• If you are having problems logging in please use the Contact Us in the lower right hand corner of the forum page for assistance.

The Forgotten "White" Slaves

Mike

Well-known member
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-irish-slave-trade-the-forgotten-white-slaves/31076

Funny, I do not hear Irish people reminding everyone time and time again of the atrocities committed towards their ancestors. Wonder why that is?
 

Steve

Well-known member
Mike said:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-irish-slave-trade-the-forgotten-white-slaves/31076

Funny, I do not hear Irish people reminding everyone time and time again of the atrocities committed towards their ancestors. Wonder why that is?

cause you are not in Ireland or the northeast.. :?
 

Steve

Well-known member
The majority of the early slaves to 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 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.

During the 1650s, over 100,000 Irish children between the ages of 10 and 14 were taken from their parents and sold.

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, in most cases from the 17th and 18th centuries, Irish slaves were nothing more than human cattle.

As an example, the African slave trade was just beginning during this same period. It is well recorded that African slaves, not tainted with the stain of the hated Catholic theology and more expensive to purchase, were often treated far better than their Irish counterparts.

Children of slaves were themselves slaves, which increased the size of the master’s free workforce. Even if an Irish woman somehow obtained her freedom, her kids would remain slaves of her master. Thus, Irish moms, even with this new found emancipation, would seldom abandon their kids and would remain in servitude.

In time, the English thought of a better way to use these women (in many cases, girls as young as 12) to increase their market share: The settlers began to breed Irish women and girls with African men to produce slaves with a distinct complexion. These new “mulatto” slaves brought a higher price than Irish livestock and, likewise, enabled the settlers to save money rather than purchase new African slaves.

England continued to ship tens of thousands of Irish slaves for more than a century. Records state that, after the 1798 Irish Rebellion, thousands of Irish slaves were sold to both America and Australia. There were horrible abuses of both African and Irish captives. One British ship even dumped 1,302 slaves into the Atlantic Ocean so that the crew would have plenty of food to eat.

There is little 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 brown, tanned faces you witness in your travels to the West Indies are very likely a combination of African and Irish 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 stop pirates from doing what they desired, the new law slowly concluded THIS chapter of nightmarish Irish misery.

But, if anyone, black or white, believes that slavery was only an African experience, then they’ve got it completely wrong.

Irish slavery is a subject worth remembering, not erasing from our memories.

These are the lost slaves; the ones that time and biased history books conveniently forgot.
 

Mike

Well-known member
Lots of people with Irish ancestry down here and they aren't constantly whining because their ancestors might have been slaves.
 

Steve

Well-known member
Mike said:
Lots of people with Irish ancestry down here and they aren't constantly whining because their ancestors might have been slaves.

I didn't say they were whining.. but I have heard about it from many folk around here... I have one acquaintance that is about as bad as ol Al when it comes to listening to her.. she is extremely bitter..

an nowhere as much as you here from the other minority slave class..

had I not heard it.. I would be like most and just thought of it as indentured servitude
 

mrj

Well-known member
Were truth told, very likely many races of people have sold those among their 'own' deemed inferior for whatever reason, into slavery from time immemorial.

And, it continues today, maybe most egregiously, IMO, with women and children as the victims and too often they are sold into demoralizing and health breaking sexual abuse rings. AT LAST, something is being done about that, even here in SD.

Too bad so few people of color, or of any race, admit that it has happened in the past, and continues, and that even their own people have sold their 'own' in the past, and some continue the practices even today.

People decrying slavery and blaming all others than their own people also usually ignore the fact that white people, worldwide, were in the forefront of attempts to eliminate slavery, from the very beginning, at no small risk to themselves, from what I've read over the years.

mrj
 
Top