The Irish Slave Trade – The Forgotten “White” Slaves

[Locutus]

Originally published in 2008:

They came as slaves; vast human cargo transported on tall British ships bound for the Americas. They were shipped by the hundreds of thousands and included men, women, and even the youngest of children.

Whenever they rebelled or even disobeyed an order, they were punished in the harshest ways. Slave owners would hang their human property by their hands and set their hands or feet on fire as one form of punishment. They were burned alive and had their heads placed on pikes in the marketplace as a warning to other captives.

We don’t really need to go through all of the gory details, do we? We know all too well the atrocities of the African slave trade.

But, are we talking about African slavery? King James II and Charles I also led a continued effort to enslave the Irish. Britain’s famed Oliver Cromwell furthered this practice of dehumanizing one’s next door neighbor.

The Irish slave trade began when James II sold 30,000 Irish prisoners as slaves to the New World. His 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.


more


The Irish Slave Trade – The Forgotten “White� Slaves | Global Research

 

[Ludlow]

I wonder if they liked red eye gravy

 

[Blackleaf]

.
But, are we talking about African slavery? King James II and Charles I also led a continued effort to enslave the Irish. Britain’s famed Oliver Cromwell furthered this practice of dehumanizing one’s next door neighbor.

The Irish slave trade began when James II sold 30,000 Irish prisoners as slaves to the New World. His 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.

more


The Irish Slave Trade – The Forgotten “White� Slaves | Global Research

What the PC history books don't normally tell you about the Cromwellian Invasion of Ireland:

The English Parliament, victorious in the English Civil War, had several reasons for sending an army to Ireland in 1649.

• An alliance was signed in 1649 between the Irish Confederate Catholics and Charles II (the exiled son of the executed Charles I) and the English Royalists. This allowed for Royalist troops to be sent to Ireland and put the Irish Confederate Catholic troops under the command of Royalist officers led by James Butler, Earl of Ormonde. Their aim was to invade England and restore the monarchy there. This was a threat which the new English Commonwealth (English republic) could not afford to ignore.

• Even if the Confederates had not allied themselves with the Royalists, it is likely that the English Parliament would have eventually tried to reconquer Ireland. They had sent Parliamentary forces to Ireland throughout the Wars of the Three Kingdoms (most of them under Michael Jones in 1647). They viewed Ireland as part of the territory governed by right by the Kingdom of England and only temporarily out of its control since the Irish Rebellion of 1641.

• In addition many Parliamentarians wished to punish the Irish for atrocities against English Protestant settlers during the 1641 Uprising.

• Some Irish towns (notably Wexford and Waterford) had acted as bases from which privateers had attacked English shipping during the 1640s.

• Parliament had raised loans of £10 million under the Adventurers Act to subdue Ireland since 1640, on the basis that its creditors would be repaid with land confiscated from Irish Catholic rebels. To repay these creditors, it would be necessary to conquer Ireland and confiscate such land.

• Cromwell and many of his army were Puritans who considered all Roman Catholics to be heretics and so for them the conquest was partly a crusade. The Irish Confederates had been supplied with arms and money by the Papcy and had welcomed the papal legate Scarampi and later the Papal Nuncio Rinuccini in 1643–49.

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.

The Parliamentarian campaign in Ireland was the most ruthless of the Civil War period. In particular, Cromwell's actions at Drogheda and Wexford earned him a reputation for cruelty.

However, pro-Cromwell accounts argue that Cromwell's actions in Ireland were not excessively cruel by the standards of the day. Cromwell himself argued that his severity when he was in Ireland applied only to "men in arms" who opposed him. Accounts of his massacres of civilians are still disputed.

Formally, Cromwell's command issued in Dublin shortly after his arrival states the following:

I do hereby warn....all Officers, Soldiers and others under my command not to do any wrong or violence toward Country People or any persons whotsoever, unless they be actually in arms or office with the enemy ... as they shall answer to the contrary at their utmost peril.

Cromwell's actions in Ireland occurred in the context of a mutually cruel war. In 1641–42 Irish insurgents in Ulster killed between 4,000 and 12,000 Protestant settlers who had settled on land where the former Catholic owners had been evicted to make way for them. These events were magnified in Protestant propaganda as an attempt by Irish Catholics to exterminate the English Protestant settlers in Ireland. In turn, this was used as justification by English Parliamentary and Scottish Covenant forces to take vengeance on the Irish Catholic population. A Parliamentary tract of 1655 argued that, "the whole Irish nation, consisting of gentry, clergy and commonality are engaged as one nation in this quarrel, to root out and extirpate all English Protestants from amongst them".


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cromwellian_conquest_of_Ireland#Guerrilla_warfare.2C_famine_and_plague

 

[petros]

Are you high?

 

[Blackleaf]

Are you high?

No. I'm not high. I'm not a hippy.

The Irish slave trade began when James II sold 30,000 Irish prisoners as slaves to the New World. His Proclamation of 1625 required Irish political prisoners be sent overseas and sold to English settlers in the West Indies.

The Irish Slave Trade – The Forgotten “White� Slaves | Global Research

BOLLOCKS!

