ha, I didn’t mean the majority of all slaves, I meant of the indentured servants who one would classify as slaves, the majority were convicts, not kidnapping victims or whatever.
I don’t think that the conditions that Irish and other Europeans were kept in and brought to America bears comparison to the African slave trade and the slave culture, auctions, breeding etc. of the South. But it certainly falls within the realms of modern human rights laws definitions of slavery. So I’d like to agree with you on that.
The context of the memes referenced is that it was somehow worse, which is nonsense.
Just like the meme that Irish people dont complain and demand a living, as per the links. Here is a great link of an Irish man moaning, bitcching, whining, complaining and thinking that everyone owes him a living.
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Wash your brain out with soap: Ferguson is a tame academic for the Republican Party. He is a racist, imperialist, homophobe. For cash.
Your post is so very, very wrong that it defies beginning correction.
Imperialism is never “beneficial”, if you are going to argue that a population dropping from 8 million to two million was a good thing because the standard of living of those remaining improved we have a lot of ground to make up before we can even begin to have a conversation about what good and bad are.
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I don’t think that the conditions that Irish and other Europeans were kept in and brought to America bears comparison to the African slave trade and the slave culture, auctions, breeding etc. of the South.
Neither do I (other than the simple fact that both were examples of slavery).
The context of the memes referenced is that it was somehow worse, which is nonsense.
Of course, and if you read my other replies in here I’ve never suggested otherwise, and bigged up the meme debunking in general.
re Morrissey, no thanks, the British can keep him.
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You raise the important point that famines are always political rather than about just food. Of course the greatest famines of the glorious high point of British empire were in India which was devastated and the numbers killed defy belief (also China) Ireland was just relatively depopulated as it was a small country. Although much more heavily populated than now of course. With the dense populations being in parts that bear much similarity to lunar landscapes and which were very marginal at best.
India was a wealthy country systematically paupered.
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Reminds me of the pirate robot play, Arrr-yew-arrr.
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That’s always interesting. We know pretty much exactly where the Irish half of my family came over, when, an under what circumstances. My grandfather arrived ~1950, as a mechanic for a racing team and ended up in the Bronx. My grandfather described his family as “almost respectable” but still pretty much dirt poor. They were some of the first Catholic land owner is their country. And there was some political involvement both before after independence. We still own the house my grandfather was raised in (it’s crumbling from moisture) and what’s left of the family farm (most of it is a highway overpass). My grandmother’s family less so. Both her parents were born in the US shortly after their parents arrived, from weirdly the exact same places in Ireland. There were some tenements and abusive menial factory jobs (though some one was a ferrier). But they came too late for coffin ships.
The French side of the family is a bit if a mystery though. We know my great grandparents were born in Prince Edward island, they spoke acadian and the emmigrated to Maine sometime before 1920. We have no clue how long the family has been in this hemisphere though. And less clue where they came from specifically in France, or even if they were technically French at all before Canada happened.
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Wow. Irish slaves. Learn something new every day. I had no idea there was an arm of the Atlantic slave trade where Irish were captured, packed into boats like sardines, brought to the Americas, sold and bred like livestock, beaten, and even killed if their owners wanted it (and don’t get me started on that “3/5ths of an Irishman” compromise.)
They weren’t?
Then why the fuck are we talking about “Irish slaves”?
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The Scottish Genealogy Society was a great resource when I was trying to track down where my many-great grandfather had come from.
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Serfs, slaves… We’re all the children of conquered peoples
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But it’s important to remember that the children of peoples enslaved 150 years ago are still dealing with significantly worse legacy issues than the children of peoples enslaved several thousand years ago.
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True!!!
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In terms of slavery:
So when the UK decided to outlaw slavery, they compensated people for their lost investment. The records of this have recently been made public, meaning it’s now possible to see who owned slaves. It turns out the slaves held overseas where a common ‘investment’ by people of modest means. So yes, it’s both sets of kids who had ownership papers for human beings.
And, indeed, the efforts of slaves and the empire built bridges, tunnels, monuments and buildings still in use today. Obviously, the working class has been horrendously exploited in England, but pretending that English people now aren’t still enjoying the profits of slavery is as disingenuous as when American white people make the same sorts of claims.
In terms of Ireland:
Playing disempowered groups of people against each other is always of greatest benefit to the owning classes, but it does also confer privileges upon the more-favoured group.
This whole meme of ‘well, it wasn’t my acestors’ is fucking stupid. The past is past. What matters is the present, when black people still face systemic discrimination and Ireland is still post-colonial and poor.
