The Forgotten White Slaves

They came as slaves; vast human cargo transported on tall British ships bound for the Americas. They were shipped by the hundreds of thousands and included men, women, and even the youngest of children. Whenever they rebelled or even disobeyed an order, they were punished in the harshest ways. Slave owners would hang their human property by their hands and set their hands or feet on fire as one form of punishment. They were burned alive and had their heads placed on pikes in the marketplace as a warning to other captives. We dont really need to go through all of the gory details, do we? After all, we know all too well the atrocities of the African slave trade. But, are we talking about African slavery? One of the most insensitive and savage episodes in history; the English monarchy executed a campaign against the Irish to destroy all traces of Irish society, culture, and religion. Little has been written about this attempted genocide of the Irish because the topic is so politically sensitive. King James II and Charles I led a continued effort to enslave the Irish. Britains famed Oliver Cromwell furthered this practice of dehumanizing ones next door neighbor.

Slavery in Britain and Ireland

Slavery in Britain and Ireland dated from before Roman occupation. Chattel slavery virtually disappeared after the Norman Conquest. It was finally abolished by the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 (which made some exceptions for other parts of the British Empire). The prohibition on slavery and servitude is now codified under Article 4 of the European Convention on Human Rights, incorporated into UK law by the Human Rights Act 1998.

Before 1066
From before Roman times, the practice of slavery was normal in Britannia. Slaves were routinely exported. Slavery continued as an accepted part of society under the Roman Empire and after; Anglo-Saxons continued the slave system, sometimes in league with Norse traders often selling slaves to the Irish. In the early fifth century, the Romano-Briton Saint Patrick was captured by Irish raiders and taken as a slave to Ireland. St. Brigit a patron saint of Ireland was herself the daughter of Brocca, a Christian Pict and slave in Ireland who had been baptised by Saint Patrick. Early Irish law makes numerous reference to slaves and semi-free senclithe. A female slave (cumal) was often used as a currency unit, e.g. in expressing the honour price of people of certain classes. From the ninth to the twelfth century, Dublin in particular, became a major slave trading center, which lead to an increase in slavery. In 870 A.D. Vikings besieged and captured the stronghold of Alt Clut (the capital of the Kingdom of Strathclyde) and took most of the sites inhabitants; most likely by Olarf the White and Invarr the Boneless, to the Dublin slave markets in 871 A.D. While the Welsh queen, Maredudd of North Wales, paid a ransom for 2,000 Welsh slaves, which demonstrate the large-scale slave raiding upon the British Isles. Vikings would trade with the Gaelic, Pictish, Brythonic and Saxon kingdoms while continuing to raid the British Isles for slaves. Some of the earliest accounts of the Anglo-Saxon English come from the account of the fair-haired boys from York seen in Rome by Pope Gregory the Great. In the seventh century, the English slave Balthild rose to be queen of the Frankish king Clovis II. Anglo-Saxon opinion turned against the sale of English abroad: a law of Ine of Wessex stated that anyone selling his own countryman, whether bond or free, across the sea, was to pay his own wergild in penalty, even when the man so sold was guilty of crime. Nevertheless, legal penalties and economic pressures that led to default in payments maintained the supply of slaves and in the 11th century, there was still a slave trade operating out of Bristol as a passage

in the Vita Wulfstani makes clear. Under ecclesiastical pressure, however, as the feudal order congealed in England during the 12th century, villeinage took the place of outright slavery.

Normal England
According to the Domesday Book census in 1086, over 10% of England's population were slaves. In 1102, the Council of London (1102) convened by Anselm issued a decree: "Let no one hereafter presume to engage in that nefarious trade in which hitherto in England men were usually sold like brute animals." However, the Council had no legislative powers, and no act of law was valid unless signed by the monarch. As the feudal order congealed during the 12th century, the reduced status of the villein rendered outright slavery largely obsolete; the last form of this enforced servitude had disappeared in Britain by the beginning of the 17th century, though the laws on villeinage remained on the books for centuries.

