The Irish Slave Trade – The Forgotten “White” Slaves The Slaves That Time Forgot

Let me see...

So what is the reality about the history of Irish unfree colonial labor?

While the majority of Irish people who became indentured servants in the colonies did so willingly (why they felt they had to so is, of course, another question), a not insignificant number were forcibly deported and sold into indentured servitude. This peaked just after the brutal Cromwellian conquest of Ireland when there were orders given in multiple counties to round up and deport those who, it was claimed, could not support themselves.

So there were both voluntary and involuntary servants. What's the difference?
The laws were the same. Both were treated as servants and had a predetermined length of time to serve before they were freed. In Barbados the customary length of time to serve in the 1650s was between five or seven years, but in 1661 a new law was introduced that reduced this to between four to two years. This "custom" was altered by colonial administrators to attract servants to migrate to their colonies and it was also used to single out the Irish when they were not wanted. In 1655 harsh laws were passed in Virginia that targeted Irish servants who arrived in the colony without indentures. These terms for adults were two years longer than those that applied to other "Christian servants," and three years longer for those under 1​6 years of age. But by 1660 (the Restoration) the law was repealed.

Meanwhile, you're telling me that some Irish people profited directly and indirectly from the Caribbean slave trade?

Yes, absolutely. In Ireland it was mainly indirect via the provisions trade. It primarily benefited the Protestant Ascendancy, the Catholic elites, and the Catholic middle class who dominated trade in the cities. Many of our merchants (whether Catholic, Protestant, Huguenot, or Quaker) made fortunes trading with all of the slavocracies in the Caribbean. Shoes for enslaved people were manufactured in Belfast; and as mainly poor Irish Catholic tenants were forced off the land to make way for livestock, butter, beef, and pork were salted and exported to the colonies in enormous quantities via Cork, Dublin, Waterford, and Limerick.

So Irish peasants lost their land to make way for cattle, which was then exported by Irish landlords to feed enslaved peoples, who didn't grow food of their own because the land was too valuable for making sugar. And then presumably Irish people bought sugar and rum?

Yes, the provisions exported from Ireland fed slaves, servants, overseers, and planters. Herring, pork, beef, and butter and so on. One cut of beef exported out of Cork was known as "Planters Beef." And in the other direction a flood of slave-produced goods were sold in Ireland (sugar, tobacco, etc.). Every newspaper in Ireland in the 18th century carries adverts for sugar from Barbados or Jamaica being sold by a local grocer. By 1770 the Irish market absorbed nearly 90 percent of Antigua's total rum exports and in 1774 Dublin imported 108,821 gallons of rum from Antigua. Many merchants in the colonies paid for their Irish provisions in slave produce.

No, the Irish Were Not Slaves Too

Historian Liam Hogan has spent the last six years debunking the Irish slave myth.

I already know that some folks won't believe it because it doesn't come from FOX or Stormfront.

Edit: Before you start throwing things, you should read this How the Irish Became White. I have. #ADOS

Double Post

a reply to: Lumenari

An excellent OP that hits close to home for me, as I am Cherokee and Irish. My Irish side came to America as "indentured servants" in the early 1700's.

So similar to my family, Iroquois and Irish. My family came around 1650's.
There is a diary of the accounts of the time that was written about my family. There is a church in Maryland that has it under lock and key. I have tried everything to get a copy of it with no luck. I've even offered to pay for the service, nothing.

nvm

Ah, the guilt trip again. YOU WILL FEEL GUILTY. Your ancestors did this, it's your fault. Paying reparation is only to assuage your guilt.
It doesn't matter that your ancestors were "slaves" "indentured servants" or any other term for servitude. You will be blamed.
I live in England and I want reparations from Denmark and the Nordic countries for all the wealth and "slaves" they extorted through Danegeld.
There is REAL slavery NOW, fight for them not ghosts from the past.

a reply to: contextual

The point is slavery isn’t owned by any race colour or religion it’s been around as long as mankind’s been around and always will be.

a reply to: ElectricUniverse


Respect

You can look at the 19th Century starving of the Irish then forcing them into prison camps (new style factory settlements in Englands north like Manchester) as another form of slavery prepetrated by Westminster.

