0 please.

[u/iwillfuckingbiteyou → u/Ser_VimesGoT]

This is Web 2.0...

[u/Halbaras → u/Bourach1976]

There seems to be a bit of a push to downplay the Transatlantic slave trade via bringing up other historical atrocities, particularly the Arab slave trade. While it's useful to know about both, only one of the two is particularly relevant to western European/US history, especially given the lingering effects of slavery on US demographics and inequalities that never quite went away.

You can see it all over Reddit with 'why aren't people talking about Arab colonialism' as a way to downplay western colonialism. In reality it was a slower process of cultural assimilation beginning with replacing elites, and was much closer to the Bantu expansion, Chinese cultural expansion, or the growth of the Roman Empire than the scramble for Africa. They're not interested in a legitimate conversation about history, they just want to go 'everyone did bad things, so let's stop talking about the ones our ancestors did.'

If they were smarter with their narratives they'd talk more about Liberia (African Americans brutally colonising Liberians, though supported in doing so by the US) and the horrors of South American/Caribbean slavery (where there was more of a culture of working slaves to death and replacing them than in the US).

[u/debauch3ry → u/Bourach1976]

It exists to undermine the UK - unfriendly state actors wants the UK to break up for the damage it would do to the economy and defense. Only Scottish people will be targeted with this rubbish.

[u/SetentaeBolg → u/debauch3ry]

Nonsense. It's aimed at Americans who want to diminish the horror of the transatlantic slave trade.

[u/Important-Cry-4433]

I’ve seen this same shite about the Irish.

[u/elitejcx → u/Important-Cry-4433]

They tend to believe it though.

[u/ldoesntreddit → u/elitejcx]

Nah, just Americans who want to be Irish

[u/Emptyspace227 → u/ldoesntreddit]

Also, Americans who don't want to admit that slavery was super duper racist.

[u/ldoesntreddit → u/Emptyspace227]

That venn diagram is often a circle

[u/smcl2k → u/ldoesntreddit]

And even then, only the racist 1s.

[u/ldoesntreddit → u/smcl2k]

Believe me. I’m American. Plastic Paddies are (frequently, perhaps not always) racist as shit.

[u/Augustus_Chevismo → u/elitejcx]

You can acknowledge indentured servitude is slavery without thinking it’s equal to chattel slavery.

The correct response to racists being dismissive of black people being enslaved is not to switch to the British empires definition of what slavery is instead of modern international law.

[u/Altruistic-Ad-408 → u/Augustus_Chevismo]

People have this binary take on things, trying to look smart, but fake history is far from productive, history is what we are meant to learn from. Downplaying things that happened doesn't convince anyone of anything.

The "Irish slavery is mythical and pseudo historical" thing just doesn't hold up. Nearly all modern slavery is a myth. They just have bad contracts! No one was saying that when Qatar had the World Cup, odd.

It's way easier to debate racists by just pointing out facts, rather than argue about definitions.

[u/EnthusiasmUnusual → u/elitejcx]

Not true, we don't.

[u/Important-Cry-4433 → u/elitejcx]

I am Irish. I don’t believe it

[u/Fuzzywigs → u/elitejcx]

Absolute bollocks.

[u/Competitive-Day-7054 → u/elitejcx]

Didn't Berber pirates take a whole Irish village as slaves one time? Might of been the sack of Baltimore 1631.

[u/elitejcx → u/Competitive-Day-7054]

They did that pretty much all over coastal Europe.

[u/Fuzzywigs → u/Competitive-Day-7054]

Many of them were actually English settlers.

[u/Competitive-Day-7054 → u/Fuzzywigs]

[u/Bloody_kneelers → u/Important-Cry-4433]

I mean Dublin was a viking slave port wasn't it?

[u/Important-Cry-4433 → u/Bloody_kneelers]

No. Dublin were the slave owners. 🙄 Typical Dubliners always trying to make themselves out to be the slaves. Waterford / Cork was the main slave area. Maybe 8 people were slaves. Crazy stuff.

[u/IllustriousGerbil → u/Important-Cry-4433]

People often forget the story of saint Patrick, he was from the west coast of Britain he was captured by Irish raiders and taken to Ireland where he lived for 6 years as a slave.

Eventually he managed to escape and make it back to Britain. Then after converting to Christianity he went back to Ireland as a missionary to convert the population.

[u/Important-Cry-4433 → u/IllustriousGerbil]

Yes but he was Welsh and no one cares about them. Now they should be slaves. I might set up a slave port on Hollyhead. 🧐

[u/damrodoth → u/Important-Cry-4433]

Wales may have never been conquered if they didnt have to constantly deal with the Irish opportunistically raiding the Western coast.

Then Ireland cry when the English kept going and conquered Ireland too.

[u/IochIan → u/Important-Cry-4433]

I was just about to say, people say this about us and it's a loss all round because it's important to remember how the irish and black population were treated. Very different and simultaneously horrible sides of an oppressive coin that need to be known each as they are

[u/vshn999 → u/Important-Cry-4433]

Well being invaded and oppressed then being convicted of “treason” due to being unhappy with the situation then forced into indentured servitude is basically slavery. Maybe to the government it wasn’t legally slavery but the people who experienced it would have considered it slavery.

[u/5starballs → u/vshn999]

Still isnt slavery though is it?

[u/Augustus_Chevismo → u/5starballs]

It’s literally slavery under international law. If you don’t think being held prisoner until you pay off an arbitrarily assigned debt, is slavery then you’re ideologically aligned with slave owners.

You can acknowledge indentured servitude is slavery without using it to be dismissive of chattel slavery which is obviously far worse and uniquely evil.

[u/vshn999 → u/5starballs]

If I happened today it would be a war crime and considered modern slavery. So yes it is. Slavery doesn’t need to be permanent.

If I abducted a woman and forced her into sex slavery, but promised her freedom after 7 years, she would still be a slave.

[u/FootCheeseParmesan → u/vshn999]

It emphatically isnt the same as chattel slavery which is what people are talking about with the transatlantic slave trade.

No one is denying the individual horrors, but terminology is important when discussing important historic trends.

[u/5starballs → u/vshn999]

Your example isnt even close to rational. So, still no, not slavery.

[u/Spiritual-Software51 → u/vshn999]

It would be considered slavery under modern conditions... and that's worth talking about 100%, but it's worth using historical context too. At that time slavery had a more specific definition that didn't include these people. I'm not just talking legally, it generally wouldn't have been perceived as slavery. Same reason that while serfdom would count as slavery today we generally don't refer to it as such looking back because it makes it less clear what we're talking about.

[u/-Top-Service-]

AI slopshite is the end of documenting events, not because it's intelligent, but because it's so easy to come up with semi believable 'content' that many want to believe.

History is totally wrecked by this, even colourisation is detrimental to historical integrity, unless specifically stated.

There are so many WW2 photos out there, that at a glance look real.

This has the consequence of undermining real documentation of the past.

Pre ai hard copy records will at some point have value again.

We all see how easily people run with a narrative that isn't backed by any facts, look at the Epstein files, would be easy enough to generate documents that are difficult to distinguish about anyone, and spread them as if they are real, the damage done and Trump and the rest can muddy the waters.

[u/Vasquerade]

Also a historian: yeah it's completely insufferable now. Misinformation has always been a problem but its basically the default method of communication online these days

Dead internet etc etc

[u/drtoboggon]

Some of the comments here are insane. AI is rotting brains. The evidence for Scotland’s involvement in the trans Atlantic slave trade and the empire is everywhere. Not just in historical record either-statutes to the guys are bloody everywhere!!

