The history of the African slave trade into the Americas is well-documented as well as largely taught in American schools today.
However, as John Martin of the Montreal-based Center for Research and Globalization points out in his article ‘The Irish Slave Trade - The Forgotten ‘White’ Slaves,’ it was not just Africans who were traded as slaves.
Indeed, the Irish have a gruesome history of being traded as slaves as well, and subjected to similar and sometimes worse treatment than their African contemporaries of the time.
Strangely though, the history of Irish and ‘white’ slavery is by and large ignored in the American educational curriculum today.
In his article, John Martin writes “The Irish slave trade began when James II sold 30,000 Irish prisoners as slaves to the New World. His Proclamation of 1625 required Irish political prisoners be sent overseas and sold to English settlers in the West Indies. By the mid 1600s, the Irish were the main slaves sold to Antigua and Montserrat. At that time, 70 percent of the total population of Montserrat were Irish slaves.”
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12 comments:
It's not a claim, it's the truth.
I am part Irish and I want restitution !
There where WAY MORE irish slaves than bla ks but you dont see them complaining 200 yrs later.
Never hear of the Romanichals (i.e., Gypsies from Britain) who were slaves in the US as well.
In Colonial times Britain dealt with their "Gypsy problem" by shipping them overseas to their colonies in
America and to Spanish Louisiana. A lot of Gypsies were then sold to southern plantation owners. A lot were banned to Jamaica where they were owned by black Jamaicans.
Gypsies will never use their background as slaves in the US as an excuse though. They are a proud people and a smart people who are aware you can't blame present day failures on past events in history.
White people are the slaves now working for those who won't.
Try looking up the history of the scotch families who were promised great things if they came and worked on the plantations of Ulster, and then found theselves indentured. They along with other Irish families fled the lives of slaves to seek a better life. They found it here, in our great nation. The Mary Ashanti's of the world are to be pitied, they were robbed of the knowledge of their ancestors by the horrors of slavery and transplanted by force here. This led to generations of disadvantagement.
So much more to say here, but look around, observe what the generations after MLK has wrought. Should loss of a birthright be allowed to continue to condone unequal performance when so many opportunities have been granted?
Every Irishman/Scotsman I've ever met in my life has been a robust hard working inventive type person and a pleasure to be around, never complaining about their past.
Now everyone wants to be Irish.Even those with 1/32nd Irish blood will expect to get paid-including myself.
Look for Fauxahontas to suddenly claim some Irish ancestry.
900 years of slavery under the British Crown. Murder by starvation of millions. Took their native language away. Cut down all of the Irish forests to build the British fleet - didn't bother to replant. Set up land barons to tax the life out of subsistence farmers while reducing their land size to less than what would feed the farmers and their families. Those who couldn't pay the tax were evicted, with no place to go, eventually becoming default criminals, then shipped to Australia as prisoner slaves or to the U.S. as slave trade slaves. Withheld grain shipments that would have fed millions during the potato famine. Won't let go of Northern Ireland even though the South has proven itself fully capable of self rule.
Up the Crown!!
I doubt this info will be in the Common Core Curriculum...
therefore, we demand reparations!
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