The translation is a little clumsy, but still for me it was new and interesting information …
The Irish slave trade began when James II sold 30,000 Irish prisoners as slaves to the New World. His Appeal of 1625 demanded that Irish political prisoners be sent overseas and sold to English settlers in the West Indies. By the mid-17th century, the Irish were the main slaves sold in Antigua and Montserrat. By this time, 70% of the entire population of Montserrat were Irish slaves. Ireland quickly became the largest source of human livestock for English merchants. Most of the first slaves sent to the New World were actually white.
From 1641 to 1652, over 500,000 Irish were killed by the British and another 300,000 were sold as slaves. Ireland's population declined from roughly 1,500,000 to 600,000 in just one decade.
Let's remember in more detail how it was …
Families were divided as the British did not allow Irish fathers to take their wives and children with them to the Atlantic. This has led to the emergence of homeless women and children. The British solution to this problem was also to auction them off.
During the 1650s, over 100,000 Irish children between the ages of 10 and 14 were taken from their parents and sold as slaves to the West Indies, Virginia and New England. In this decade, 52,000 Irish people (mostly women and children) were trafficked to Barbados and Virginia. An additional 30,000 Irish men and women were transported and sold to bidders.
In 1656, Cromwell ordered 2,000 Irish children to be sent to Jamaica and sold as slaves to English settlers. Many people today avoid referring to Irish slaves for what they really were: Slaves. They came up with the idea of calling them "Contract Servants" to describe what was happening to the Irish. In most cases, however, since the 17th and 18th centuries, Irish slaves were nothing more than human cattle.
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As an example, the African slave trade was just beginning during this same period. It is well documented that African slaves, untainted by the hated Catholic faith and at a higher cost, were treated far better than their Irish counterparts. African slaves were very expensive in the late 17th century (£ 50) and Irish slaves were cheap (£ 5 or less). If a planter whipped, branded or beat an Irish slave to death, it was never a crime. The death of a slave was a monetary problem, but it was much cheaper than killing a more expensive African. English masters quickly began to breed Irish women for both their personal enjoyment and greater profit. The children of the slaves were themselves slaves who increased the size of the master's labor force.
Even if an Irish woman somehow gained her freedom, her children remained slaves to her master. Thus, Irish mothers, even with this release, rarely abandoned their children and remained in bondage.
Over time, the British came up with a better way to use these women (in many cases girls as young as 12) to increase their market share: the settlers began to interbreed Irish women and girls with African men to produce a special kind of slave. These new "mulatto" slaves cost more than Irish cattle and also allowed settlers to save money on buying new African slaves.
This practice of interbreeding Irish women with African men took place 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 for the purpose of producing slaves for sale."
In short, it was only stopped because it interfered with the profits of a large slave transporting company. England continued to ship tens of thousands of Irish slaves for over a century.
Documents show that after 1798, the year of the Irish Rebellion, thousands of Irish slaves were sold to America and Australia. There has been terrible abuse, both African and Irish prisoners.
One British ship even drowned 1,302 slaves in the Atlantic Ocean to give the crew more food. There is little question that the Irish suffered the horrors of slavery as much (if not more in the 17th century) than Africans. Another very small question is that those brown, swarthy faces that you see on your travels in the West Indies are most likely a combination of African and Irish ancestors.
In 1839, Britain finally decided, on its own initiative, to stop participating in this terrible act and to stop the transport of slaves. While their decision did not stop the pirates.
Why is this so rarely discussed? Are the hundreds of thousands of Irish victims worth more than a mention by an unknown author?
Or their story, as the English pirates wanted: (unlike the African one) should completely and completely disappear as if it never existed. Not a single Irish victim has ever been able to return home to speak of the ordeal that befell them. These are the lost slaves, the ones that time and preconceived history books conveniently forgot.
Between 1652 and 1659, an estimated 50,000 Irish men, women and children were forcibly transported to the British imperial colonies in Barbados and Virginia as plantation slave forces.
Other prisoners of war, as well as political dissidents captured in the conquered regions of England, Wales and Scotland, were also sent to perpetual settlement in Barbados as slaves. This essentially allowed Cromwell to cleanse the population of any opposing elements, as well as provide a profitable source of income through their sale to plantation owners.