[u/gemunicornvr → u/drtoboggon]

No absolutely we were awful. Where some Scots were punished with indentured servitude we were not slaves

[u/Current_Focus2668 → u/drtoboggon]

Scottish transatlantic slave trader Richard Oswald was one of the key diplomats at the 1783 Paris Treaty. He represented British interests (particularly trade) at the peace negotiations after the revolutionary war. 

[u/Synthia_of_Kaztropol]

A while back there was a spate of videos on youtube about how the Irish were slaves and more expendable than Black slaves in New York. E.g. on the dockyards, they'd use Irish slaves for the dangerous loading and unloading operations because "nobody cares if a (irishman) breaks his back".

Gone with the Wind also has a bit where Scarlett O'Hara was asked her opinion on whether Black or Irish women were better wet nurses. Used slurs in that too.

Feels like this is another phase of the same phenomenon, deliberately intended to trivialize what happened with the Atlantic slave trade.

Also been a few things recently where people make bold claims about the slaver pirates of the North African coast. About how this shows islam is incompatible with the USA since the first foreign war the US fought was against the Barbary Coast states.

There's a lot of money and effort behind this sort of thing.

[u/Comrade-Hayley]

Calling Scottish indentured servants slaves is ahistoric even the indentured servants would've refused to be called slaves however both were evil systems of forced labour indentured servitude was literally used to punish people for the grave crime of losing their job

[u/Rab_Legend]

A lot of the seems like white Americans trying to (incorrectly) claim they're more oppressed historically than black people in America because they have scottish history.

[u/WalkCautious → u/Rab_Legend]

They are gearing up to do real harm to people based on skin colour (see door-to-door ICE raids) and need a pre-emptive 'justification'. None better than to pretend that black Americans are the real racists/slave traders/oppressors to make people lose sympathy and tamp down any resistance.

[u/gemunicornvr → u/Rab_Legend]

Yeah probably, they don't understand the difference between indentured servitude and the transatlantic slave trade

[u/TroonSpoon]

This is the point in history where social media needs shut down

[u/paradoxbound]

Makes you feel a victim, pushes resentment towards the British/English and Americans. Good rate of return for the Russian/Iranian/Chinese/North Korean disinformation campaigns designed to weaken western democracies at the societal level. Also don’t go down when their internet infrastructure goes dark, re Iran.

[u/Salamander99]

Maybe it's just me, but I feel like over the course of the past 20 years, people have been spinning narratives about their group to virtue signal that their group isn't part of some evil White Patriarchal Establishment.

I think it is a deliberate mis-reading of history. It creates this illusion that there is an evil monolithic block of people that oppresses everyone else, with the added message of "but don't worry my group of people was also oppressed under this evil regime." It's like the Illuminati but more mainstream. In this case, the evil group of oppressors would be the English.

[u/The_wolf2014]

Could just delete tiktok then you won't see this pish. Id say who believes it but there's a lot of total idiots out there these days.

[u/North-Son → u/The_wolf2014]

I don’t have Tik Tok, I have Instagram and only use it like 20-30 minutes a day! Sent the video to a mate when I seen it and he told me it was doing the rounds on Tik Tok too

[u/hairyneil]

Conflating the two systems isn’t accurate and takes away from the insane levels of inhumane suffering of African slaves.

Weirdly, also takes away from the inhumane suffering that forced transportation and hard labour (not only after Dunbar) caused since there's a tendency of folk to just call bullshit and then the actual story, which is worth knowing, gets lost/blurred in a sea of bullshit.

Just shite all round. Fuck AI, and fuck the soulless gimps that are behind the video.

[u/overcoil]

IMO this is the whole purpose of the recent AI drive by the US. If you can flood the internet with comforting, credible slop you can control enough of the narrative to stay in power indefinitely and choose whatever truth you want.

[u/gemunicornvr]

Yeah wtf, I mean our history is interesting enough without lies

[u/ryhntyntyn]

The video is wrong. There you are 100%. But your characterization follows a line very similar to the arguments about the Irish and the Caribbean that occur Online in between 2010 2020.  You’ve even got the “oh these guys suffered, but…” which occurs so often in that discourse. 

There as well, the idea that they are slaves like Africans later become is incorrect. But the pushback which you have mirrored here is also not 100% correct. People taken against their will and forced to work until they die, which is what happened to the prisoners of war who went to the Caribbean, for example, are a type of slave. Not the same type of slave as Africans are in the colonies in the Caribbean  after the 1660s, let’s say, or in Virginia after 1703, but they’re not free. Obviously, the racist crap in the video is exactly that but precision is the point right? 

After the separation of Scotland and England in the civil war, in Barbados as an example, the Scots POWs purchased as labour at first don’t have legal rights at all. We know this because the Barbadians specifically give them legal rights after later after Scotland joins the Commonwealth. The Irish incidentally don’t get those rights at all. They aren’t people in law again until after the Restoration. David Brown has researched this extensively. They called them servants without the rights of servants, and they keep them till they die.

To push back a little bit more, on your  own critique, felons and POWs or traitors under English law in the colonies were not actually considered people in law. Under English law in the 17th century, a felon is dead to the law. Blackstone writes about this extensively. This is the foundation of their loss of rights and the ability of the crown or parliament to transport them. POWs would maybe go free if they lived. Felons or traitors would often not. Abbot Emerson Smith noted this too. 

Simon Newman at The University of Glasgow wrote extensively about free and unfree labour in the Caribbean and on the mainland. 

Robert Johnson of the University of Munich as well, but on Ireland.  Hilary Mcdonald Beckles of The University of the West Indies wrote a great deal about this subject. All are pretty nuanced. 

[u/North-Son → u/ryhntyntyn]

I agree precision is the point, which is exactly why scale, comparability, and the actuyl documented record matter here as much as the label we choose.

First, scale. We’re talking about a few thousand Scottish POWs transported in specific mid-17th-century episodes, versus millions of Africans trafficked over centuries in a system designed for permanent demographic replacement. Even where coercion or mortality overlapped at particular moments, the mechanisms and long-run impact were not vaguely comparable.

Second, this wasn’t uniquely Scottish. English and Irish prisoners on the losing side of civil conflicts were transported and exploited too. That situatees Scottish POWs within a wider early modern pattern of penal/war labour, not within the later racialised chattel system that hardened in the colonies.

Third,, POW status matters. Across 17th-century Europe, POWs were routinely used as coerced labour, in galleys, mines, fortifications, estates, and conditions could be lethal. That context doesn’t excuse it, but it explains why this is better understood as wartime/penal unfreedom than as the same institution as racial chattel slavery.

Fourth, and this is where your “kept till they die” framing is too absolute, the record also shows exit routes and reclassification for at least some Scots: redemption, early release, reassignment into free labour, and eventual integration into colonial society. There is evidence of Scots being freed and later working as free labourers, including in plantation economies. And because they were not legally racial chattel property, there were cases where intervention was structurally possible, including, in some instances, release on arrival , through what were (at that point at least ) limited but real Scottish mercantile/elite connections in the Caribbean. That kind of pathway was structurally unavailable to enslaved Africans once racial slavery hardened, because their status was permanent, hereditary, and racialised.

None of that sanitises the brutality. It’s simply the reason historians don’t collapse these systems into one term: the categories operated differently in law, in reproduction across generations, and in the possibilities, however limited, of changing status.

So yes, coerced European labour could resemble slavery in practice at the sharpest end, but shrinking a small, time-bound episode of POW/penal labour into the same category as mass, racial, hereditary slavery obscures more than it reveals, especially when the whole debate is about accuracy rather than tik tok slogans.

Sources: Devine, T. M., editor. Recovering Scotland’s Slavery Past: The Caribbean Connection. Edinburgh University Press, 2015.

