Note: Sources such as the New York Times, Snopes, and other revisionist Left-wing propaganda sites will call this a myth, but this is true. Calling slavery ‘indentured service’ does not change what happened.
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.
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 2000 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
*I cribbed this from a FaceBook post by a fella named Daniel Wissert.
Note: The author of this story is unknown.
Today is Memorial Day, 2017. It has been a day of mixed emotions for me. Sadness, at all the lives lost in wars. Anger at a nation complacent enough to allow its government to wage perpetual war. Sadness at a populace with far too many citizens ignorant of the meaning of the day. Disgust at the poorly educated college students and graduates who are far too eager to discard the freedom and safety for which more than 1 million Americans gave their lives in favor of socialism. Contempt for a Congress that ignores the clear wishes of the people. All that combined with the desire to choke the living (expletive deleted) out of the company who sent me “Happy Memorial Day” greetings in a sales flier. With that in mind, please understand if I write about something other than Unicorns and puppies today.
My Father taught me and my siblings how to hunt and fish at an early age. We knew how to handle a gun by age 10, and I started at 7. Except for maybe one sister, we all learned early on how to put a worm on a hook. We learned to clean fish and skin squirrels. We never wasted our edible kills and catches, and the family diet was often subsidized with fish, squirrels, venison, and waterfowl. After we kids got old enough, my Mother joined in, and earned a formidable reputation as a crack shot. Any legal deer that got within range of her .243 Remington was destined to become table fare. Some years she shot more deer than my Father.
Having just enjoyed, for the most part, Autumn and Winter in Texas, I am now back in Panama, where Summer never ends. We have two seasons, wet and dry. Dry season is winding down and the rains will soon arrive. Rainy season is not as pleasant as dry season. During the dry, we have breezes most of the time and the temperature rarely rises much above 90F. In fact, the average year round high temp in Panama City is 87F. The highest temp recorded in Panama City for the last 13 years was 102F and the lowest was 68F. The real killer here is humidity. The average humidity in the morning is 91% and 72% in the evening. When July rolls around, we frequently see 90F and 90% humidity and no breeze. Even so, our hottest months can’t hold a candle to July in East Texas. Being close to the equator, our day length is pretty consistent. In December the day is 12 hours long and in July it is 13 hours long, and we don’t mess with it by changing the time twice a year.