The volume in which White prisoners were transported to Barbados was so great that by 1701, of the approximately 25,000 slaves represented in the island's population, about 21,700 of them were of European origin. Later, as the African slave trade began to expand and flourish, the Irish slave population of Barbados declined rapidly over time, partly because many died from work shortly after their arrival, and also as a result of racial mixing with Black slaves.
Unlike the small number of White Contract Servants present in Barbados, who at least theoretically could hope for possible freedom, despite how hard their temporary slavery could be, White slaves did not have such a hope.
Indeed, they were treated like slaves of African descent in every conceivable way. Irish slaves in Barbados were viewed as property that could be bought, sold, treated in any way the slave owner pleased. Their children also inherited slavery for life. Punitive violence such as whipping was lavishly used against Irish slaves, and was often used immediately upon their arrival to brutally cement their slave status and as a warning against future defiance.
Dehumanizing and degrading brute-like bodily examinations were used to evaluate and show the "qualities" of each captive to prospective buyers, something that reached disgrace in the Black slave markets was also practiced against White slaves and contract servants in the West Indies and North America colonies.
Irish slaves were separated from their free White relatives through the initials of the owner, which were applied with a red-hot iron to the forearm for women and on the buttocks of men. Irish women in particular were viewed by White slave owners as excellent merchandise, who bought them as sexual concubines. The rest ended up being sold to local brothels.
This humiliating practice of sexual slavery has made Irish men, women and children potential victims of the perverse whims of many hideous buyers.
In fact, the fate of the White slaves was no better than that of the captive Africans. At times, due to economic conditions, they were treated even worse than their Black comrades in misfortune. This was especially true for much of the 17th century, as White captives were much cheaper in the slave market than their African counterparts and were therefore much less well treated as a convenient disposable labor force.
Only later did Black Slaves become a cheaper commodity. A report dating back to 1667 mercilessly describes the Irish of Barbados as: "the poor people who are simply allowed not to die … they are ridiculed by the Negroes and are called by the Epithet white slaves."
A 1695 report written by the island's governor frankly states that they worked "under the scorching sun without shirts, shoes, or stockings" and "were ruthlessly oppressed and used like dogs."
It was well known to the Irish of that era that being deported or "barbados" to the West Indies meant a slave life. In many cases, it was in fact common for White slaves in Barbados to be overseen by mulattos or Black overseers, who often treated captive Irish slaves with extreme cruelty. Indeed:
The mulatto drivers whipped the whites with pleasure. It gave them a sense of power and was also a form of protest against their white masters.
Existing public records in Barbados report that some planters have gone so far as to systematize this mixing process by establishing special "tribal farms" for the specific purpose of raising children of mixed-race slaves. White female slaves, often as young as 12 years old, were used as "producers" by being forcibly mated with Black men.
The chained Irish of Barbados have played a major role as instigators and leaders of various slave uprisings on the island, which have become a pervasive threat faced by the aristocratic planters.
This kind of rebellion occurred in November 1655 when a group of Irish slaves and servants fled along with several Blacks, and tried to ignite a general rebellion among the slaves against their masters.
This was a serious enough threat to justify the deployment of the militia, which ultimately defeated the insurgents in a fierce battle. Before their death, they inflicted significant damage on the ruling plantation class, chopping several slaveholders to pieces in revenge for their slavery. They did not succeed in their strategy of completely devastating the sugarcane fields in which they were forced to work to enrich their owners.
The captured were set as an example, as a cruel warning to the rest of the Irish, when the captured were burned alive and their heads were then put on pikes for all to see in the market.
As a result of the dramatic increase in the migration of Black slaves to Barbados, coupled with high Irish mortality and racial mixing, the number of White slaves, who once made up the majority of the population in 1629, dwindled to an increasingly diminishing minority by 1786.
Currently, only a tiny but still significant community remains within the local population of Barbados, which includes the descendants of Scotch-Irish slaves, who continue to bear testimony to the tragic legacy of their chained Celtic ancestors. This small group within the predominantly Black Island of Barbados is known locally as the "Red Legs (Red Legs)" which was originally a derogatory term used in the same context as the "redneck" insult and originated from the sunburned skin of the first White slaves who were unaccustomed to the Caribbean tropical climate.
Today, the community of about 400 still resides in the northeastern part of the island in the parish of St. John, and vigorously resists racial mixing with the outnumbered Black population, despite living in extreme poverty. They make their living mainly by subsistence farming and fishing, and indeed they are one of the most impoverished groups living in modern Barbados.
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.