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
you racist ignarant idiots
i am irish i am white
none of what you have said ever happend
dont tell me my history you sick evil people
i am an irish rasta and to tell me that the horrors thats happened to our ppl didnt happen is sick and evil
im irish and white and i have been researching this for a while. i have read british recordsand those of the west indies and irish white slavery certainly did happen we are just in denial because as a nation we are embarressed and would rather forget and deny its existence. Maybe try reading some books
ash……………its apparent ‘who’ the ignorant fool is…….
You dont Capitalize, you dont use correct English, you dont put periods at the end of your obvious naive sentences, and you my dear idiot……are not able to carry on a coherent sentence if you tried……..
Its obvious that you are nothing more than a young twit attempting to worship at the feets of ‘another’, rather than to actually look into anything that would ‘educate’ you on your racial identity…….
Its White Fools like you that will continue to destroy the racial consciences of the rest of us out here…….
You ARE White Trash……..you are the White-nigger…..you have pledged your allegiance to ‘another’…..a ‘stranger’…….
and its White people like you, my dear, that need to be eradicated/annihilated out of the White gene-pool……….
Amen to that!!!
That attitude dosn’t help. He’s ignorant and prefers to stay that way.. My first reply was against him and I didn’t use capitals or commas in my writing. Its not about spelling its about opinion. I don’t agree with him, the opposite in fact, but your reply is uncalled for and makes you know better than him. Using the words eradicate and annihilate not needed. He needs to be educated true but not attacked. Its his problem that he’s ignorant to the truth not yours.
Poor Ash…. Im Irish too & it appears to me that you really havent bothered to look at your own history. Thats really really sad. Perhaps you should.
dear ash smoke 2 js in the morning smoke 2 js at night, in between read a few history books,the planet contains one race, the human.
This story of white servitude is hidden and they represent (AT LEAST) 1/2 to 2/3 of the first settlers of the America colony.
They were temporary chattel.
You had the :
– Redemptioners ( specially the Germans who came with all their family but the family members were frequently sold to different masters);
– The Indentured Servants who sold themselves for a better life and a better place to live; they were lured with false promises ie “A land of milk and Honey is waiting for you in the new world”; and London was characterized by high poverty, famine and was “infested” with plagues…
– The kidnapped people of London, Bristol and Liverpool (Men, Women, Children); It was a Royal policy : POOR RELIEF;
– The poors and vagrants (Men, Women, Children) of the United Kingdom;
– The loose or lewd women (prostitutes);
– The convicts and criminals; who were highly preferred by planters because they were bound for 14 years at least; The child servants were praised for the same reason ( long period of bondage)…Maryland and Virginia were convicts’ states…
– The war prisoners ie Irish and Scottish ( Monmouth Rebels , Covenanters etc); the “Irish slave trade” is hidden into our history books but it’s a reality of the past …
– Apprentices , which was the best form of “bondage” (with the Redemptioners) because they could learn a job;
– Many indentured servants came from Europe (Italy and Greece) as well;
– Seamen impressed in ships ( they were bound to the master’s ship and could whipped in case of mutiny). They were often kidnapped in British Taverns; many case of desertions occurred in the Royal and Continental navies. As Richard Brandon Morris said they were the “last slaves” to be emancipated in 1915…Their hand could be cut off in a case of aggression against the ship’s captain…
It must be said that London ( Liverpool,Bristol) Merchants and British authorities ( Royalty; Mayor etc) were responsible for their temporary enslavement, and made huge profits in selling them to the colonies …
London ( Liverpool , Bristol) Merchants with British Authorities ( specially the Royalty) were also involved in the African slave trade…
When the supply of white servants happened to be insufficient in order to match the labor demand in the colonies, they created the Royal Company of Africa in order to import (kidnap) more Africans…
When you have a look at the first census in the American colonies , white servants or temporary slaves, outnumbered African slaves in all the British colonies ( America and West Indies).
The African slave trade and the possession of black slaves happened to be more profitable to the former servants traders/drivers and to the former servants masters in the colonies. This is why, we African or afro descendants suffered so much..
Planters were really harsh on them : many servants deaths were due to maltreatment…
After the American Revolution, British turned to Australia , as a convict colony. The Jails ships in London ( called “HULKS” were overcrowded).
When the African slave trade has been abolished, they turned to Asia for the “Pig” Trade or Coolie Trade, ( China and India). The same suffering, the same maltreatments, the same riots ( in the plantations and the slave ships)….
Only the European poor and the middle class went to the new world , the richest stayed in Europe.
Many white servants and black slaves married together because they suffered the same pains and maltreatments. Many white servants were involved in slave riots like in the New York Plot ( see Pr Richard Brandon Morris and Pr Abbott Emerson Smith), and some even fled to the Indians with their black brethren.
They suffered the “middle passage” as well, because they died like flies in the ships who brought them to the colonies, they were packed like “herring”….
With the time, white servants became overseers, and hatred was installed between the two communities, by the planters who divided them in order to ruled them…Some white servants were used in the militia in order to defend the colony from French and Spanish , but also to kill Indians or suppress slaves insurrections.
The “Divide and Rule” technique was used against the Indians (first slaves in America) in order to get allies and slaves. Europeans would give guns to their Indian allies in order to enslave other Indians. They used this technique in Canada, North America, South America ( Mexico) , the West Indies (Cuba) and in Africa as well… But the Indians slaves in North America died like flies, and could flee easily because after all it was their country.
Europeans kidnapped Indians , or caused wars between Indians tribes in order to response to their labor demand.
The American used the race card in order to ally with the white servants (or former servants), even if they really despised them , by calling them names : “White Trash”; “Redneck”; “Hillbillies”; “White niggers” etc.
It’s must be said that white servant preceded the black slave into the South plantations.
And the system which was imposed to them ( punishment, tortures, rapes, separation of families etc) was ready to absorb the black Africans slaves ( See Pr Ulrich B Phillips).
It was really “A NASTY” period for poor whites and anything colored ( Blacks, Indians etc).
The European rich class caused a lot of suffering to these people , even if they were white like them ….
Nothing better could happened to blacks, Chinese or Indians who were bound to that same class !!!
The seeds and the framework of their suffering can be found in the story of the white “slaves” who peopled American and West Indies colonies.
The racial card and segregation was played against them, and the white colonists had any mercy for them : Burned alive, Emasculation; Cutting the limbs; Extreme cases of torture …
This is stories they won’t tell you at scholl , or in Hollywood movies. In order to know a little research process is compulsory…
That is the truth Nehesey suffering of The Many Peoples from the evil few who carefully planned and implemented inequity inequality injustice robbery poverty endenture conscription slavery wars plagues and genocides they were some of the many prongs of the same divils who still want to divide and conquer
THEY WILL NOT KILL THE SOUL OF HUMANITY THAT IS SACRED !
We should All commemorate the crimes against All of our peoples publicly and protest against what is happening today in the world it can be sad to think that things like this still go on because of corporate greed , Wehave to really look at how we support these slavedrivers without knowing it by buying products from them!
Thanks. I’m Irish. I’m glad I’m not the only one who knows this history. Strange how nothing about Irish slavery is mentioned in the history books. Maybe it’s because the British Protestants wrote those books.
I knew there was a reason for the great affinity between the Irish and the Jamaicans–you are Irish.
Even my mother, an immigrant and very elderly now, recognizes the “Lilt of Irish laughter” in her Jamaican aides (she calls the her nurses) and constantly tells them “You’re so Irish looking!”