Photo 1 An Irish Slave Warehouse in NewfoundlandCanada Photo2 Irish slave manacles “Whenever they rebelled, or even disobeyed an order, they were punished in the harshest ways. Slave owners would hang their human “property” by their hands and feet, and set them on fire, as one particularly severe form of punishment. They were sometimes burned to death, and then had their severed heads placed on pikes, as a warning to other captives. This may sound like a description of the atrocities of the African slave trade, but we are not talking here about African slaves. We are talking about white, Irish slaves” . The English government variously referred to Irish to be transported as rogues, vagabonds, rebels, neutrals, felons, military prisoners, teachers, priests, maidens etc. All historians call them servants, bondsman, indentured servants, slaves, etc., and agree that they were all political victims. The plain facts are that most were treated as slaves. After their land was confiscated by England, which drove them from their ancestral homes to forage for roots like animals, they were kidnapped, rounded up and driven like cattle to waiting ships and transported to English colonies in America, never to see their country again. They were the victims of what many called the immense Irish Slave Trade. In 1641, Irelands population was 1,466,000 and in 1652, 616,000. All writers on the 17th century American colonies are agreement that the treatment of white servants or white slaves in English colonies was cruel to the extreme, worse than that of black slaves; that inhuman treatment was the norm, that torture (and branding FT, fugitive traitor, on the forehead) was the punishment for attempted escape. Dunn stated: Servants were punished by whipping, strung up by the hands and matches lighted between their fingers, beaten over the head until blood ran, --all this on the slightest provocation.(30) Ligon, an eyewitness in Barbados from 1647-1650 said, Truly, I have seen cruelty there done to servants as I did not think one Christian could have done to another. It is also of importance to be aware of the fact, as Dunn Confirmed, that most population lists for Barbados, Jamaica and the Leeward Islands concern only parish registers of the Church of England, all other people were essentially ignored in the head count*. *papists were not considered Christian Estimates vary between 80,000 and 130,000 regarding the amount of Irish sent into slavery in America and the West Indies during the years of 1651 - 1660: Prendergast says 80,000(17); Boudin 100,000(18); Emmet 120,000 to 130,000(19); Lingard 60,000 up until 1656(20); and Condon estimates the number of Irish transported to the British colonies in America from 1651 - 1660 exceeded the total number of their inhabitants at that period, a fact which ought not to be lost sight of by those who undertake to estimate the strength of the Celtic element in this nation... source: \full article ewtn/library/HUMANITY/SLAVES.TXT Richard S. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves, Chapel Hill, NC, U of NC Press, 1972 Thomas Addis Emmet, Ireland Under English Rule, NY & London, Putnam, 1903 John P. Prendergast, The Cromwellian Settlement of Ireland, Dublin, ?, 1865 Anthony Broudine, Propuguaculum, Pragae Anno, 1669 dward OMeagher Condon, The Irish Race in America, New York, A.E. and R.E. Ford, 1887
Posted on: Sun, 26 Oct 2014 13:08:50 +0000
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