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IRISH: THE FORGOTTEN WHITE SLAVES
Source: http://goo.gl/LQ9JTW
They came as slaves: human cargo transported on 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. Some 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 VI and Charles I
also led a continued effort to enslave the Irish. Britain’s Oliver
Cromwell furthered this practice of dehumanizing one’s next door
neighbour.
The Irish slave trade began when James VI 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.
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.
African slaves were very expensive during the late 1600s (£50
Sterling). Irish slaves came cheap (no more than £5 Sterling). If a
planter whipped, 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 mothers, even with this new
found emancipation, would seldom abandon their children and would
remain in servitude.
In time, the English thought of a better way to use these women to
increase their market share: The settlers began to breed Irish women
and girls (many as young as 12) 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 the Irish experienced the horrors of slavery
as much (if not more, in the 17th Century) as the Africans did. There
is also 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 it’s 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 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.
But, why is it so seldom discussed? Do the memories of hundreds of
thousands of Irish victims not merit more than a mention from an
unknown writer?
Or is their story to be the one that their English masters intended:
To completely disappear as if it never happened.
None of the Irish victims ever made it back to their homeland to
describe their ordeal. These are the lost slaves; the ones that time
and biased history books conveniently forgot.
Vía AMERICAN KABUKI
http://americankabuki.
Share this:
Source: http://goo.gl/LQ9JTW
They came as slaves: human cargo transported on 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. Some 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 VI and Charles I
also led a continued effort to enslave the Irish. Britain’s Oliver
Cromwell furthered this practice of dehumanizing one’s next door
neighbour.
The Irish slave trade began when James VI 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.
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.
African slaves were very expensive during the late 1600s (£50
Sterling). Irish slaves came cheap (no more than £5 Sterling). If a
planter whipped, 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 mothers, even with this new
found emancipation, would seldom abandon their children and would
remain in servitude.
In time, the English thought of a better way to use these women to
increase their market share: The settlers began to breed Irish women
and girls (many as young as 12) 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 the Irish experienced the horrors of slavery
as much (if not more, in the 17th Century) as the Africans did. There
is also 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 it’s 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 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.
But, why is it so seldom discussed? Do the memories of hundreds of
thousands of Irish victims not merit more than a mention from an
unknown writer?
Or is their story to be the one that their English masters intended:
To completely disappear as if it never happened.
None of the Irish victims ever made it back to their homeland to
describe their ordeal. These are the lost slaves; the ones that time
and biased history books conveniently forgot.
Vía AMERICAN KABUKI
http://americankabuki.
Share this:
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