Figure 1.--This drawing depicts English soldiers loading Irish captived onto a ship and transport to the New World where they will work as slaves. We are not sure who the illustratir was or when it was drawn. The signature looks like something as Hamilton.

One method the English had for supressing the Irish people was slavery. The term usually applied is 'indentured servitude', but this meant tranport abroad and temprary slavery. Large numbers of Irish were transported and enslaved for several years. The enslaved were men, women, and children--including the youngest children. There is no precise acounting, but hey numbered in to hundresd of thousands. The largest number went to the Americas, especially the Caribbean sugar islands. The term endentured servitude does not capture what was involved. They were considered to be property under the law, and the owner could treat them in the same savage way that Aftican captives were treated on the sugar islands. The Irish slave trade began with King James I. He sold 30,000 Irish prisoners as slaves to the New World. His Proclamation of ordered required Irish political prisoners be sent overseas and sold to English settlers in the West Indies (1625). It did not occur earlier because England was just beginning to found colonies. By the mid-1600s, the Irish were the main slaves sold to Antigua and Montserrat. Some 70 percent of the total population of Montserrat were Irish slaves. King Charles I led a continued effort to enslave the Irish. Britain’s famed Oliver Cromwell continued the practice of supressing and enslaving the Irish. Ireland at the tome was the primary source of 'human livestock' sold by English merchants. Rarely reported in history books, the majority of the first slaves in England's American colonies colonies 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 about 1,500,000 to 600,000 in one single decade. Families were ripped apart as the British did not allow Irish dads to take their wives and children with them across the Atlantic. This led to a helpless population of homeless women and children. Britain’s solution was to auction them off as well. Cromwell's Protestant Army tokk some 100,000 Irish children (10-14 years old) from their parents and sold them as slaves in the Caribbean sugar islands, Virginia, and New England (1650s). There were 52,000 Irish (mostly women and children) sold to Barbados and Virginia (1652). Another 30,000 Irish men and women were also transported and sold at auction. Cromwell personally ordered that 2,000 Irish children be sold as slaves to English planters in Jamaica (1656). At the time, African captives were just beginning to arrive in English colonies. They were more expensive than the Irish because there was no release point as was the case of the Irish. And because they were permannt property, theu were often treated better than the Irish. English masters began breeding the Irish women for both personal pleasure and for profit. Children of slaves were themselves slaves, which increased the number of free workers. When and if an Irish woman obtained her freedom, the children would remain slaves. And many Irish mothers wouild abandon their children. And when African captives began arriving, English masters began breed Irish women and girls with African men to produce mulatto slaves who would never be released. [Martin] These practices were most common in the Caribbean sugar islands, in part becaise in North America, endentured servants could run away to the beckoning frontier. This option was less available on a small sugar island. England continued to ship tens of thousands of Irish slaves for more than a century. The last recorded sale was after the 1798 Irish Rebellion. Thousands of Irish slaves were tranported and sold in both America and Australia.

Sources

Gibney, John. The Shadow of a Year: The 1641 Rebellion in Irish History & Memory (2012).

Martin, John. "The Irish slave trade – The forgotten 'White' slaves," Rasta Livewire (October 28, 2008).

Created: 1:57 PM 2/21/2019
Last updated: 1:57 PM 2/21/2019