Transportation and Banishment

The 21st Century would have viewed Queen Elizabeth I with the same horror as Hitler and Stalin. Her policy of Irish genocide was pursued with such evil zest it boggles the mind, but Elizabeth was only setting the stage for the even more savage program that was to follow, directed specifically to exterminate the Irish. King James II and Charles I continued Elizabeths campaign but it was Oliver Cromwell who almost perfected it. Few people in modern so-called civilized history can match the horrors of Cromwell in Ireland. It is amazing what one man can do to his fellow man under the banner that God sanctions his actions. During the reign of Elizabeth I, Admiral Sir John Hawkins of Plymouth, a notable Elizabethan seafarer, is widely acknowledged to be "the Pioneer of the English Slave Trade". Slavery was an old established commerce dating back to earliest history. Julius Caesar brought over a million slaves from defeated armies back to Rome. In 15541555, Hawkins formed a slave trading syndicate of wealthy merchants. He sailed with three ships for the Caribbean via Sierra Leone, hijacked a Portuguese slave ship and sold the 300 slaves from it in Santo Domingo. During a second voyage in 1564, his crew captured 400 Africans and sold them at Rio de la Hacha in present-day Colombia, making a 60% profit for his financiers. A third voyage involved both buying slaves directly in Africa and capturing a Portuguese ship with its cargo; upon reaching the Caribbean, Hawkins sold all the slaves. On his return, he published a book entitled An Alliance to Raid for Slaves. Though Britain was a leader in the Atlantic slave trade, almost all of the slaves concerned were transported from Africa to the Americas and never saw the British Isles. Of those who did arrive in Britain, most worked as household servants. By the 16th century, the Arabs were the most active, generally capturing native peoples, not just Africans, marching them to a seaport and selling them to ship owners. Dutch, Portuguese and Spanish ships supplied slaves to the Spanish colonies in America. It was not a big business in the beginning, but very profitable and ship owners were primarily interested only in profits. The morality of selling human beings was never a factor to them.

Barbary pirates
On 20 June 1631, in an event known as the Sack of Baltimore, the village of Baltimore in County Cork, Ireland was attacked by Algerian pirates from the North African Barbary Coast. The pirates killed two villagers and captured almost the whole population of over 100 people, who were put in irons and taken to a life of slavery in North Africa. Villagers along the south coast of England petitioned the king to protect them from abduction by Barbary pirates. Item 20 of The Grand Remonstrance, a list of grievances against Charles I and presented to him in 1641, contains complaints about Barbary pirates of the Ottoman Empire abducting English people into slavery. After the Battle of Kinsale, early 1600s, the English were faced with a problem of some 30,000 military prisoners so they created an official policy of banishment. They were called Wild Geese -- Irish banished from their homeland.