Charles I became the king in 1625, taking over from his father James VI and I. James II wasn't even born until 1633.

Epic failure.

Whoever wrote this nonsensical, factually and historically incorrect article on some mythical Irish slave trade needs to be shot.

"But the Irish were slaves too"

aka Hogan's Law

"The burden of whiteness is this: You can live in the world of myth and be taken seriously." Ta-Nehisi Coates

Debunked: the Global Research article on “Irish Slaves”

It is doubtful that the “author” of this awful Global Research article even exists. John Martin cannot be found. According to Irish Central this ghost with a penchant for the ahistorical is an “Expert”

Let’s break it down.

“The Irish slave trade began when James II sold 30,000 Irish prisoners as slaves to the New World. His proclamation of 1625…“

1. There was no Irish slave trade at this time.

2. James II was born in 1633, eight years after he is supposed to have made this proclamation.

3. The "30,000” claim in relation to the the early 1600s is a ludicrous exaggeration as around 50-60,000 migrated to the New World from Ireland during the entire seventeenth century.

4. The vast majority of Irish who settled in the New World in the 17th century did so voluntarily.

“By the mid 1600s, the Irish were the main slaves sold to Antigua and Montserrat. At that time, 70 percent of the total population of Montserrat were Irish slaves.”

5. The Irish were not slaves in Antigua and Montserrat, they were indentured servants, planters, labourers, craftsmen, merchants etc.

6. Circa 70% of Montserrat was populated by the Irish, it was arguably an Irish pseudo-colony at this time (late seventeenth century). Many of these Irish colonists in Montserrat (a British Overseas Territory) owned slaves, imported slaves and traded slaves, all of whom were African.

“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.”

7. No, indentured servants were not slaves, they had legal rights and their term of service was both temporary and contracted (i.e. most decided to become an indentured servant) Their children were born free.

8. Slaves on the other hand were treated exactly like livestock, and all of these slaves were African.

“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. “

9. A complete fabrication

“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, [Oliver] Cromwell ordered that 2000 Irish children be taken to Jamaica and sold as slaves to English settlers.”

10. Huge exaggeration in numbers. Circa 10,000 were forcibly deported from Ireland during Cromwellian era. They were sold into indentured servitude. All who survived were freed in 1660 at the restoration of the English monarchy. None were chattel slaves.

11. Cromwell made no such deportation order re: 2000 children, but a member of his government infamously did in 1655 (not 1656). Vile as the scheme was, it was never implemented. Read Patrick J. Corish or Professor Nini Rodgers on this.

“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.”

12. A clever lie. It equates the purchase of slaves (lifetime service, own their children, no legal status) with the purchase of the labour contract of a servant (5/6 years service, have to pay freedom dues at the end). Thus obviously slaves cost more.

13. Anti-Catholic sentiment and prejudice was rife at this time but no Catholic was treated worse than a chattel slave. Absurd.

“The Irish were further exploited when the British began to “breed” Irish women - or girls, sometimes as young as 12 - with African males.”

14. Another lie. There is no evidence of this, in fact all of the colonies passed laws on miscegenation that punished voluntary unions between white females and black slaves.

15. Furthermore, the quote that follows about “forbidding the practice of mating Irish slave women to African slave men for the purpose of producing slaves for sale.” gives the impression it is from a primary document, but it is not. It’s a quote from a blog by James F. Cavanaugh from 2003, “Clann Chief Herald of the Kavanagh family”

“In 1839, Britain finally decided on it’s own to end its participation in Satan’s highway to hell and stopped transporting slaves. “

16. Another fabrication and possibly one of the most ahistorical sentences I have ever read.

You can read my complete critique of the “Irish slaves” narrative here

https://www.academia.edu/9475964/The_Myth_of_Irish_Slaves_in_the_Colonies


"But the Irish were slaves too" — Debunked: the Global Research article on "Irish...

 

[55Mercury]

James II came after James VI?

 

[Blackleaf]

James II came after James VI?

James II and VII came after James VI and I. James II and VII was James VI and I's grandson.

James II and VII wasn't even on the throne in 1625, as he wasn't born until 1633. The article is rubbish.

 

[taxslave]

James II and VII came after James VI and I. James II and VII was James VI and I's grandson.

James II and VII wasn't even on the throne in 1625, as he wasn't born until 1633. The article is rubbish.

Funny it doesn't look like something you wrote. The forcible removal of Irish citizens being shipped off to AMerica as indentured slaves is a well documented fact

 

[Blackleaf]

Funny it doesn't look like something you wrote.

It is.

James I is James VI and I.

James II is James II and VII.

James II - whom Locutus's historically inaccurate article claims was behind a Proclamation of 1625 which required Irish political prisoners be sent overseas and sold to English settlers in the West Indies - wasn't actually born until 1633. Charles I came to the English, Scottish and Irish thrones in March 1625, taking over from his father, James VI and I.

The forcible removal of Irish citizens being shipped off to AMerica as indentured slaves is a well documented fact

No, it isn't. It's a well-documented myth. They were indentured servants, not slaves. Unlike black slaves, the Irish had legal rights and their term of service was both temporary and contracted (i.e. most decided to become an indentured servant). Their children were born free.