They were brought in as slaves. English ships transported many human goods to both America. They were transported by hundreds of thousands: men, women and even small children.
When they rebelled or simply did not obey orders, they were severely punished. The slave owners hung them up by their arms and set them on fire as punishment. They were burned alive, and the remaining heads were put on pikes that stood around the markets as a warning to the rest of the captives.
We don't need to list all the bloody details, do we? We know all too well the atrocities of the African slave trade.
But are we talking about African slaves now? Kings James II and Charles I also made a lot of efforts to develop slavery - enslaving the Irish. The famous Englishman Oliver Cromwell developed the practice of dehumanizing his closest neighbors.
The Irish trade began when Jacob II sold 30,000 Irish prisoners into American slavery. His proclamation of 1625 proclaimed the need to send Irish political prisoners abroad and sell them to English settlers in the West Indies. By the mid-1600s, Irish slaves were the most sold in Antigua and Montserrat. At the time, 70% of the Montserrat population was Irish slaves.
Ireland soon became the largest source of human goods for British businessmen. Most of the early slaves of the New World were white.
From 1641 to 1652 the British killed more than 500 thousand Irish and sold another 300 thousand into slavery. In just this decade, the population of Ireland fell from 1,500 thousand to 600 thousand people. Families were divided, since the British did not allow Irish men to take their wives and children with them to America. This left a population of homeless women and children helpless. But the British also sold them through slave auctions.
During the 1650s, more than 100,000 Irish children aged 10-14 were taken from their parents and sold into slavery in the West Indies, Virginia and New England. During the same decade, 52,000 Irish men and women were trafficked to Barbados and Virginia. Another 30,000 Irish were auctioned elsewhere. In 1656, Cromwell ordered 2,000 Irish children to be sent to Jamaica and sold into slavery by the English conquistadors.
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Many people today avoid referring to the truthful term "slaves" for Irish slaves. The term "contract servants" is used in relation to them. However, in most cases, in the 17th and 18th centuries, the Irish were sold as slaves, like livestock.
At this time, the African slave trade was just beginning. There is documentary evidence that African slaves, not soiled by the hated Catholic faith and more expensive, were treated much better than the Irish.
In the late 1600s, African slaves were very expensive at £ 50. Irish slaves were cheaper - no more than 5 sterling. It was not considered a crime if a planter whipped, clumed and beat an Irish slave to death. Death was an expense item, but less significant than the murder of an expensive negro. The English slave owners used Irish women for their pleasure and profit. Slave children were slaves who increased the wealth of their master. Even if an Irish woman, in any way, got freedom, her children remained slaves to the master. Therefore, Irish mothers, even having received freedom, rarely left their children and remained in slavery.
The British pondered the best ways to use these women (often just girls 12 years old) to increase profits. Settlers began interbreeding Irish women and girls with African men to obtain slaves with different skin colors. These new mulattoes were worth more than Irish slaves and allowed the settlers to save money by not buying new African slaves. This practice of interbreeding Irish women with blacks continued for several decades and was so widespread that in 1681 a law was passed "prohibiting the practice of mating Irish female slaves with African male slaves in order to produce slaves for sale." In short, it was discontinued only because it prevented the slave trading companies from making a profit.
England continued to transport tens of thousands of Irish slaves for over a century. History says that after the Irish Rebellion of 1798, thousands of Irish slaves were sold to both America and Australia. Both African and Irish slaves were treated terribly. One English ship threw 1,302 living slaves into the Atlantic Ocean, as there was little food on board.
Few doubt that the Irish have experienced the full nightmares of slavery - on a par with the negroes (and even worse in the 17th century). And also, there is little doubt that the brown mulattos in the West Indies were mainly the fruits of African-Irish crossbreeding. Only in 1839 did England decide to turn off the satanic road and end the slave trade. Although this thought did not prevent the English pirates from continuing to do this. The new law was the first step towards ending this chapter of Irish suffering.
But if anyone, black or white, thinks that slavery only concerned Africans, he is completely wrong.
Irish slavery must be remembered; it cannot be erased from our memory.
But why is it not told about it in our public and private schools ?! Why isn't this in the history books? Why is this rarely talked about in the media?
The memory of the hundreds of thousands of Irish victims deserves more than the mere mention of an unknown writer.
Their history was rewritten by English pirates. Irish history is almost completely forgotten, as if it never existed.
None of the Irish slaves returned to their homeland, and could not tell about the experiences they experienced. They are forgotten slaves. Popular history books avoid mentioning them.