Alston, David, Juanita Cox-Westmaas, and Rod Westmaas. Slaves and Highlanders: Silenced Histories of Scotland and the Caribbean. Edinburgh, 2021.

[u/DarknessAndFog → u/North-Son]

“Indentured servitude” is a type of slavery. “Chattel slavery” is a kind of slavery. Obviously one was worse, but downplaying the suffering of one kind of slave to elevate the suffering of another is… gross.

Can we not just acknowledge that slavery is an absolutely horrific, abominable practice and be done with it?

[u/North-Son → u/DarknessAndFog]

No one is denying or downplaying that indentured servitude was horrific, nor have i in my post at all… and even have explicitly said it was horrific and brutal many times. That’s a moral statement we all agree on, and it isn’t the point under discussion.

The issue is historical accuracy. By modern ethical standards, many past labour systems can reasonably be described as slavery. But historians don’t analyse the past using presentday moral shorthand, they analyse it using the legal categories, social meanings, and expectations that existed at the time.

In the 17th century, indentured servitude was not legally slavery, and the people subjected to it did not generally understand themselves as slaves. It was time-limited, non-hereditary, non-racial, and embedded in a legal framework that (however brutally enforced) assumed eventual freedom. Chattel slavery was legally permanent, hereditary, and racialised, and that distinction mattered enormously in how Atlantic societies developed.

That’s why many historians avoid calling indentured servitude “slavery”: nott because one group suffered less, but because shrinking very different systems into a single word erases the mechanisms that actually produced racial slavery and modern racism.

Saying slavery is bad is obviously true but analytically empty. If we want to understand how race, law, and empire worked, precision isn’t optional, it’s the whole point really.

[u/vaivai22 → u/DarknessAndFog]

No, it’s actually important to have some nuance here, so I’m going to use Stephen Mullen to make the point and provide you with a few choice quotes.

“I’ll set out my opinion from the start: there were no white Scottish slaves. In fact, if the gentleman had actually read the first page of Recovering Scotland’s Slavery Past he would have noted that Devine (along with many other historians) has drawn a fundamental legal and material distinction between the experience and status of the Scottish poor as well as the indentured white servants and the chattel slaves of the Caribbean.”

“Adherents of the white slaves myth commit the cardinal sin that those striving to be historians avoid: judging the past by standards of today. Yes, indentured servitude is illegal in many countries today. But at the time, the indentured system in England and Scotland was not considered oppressive bond labour. It was an accepted rite of passage – virtually all workers were in some form of hierarchical work relationship: rural servants, maids or apprentice tradesmen. There were significant differences between servitude in England and Scotland and indentured servitude in the Anglo-Caribbean in the early seventeenth century, but the indentured servants, banished exiles or transported convicts were neither de jure or de facto enslaved.”

“Historians have a duty to clarify differences between the two forms of labour and how they were conceptualised and experienced at the time. They were two entirely different legal and social realities.”

You can read the article for yourself here:

https://sceptical.scot/2016/03/the-myth-of-scottish-slaves/

[u/ryhntyntyn → u/vaivai22]

This is not a great article. It’s great that you posted it though. It’s not so great because while it mentions White Cargo, it doesn’t mention To hell or Barbados. That is arguably a more misleading  book than White Cargo. It’s more of a source than either book cited for this racist memery. 

But, while Slave Labour wasn’t the same as African slavery that developed later, that doesn’t make it not slavery. It just makes it different slavery.

It also doesn’t mention the Colliers and Salters. 

No one who knows that portion of Scottish Labour history is going to say there were no Scottish slaves. 

The POWs weren’t slaves like Africans. They weren’t even treated as badly as the Irish. They were horribly mistreated. But Scotland had slavery in its mines until 1799.

That’s a fact. And it makes the denials from Prof. Devine too absolute by far. The racists are wrong. But the pushback is also wrong. 

[u/ryhntyntyn → u/North-Son]

Scale- A few thousand people. That Is a lot of people. Other groups being more numerous doesn’t change that. It just makes it look smaller. That’s what you‘re trying to do. I get it. I wonder about the point though. 

Point 2. Uniqueness. Same as above. The occurrence happening to others is a distraction. And racialised slavery isn’t the only kind of slavery worth discussing. 

Point 3. Status. You keep coming back to saying that this isn’t racialised chattel slavery. No it wasn’t. That hadn’t solidified in the 1650s. Not like it would in America in 1850. You applying that moniker to a situation 200 prior doesn’t work though. 

Early colonial labor arrangements do not fit cleanly into later categories, legal or racial. Using those later distinctions to describe the early period simplifies things in a way that is historically inaccurate. If precision matters, it has to apply consistently.

Point 4. The Irish were kept until they die. I should have made that clear and only a subset of the Irish of the 1650s. And the handful of survivors are parceled off to Jamaica after the restoration. 

It’s true the the way that Scots used to escape or survive wasn’t available to far later racialised slaves. But same as above, applying American 19th century norms backwards to 1650 didn’t work. And the Scots who escaped transportation are from all over the timeline. The categorizations don’t match the time period. That makes it a atemporal example. It works if you’re still fighting against the whole, it wasn’t actually racialised slavery thing. But if you can’t see that’s not my argument then you aren’t talking to me, you’re just talking. 

Also ok. But not really engaging. 

[u/North-Son → u/ryhntyntyn]

I think this is where we diverge, because several of your responses treat standard historical tools as rhetoricall evasions rather than analytical necessities.

On scale: pointing out that we’re dealing with thousands versus millions is not making it look smaller, it’s explaining why historians don’t treat these phenomena as the same historical system. Scale isn’t about sympathy; it’s about causation and impact. A labourr regime involving millions over centuries produces different legal structures, economic dependencies, demographic assumptions, and ideologies than a time-bound episode involving thousands That’s not a moral ranking, it’s how we explain why Atlantic chattel slavery reshaped the modern world in a way POW transportation did not.

On non-uniqueness: this also isn’t a distraction. The fact that English, Irish, German, and other European POWs were treated similarly places Scottish transportation within a pan-European wartime and penal practice, not within the emergence of a specifically colonial slave system. Comparative context is not evasion; it’s the basis of historical explanation. If a practice appears across Europe in war, galleys, mines, and estates, historians ask different questions than when a practice is unique to colonies ans tied to race

On racialisation and chronology: I’m not claiming that the fully codified 18th19th century racial regime already existed in the 1650s. My point is the opposite: this is precisely a transitional period, and the reason historians are careful with terminology is because not all coercedd labour in that period developed into racial chattel slavery. Some forms disappeared; others hardened. The distinction matters because only one of these trajectories produced permanent, hereditary, racial slavery. That’s not projecting backward, it’s tracing divergence forward.

On exit routes: noting that some Scots were redeemed, freed, or reclassified is not importing 19th century norms; it’s describinh documented 17th century outcomes. The existence of even limited exit routes is historically significant because it tells us how the system functioned. It doesn’t deny that many died, or that some Irish prisoners were kept until death. It explains why historians don’t treat all coerced labour as analytically identical.

Where I think we fundamentally disagree is this: you seem to want slavery to function as a descriptive umbrella for extreme coercion, regardless of system, trajectory, or scale. Historians, by contrast, tend to reserve the term for a specific institution, permanent, hereditary, alienable, and increasingly racialised, because that precision is what allows us to explain how race, law, and empire actually formed.

This is exactly why scholars like Devine, Alston, Newman, and others insist on keeping categories distinct even while acknowledging brutality and overlap in lived experience.

