Stop Sanitizing the Mayflower Story

This website has been set up to campaign for the telling of the  whole  of the Mayflower Story during the Mayflower 400 commemorations.

Presently the commemoration plans sanitize that story.

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The Mayflower journey was part of Early English Colonialism which involved

  • The invasion of Virginia, New England and the Caribbean and land seizure wars against the Indigenous peoples of North America
  • The economic success of New England through trade with the slave colonies of the Caribbean
  • The establishment of patterns of ‘extravagant’ violence in the Wars conducted against Indigenous Nations that lasted 300 years
  • The establishment of a tradition of sanitizing the story of English colonialism in the Americas

As well as the background context and the details of the journey and settlement, the story of the early years of New England and its links to the Caribbean is needed too.

  • It is a tale of loss of indigenous land, life and culture on a scale only seen by earlier colonisation in the Americas in the years following Columbus’ fateful journey in 1492.
  • It is a tale of economic growth through slavery and slave trading linking the Caribbean and the North American sea board.
  • But it is a tale that isn’t being told.

The Separatist Puritan Story alone isn’t The Mayflower Story 

The Mayflower Story involves three peoples

  • English Colonial settlers
  • Indigenous People living in what became North America
  • African Slaves forcibly imported into North America and the Caribbean

 

Write a letter and pass a motion against sanitization of the Mayflower Story.

Download a campaigning leaflet

Buy a copy of  “Telling the Mayflower Story: Thanksgiving or Landgrabbing, Massacres and Slavery”