The Irish slave trade began when James II sold 30,000 Irish captives as slaves to the New World. His Proclamation of 1625 required that Irish political prisoners be sent abroad and sold to English settlers in the Caribbean. From the mid-17th century, the Irish made up the majority of slaves traded in Antigua and Montserrat. By that time, 70% of the total population of Montserrat were Irish slaves. Ireland quickly became the largest source of livestock for English traders. Most of the first slaves sent to the New World were in fact white. The population of Ireland fell from about 1,500,000 to 600,000 in just one decade. Let’s remember in more detail how it happened… Families were divided because the British did not allow Irish fathers to take their wives and children with them to the Atlantic. This has led to homeless women and children. The British solution to this problem was to auction them off. During this decade, 52,000 Irish (mostly women and children) were smuggled into Barbados and Virginia. A further 30,000 Irish men and women were transported and sold to bidders. In 1656, Cromwell ordered 2,000 Irish children to be sent to Jamaica and sold as slaves to English settlers. Many people today avoid calling the Irish slaves what they really were: slaves. They came up with the idea of calling them “Indentured Servants” to describe what was happening to the Irish. However, in most cases from the 17th and 18th centuries onwards, Irish slaves were nothing more than human cattle. For example, the African slave trade had just begun during this period. It is well known that African slaves, untainted by the hated Catholic faith and sold at a higher price, were treated much better than their Irish counterparts. African slaves were very expensive at the end of the 17th century (£50), but Irish slaves were cheap (no more than £5). If a planter beat, branded, or beat an Irish slave to death, it was never considered a crime. The death of a slave was a monetary issue, but it was much cheaper than killing a more expensive African. English masters quickly began breeding Irish women for both personal pleasure and greater profit. The children of slaves were themselves slaves who added to the master’s labor force. Thus, Irish mothers, even despite this emancipation, rarely left their children and remained in slavery. began crossing Irish women and girls with African men to create a special type of slave. These new “mulatto” slaves were worth more than Irish cattle and also allowed settlers to save money by purchasing new African slaves. This practice of interbreeding Irish women with African men continued for several decades and was so widespread that in 1681 a law was passed “prohibiting the practice of mating Irish female slaves with African male slaves for the purpose of producing slaves for sale.” In short, he was stopped only because it affected the profits of a large slave transport company. England continued to send tens of thousands of Irish slaves for over a century. Records show that after 1798, the year of the Irish Rebellion, thousands of Irish slaves were sold to America and Australia. There were terrible abuses of both African and Irish prisoners: one British ship even drowned 1,302 slaves in the Atlantic so that the crew would have more food. There is no doubt that the Irish suffered the horrors of slavery just as much (if not more so) in the 17th century than Africans. Another very small issue is that those brown, dark faces that you may see while traveling in the West Indies are most likely a combination of African and Irish ancestry. In 1839, Britain finally decided on its own to stop participating in this terrible act. . and stop transporting slaves. Although their decision did not stop the pirates. Why is this so rarely talked about? Do the memories of hundreds of thousands of Irish victims deserve more than the mention of an unknown author? Or is their history, as the English pirates wanted: (unlike the African) should completely and completely disappear, as if it had never existed. Not a single Irish victim was ever able to return to their homeland to talk about the suffering that befell them. These are the lost slaves, the ones that time and partisan history books have conveniently forgotten. Slave work. Other prisoners of war, as well as political dissidents captured in the conquered regions of England, Wales and Scotland, were also sent to permanent settlement in Barbados as slaves. Essentially, this allowed Cromwell to purge the population of any hostile elements, as well as provide a profitable source of income by selling them to plantation owners. represented among the island’s population, about 21,700 of them were of European origin. Later, as the African slave trade began to expand and prosper, the number of Irish slaves in Barbados declined rapidly over time, partly because many of them died of labor soon after their arrival, and also as a result of racial mixing with black slaves, as opposed to a small number whites. While there were indentured servants in Barbados who could at least theoretically hope for eventual freedom, no matter how difficult their temporary slavery may have been, the white slaves had no such hope. In fact, they were treated the same as African slaves in every conceivable way. Irish slaves in Barbados were considered property that could be bought, sold and disposed of as they saw fit. Their children also inherited slavery for life. Punitive violence such as flogging was widely used against Irish slaves and was often used immediately after their arrival to brutally secure their status as slaves and also as a warning against future disobedience. . “quality”. “From each captive to future buyers, what became famous in black slave markets was also practiced against white slaves and indentured servants in the Caribbean and North American colonies. Irish slaves were separated from their free white relatives. the owner’s initials, which were applied with a hot iron on the forearm for women and on the buttocks for men. Irish women in particular were considered a superior commodity by white slave owners, who purchased them as sexual concubines. The rest were eventually sold. to local brothels. The degrading practice of sexual slavery made Irish men, women and children potential victims of the perverted whims of many disgusting buyers. In fact, the fate of white slaves was no better than that of captured Africans. Sometimes due to economic This was especially true throughout much of the 17th century, as white captives were worth much less on the slave market than their African counterparts, and were therefore treated much worse because they were considered convenient, disposable labor. Only later did black slaves become a cheaper product. . In a report dating from 1667, the Irish of Barbados are mercilessly described as: “Poor people who are simply allowed not to die… they are ridiculed by the blacks and called the Epithet white slaves.” A 1695 report written by the island’s governor openly states that they worked “under the scorching sun without shirts, shoes or stockings” and were “mercilessly oppressed and used like dogs.” The Irish of that time were well aware that deportation or “Barbados” to the Caribbean meant a life of slavery. In many cases, it was common for white slaves in Barbados to have mulatto or black overseers, who often treated captured Irish slaves with extreme cruelty. In fact: Mulatto drivers took pleasure in flogging whites. This gave them a sense of power as well as a form of rebellion against their white masters. Raising Slave Children Mixed Race White slave girls, often starting at age 12, were used as “breeders” and were forcibly mated with black men. a widespread threat faced by aristocratic planters. This type of rebellion occurred in November 1655 when a group of Irish slaves and servants escaped along with several blacks and attempted to incite a general revolt among the slaves against their masters. This was quite a serious threat that aristocratic planters faced. threat to. to justify the deployment of the militia, which eventually routed the rebels in a fierce battle. Before their deaths, they inflicted significant damage on the ruling plantation class by cutting several slave owners to pieces in retaliation for their slavery. They failed to completely burn down the sugar cane fields they were forced to work in to enrich their masters. and their heads then rose at the launches for everyone to see. On the market. As a result of the dramatic increase in black slave migration to Barbados, coupled with high Irish mortality rates and racial mixing, the number of white slaves who had once made up the majority of the population in 1629 was reduced to an ever smaller minority. by 1786. Today it is only a miniature but still significant community among the local population of Barbados, including descendants of Scots-Irish slaves who continue to bear witness to a tragic legacy. of their chained Celtic ancestors. This small group on the predominantly black island of Barbados is known locally as the “Redlegs”, which was originally a derogatory nickname, understood in the same context as the slur “redneck”, and derived from the tanned skin of the early white slaves, which was unusual. . Caribbean tropical climate.To this day, a community of about 400 people still lives in the northeastern part of the island in the ecclesiastical parish of St. John and strongly resists racial mixing with the numerically superior black population, despite living. in extreme poverty. None of the Irish slaves returned to their homeland to tell of their suffering. These are the forgotten slaves. Popular history books avoid mentioning them.
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