| Submit your comments on this article | |
| Home Front: Culture Wars | |
| Where are my Reparations? The slaves that time forgot | |
| 2014-12-28 | |
| Re: Source. Blind pig, mushroom. Don't get your Irish up with me! [DAILYKOS] We've all been taught the horror's [sic] of the African slave trade. It's in all the school books and in plenty of Hollywood movies. But for some reason the largest group of slaves in the British Colonies in the 17th Century doesn't get mentioned at all: the Irish. Don't forget the English. You know? Duke of Monmouth? Judge Jeffereys? Read Captain Blood, dammit. Most people have heard of the Great Famine, which reduced the population of Ireland by around 25%. That pales in comparison to the disaster that England inflicted upon Ireland between 1641 and 1652, when the population of Ireland fell from 1,466,000 to 616,000. Then things got worse. What to do with the Irish? From the Tudor reconquest of Ireland until Irish Independence in 1921, the English puzzled over the problem of what to do with all those Irish people. They were the wrong religion. They spoke the wrong language. But the big problem was that there were just too many of them. The English had been practicing a slow genocide against the Irish since Queen Elizabeth, but the Irish bred too fast and were tough to kill. On the other side of the Atlantic, there was a chronic labor shortage (because the local natives tended to die out too quickly in slavery conditions). Putting two and two together, King James I started sending Irish slaves to the new world. The first recorded sale of Irish slaves was to a settlement in the Amazon in 1612, seven years before the first African slaves arrived in Jamestown. The Proclamation of 1625 by James II made it official policy that all Irish political prisoners be transported to the West Indies and sold to English planters. Soon Irish slaves were the majority of slaves in the English colonies.
| |
| Posted by:Hupineger Glomomp7489 |
| #7 40 acres and a mule |
| Posted by: Alaska Paul 2014-12-28 23:25 |
| #6 Irish slavery gave way to "indentured servitude." The Irish could come here and work for a given number of years and then earn their way out of servitude. My great grandfather did just that in the early 1800s. He worked for a time in America to earn his freedom. His wife and children stayed in Ireland to come later. Unfortunately, his two girls died in Ireland before they could get here. His wife did make it here. They were grateful to be here. The African-Americans should quit whining and get on with life. Quit being victims. |
| Posted by: JohnQC 2014-12-28 09:19 |
| #5 Oh, and just remember "...to the shores of Tripoli". While the captain and passengers of a pirated ship were ransomed, the average seaman was just another sell in the African slave market. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2014-12-28 08:50 |
| #4 But the numbers of the Irish were much smaller. They soon gravitated toward local gov't jobs, such as law enforcement and fire departments...... oh wait ! |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2014-12-28 04:47 |
| #3 This throws a monkey wrench into the reparations mantra, eh? |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2014-12-28 01:05 |
| #2 Try this on for size The English trade in Irish Slaves in the New World White and Black Slaves in the Sugar Plantations of Barbados. 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. The first slaves imported into the American colonies were 100 White children. They arrived during Easter, 1619, four months before the arrival of a the first shipment of Black slaves.Mainstream histories refer to these laborers as indentured servants, not slaves, because many agreed to work for a set period of time in exchange for land and rights. Yet in reality, indenture was enslavement, since slavery applies to any person who is bought and sold, chained and abused, whether for a decade or a lifetime. Many white people died long before their indenture ended or found that no court would back them when their owners failed to deliver on promises. In the 17th Century, from 1600 until 1699, there were many more Irish sold as slaves than Africans Tens of thousands of convicts, beggars, homeless children and other undesirable English, Scottish, and Irish lower class were transported to America against their will to the Americas on slave ships. You read that right: Slave ships. References: John P. Prendergast, The Cromwellian Settlement of Ireland, Dublin, 1865 Thomas Addis Emmet, Ireland Under English Rule, NY & London,Putnam, 1903 Prendergast, The Conwellian Settlment of Ireland Richard Ligon, A True and Exact History of Barbadoes, London, Cass, 1657, reprinted 1976 Sean O’Callaghan, To Hell or Barbados: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ireland, (Dingle, Ireland: Brandon, 2001) James F. Cavanaugh, Clan Chief Herald For Mather’s account of the case, see Cotton Mather, Memorable Providences, Relating ToWitchcrafts And Possessions (1689) |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2014-12-28 01:03 |
| #1 Reparations? Have to buy off half of Boston at a minimum, and most police and fire in the east coast cities. |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2014-12-28 00:55 |