Prior to sourcing this modern group of slaves Westminster and their Lordy cronies had been encouraging local English and Scottish to leave Britain as they literally were in the way of agricultural development and as thhe working classes population increased they just sent them abroad to settle the Americas etc.

Suddenly this new thing developed the industrial revolution................... Trouble was for the ruling elite they'd just kicked out the native population overseas to the new colonies and workers for the new factories were so thin on the scene. They needed an answer, Bingo!!!!!!!! Irish!!!!

Starve em then encourage them abroad in that good old fashioned way as practised a generation earlier with their own, as industry kicked off a new people came to dominate the western half of England and Scotland manning the factories, building the industrial infrastructure. Virtually everone in these regions today has Irish family or decent and the way this industrial program was orchestrated by the English elite is similar to the slavery seen in the USA

a reply to: Lumenari

Rebelling??
If my family history is right, my ancestor came as an indentured servant , and I really think the blacks at that time were considered the same... till that freed servant mentioned above came up with the idea that he should be able to own his servant along with any children that servant might father..
Well, the servants, both white and black, really didnt like the conditions they were living in and they put on one heck of a rebellion. They didnt serve the complete time they were supposed to. If the Irish and the black slaves descendants deserve reparations then so dont the palantine germans.

I know from research my mom has done that half of our family on each side came from Ireland in the 1700s. One part (dad's dad) were Swede and mom's grandmother's family was English/Scottish. Along the way my mom's biological dad's grandmother was full Cherokee, that would have been in the mid-1800s.

Why people are so hung up on who did what to whom is beyond me. People have been trained in the last few decades to believe they are owed something for things that happened to their ancestors. They refuse to understand just how lucky we are to have been born in the USA when we were, with the freedoms and rights we have today. The bottom line is, people suck. Always have, always will.

a reply to: paraphi

False, what you are claiming is the historical revisionism. White people have been also enslaved, white women were raped, and murders were common and completely legal. The Irish, before the IRA, were fighting to be free from the English, that does not make them criminals. what you are claiming is the same as claiming that any black man or women whom wanted freedom and tried to flee were all "criminals..." They were not criminals, and neither were the Irish slaves.

White people were slaves.

No argument can be mounted against that indisputable fact.

For some reason, leftists are GUTTED about it. What a surprise.

Just pointing out the obvious, but if the OP really just wanted to tell a forgotten historical story. There was no need to attempt to equate it with African slavery..

The story is just as interesting either way...


Well unless someone is more interested in down playing African slavery than sharing the story of Irish indentured servants..



The funniest part is I bet people think people do not notice lol..

a reply to: JustJohnny

You know there is good reason to think that the slave trade routes the Muslims had over the Sahara were actually more brutal than the slave ships over the Atlantic. Not only did they force march mostly women and children over that route because they didn't want many grown men, but the conditions of the march were arguably worse and more likely died between the two - weaker stock and worse conditions.

But, of course, it's only the European slave trade over the Atlantic that anyone cares about these days. I wonder why? Maybe because it's not politically correct to point out that the Africans were more than happy to sell their own to anyone who was buying and everyone was buying. Some countries in Africa today still buy and sell each other.