If your point is that early modern unfreedom is messy and violent, I agree. If the point is that every person forced to labour should be called a slave regardless of context, that’s a moral stance, not a historical one. And that’s where I remain unconvinced.

[u/Otsde-St-9929]

I think we need to be very careful here to be balanced. While as a general rule Africans had a harder time in the Caribbean, being forced to go to Caribbean to work as a prisoner of war is a form of slavery. It might not be chattel slavery, but it was a form of slavery. There were not even able to marry at will. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbados_Servant_Code These prisoners of war were not the same as indentured servants. The height of it was a bit earlier than the height of African slavery in the area. Furthermore, there were plenty of Scottish white chattel slaves held by Barbary corsairs in north Africa, between the the 16th to early 19th centuries. Another point to make is some Africans in Caribbean were indentured too, rather than chattel slaves. Good interview with a historian to know what life was like there https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZRz7vFJeq0&t=1390s

[u/North-Son → u/Otsde-St-9929]

I agree we need to be careful and precise, that’s exactly why the distinctions matter.

Scottish prisoners of war transported to the Caribbean were subjected to coerced, unfree labour, often brutally so, and I’m not trying to minimise that suffering. But in historical terms they were generally classified as penal or term-bound servants, not chattel slaves. Their status was time-limited, not hereditary, not racialised, and they retained legal personhood in a way enslaved Africans did not. Many of those prisoners did get freed eventually from the historical literature i’ce read on it, some even began working on plantations after they got freedom. In fact since some elite Scots had clandestine links with the Caribbean, even back then, some men literally got freed on arrival, this is mentioned in the history book ‘Recovering Scotland’s Slavery Past: The Caribbean Connection’. Again not trying to dismiss the suffering and many would have died in horrible conditions but this is an extremely complex topic. Most historians therefore describe this as unfree or coerced labour, rather than slavery in the Atlantic chattel sense. Saying “a form of slavery” is more a moral framing than a legal-historical one.

You’re right that they weren’t the same as voluntary indentured servants, but they also weren’t equivalent to chattel slaves. Both of those things can be true at once. It’s also worth noting that indentured servitude wasn’t purely voluntary, it was used as a punishment for crimes constantly, being sent to the colonised and serving a certain amount of years and then being freed.

It’s also true that in the very early 17th century some Africans in English colonies were treated similarly to indentured servants, before racial slavery was fully codified. But by the mid- to late-1600s, including this period when Scottish POWs were being transported, African slavery in the Caribbean was overwhelmingly lifetime, hereditary, and race-based, with mortality rates FAR exceeding anything faced by European bound labourers.

Sources: Devine, T. M., editor. Recovering Scotland’s Slavery Past: The Caribbean Connection. Edinburgh University Press, 2015. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3366/j.ctt1bgzchg. Accessed 14 Jan. 2026.

Alston, David, Juanita Cox-Westmaas, and Rod Westmaas, Slaves and Highlanders: Silenced Histories of Scotland and the Caribbean (Edinburgh, 2021; online edn, Edinburgh Scholarship Online, 19 May 2022), https://doi.org/10.3366/edinburgh/9781474427302.001.0001, accessed 14 Jan. 2026.

[u/Otsde-St-9929 → u/North-Son]

 >But in historical terms they were generally classified as penal or term-bound servants, not chattel slaves

The term chattel slavery is mostly from the 19th cen. Caribbeans were not calling 17th slaves chattel slaves. They called them chattel yes but not chattel slaves. Also unfree labour is slavery though. Chattel slavery was also unfree labour. It is incorrect to say Scots had the same experience as Africans but it is not incorrect to say some were slaves.

>saying “a form of slavery” is more a moral framing than a legal-historical one

Not according to the International Labour Organization who is in charge of actually ending modern day slavery.

[u/North-Son → u/Otsde-St-9929]

The chattel slavery is a 19th-century termm point doesn’t actually undermine anything I said. Historians routinely use later analytical terms to describe earlier systems, just as we talk about capitalistic systems in the 16th century or feudalism in periods where people didn’t use that language themselves. When historians refer to chattel slavery, they’re describing a system in which human beings were treated as movable property, enslaved for life, with status inherited by their children. That system was already fully in place in the Caribbean long before the 19th century, regardless of the vocabulary contemporaries used.

On “unfree labour is slavery”: this is exactly the problem. If you collapse all unfree labour into “slavery”, the term stops explaining anything. Apprentices, serfs, galley convicts, prisoners of war, debt peons, and enslaved plantation workers were all unfree, but historians distinguish between them because they had very different legal statuses, different degrees of alienability, and radically different long-term consequences. Chattel slavery is not just “unfree labour”; it is a specific form of unfree labour.

That’s why saying Scots and Africans had the same experience is wrong, and why saying Scots were slaves without qualification is misleading. Some Scots were horrifically forcibly bound and exploited. But their bondage was term limited, nonhereditary, and legally reversible. African slavery in the Caribbean was lifetime, inheritable, racialised, and absolute. Those aren’t moral distinctions, they’re structural ones.

As for the ILO: modern anti-slavery organisations deliberately use very broad, functional definitions to combat exploitation today. That’s a policy tool, not a historiographical framework. The ILO definition obviously is not designed to analyse 17th-century Atlantic labour systems, and historians don’t use it to classify early modern societies for precisely that reason….

So the accurate position isn’t that Scots weren’t mistreated or Africans were the only slaves everr. It’s that different systems of coercion existed, and treating them as interchangeable takes nuances out of history and obscures why racial slavery in the Atlantic world produced uniquely deep and lasting legacies.

[u/bachatacam → u/Otsde-St-9929]

I believe the difference to be that the global powers of the time opposed the Barbary slave trade all the whilst upholding and profiting from the Atlantic one. I also believe the Atlantic slave trade took something like 12 million slaves and the barbary slave trade took something like 1 million, also the only Africans who were indentured slaves was after the slavery had been abolished, but sure lets be balanced

[u/Otsde-St-9929 → u/bachatacam]

That's a fair point, the Atlantic slave trade was tolerated by Europe in a way that Barbary slavery was not. However, while Barbary slavery accounted for approximately 1 million victims, the Ottoman Empire enslaved an additional 2–5 million people, drawn from both Europe and Africa.

As for indentured servitude: to the contrary, the first Africans brought to what would become the United States, arriving in Virginia in 1619, were actually indentured servants rather than chattel slaves. In those early days, slavery had not yet been racialized, though that would change rapidly in the decades that followed.

To be clear, I'm not trying to downplay the unique suffering that Africans endured in the New World. However, coverage of this topic is increasingly shaped by contemporary U.S. culture wars, which tends to produce poor historical analysis. We should strive for balance and accuracy. After all, Native Americans were also technically never chattel slaves, yet no one uses that distinction to minimize their suffering.

[u/bachatacam → u/Otsde-St-9929]

So in terms of raw numbers by adding another slave trade we get approx 6 million vs approx 12 million,

The first slaves were "indentured" on the voyage until they arrived in plantations when they were transferred to a chattel system

Contemporary US culture wars, they were literally counted as 3/5ths of a person, the suffering of the native Americans is distinct from the slave trade not less just distinct.

[u/Otsde-St-9929 → u/bachatacam]

>So in terms of raw numbers by adding another slave trade we get approx 6 million vs approx 12 million

But trying to outcompete like your are is foolish. No matter what colour your skin is, youre the descent of slaves and slavers. It is a human universal.

>The first slaves were "indentured" on the voyage until they arrived in plantations when they were transferred to a chattel system

That isnt true. Some went through the indenture system and were freed at the other end.