Banishment did not solve the problem entirely, so James II encouraged selling the Irish as slaves to planters and settlers in the New World colonies. In 1612, the first Irish slaves were sold to a settlement on the Amazon River in South America. More accurately, the first recorded sale of Irish slaves was in 1612, because the English, who were noted for meticulous record keeping, simply did not track anything Irish, neither goods nor people, unless such was being shipped to England. The disappearance of a few hundred or a few thousand Irish was not a cause for alarm, but rather for rejoicing. Who cared what their names were anyway, they were gone. The Proclamation of 1625 ordered Irish political prisoners be transported overseas and sold as laborers to English planters settling the islands of the West Indies. This officially established a policy that was to continue for two centuries. In 1629, a large group of Irish men and women were sent to Guyana. By 1632, Irish were the main slaves sold to Antigua and Montserrat in the West Indies. A 1637 census showed 69% of the total population of Montserrat were Irish slaves. There were not enough political prisoners to supply the demand, so slaver gangs combed the Irish country sides to kidnap people to fill quotas. Ireland quickly became the biggest source of human livestock for English merchants. The majority of the early slaves to the New World were actually white. Few people, today, are aware that throughout the entire 17th century, from 1600 to 1699, far more Irish were sold as slaves than Africans. Africans were better suited to work in the semi-tropical climates of the Caribbean but they had to be purchased. The Irish were free for the catching, so to speak. Ireland became the biggest source of livestock for the English slave trade. In 1641, Ireland's population was 1,466,000 and in 1652, 616,000. According to Sir William Petty, 850,000 were wasted by the sword, plague, famine, hardship and banishment during the Confederation War 1641-1652. At the end of the war, vast numbers of Irish men, women and children were forcibly transported to the American colonies by the English government. These people were rounded up like cattle, and, as Prendergast reports on Thurloe's State Papers(Pub. London, 1742), "In clearing the ground for the adventurers and soldiers (the English capitalists of that day)... To be transported to Barbados and the English plantations in America. It was a measure beneficial to Ireland, which was thus relieved of a population that might trouble the planters; it was a benefit to the people removed, which might thus be made English and Christians ... a great benefit to the West India sugar planters, who desired men and boys for their bondsmen, and the women and Irish girls... To solace them." In 1641, the Confederation War broke out in Kilkenny as the Irish attempted to throw out the English yet again; something that seemed to happen at least once every generation. In 1649, Cromwell landed in Ireland, slaughtering some 30,000 Irish living in the city of Drogheda. Cromwell reported, I do not think 30 of their whole number escaped with their lives. Those that did are in safe custody in the Barbados. In 1649, there was an Irish slave revolt in Barbados, the Irish were hanged, drawn and quartered, and their heads were put on pikes prominently displayed around Bridgetown as a warning to others. In 1650, 25,000 Irish were sold to planters in St. Kitt. From 1641 to 1652, in the 12 year period during and following the Confederation revolt (Irish Uprising) and subsequent Cromwellian invasion, over 550,000 Irish were killed by the English and 300,000 were sold as slaves. The English Parliament passed the Act for the Settlement of Ireland in 1652, which classified the Irish population into one of several categories according to their degree of involvement in the uprising and subsequent war. Those who had participated in the uprising or assisted the rebels in any way were sentenced to be hanged and to have their property confiscated. Other categories of the Irish population were sentenced to banishment with whole or partial confiscation of their estates. Whilst the majority of the resettlement took place within Ireland to the province of Connaught, Dr William Petty, Physician-General to Cromwell's Army, estimated that as many as 100,000 Irish men, women and children were transported to the colonies in the West Indies and in North America as indentured servants. The Irish population of Ireland fell from 1,466,000 to 616,000. Soldiers sold as slaves or banished, were not allowed to take their wives and children. The result was a population of homeless women and children, who were declared a public nuisance, rounded up and sold as slaves. But the worst was yet to come.

