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Untold story {Global Research Article}of White Irish slavery, 7 years before black slavery By Deborah Scott
They came as slaves; vast human cargo transported on tall British ships bound for the Americans. They were shipped by the hundreds of thousands, included were men, women, and children even the youngest of them.
Whenever they rebelled or even disobeyed an order, they were punished in the harshest ways. Slave owners would hang their property by their hands or feet on fire as one form of punishment. They were burned alive and their heads placed on pikes in the market place as a warning to other captives.
We are talking about "The Irish Slave Trade - The Forgotten "White" Slaves brought to America seven years prior the the Black slaves.
Led by King James 2nd and Charles 1st continued efforts 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 the 2nd sold 30,000 Irish prisoners as slaves to the new world. His Proclamation of 1625 required Irish political prisoners to be sent over seas to the English settlers in the West Indies. By the mid 1600's, the Irish were the main slaves sold to Antiguna and Montserrant. At the time, 70% of the total population were of Irish slaves.
The Irish were considered "Livestock" and sold as such. Ireland became the biggest source of human slaves for English merchants. The majority of slaves in 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 1,500,00 to 600,00 in one single decade. Families were ripped apart as the British, did not allow dads to take their wives and children with them across the Atlantic. This led to a helpless population of homeless women and children. British solution was to auction them off as well.
During the 1650's, over 100,000 Irish children between the ages of 10 to 14 were taken from their parents ans 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 transported and sold to the highest bidder. In 1656, Cromwell ordered that 2,000 Irish children were to 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, form the 17th and 18th centuries, Irish slaves were nothing more then human cattle.
As an example, the African slave trade was just beginning during this time period. They were fully documented and recorded as such. And were not tainted with the stain of the hated Catholic theology and more expensive to pruchase, were treated far better then their Irish counterparts.
Irish slaves came cheap, if a planter whipped or branded or beaten to death, it was never a crime nor recorded. A Irish death was a monetary setback, but far cheaper then killing a more expensive African.
The English masters quickly began breeding Irish women with African men for their own pleasure and greater profits. Which being children of slaves were themselves slaves, which increased in size of the master's workforce. Even if an Irish women somehow obtained her freedom, her children would remain slaves of her master. Thus Irish moms, even with new found emancipation, would seldom abandon her children and would remain in servitude.
In time the English found a better way to use these women {in many cases, girls as young as 12 to increase their market share: In breeding Irish women and girls with African men they produced slaves with a distinct complexion. These new 'mulatto" slaves brought a higher price than the Irish {livestock} and likewise, enabled the settlers to save money rather then purchase a new African slave. This practice of breeding went on for several decades. The only reason it was stopped by legislation it interfered with with the profits of large slave transport companies.
England continued to ship tens of thousands of Irish slaves for more then a century. Records state that, even after the Irish rebellion in 1798, thousands of Irish were slaves were sold to both America and Australia. There were horrible abuses in Irish and black slavery, however the the Irish captivity has not been broadly mentioned in history books, nor discussed in our schools, nor was there any mention of the Irish as the first slaves, or included in the signing of the proclamation to free the slaves.
There is no 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 of brown skin, tanned faces in your travels to the West Indies are very likely a combination of Irish and African 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 not stop pirates from doing what they desired, the new law slowly concluded, this chapter of the nightmarish Irish misery.
But, if anyone, black or white, believes that slavery was only an African experience, then they've got it completely wrong.
Is Irish slavery a subject not worth remembering! do the Irish victims have no merit in biased history and books that conveniently forgot the "White Slave Trade."
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