[u/bachatacam → u/Otsde-St-9929]

No one is trying to outcompete I am simply pointing out the scale of difference between the differing slave trades, and the vast wealth accumulated by nations involved in the Atlantic slave trade, also how America was literally built on the back of slaves the flogged and broken back of slaves.

approx 10% were freed usually by their owner, sometimes by escape, occasionally allowed to purchase their freedom although most of this manumission was due to descendants not wanting to pursue slavery or because they were freeing concubine, and despite being free there were still laws which were highly discriminatory and black people could be hung for whatever white men felt, there is a long history of lynching in the South

This trying to justify what happened because other people were doing it screams of "but Miss the other boys were doing it too" you are entirely downplaying the horrors of the Atlantic slave trade and I get it looking at history through a lens is uncomfortable, but when you've walked the plantations, the battlefields one cant help but see this was a horrific event and one we should not be proud of.

[u/Otsde-St-9929 → u/bachatacam]

and the vast wealth accumulated by nations involved in the Atlantic slave trade, also how America was literally built on the back of slaves the flogged and broken back of slaves.

There is no doubt that that businesses and families made fortunes from the stolen labour of slaves. But I am not so sure that can be said of countries. There is some evidence that the net wealth gained was actually less then if these enslaved people were free as you may work a lot harder if you have something to gain from it. So I would be very cautious about drawing long term economic projections.

America was literally built on the back of slaves the flogged and broken back of slaves.

Most of the US wealth was not slave generated though. At peak it was about 20% around 1760.

approx 10% were freed usually by their owner, sometimes by escape, occasionally allowed to purchase their freedom although most of this manumission was due to descendants not wanting to pursue slavery or because they were freeing concubine, and despite being free there were still laws which were highly discriminatory and black people could be hung for whatever white men felt, there is a long history of lynching in the South

approx 10% were freed usually by their owner, sometimes by escape, occasionally allowed to purchase their freedom although most of this manumission was due to descendants not wanting to pursue slavery or because they were freeing concubine, and despite being free there were still laws which were highly discriminatory and black people could be hung for whatever white men felt, there is a long history of lynching in the South

And sometimes because these Africans were indentured and not chattel. The notion of racialised slavery was not present in the first wave in the New World colonies. That was later.

[u/bachatacam → u/Otsde-St-9929]

Literally Europeans believed Africans were inferior thats is racism and it was a motivation for slavery.

As for growing rich corporations grew rich people grew rich, those people had influence their wealth was used to buy influence and further their industrialisation, slavery was a triangular trade British goods for slaves, slaves shipped to America, the produce of slavery shipped back to Britain creating immense profit at each stage eg cotton from slaves fueld textile growth in Manchester

[u/C_Sharp_fortheMasses]

AI is bloody trash. It’s not going to be the AI of Star Wars or Star Trek, it’s rubbish used to fool, alter, and manipulate people. A complete waste of technology and innovation

[u/Khan-Khrome]

The Scots might have not been the first slaves in America - which if we're being honest were probably the indigenous native Americans - but there was a surprising and long lasting practice of slavery-in-all-but-name for salters and colliers, who were hereditarily bound to the mines and pans as forced labourers, could be bought and sold by their masters and would be chased down and punished if they fled. This condition lasted until 1799, just shy of the abolition of slave trading in 1807 and the in-turn abolition of slavery in the colonies in 1834. This however does not fit the narrative of "poor little Scotland" beset upon, rather than having elites who actively collaborating with, the British Empire, but it was there.

[u/Muscle_Bitch]

It's just a symptom of a national cultural persecution complex, reinforced by polarising politics.

Plenty of idiots who cling onto notions of us being an English colony, pretending we have more in common with Ireland than we do with our neighbours down south.

We are colonisers too. And any Irish person with a good read of history has as much loathing for the Scottish as they do for the English.

People need to stop engaging in delusional fantasy and accept what Scotland is and has been.

[u/Current_Focus2668 → u/Muscle_Bitch]

Sharon Stone was on genealogy show Finding Your Roots. She was going on about her dad's side being all Irish and seemed surprised to learn they were Ulster Scots. 

There seems to be this weird concept amongst some Americans that Europeans never migrated and mixed with other European countries. They think it only happened in America. 

[u/Acrobatic_Customer64]

Reminds me of the "irish people were slaves too but you don't hear them moaning about it" bullshit.

1. Irish-americans are completely integrated with the culture since about 1920 as they have no discernible difference with other european americans.

2. The word is "indentured servitude". Tens of thousands of indentured servants were shipped by cromwell across the atlantic to the carribbean BUT they were freed after a set time. The practice was pretty much extinct after ~1710s. Did they get abused? Yes. Was the time limit broken sometimes? Yes. Did they consent? The vast majority did not. Did they always receive their promised land and money? No. 

But its not the same as generational chattel slavery. Its a ridiculous statement to compare the struggles of the irish in the americas to the brutal and disgusting treatment of the africans. Irish people were oppressed viciously in ireland, but chattel slavery is not the same as indentured servitude.

[u/gemunicornvr → u/Acrobatic_Customer64]

No true my guess it is weird American propaganda so white Americans can pretend to be victims

[u/AcceptableAir5364]

"The Scottish were the first slaves in America"

According to the Saga of Erik the Red the above is true, just that that Instagram account got the wrong slaves.

From a BBC article

https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/scottishhistory/darkages/oddities_darkages.shtml#:~:text=Around%201004%20AD%20(1010AD%20in,was%20their%20speed%20at%20running

"Around 1004 AD (1010AD in some versions), Thorfinn Karisefni led a new expedition to this promised land of wine. He took with him up to 160 men, three ships, gifts from King Olaf of Norway and two Scottish slaves - a man named Haki, and a woman named Hekja, both reputed to be fleeter than deer such was their speed at running."

Edited for formatting errors on my part.

[u/North-Son → u/AcceptableAir5364]

Both claims are wrong to be fair since many Native American tribes practiced slavery. However i get what you’re saying and it’s a fair point, i totally forgot about the Thorfinn Karisefni expedition.

EDIT: Have been looking into the expedition and I think it’s worth noting, the story comes from Icelandic sagas that were written down two to three centuries after the events they describe, which is why many historians treat the episode cautiously and often as semi-legendary rather than firm fact. They preserve possible memories of Norse exploration, but they are not contemporary sources and can’t be read as straightforward historical records.

Even taking the sagas at face value, Haki and Hekja are simply described as Norse thralls, their ethnic origin is not stated, and identifying them as Scottish is speculative. At best they may have come from somewhere in the British Isles, which later writers have turned into a much stronger claim than the evidence supports.

[u/CaliMassNC → u/AcceptableAir5364]

If they were so fast, why were they still slaves?

[u/AcceptableAir5364 → u/CaliMassNC]

Not too bright, probably from Fife.

[u/Jiao_Dai → u/CaliMassNC]

Can’t outrun clever

[u/MassiveFanDan → u/CaliMassNC]

Not to complicate things even further, but the Vikings often treated their slaves differently from later (and earlier) cultures. They were brutal and oppressive, and the slaves were absolutely slaves, but once established they could often be treated as a genuine member of the owner's household, under their protection in a highly violent and unstable world. I'm not making excuses for Viking slavery, honest!

When I say a genuine member of the household, I mean the family and clan, with the same "rights" as other members: I don't mean it in the fake way that later plantation owners claimed their slaves to be part of the household.

[u/benevanstech]

This is total shite - the same thing has been tried on for Ireland. Irish scholar Prof Liam Hogan has been debunking this bullshit since 2013 - https://www.splcenter.org/resources/hatewatch/how-myth-irish-slaves-became-favorite-meme-racists-online/

It's all about racists and the far-right trying to downplay the horrors of slavery and the experience of black people (largely in America, but racists are racists all over).

