Posted on 03/23/2015 9:28:55 AM PDT by Ben Mugged
I am certain we never heard this in school.
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.
You might check these publications, "Without Indentures: Index to White Slave Children in Colonial Court Records" by Richard Hayes Phillips, Ph.D., paperback, 2013, Genealogical Publishing Company, Baltimore, MD. I got a copy several months ago for research. Then there's "To Hell or Barbados: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ireland" by Sean O'Callaghan, paperback, 2001, "The Irish Slaves: Slavery, indenture and Contract labor Among Irish Immigrants" by Rhetta Akamatsu, paperback, 2010 and "They Were White and They Were Slaves: The Untold History of the Enslavement of Whites in Early America" by Michael Hoffman, paperback, 1993.
There are more, but my point, is that the average American only knows about black slaves, who were almost invariably captured and sold into slavery by fellow blacks in Africa by the way.
White privilege much?
Some whites who came to America were indentured servants and they served 7 years. Some were from debtors prison. If a man could not pay his debts he might have to go to prison or I guess to America.
Indentured servitude was a contractual agreement and yes many early black “slaves” were actually indentured servants.
Anthony Johnson was the indentured servant who served his end of the agreement and went on to become the first slave owner in America (he was from Angola)
I have an ancestor who was captured and “enslaved” by the indians twice. The second time he decided to marry within the tribe. The tribe later split with my ancestor’s group choosing to take up farming and living in cabins like whites.
I am Irish and native American Indian! I demand DOUBLE Reparations!
Make that TRIPLE, as I am also a WOMAN!
30,000 Irish in 1625 and now we are overrun with them.
My Irish Catholics came in 1720 as indentured servants to the Livingston planation south of Renssalaer, NY...
Watch the old Errol Flynn movie “Captain Blood.” In it the supports of those who were rebelling against the king were captured and condemned to be sent to the British colonies in the Carribbean and to be SOLD AS SLAVES. Thus, English men being sold as slaves to other Englishment in the New World.
And you are correct about indentured servitude.
Irish blight on our Anglo-Saxon nation.
We should have picked our own damn tobacco.
We studied this in eighth grade history. I suspect it was long ago ditched from the school curriculum.
Yes, the standard narrative of slavery in America is very slapdash and only approximately true.
You’ve documented white Europeans being held as chattel slaves, and mentioned a single black slave-owner (ironically, if your account is correct, the first slave owner in what became the United States), but there were many (not so many as white slave-owners, but enough that the account of the dynamics of slavery as purely racist in basis is dubious), and another poster mentioned American Indians holding slaves. Look up the documentation of the Trail of Tears deportation to Oklahoma, and you’ll find that a great many Indians were accompanied by their slaves.
And, there were free blacks in the antebellum South who weren’t slave-owners.
My German ancestor came from Rotterdam on the slave ship Sally as an indentured servant. His wife came from Ireland as a slave who he bought out of bondage. He fought in the revolutionary war and their son fought in the war of 1812.
Like me, you get your facts from old h’wood movies I see. LOL! Historically, blacks don’t have the market cornered on “slavesmanship”.
You forgot to mention blacks were valued at 10x the dollar amount as white indentured servants, so there were fewer blacks under servitude than whites. Frequently owners would breed 10 white women to one black slave.
Which explains the lines from the Irish rebel song "The Men Behind the Wire":
'Round the world the truth will echo,
Cromwell's men are here again,
England's name again is sullied
In the eyes of honest men.
Indentured servants and chattel slaves were quite different, both in practice and in law. Chattel slaves were slaves for life and their offspring became slaves for life. There was no escape unless they were freed by their owners.
Indenture servants were released from their contract at a period of time stipulated in the contract. In most colonies they received a piece of land and farm implements when they released from their indenture. Their children were not bound under the indenture. The most common form of indenture came from the debt that was owed to a ship owner whom had provided passage to the New World. The ship captain would sell the indenture to planters who needed laborers. When those servants had worked off their debt, they became free.
Old Ben’s Kraut ancestor came to NY as an indentured servant. Lucky thing for him (or unlucky), the Brit who was running the operation was incompetent and the whole thing went belly up.
Rather than feed his German laborers he “set them free” at the edge of the wilderness.
I was wondering why all the british here at work were not wearing green on st. patricks day last week.
Now I know why!
Orange.
You’re supposed to wear orange on St. Patrick’s day.
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