a reply to: Breakthestreak

I'm considered a leftist and I am not gutted about it in the least. Slavery and indentured servants was the main component of society and economy that our modern day concept of employment came from. And colonial america treated both classes the same weather they were black African slaves shipped over from Africa. criminals out of British prisons, political prisoners or captives of war, immigrants that were flooding England, or just some of the many poor that filled the workhouses. The amount of time that they would serve might be different according to what class they came from but at the start, they were all assured their freedom as long as they served the time to the masters satisfaction. And it took an African slave that was brought over by the slave traders and sold into indentured servitude fighting in court for the permanent ownership of his own servant after he was freed, probably given his own tract of land since that was customary along with other provisions, that opened up the possibility of lifelong enslavement. And, it was probably the ugliness of the system that developed after that point that brought about the transformation into an employment economy, or it at least played a role.
That's history, or at least my understanding of it. Instead of looking at it as a great evil brought onto our ancestors or a shame that we are somehow responsible for. Maybe we should just celebrate that as much as we think our lives suck...we have it so much better than our ancestors did!

a reply to: Breakthestreak

No one is surprised by that fact...


Relatively All the historians, college professors, exc lean left..

Now you can say that is because of some vast conspiracy, while I would say that conservative propaganda is just really easy to see through for anyone who has been taught the list of logical fallacies.. aka things that sound good, but mean nothing..

But it is irrelevant..


It is only in rightwing world where no one knows basically every race and culture kept and were slaves at some point..


Hell at one point slavery was way better than them killing everyone..

Hell the very first time it might have been the defeated parties idea...


“Ok, you won.. but how about we work for you and you don’t kill us?!?”



Here is the difference..


African slavery was HERE and less than 2 life times ago.. quite a bit less..


Almost No African American before the last generation received ANY benefit from their fire fathers labor.. zero..

None inherited a business, land or anything else..

And the rapes.... well we all know what happens when you give males god like power over females.. the rapes would have been universal and besides pissing off the white women, were 100% legal ..


Then you have the fact the worst of it wasn’t slavery.. during slavery there was a financial benefit in being semi decent to your slaves..


After abolition that reason was gone AND then south blamed them for the civil war..


Then the reconstruction became unpopular and all of America blamed them for the war..


North and south kinda reconciled by agreeing it was all the slaves fault for not knowing their place... and yes that was specificities said by the elected politicians of the time.

AND ALL OF THAT ONLY ENED 50 YEARS AGO..


Half of one life time..


That is why some obscure reference to the distant past is relatively meaningless..

a reply to: JustJohnny

And here is the logical fallacy that you overlook.

How many of us whites actually inherited something from our forefathers that is making us richer than they are?

That's just plain dumb. Most of us don't inherit much of anything from our families, and yet our outcomes are better. The persistent belief that we all inherit what we have instead of having worked for our entire lifetimes (from education to career) for it and that blacks were denied that mystical inheritance while they sit around and persist in not acting white (shunning education and career), largely explains many of the differences in outcome.

a reply to: JustJohnny

As far as the rapes and god like powers..

That was something that every women experienced, her god was her husband! The slaves were freed before that grip over women was loosened, if he was a Male slave, he was given the right to vote before her. Sure, some states tried to find ways to take that right from him.. but, he had the right to vote, according to the constitution.
Women, it seems, in just about every area of the world, has had the longest duration of enslavement, proclaimed by god himself at the beginning of time if you believe any of the predominate religions of the world.

According to liberal Democrats there were no such thing as white slaves.

And its actually insensitive and borderline racist.

The only enemy are white people, that is why they can only refer to everyone they disagree with as a nazi..

Because white nazis are the only reference they can use.

If any other culture committed such horrible acts there was a reason, or they are held to lower standards., not civilized..

Welcome to loserville



.

a reply to: Bloodworth

No, I can accept someone who doesnt agree with me isnt a nazi. But when someone is marching down the street carrying tiki torches shouting Jews will not replace us, have nazi symbolism all over the place, I'm sorry but they are nazis! When white separatist talk about their future all white homeland they want... they are nazis.
When people post threads griping that white women aren't having enough kids and the white race is dying out, they are spreading the same propaganda as the nazis did..
And, when the Republican party accepts these types of people within their ranks and only speaks out against them when some current event forces the to disassociate with them... I have my suspicions of the Republican party.