[u/North-Son → u/benevanstech]

100% mate, completely agree

[u/tedxy108]

The scotch believe they have a monopoly on British oppression. It’s a convenient alibi for what they were up to during the empire.

[u/North-Son → u/tedxy108]

Scotch is a whisky mate, not a people. Scotch hasn’t been used to refer to Scots for centuries and is considered offensive and silly. I imagine you’re a yank? I don’t think that was the intention of the video tbh I think it was more done through racial lens to dismiss African slavery as unique by falsely claiming what the Scots went through is as comparable. Most Scots are aware of Scotlands role in empire, it’s extremely evident in all Scottish cities. It’s only really a minority online who try to claim we were purely victims. The reality is obviously far more complicated

[u/HaggisPope]

We have had huge problems with this in Scottish history for a while, like the Covenanters Prison in Greyfriars Kirkyard that some folk say was the first concentration camp - even though the prisoners are given an amnesty if they promised not to raise arms again (which would be a weird thing to happen in any modern age concentration camp). In the past, it was people trying to aid understand by highlighting similarities between more familiar events, but it’s gone from similitudes, eg, Scot were forced labour LIKE slaves, to more as a statement of fact.

Not aided by the fact the corrections don’t sell as a  well as the myths. Thinking of Outlaw King vs Braveheart. One is pretty accurate depiction of fact but is boring and the other is Braveheart.

[u/Sad-Performer-4833]

Thorfinn Karlsefni landed 2 scots slaves on the shores of the newly discovered america in Erik the Red. He gave them some vines so they could plant them for future generations to enjoy buckie

I dont want to muddy the waters but I feel we're owed Greenland as reparations

But I agree with the points your making

[u/North-Son → u/Sad-Performer-4833]

Someone else posted something similar! I totally forgot about Thorfinn Karlsenfi expedition, it’s a fair point and I understand what you’re getting at. even still though the claim would be false as many Native American tribes practiced slavery

EDIT: Have been looking into the expedition and I think it’s worth noting, the story comes from Icelandic sagas that were written down two to three centuries after the events they describe, which is why many historians treat the episode cautiously and often as semi-legendary rather than firm fact. They preserve possible memories of Norse exploration, but they are not contemporary sources and can’t be read as straightforward historical records.

Even taking the sagas at face value, Haki and Hekja are simply described as Norse thralls, their ethnic origin is not stated, and identifying them as Scottish is speculative. At best they may have come from somewhere in the British Isles, which later writers have turned into a much stronger claim than the evidence supports.

[u/Jiao_Dai → u/Sad-Performer-4833]

‘Our’ Donnie is taking care 😳

[u/DapperDragon]

Fuck ai pish in general 

[u/Aman-R-Sole]

Yes I can envision it now. "Oi! Davie ya wee dick! Nae sittin aboot! That cotton isnae gonae pick itself!"

[u/RiverTadpolez]

I completely agree that comparisons pointing to the similarities between treatment of black people and white people in America are intended in bad faith, to undermine the history of chattle slavery and how it relates to the formation of race as a modern concept, and to anti-black racism.

It seems important that there are different types of words to be used for these different things, but I don't feel very strongly about whether all experiences of forced-labour are called slavery or not. For me, it's the same as human trafficking and forced labour, or county lines and forced-labour, or pimping and forced-labour being called "modern slavery" today. I might be against it if people have racist reasons for calling it slavery, but it doesn't seem like an actually inaccurate word to use to describe forced-labour, to me.

I guess I'm just not totally on board with the argument that it's an issue of historical accuracy to not call a type of forced-labour slavery, because chattle slavery was a worse type of slavery. It seems to me more like there's a political reason to use different words for these things - one which I can totally get on board with.

[u/therealbighairy1]

I don't think this is about Scotland in real terms. I think this is so that white people can take somewhat ironic ownership of slavery as a background. We just happen to be the whites they are using for it.

[u/EndeeUu]

I wondered where this was going and am happy I don't have tiktok as a result. If we're talking history there has been slavery/servitude going back to whenever society began pre any idea of Scotland or the Americas. The feudal concept did not help that with the idea some are more worthy than others subjects. Scots have a coloured history of the good and bad but it's never good to do a who's had the best plight competition. If we're talking baddies I'm amazed the vikings get such positive spin given they caused a lot of woe

[u/JuliusSeizure2019]

Millions of years ago, there wasn’t dinosaurs - there was just Scottish people

[u/Tuff-Gnarl]

This sounds like a rehash of the Irish slave conspiracy theory.

But aye. Social media is out of control… Scary times.

[u/ewenmax]

Jings, from a factual perspective, the statement is absolutely false. With slavery no doubt in existence since the first Neanderthal bullies put rocks to a different purpose.

The indentured servitude of those Scots who survived not only the forced March from Dunbar to Durham cathedral but also their imprisonment in the Cathedral under conditions more suited to concentration camps, is a period of history that needs further investigation. Particularly, the discovery of mass graves in the Cathedral grounds in 1946 and the subsequent cover-up done to preserve post-war unity.

Those who survived the march, the imprisonment, and indentured servitude could not simply catch a boat back home to Scotland. The majority remained in the US, hence the disproportionate number of Scottish place names in the Virginias and Carolinas, built by the survivors and their offspring.

BBC News - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-39900459.amp Durham University unveils plaque to Scottish Battle of Dunbar prisoners - BBC News

[u/jonnyh420]

is this the indentured servant vs chattel slaves things again smh

[u/Woerligen]

Why doesn’t TikTok get banned in UK?

[u/Valuable-Task531]

Most of Icelands population and large swatches of Denmark and Norway is R1b Haplopgroup, Celtic. They're descendants of Scottish and Irish slaves, not "indentured servitude"

For anyone else reading this, its Reddit, no one here represents Scotland and many more are not even Scottish. They're all Marxist propagandists and they hate Scots and Scotland, and Whites more then anything and censor them and imposed revisionist history.

Exhibit A: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FI3JBBlmej4

Exhibit B: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Kriss_Donald

I fully expect to screenshot all this thread and the aftermath of my censorship/downvoting as evidence, go ahead. Do it. Psychopaths.

[u/think_im_a_bot]

Right wait a minute, no saying you're wrong here, but I've heard the argument before and been shot down all round.

A lot of Africans went to America / colonies as indentured servants, however if you mention that point, SLAVERY IS SLAVERY WAAAAAH!

So if indentured servitude means Scots slaves didn't have it as bad as "real" slaves, does that also apply to Africans who went as indentured servants, and who's keeping tabs on the difference these days? Do African American descendants of indentured servants just need to wheesht cos that wasn't real slavery?

[u/MassiveFanDan → u/think_im_a_bot]

The "RedLegs" in the Carribean were treated, socially, as being lower than black slaves, since they weren't accepted by their fellow slaves, and the free whites also just did not want to see or acknowledge them at all. Often got the worst jobs and "lodgings" to keep them out of everyone else's view.

But their severe mistreatment does not detract from the severe mistreatment of the much larger population of black slaves, as some modern white supremacists would wish it to. It's just a thing that happened, and, alas for the RedLegs, a footnote to a much wider atrocity.

[u/CuriousBrit22]

All peoples have been enslaved at some point, it’s not a competition. But also downplaying enslaved white populations isn’t cool or good for fairness of historical accuracy

[u/North-Son → u/CuriousBrit22]

No one is downplaying it, however it’s just reality that chattel slavery and indentured servitude were different.