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What matters is the present, when black people still face systemic discrimination and Ireland is still post-colonial and poor.
huh? how did you come to that misguided notion?
Ireland is one of the wealthiest nations in the world per-capita.
Despite the financial crisis, which led to a large spike in unemployment, but which the effects of have been largely mitigated due to our readiness to emigrate, and the speed at which we’ve sorted out our finances.
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Part of my family were Irish indentured servants, and they kind of were slaves. At least by some historical definitions. Obviously they weren’t slaves like African Americans, they weren’t round up, captured, sold, beaten, treated like animals, etc… My great grandfather sold himself and his wife into slavery of his own, mostly, free will. Basically he had to pay off his trip to America, his food, his lodging, fees, and interest, and then he was free, and if he couldn’t, at least his children would be. This is more like the nasty situations many of our southern neighbors have to endure to get here (albeit without the legality, narco-violence, and full lack of legal representation and enforcement).
Indentured servitude is, though, kind slavery historically. Many historical slaves could buy their freedom, emerging as full (ish) citizens of their slavers realm. Many slaves, historically, had rights. It’s just when colonialism, racism, and capitalism combined to form the African slave trade, they invented one of the most virulent, and inhumane examples of an already abhorrent practice.
Saying my ancestors were basically slaves isn’t me trying to degrade our historical atrocities. Nor should it be read that way. Historical misery isn’t a zero sum game. It isn’t a pissing contest. If people use it that way, they are idiots, but that shouldn’t reflect on the historical circumstances themselves.
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Neil Oliver, historian/archeologist/author/television presenter, taught me a few new things about the Irish. Yes, they were bought and sold and enslaved… by vikings [originally, and man oh man did those vikings sure get around].
At the moment I can’t find the relevant YouTube video he did for the BBC (taken down re copyright claims, I suppose), but here’s a synopsis of Irish-as-enslaved-people many many centuries prior to the tale of “Irish slaves in the Americas”…
Dublin was founded in 841 A.D. by Norwegian Vikings as a center for their slave trade. Iron slave collars and chains. A mail slave cost 12 ounces of silver; a female cost 8 ounces of silver. Dublin grew to be the largest slave markets in Europe, trading Angles, Brits and Picts.
(source:
http://www.lagunabeachbikini.com/index.php/2013/11/22/neil-oliver-the-vikings/ )
Oliver makes an interesting argument in one of the three Vikings episodes where he points to runes marked on a handrail inside the Hagia Sophia in Turkey (see the Wikipedia entry or better yet the actual dang footage from his show). When Oliver deciphers the runes–basically a “Kilroy was here” message–he points out that Irish slaves probably or in fact were sold as far as Turkey. Perhaps I misinterpret (I am sorry, I can’t remember it all very clearly, my brain is in low gear from a stomach flu virus at the moment).
ETA: The blockquote has been copied and pasted wholesale. I believe the writer intended it to read “male slave” and not “mail slave”… let stand? [asks the English major]
ETA2: Changed “anthropologist” to “archeologist” in first line of comment. Sorry. Flu has my brain fogged in like my xmas in Corpus Christi (TX) last year.
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I found the online database. Even with that, I’ve yet to find anyone in the “Seventh Class” who would have had the economic wealth to have ownership - that class, by population, would have been the bulk of “The English People” at the time.
From the Legacies of British Slave-ownership Project:
It also granted £20 million in compensation, to be paid by British taxpayers to the former slave-owners. That compensation money provided the starting point for our first project. We are now tracking back to 1763 the ownership histories of the 4000 or so estates identified in that project.
I’m not sure how many in the lower classes - the bulk of the population - would have qualified for “estate” status in the 1800’s, additionally of the searches I’ve done, and from reading some on this project, the heady majority of those compensated (ie: that owned slaves at the time it was abolished 1807-1833- trade/ then completely) were estates in the Caribbean, Mauritius (off Madagascar) & the Cape (South Africa).
…and I’m left very confused indeed as to your point regarding English slave-owners being comprised both of the aristocracy and the paupers - when the data you reference doesn’t seem to back that up.
If I missed something, by all means, enlighten me.
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Also important to remember that the children of peoples enslaved 150 years ago aren’t the only ones still suffering today from the legacy of the US Civil War, and that you cannot separate those who are and are not so suffering by simply looking at the color of their skins.
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I just hope that isn’t meant as some kind of Confederate apologist thing, because I honestly don’t have the energy for a “heritage not hate/war of Northern aggression” argument today.
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Absolutely not! Just pointing out that we’ve got a lot more damage to repair than most people realize.
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