Irish slaves

Fiction over fact Pseudohistory

How it didn't happen

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Irish slaves is a term and a myth which refers to the supposed historical exploitation of Irishmen as slave labor. It is frequently evoked by white supremacists, white nationalists, Neo-Nazis, Stormfront users, and Neo-Confederates claiming that the enslavement of Africans doesn't matter because "White people were slaves too."

Origins[edit]

The origin of this myth is from a 1993 book called They Were White and They Were Slaves: The Untold History of The Enslavement of Whites in America, self-published and written by conspiracy theorist and Holocaust denier Michael A. Hoffman II. The myth was further advanced in Ireland by journalist Sean O'Conaghan in the book To Hell or Barbados: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ireland and other books such as White Cargo: The Forgotten History of Britain's White Slaves. Since then, the "Irish slaves" myth has been repeated frequently on social media such as Facebook, often with unrelated images as "pictures" of Irish slaves. One common version, debunked by Reuters, is that "the first slaves imported into the American colonies were 100 White children in 1619, four months before the arrival of the first shipment of Black slaves". In fact, the first slaves imported were black Africans, and there's no evidence of the 100 white children.^[1]

The most common themes of the "Irish slaves" myth according to Wikipedia are:

• The media and historians are covering it up.
• The Irish people were enslaved after the Cromwellian Invasion of Ireland in 1649
• Irish slaves were treated worse than African slaves and female Irish were forced to reproduce with male Africans.
• Using a forged 1625 declaration attributed to King James II sending thousands of Irish prisoners to the West Indies as slaves (despite the fact that James II (1633-1701, reigned 1685 to 1688) hadn't even been born at the time...).
• Taking actual slave atrocities such as the 1781 Zong Massacre and substituting African slaves with Irish ones.

Worldwide "white" slavery[edit]

Let's not get exclusively US-centric or even America-centric about "white slaves" or "Irish slaves". (After all, Virginians did not invent slavery...)

• Several societies have have practised equal-opportunity enslavement, recruiting their human resources from Europe as just as readily as from Africa - the ancient Romans, for example, and the Ottoman Turks (though the Ottomans did sometimes favor Circassians as slave harem-fodder).^[2] The moral of this - slavery can get tough whatever the hue of your skin.
• Roxelana,^[3] a Polish/Lithuanian/Ruthenian/Ukrainian woman captured in a Crimean Tatar slave-raid^[4] and sold down-river^[5] to Constantinople/Istanbul,^[6] entered the Sultan's harem, seduced the Sultan Suleman I the Magnificent^[7], sensibly converted to Islam and ended up influencing the Ottoman state - in person^[8] and through her descendants.^[9] The moral of this - Roxelana represents one exception amongst millions of slaves. Alternative moral: Islamic slavery appears milder or more flexible than North American slavery.^[10]

Debunked[edit]

The problem with this whole idea is that the "Irish slaves" were in fact indentured servants. While both indentured servitude and chattel slavery may be considered subcategories of "slavery", and indeed both are banned within the United Nation's 1956 Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade, and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery,^[11] the two are very different concepts in practice. Indentured servants agreed to work for a period varying between 2 to 7 years in exchange for being transported to the Americas. At the end of this period, they were free. Chattel slavery, however, as is well known, was permanent and persisted to the descendants of slaves. While indentured servants probably had it bad, the difference between indentured servitude and slavery is enormous, as described by Liam Hogan:^[12]

It's also relevant that the period in which Irish people were placed in indentured servitude was during the 17th century, whereas black slavery continued for another 200 years: most "Irish slaves" were exported to the Caribbean by the British. Where "Irish slaves" augmented an existing workforce, the enslavement and exploitation of black slaves was an integral part of the economy. "Irish slaves" were primarily exported by Oliver Cromwell, some hundreds of years before the major waves of Irish immigration to the US, so it was never really relevant to Irish Americans — in fact, many Irish people moved to the South and strove hard to become slaveowners themselves. The American Dream, huh? It was such an issue that prominent Irish politician Daniel O'Connell began petitioning Irish Americans not to take part in the slave trade.

Actual Irish slaves[edit]

Throughout antiquity, the medieval period, and as recently as the early modern era, there were in fact many Irish slaves and slave raids on the island. However, these were orchestrated by Gaelic raiders^[13], Vikings^[14], and Barbary pirates.^[15] Saint Patrick was said to have been a slave for a part of his life, and many Irish throughout history could find themselves as the slaves or enslavers of other Irish.^[16] By the 18th century the threat of the Irish being enslaved had faded into history, as the institution was abolished on the island and British naval power meant Barbary pirates were no longer a threat; the big existential crisis for the Irish became starvation.

Scottish slaves[edit]

Similar claims have been made about Scottish people, including on the American website Electric Scotland, where an article suggests "the Alba, Scots, Irish and Picts have been the longest race held in slavery." Again, actual claims relate either to Vikings in the early medieval period or to indentured servitude from the 17th century.^[17] This has also become tangled up with people who seek to deny that Scots were involved in the transatlantic slave trade: in reality, Scots were deeply involved in running plantations and profiting from the goods produced there (even Robert Burns, Scotland's national poet, considered a career as an overseer on a slave plantation). But some eccentric Scots move from denying Scotland's complicity in the cruelty of slavery, to assert falsely that Scots were actually the victims of slavery rather than some of the perpetrators; Stephen Mullen, author of It Wisnae Us: The Truth About Glasgow and Slavery, has debunked these myths.^[18]

See also[edit]

• Confederate States of America

External links[edit]

• The unfree Irish in the Caribbean were indentured servants, not slaves, Liam Hogan, Laura McAtackney, and Matthew Connor Reilly.
• The Myth of “Irish Slaves” in the Colonies, Liam Hogan
• Debunking the imagery of the “Irish slaves” meme
• Slavery Myths Debunked

References[edit]