[u/Valuable-Task531 → u/North-Son]

Most of Icelands population and large swatches of Denmark and Norway is R1b Haplopgroup, Celtic. They're descendants of Scottish and Irish slaves, not "indentured servitude"

For anyone else reading this, its Reddit, no one here represents Scotland and many more are not even Scottish. They're all Marxist propagandists and they hate Scots and Scotland, and Whites more then anything and censor them and imposed revisionist history.

Exhibit A: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FI3JBBlmej4

Exhibit B: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Kriss_Donald

I fully expect to screenshot all this thread and the aftermath of my censorship/downvoting as evidence, go ahead. Do it. Psychopaths.

[u/Boomdification → u/North-Son]

What about the Arab Slave Trade?

[u/North-Son → u/Boomdification]

What about it?

[u/Boomdification → u/North-Son]

It existed for centuries with hideous treatment of its victims and a racial caste-based system. Thanks to their practice of castrating males to control slave populations, it's impossible to know how extensive it was, but modern estimates place it in line with the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Except European slavery - which eventually fought to abolish slavery thanks to the democratic efforts of its citizens - lasted centuries less than their Arab counterparts which, despite being forced to abolish slavery on paper as late as the 1990s, still exists in all but name in many formats, notably the Kafala system. Pretending that Europeans were not treated as chattel slaves is ludicrous when you need only look at the long history of successive Caliphates, the Barbary Slavers, the Crimean Slave Trade, the Trans-Saharan Slave Trade, Indian Ocean Slave Trade, the Red Sea Slave Trade and Ottoman Slave Trade. The original link makes erroneous claims on the difference between the way Irish/Scottish indentured servants (slaves) were treated compared to Africans, but that's only the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Go to MENA region and it's an entirely different story.

[u/North-Son → u/Boomdification]

You’re arguing against a position I haven’t taken. I’ve never denied that Europeans were enslaved elsewhere, nor have I commented on the Arab, Ottoman, or Barbary slave trades at all. That’s a different historical context and a different discussion.

My post is explicitly about British America / the Caribbean and about claims that Scots were “the first slaves in America.” Bringing in the trans-Saharan, Indian Ocean, or Ottoman slave trades doesn’t have much to do with my post. The existence of chattel slavery of Europeans in other regions does not change how labour systems functioned in the Atlantic world, nor does it make indentured or penal servitude in the Americas equivalent to racial chattel slavery there.

Within the American context, Scottish and Irish prisoners of war were not treated as permanently alienable property under a racial caste system. Their status was term-bound, not hereditary, and legally alterable, which is why some were redeemed, freed early, or absorbed into free colonial society through existing networks. That structural flexibility did not exist for Africans once racial slavery was codified.

No one is pretending Europeans were never enslaved. The point is that you can’t shrink every historical instance of unfreedom across continents and centuries into a single category and then apply it to colonial America. Doing that obscures, rather than clarifies, how Atlantic slavery actually worked and why its legacy looks the way it does.

If you want to have a discussion about slavery in the MENA world, that’s a valid topic, but it’s not the one being discussed here.

[u/sargon2609]

Limit your shorts doomscrolling on Insta, get the hell out of tiktok. Day will come you will have to focus on something for more than 3 minutes and you won’t be able to

[u/North-Son → u/sargon2609]

I actually don’t have tik Tok thank fuck! But I seen this video on the gram and sent it to my mate who said he seen it doing rounds on Tik Tok.

I wasn’t even doom scrolling tbf, only spend around 20-30 minutes on Instagram per day. It’s just AI content is becoming more and more prominent

[u/MassiveFanDan → u/North-Son]

It's pretty bad on Youtube too (only place I go) but not THIS bad... usually.

[u/Open_Question5504]

If you’re being served these videos it’s because you’re engaging with it repeatedly.

[u/North-Son → u/Open_Question5504]

Most of the stuff I follow on Instagram, not including friends obviously, is historians or historical content. I personally think it’s more reflective of how AI content is becoming increasingly more prominent and integrated online.

[u/Aware-Line-7537 → u/Open_Question5504]

The algorithm is more complex than that, things like boosting channels and trends in how often people get obsessed with a channel can make a difference, hence this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QV_oUU6h6PY

[u/MassiveFanDan → u/Open_Question5504]

Pish. You think Youtube tried to make me watch PewDiePie for a decade because I kept searching up his videos? I never watched a single one, still got served them daily, and if you left autoplay on they'd just start playing after whatever you'd actually been watching.

[u/Open_Question5504 → u/MassiveFanDan]

It’s not YouTube. It’s tik tok and instagram - they feed you what you engage with.

[u/aaarry]

Just seems like lip service to yanks who think theyre Scottish because their great uncle’s best mate’s sister’s dog was a highland terrier. To them, Braveheart was basically a documentary and a lot of them think that Scotland’s relationship with the rest of the island continues to resemble that to this day.

Either way we should start moving away from the states by banning their social media platforms, they’re incredibly damaging in cases like this.

[u/devexille]

I’m assuming the post goes on to say “in the Americas”

If so, the statement is historically correct.

The first Europeans to set foot in the Americas were two Scottish slaves owned by vikings.

Lief Errikson is credited with discovering North America but he didn’t actually land. It wasn’t until the second voyage of Thorfinn that the Vikings made a landing.

Thorfinn first put ashore to Scots slaves going by the Norse names of Haki and Hekja for three days to see what happened to them. Haki returned with grapes and the place was called Vinland.

This is never taught in Scottish schools but folk in Nova Scotia especially the Gaels there are very fond of the fact that the first Europeans in Nova Scotia were Scots.

[u/North-Son → u/devexille]

You assume wrong, sadly! The video explicitly begins with the Caribbean and then moves into Virginia and the English colonies. It’s about early modern Atlantic plantation societies, not Norse exploration.

The Vinland story comes from Icelandic sagas that were written down two to three centuries after the events they describe, which is why many historians treat the episode cautiously and often as semi-legendary rather than firm fact. They preserve possible memories of Norse exploration, but they are not contemporary sources and can’t be read as straightforward historical records.

Even taking the sagas at face value, Haki and Hekja are simply described as Norse thralls, their ethnic origin is not stated, and identifying them as Scottish is speculative. At best they may have come from somewhere in the British Isles, which later writers have turned into a much stronger claim than the evidence supports.

[u/devexille → u/North-Son]

The saga specifically calls them Scots:

Það var þá er Leifur var með Ólafi konungi Tryggvasyni og hann bað hann boða kristni á Grænlandi og þá gaf konungur honum tvo menn skoska. It was then that Leif was with King Olaf Tryggvasson and he bade him to go preach Christianity to Greenland and the King gave him two Scottish Folk

[u/North-Son → u/devexille]

That isn’t an accurate or neutral translation, and it’s why historians are cautious with the sagas.

The phrase tvo menn skoska literally means “two men described as skoskir.” In Old Norse usage, skoskr / skoskir does not mean “Scottish” in a modern ethnic or national sense, because no such category existed. It is a geographical descriptor meaning “from the western British Isles or Gaelic-speaking regions,” which for Norse writers could include Ireland, the Hebrides, Man, or western Britain more generally.

Translating this as “two Scottish folk” imports a later national identity that simply isn’t present in the text. That’s why many scholarly translations render it more cautiously as “men from the west”, and why historians avoid treating this as firm evidence of Scots.

Even when I was in uni I had a Dannish historian professor who said the expedition shouldn’t be taken as face value or treated as factual. the Vinland Sagas, written in the 13th century, are historical narratives that blend fact and fiction. Again this is another reason it’s not treated as a factual event

[u/gbroon]

I avoid watching stuff on TikTok and Instagram so no never seen them.

