The Slaves That Time Forgot
By John Martin
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? After all, 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 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.
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 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 it’s own to end it’s 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. But, where are our public (and PRIVATE) schools???? Where are the history books? Why is it so seldom discussed?
Do the memories of hundreds of thousands of Irish victims merit more than a mention from an unknown writer? Or is their story to be one that their English pirates intended: To (unlike the African book) have the Irish story utterly and 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.
http://afgen.com/forgotten_slaves.html
just a guess. they are left out of the history books because it is very easy to say that just black people were slaves, which helps out the whole racism thing that they have been perpetuating for quite some time. they make pretty quick work of the natives all over the americas who were enslaved on their own land. the white man is a “discoverer” and an “explorer” in their story so having them enslave other white people just doesn’t fit the narrative. by “they” i of course mean “the man” looking for proof? i have none. go read a book.
Thanks for this. Another issue that directly affected my ancestors in early America was slavery. They were white, but because they could not compete with slave labor, they ended up on the frontier fighting the Indians, unwittingly giving the Rich White Man the way West over time. Today, my ancestors are not heralded as pioneers, or working-class refugees from a plantation slavestate, but reviled as ‘hillbillies’, ‘rednecks’, and ‘white trash’. Let the truth be told.
Please look back and read my previous comments and respond with your open and unbiased opinions. I am looking for honesty and a debate on our future not our past. I will not pass judgment on anything anyone has to say and I am open to all ways of thinking.
Happy St. Patrick’s Day
Kiss Me, I’m IRISH
The reason there’s little mention is simple: we’re white. Europe is treated as one country for the purposes of equality in American history. If pale and white was different than lumping everyone together as Caucasian, there might be some outrage and demonstrations from non-Irish.
Sorry, but this article is false and badly sourced. Africans were still the first slaves: the first cargo of African slaves was brought over in 1619, 6 years before James II’s proclamation. Also, this statement–“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” is also blatantly false. Not only is it not “well recorded,” scholars to my knowledge have never made this claim. Winthrop Jordan’s famous “Black Over White” talks about racism against blacks existing since the medieval period. They may not have been hated Catholics, but they were far worse–they were pagans, thought to be quite possibly in league with the devil. Finally, the Irish were either convicts or indentured servants. Both had expiration dates–ie, they were not slaves for life. Indentured servants usually had about 7 years, and with convicts it varied with their sentences. But African slaves were not only slaves for life, they swiftly became HEREDITARY slaves: their children were enslaved at birth as well. Sure, indentured servitude and convict labor were extremely harsh, and the treatment was often very similar to slavery, but there were fundamental differences. It is certainly important to recognize that the color line assigning blackness to slavery and whiteness to freedom only came about in the 18th century (see Edmund Morgan’s “American Slavery, American Freedom), but this article is making some major errors.
There were no slaves, black or white, in the American colonies until 1654. Instead, both blacks and whites were indentured servants. However, this was a year before Henry Cromwell’s decree that these Irish women and children, who had been families of political prisoners, should be enslaved in Barbados. So I suspect he intended they should be slaves for life. They died there anyway, from the heat.
Your an idiot Ali Weiss, youve contradicted yourself and the above artical you nob head.
UP THE RA
Mr. Weiss, respectfully, you are wrong on at least one critical point. The Irish WERE slaves for the most part, not indentured. Whether this was hereditary I do not know. However, most scholars at this point (at least the ones not trying to be popular and cool by referencing blacks as the only oppressed race in America and calling everyone that disagrees with them “racist”) agree that the majority of Irish were dragged to the carribean as slaves. In fact, the present theory is that the “indentured” angle was a false theory that evolved over time, as the English sought to justify/hide the flagrancy of their abuses. Likewise with the “convicts” angle. I’m a touch disturbed that anyone would actually buy that one. Oh, yes, legitimate “convicts” that violated laws they agreed to with fair access to a justice system; ah yes Mr. Weiss, has the crown yet informed you that you jews were always her majesties favorites!!! Cheerio dear, kind Mr. Weiss (a sucker born every minute).
Mr. Weiss you call the irish slaves convicts? Convicts in the respect that they violated the crown’s laws against their language, religion and culture. If you consider people striving to maintain their identity as a people criminals then I pray for the day your mind opens and allows you to accept simple logic. Tiocfaidh ar la!
You are very uninformed. Blacks were not the first slaves or slavs as the status originally meant. The word slave is a corruption of the word Slav. They are the White eastern European and the first slaves and that is where the term comes from
. Africans were the last race to be en slav ed, that is why the word stuck. The term White slave is redundant. This may be painful for some but it i the truth. Don’t take it from me read your history
I believe that slaves have been forever. If you have time, review the real story of Caesar. He has his own story in history, not the real one. He destroyed and enslaved all nationalities and groups possible. How do you think the Romans got their gold? Romans didn’t produce, they stole. For example, Celts. They had over, I recall 470 gold mines. Caesar got rid of them and took the gold. The gold mine count is from an article in European Video. On a side note. The Romans were the barbarians. If you didn’t like your kid take him and throw him on a pile. True. On one occasion, a group of Celts asked permission to travel through Roman territory to get to another city. Rome said no. So, they went through the mountains and the Romans slaughtered them. This group had a list of all citizens. A census. It was used to be sure all were fed and provided with shelter. Is that a barbarous people? There was one Sultan that had been attacked and beat Romans back twice with two different leaders. So, the next time he was attacked he kept the leader in a prison till he died. Romans didn’t try anymore. Also, Caesar captured the German leader, Romanised him, supposedly and sent him back to rule as a Roman. But, instead, he arranged for a legion of Romans to help him put down an uprising. None of the Romans returned to Rome.
The battle site was foundseveral years ago with Roman soldiers gold payment coins strewn everywhere. The guy who found them, got tired of documenting the locations there were so many. Later, the son of the Roman leader wiped out the guys family, took him back to Rome and killed him as an example. The Germans were not barbarians.
The slavers were Jew not English.
A lot of the slave masters were Irish and Scottish. That is a recorded fact. A lot of the slave ships were Dutch.
They were Scot-Irish or Irish Protestant. The aforementioned group the author of this article is speaking of are Irish Catholic. Irish Protestants were brought over from Great Britain after Cromwell forced the Irish of their land. Irish Protestants or typically of Scottish or English descent.
Most protestants were moved from Scotland to Ireland by King James of Scotland before he became King of England. He tried to encourage English people to move to Ireland, but they were not interested in moving.