A quick history lesson, I bet most don't know.
Did you know?
The Irish slave trade began when 30,000 Irish prisoners were
sold as slaves to the New World. The King James I Proclamation of 1625 required
Irish political prisoners be sent overseas and sold to English settlers in the
West Indies. By the mid 1600s, the Irish were the main slaves sold to Antigua
and Montserrat. At that time, 70% of the total population of Montserrat were
Irish slaves.
Ireland quickly became the biggest source of human livestock for
English merchants. The majority of the early slaves to the New World were
actually white.
From 1641 to 1652, over 500,000 Irish were killed by the English
and another 300,000 were sold as slaves. Ireland’s population fell from about
1,500,000 to 600,000 in one single decade. Families were ripped apart as the
British did not allow Irish dads to take their wives and children with them
across the Atlantic. This led to a helpless population of homeless women and
children. Britain’s solution was to auction them off as well.
During the 1650s, over 100,000 Irish children between the ages
of 10 and 14 were taken from their parents and sold as slaves in the West
Indies, Virginia and New England. In this decade, 52,000 Irish (mostly women
and children) were sold to Barbados and Virginia. Another 30,000 Irish men and
women were also transported and sold to the highest bidder. In 1656, Cromwell
ordered that 2,000 Irish children be taken to Jamaica and sold as slaves to
English settlers.
Many people today will avoid calling the Irish slaves what they
truly were: Slaves. They’ll come up with terms like “Indentured Servants” to
describe what occurred to the Irish. However, in most cases from the 17th and
18th centuries, Irish slaves were nothing more than human cattle.
As an example, the African slave trade was just beginning during
this same period. It is well recorded that African slaves, not tainted with the
stain of the hated Catholic theology and more expensive to purchase, were often
treated far better than their Irish counterparts.
African slaves were very expensive during the late 1600s (50
Sterling). Irish slaves came cheap (no more than 5 Sterling). If a planter
whipped or branded or beat an Irish slave to death, it was never a crime. A
death was a monetary setback, but far cheaper than killing a more expensive
African. The English masters quickly began breeding the Irish women for both
their own personal pleasure and for greater profit. Children of slaves were
themselves slaves, which increased the size of the master’s free workforce.
Even if an Irish woman somehow obtained her freedom, her kids would remain
slaves of her master. Thus, Irish moms, even with this new found emancipation,
would seldom abandon their kids and would remain in servitude.
In time, the English thought of a better way to use these women
(in many cases, girls as young as 12) to increase their market share: The
settlers began to breed Irish women and girls with African men to produce
slaves with a distinct complexion. These new “mulatto” slaves brought a higher
price than Irish livestock and, likewise, enabled the settlers to save money
rather than purchase new African slaves. This practice of interbreeding Irish
females with African men went on for several decades and was so widespread
that, in 1681, legislation was passed “forbidding the practice of mating Irish
slave women to African slave men for the purpose of producing slaves for sale.”
In short, it was stopped only because it interfered with the profits of a large
slave transport company.
England continued to ship tens of thousands of Irish slaves for more than a century. Records state that, after the 1798 Irish Rebellion, thousands of Irish slaves were sold to both America and Australia. There were horrible abuses of both African and Irish captives. One British ship even dumped 1,302 slaves into the Atlantic Ocean so that the crew would have plenty of food to eat.
England continued to ship tens of thousands of Irish slaves for more than a century. Records state that, after the 1798 Irish Rebellion, thousands of Irish slaves were sold to both America and Australia. There were horrible abuses of both African and Irish captives. One British ship even dumped 1,302 slaves into the Atlantic Ocean so that the crew would have plenty of food to eat.
There is little question that the Irish experienced the horrors
of slavery as much (if not more in the 17th Century) as the Africans did. There
is, also, very little question that those brown, tanned faces you witness in
your travels to the West Indies are very likely a combination of African and
Irish ancestry. In 1839, Britain finally decided on its own to end its
participation in Satan’s highway to hell and stopped transporting slaves. While
their decision did not stop pirates from doing what they desired, the new law
slowly concluded THIS chapter of nightmarish Irish misery.
But, if anyone, black or white, believes that slavery was only
an African experience, then they’ve got it completely wrong. Irish slavery is a subject worth remembering,
not erasing from our memories.
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