Whatever. So few of them were, and none suffered what we now think of when we look back at U.S. history and think “slavery,” that those who say “The Irish went through slavery too ya know!” are wielding a myth. And ignoring the benefits of whiteness. Semantic quibbling doesn’t change that.
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Thank you, I really appreciate this 
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Sorry, Marc Bolan was an Englishman with a Jewish father, not Irish.
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There’s likely a thousand books on
and upon the insistence of a friend, I had been reading Peter de Rosa’s Rebels: The Irish Rising of 1916. I just can’t finish the dang thing. No footnotes, everything piece of it a cartoon and full of hyperbole. If you have any recommendations on a better book that you actually found worthwhile on the matter, please let me know.
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?? as others replied, interjecting a modern definition in a discussion over claims of equivalent slavery between two groups in a historical context is ??
No, there are not slaves as intended by the article (chattel slavery) in Ireland at this time.
Yes, the expanded definition exists, congrats on finding it, no it isn’t retroactive, because the distinction between chattel and the expanded definition remains and remains YUGE.
Unless you want to hold that all history is included in the modern definition, and make a semantic case for the asswipes that propagate this Irish slavery nonsense.
Hey what a favour you’d do them, because indentured servitude sure as shit wasn’t limited to Irish, nor was forced prostitution limited to any nationality/race/ethnicity then as now.
Think you could make up a cute meme to spread on FB? How about one that just says “What about white people!? And everyone else!?” overlaid on a picture of some example of chattel slavery, of any race, historically? You could post it up anytime someone mentions African American history in North America. So educational, you’d get to explain the different meanings to so very many people, many of which, like me, are aware of it already. What an opportunity you have before you!
Or, keep your shit in the correct context.
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Look! It’s muh childhood! Don’t get to see that stuff much anymore, and I’m okay with that actually. Very fitting to this particular discussion in multiple ways.
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I’m sure she meant Mickey Finn. Steve Peregrin Took spoke Common, of course.
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Yeah but given that, some other typical public TV issues, and some uniquely Irish ones like restrictions in hiring non citizens and requirements to produce content in the Irish language, some good stuff has supposedly been produced. Most of that seems to be from the 70’s 80’s and 90’s though, given what I’ve heard. And its the exception rather than the rule. The BBC really has been putting shame to most every other model of public TV for decades. There are occasional, quiet, and unproductive calls to reform American PBS following a BBC model. And I’ve heard similar arguments with regards to RTE. PBS is so broke they can barely produce anything more expensive than a Ken Burns documentary about things your dad likes. Downton has been their biggest hit in decades. And while that’s made by Masterpiece, a PBS based production company in Massachusetts, its a co-production with a British production company. And the British side of things seems to put together most of the money and actual shooting, and take most of the proceeds.
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"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… 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."
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.”
Later in the 1850s my Great Great Grandmother, Mary Golden was forcibly taken to Australia during the potato famine where while not legally slaves, many were treated as slaves.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-irish-slave-trade-the-forgotten-white-slaves/31076
Completely without bothering to check if the assertions of slavery could be true.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-irish-slave-trade-the-forgotten-white-slaves/31076
This numerical myth is covered in part 4. https://medium.com/@Limerick1914/a-review-of-the-numbers-in-the-irish-slaves-meme-1857988fd93c#.wzmhrb9c4
The ‘mating’ myth is covered earlier on the series.
#debunked
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My historian heart WEEPS! If it’s not loaded with footnotes with tons of archival references on a topic like this, it’s largely useless.
I’ll look and see what I can find. I’m sure there is some good stuff out there.
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There is not just one document; there are many more proving that there was slavery for the Irish and at times for military prisoners, Welsh, Scots and English such as the Montserrat census of 1637. Nor was there one king (I note the typo often repeated when referring to King James)
Dr William Petty, Physician-General to Cromwell’s Army, estimated that
as many as 100,000 Irish men, women and children were transported to the
colonies in the West Indies and in North America as slaves.
During the early colonial period, the Scots and the English, along with
other western European nations, dealt with their “Gypsy problem” by
transporting them as slaves in large numbers to North America and the
Caribbean. Cromwell shipped Romani Gypsies as slaves to the southern
plantations and there is documentation of Gypsies being owned by former
black slaves in Jamaica.
Not all were captured and sold by Europeans. There were British and European slaves taken to the Barbary coast.
The key piece of evidence that shows that those transported were considered valuable property rather than convicts undergoing banishment and punishment was when surgeon superintendents were appointed to every convict and workhouse girls ship in 1792 and given a bonus for every convict arriving alive in Australia.
My Irish great great grandfather was transported to Australia for 14 years of slavery. I have his judgement. An English convict sentenced by the same judge for the same crime got 7 years.
My relative was assigned to cedar loggers. There could not have been a harsher form of slavery in a harsher environment. Nothing in his life was free. Most did not survive the snakes, spiders, ticks poisonous plants and overseers.
Is it less slavery because it had an end point?
That blog disputes the numbers not the fact that there was slavery. In fact it gives examples.
Thanks in advance. I’m just looking for a thorough (doesn’t even need to be even-handed necessarily) overview, an approximation from a reliable, insightful author.
I can’t tell if it’s harder to get to the root of historical details/events/motives when all is fresh and things are still very much in play, or when–with the passing of time–we gain perspective but most key actors have either died, gone senile, gotten lost or hard to contact, and there’s been more time to bury evidence and cover up (PR managers would probably say “curate”) the bigger picture.
Sorry for the mixed metaphors and clumsy language. It was hard enough for me to learn just how the rebels had worked with the ahem Germans to get the guns to Ireland, something I had long thought to be complete BS. Getting at the motives of some of the key figures just needs more respect than de Larosa’s throwing green Emerald Isle glitter, shamrocks and charming folksy mannerisms at us readers.
I can’t even read Shakespeare for enjoyment unless there’s a ton of footnotes. Context is everything!
I strongly recommend you read the book The Fatal Shore by Robert Hughes if you want to know more about your Irish ancestors who were transported to Australia. The link you’ve referenced appears to be historically inaccurate, politically motivated propaganda, but what your ancestors went through as transportees certainly would be considered slavery by modern standards.
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Looks like Tim Pat Coogan, a somewhat controversial journalist, wrote about both the IRA and the uprising (I recently found his book on the IRA). He might be a good place to start?
This looks more academicy, an edited volume on an academic press:
And this is from a historian who died in the 80s, so it might be dated - but it probably puts the uprising into greater context with events starting with the famine…
I wish I knew more, but this really isn’t my field. I should read more irish history!
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Thank you!
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