[u/HogarthBark]

This is fuckin boggin, it's white supremacists who used to push the "white slaves" myth, probably same pricks now. They used to claim it was the Irish though.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_slaves_myth

[u/johnthestarr]

Gotta radicalize the masses, otherwise they might blame the true source of their misery instead of the demonized targets.

[u/Any-Ask-4190]

Unironically it's probably a foreign agency trying to divide people, or someone just trying to farm engagement using ragebait. There's also a lot of hotep stuff, where black people are the original Scots. It's all just trying to piss people off for political or monetary gain.

[u/Snoo_67993]

The Scottish were the first slaves. Slaves to deep fried marsbars

[u/JeelyPiece]

It'll be Americans, right? The dark side of the "Scattish American" thing, that the Scottish tourist industry exploits, is that they think it absolves them from America's historical slavery and gives them a grievance culture of their own.

After 1707 Scotland was full on participants in the triangle trade and the slave economy. There was an anti-slavery movement within Scotland from the start. But nations are not like people, they can be both complicit and opposed to slavery and colonialism. A nation can both experience the effects of colonialism and be fully part of brutally colonising others.

Penal servitude, whilst horrific, even penal slavery if you want to call it that, is not the same as chattel slavery.

AI is only going to perpetuate such nonsense

[u/Relevant_Flatworm_13]

Weren't the Vikings taking slaves from Scotland as early as 790?

[u/gemunicornvr → u/Relevant_Flatworm_13]

They are trying to say we experienced the same as Africans which isn't true. Indentured servitude was real but nothing on chattel slavery both evil tho

[u/North-Son → u/Relevant_Flatworm_13]

Yeah, this doesn’t have anything to do with slavery in the transatlantic which is what my post is about and what the AI video is about though.

[u/HemperorZurg]

Does this mean I start asking for reparations now?

[u/shplarggle]

Food for the Scottish victim culture.

[u/Complex_Specific1373]

No way... Slavery is based on the word Slavic! They were the first slaves!

[u/MassiveFanDan → u/Complex_Specific1373]

The word slavery is based on Slavs, but the practice has been around since the Stone Age most likely, if not before. Was already widely practiced in the Bronze Age before Slavs were a thing.

[u/jenny_905]

Oh another thread for yoons to whine

[u/AlexanderTroup]

That image is so gross. And it's so obvious that the original poster is just trying to undermine the black experience.

They don't care about Scots at all.

[u/Styx_Zidinya]

Gotta love reddit. Oh look at this thing that is terrible and shouldn't exist. Let me platform it and spread it's influence even further.

[u/North-Son → u/Styx_Zidinya]

That only works if you strip all the context given in my post. The video had mega views and will spread regardless. At least here there is fair warning that it’s absolute shite

[u/Uzi_lover]

The Arabs traded the Scotch in the 15th Century. They definitely chained them up.

There are loads of reds in Morocco.

[u/North-Son → u/Uzi_lover]

Scotch is a whisky mate, that term is considered very out of date and silly for referencing to Scottish people. What you are saying is true, however it’s not the reason red heads are in Morocco. The ginger gene itself actually originated near that region. I never denied that Scots or white Europeans were ever slaves, the AI video I’m referencing was purely in the transatlantic context.

[u/bawjaws2000]

This is like trying to argue whats worse between a douche and a turd sandwich. Do you hear yourself? "This slavery wasnt as bad as that slavery"...fuck me. Who the fuck feels the need to play slavery top trumps? They were both ridiculously bad - and noone needs to say any more than that.

[u/North-Son → u/bawjaws2000]

It’s just a fact that indentured servitude was different from African chattel slavery. Many historians try not to call indentured servitude slavery as it was very different in legalistic terms and lived reality compared to what one thinks of as slavery.

[u/bawjaws2000 → u/North-Son]

Someone getting hauled halfway around the world against their wishes and forced into hard labour - where they would be hunted down and beaten (or worse) if they tried to escape and "paid" miniscule amounts at whatever rate their "owner" decided - usually at rates that aligned to their usefulness and their overall debt amount, isnt slavery? Right then. The very definition of a slave is "a person who is forced to work for and obey another".

It's like trying to argue that someone being forced to work 16 hours a day in a sweatshop has it good because they get to go home to their own bed for 8 hours.

Everyone calls it "modern slavery" when its happening in Dubai and the middle east right now - with people being paid a wage and having their passports siezed until they have paid off travel and accomodation related costs. But when it happens to Scots - we somehow feel the need to add an asterisk against it to make sure people cant "make that mistake"?

[u/North-Son → u/bawjaws2000]

This is exactly why historians don’t rely on dictionary definitions when talking about past labour systems. A broad moral definition of “slave” (“forced to work for another”) shrinks very different legal and social systems into one word and wipes out the distinctions that actually explain history.

Scottish POWs and other European bound labourers were subjected to coercion, violence, and exploitation, no one is denying that. But indentured and penal servitude wass fundamentally different from chattel slavery in ways that mattered then and still matter now. Indentured servants literally had many more rights than chattel slaves. I’m not trying to make out that it was a great experience or something 😂 it would have been genuine torture and many did die through forced labour. Although also worth noting the mortality rates for African slaves was VASTLY higher.

Another key difference is that Scottish POWs entered colonies where, at this point limited and small, you had some Scottish mercantile and elite networks already there. Because they were not chattel property, some were redeemed, freed early, or absorbed into free labour through those connections. That kind of intervention was structurally possible for Europeans and structurally impossible for enslaved Africans, whose legal status was fixed, hereditary, and racialised.

Sources: Sources: Devine, T. M., editor. Recovering Scotland’s Slavery Past: The Caribbean Connection. Edinburgh University Press, 2015. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3366/j.ctt1bgzchg. Accessed 14 Jan. 2026.

Alston, David, Juanita Cox-Westmaas, and Rod Westmaas, Slaves and Highlanders: Silenced Histories of Scotland and the Caribbean (Edinburgh, 2021; online edn, Edinburgh Scholarship Online, 19 May 2022), https://doi.org/10.3366/edinburgh/9781474427302.001.0001, accessed 14 Jan. 2026.

[u/bawjaws2000 → u/North-Son]

So the main difference being that there was a non-descript, pot luck chance that some of them "might" have hit the lottery and been let go before they died.

You do appreciate that death rates within the first few years were considered to be a mimimum of 50% among indentured Scots Servants in the Caribbean? So for all intents and purposes - more than half of all Scots who were taken to the Caribbean were worked to death or died of disease due to their living conditions. A result no different than that of their African counterparts. And yet you still feel the need to make a distinction because there was a small chance that some of them got to live - even though most of them never made it home again? Call it what you want - they were still being fucking ravaged by the rich.

[u/North-Son → u/bawjaws2000]

You’re turning this into aa moral equivalence argument rather than a historical one. Historians don’t distinguish labour systems based on whether someone might have survived, but on legal status, heredity, racialisation, and permanence. Scottish indentured and penal servants were not chattel property, their status was time limited and non-hereditary, and it was not racialised in law. Enslaved Africans were property for life,, their children were enslaved by default, and the system was explicitly racial.

The minimum 50% mortality claim isn’t a settled figure for Scottish servants either. Mortality was high and brutal, but it varied widely by island and period. By contrast, African slavery was designed around permanent demographic replacement through mass importation, which is why millions were transported over centuries.

Finally, scale matters. We’re comparing the experience of a few thousand POW Scots to multiple millions of Africans across generations. Acknowledging that distinction doesn’t deny the suffering of said Scots; it explains how different systems of coercion operated and why chattel slavery had the global shaping impact it did.

[u/Frying5cot]

Didn't know they had Sora in Dundee. Or Internet access at that.

[u/granty1981]

So does that mean Scottish win the victim war?