To understand the history and background of the Irish in Jamaica one has to go right back to the year 1655, when Admiral Penn and General Venables, having failed miserably at taking Santo Domingo in Hispaniola, and not wanting to return home empty handed, turned their attention to Jamaica, where the Spanish settlers could put up only a token resistance. Having quickly captured Santiago De la Vega, the modern day Spanish Town, they sent to Barbados and the Leeward Islands for fresh blood to populate this latest acquisition. Records show that the vast majority of the first wave were in fact Irish men and women, some of whom were indentured labourers, but the majority of whom were slaves. And how did they reach Barbados? For that we have to thank Oliver Cromwell who in 1648 put down a rebellion in Ireland with such savagery and cruelty that his name is still burned into the Irish psyche today. In his own words, after the siege of Drogheda — “The officers were knocked on the head, every tenth man of the soldiers killed and the rest shipped to Barbados.” Cromwell drove Irish men and women from their home counties into the relatively barren and inhospitable province of Connaught. The soldiers and the intelligentsia, mainly Catholic Priests, teachers and Gaelic Bards, posed a real threat to a new government, and his solution was to institute a system of forced labour, which would provide British planters in the Caribbean with a massive influx of white indentured labourers. In Thurloe’s State papers, it was ‘a measure beneficial to Ireland, which was thus relieved of a population that might trouble the planters, and of great benefit to the sugar planters who desired the men and boys for their bondsmen and women and Irish girls in a country where they had only Maroon women and Negresses to solace them.’ Speaking from my own personal experience I would say that the planters came off the worst in that deal!!! Cromwell’s son, Henry was made Major General in command of his forces in Ireland and it was under his reign that hundreds of thousands of Irish men and women were shipped to the West Indies. From 1648 - 1655 over 12,000 Irish political prisoners were shipped to Barbados. Although indentured servants (Irish included) have been coming to Barbados since 1627, this new wave of arrivals were the first to come involuntarily. The Irish prisoners made up for a serious labour shortage caused by English Planters, lack of access to African slaves. The Dutch and Portuguese dominated the slave trade in the early 17th century, and most white land owners in Barbados and the neighbouring islands were unable to purchase slaves of African origin.
Posted on: Mon, 10 Mar 2014 22:31:01 +0000
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