During the 1650s decade of Cromwells Reign of Terror, over 100,000 Irish children, generally from 10 to 14 years old, were taken from Catholic parents and sold as slaves in the West Indies, Virginia and New England. In fact, more Irish were sold as slaves to the American colonies and plantations from 1651 to 1660 than the total existing free population of the Americas. Cromwell fought two quick wars against the Dutch in 1651, and thereafter monopolized the slave trade. Four years later, he seized Jamaica from Spain, which became the center of the English slave trade in the Caribbean. August 14, 1652, Cromwell began his Ethnic Cleansing of Ireland, ordering that the Irish were to be transported overseas, starting with 12,000 Irish prisoners sold to Barbados. May 1, 1654, the infamous Connaught or Hell proclamation ordered all Irish to be removed from their lands and relocated west of the Shannon or be transported to the West Indies. Those who have been to County Clare, a land of barren rock will understand what an impossible position such an order placed on the Irish. With no place to go, the Irish were slow to respond. Cromwell had financed his Irish expeditions through business investors by promising them Irish estates as dividends and promising soldiers freehold land in exchange for their services. So to speed up the relocation process, a reinforcing law was passed on 26 June 1657 stating: Those who fail to transplant themselves into Connaught or Co Clare within six months Shall be attained of high treason are to be sent into America or some other parts beyond the seas those banished who return are to suffer the pains of death as felons by virtue of this act, without benefit of Clergy. Estimates vary between 80,000 and 130,000 regarding the amount of Irish sent into slavery in America and the West Indies during the years of 1651 - 1660: Prendergast says 80,000; Boudin 100,000; Emmet 120,000 to 130,000; Lingard 60,000 up until 1656; and Condon estimates "the number of Irish transported to the British colonies in America from 1651 1660 exceeded the total number of their inhabitants at that period, a fact which ought not to be lost sight of by those who undertake to estimate the strength of the Celtic element in this nation..." Although it was not a crime to kill any Irish, and soldiers were encouraged to do so, the slave trade proved too profitable to kill off the source of the product. Privateers and chartered shippers sent gangs out with quotas to fill. As they scoured the countryside, in their zest, they inadvertently kidnapped a number of English, too. On March 25, 1659, a petition of 72 Englishmen was received in London, claiming they were illegally now in slavery in the Barbados. The petition also claimed that "7,000-8,000 Scots taken prisoner at the battle of Worcester, in 1651, were sold to the British plantations in the New World, and 200 Frenchmen had been kidnapped, concealed and sold in Barbados for 900 pounds of cotton each." Subsequently some 52,000 Irish, mostly women and sturdy boys and girls, were sold to Barbados and Virginia alone. Another 30,000 Irish men and women were taken prisoners and ordered transported and sold as slaves. In 1656, Cromwells Council of State ordered that 1000 Irish girls and 1000 Irish boys be rounded up and taken to Jamaica to be sold as slaves to English planters. As horrendous as these numbers sound, it only reflects a small part of the evil program, as most of the slaving activity was not recorded. In 1690, no tears were shed amongst the Irish when Cromwell died. During the early colonial period, The Scots and the English, along with other western European nations, dealt with their "Gypsy problem" by transporting them as slaves in large numbers to North America and the Caribbean. Cromwell shipped Romanichal Gypsies as slaves to the southern plantations and there is documentation of Gypsies being owned by former black slaves in Jamaica. With Charles II duly crowned, the Irish welcomed the restoration of the monarchy, but it was a hollow expectation. In 1662, after reviewing the profitability of the slave trade, Charles II chartered the Company of Royal Adventurers--which later became the Royal African Company. Charles II, the Queen Dowager, and the Duke of York contracted to supply at least 3,000 slaves annually to their chartered company. They would far exceed their quotas.

Records from 1664 show Irish sold as slaves to the French on St. Bartholomew. Into the 18th century, English ships which made a stop in Ireland enroute to the Americas, typically had a cargo of Irish slaves to sell.

Slaves or Indentured Servants

Many people today will avoid calling the Irish slaves what they truly were: Slaves. Theyll come up with terms like Indentured Servants to describe what occurred to the Irish. History has whitewashed the Irish slave trade by labeling slaves as indentured servants. Indentured servants did exist; including English, French, Spanish and even a few Irish, but there is a great difference between servant and slave. In most cases from the 17th and 18th centuries, Irish slaves were nothing more than human cattle. From 1625 onward, the Irish were sold, pure and simple as slaves. There were no indenture agreements, no protection, and no choice. They were captured and turned over to shippers to be sold for profit, generally 900 pounds of cotton. Slave trade became an industry and everyone involved (except the Irish) had a share of the profits. The English government variously referred to Irish to be transported as rogues, vagabonds, rebels, neutrals, felons, military prisoners, teachers, priests, maidens etc. All historians call them servants, bondsman, indentured servants, slaves, etc., and agree that they were all political victims. The plain facts are that most were treated as slaves. After their land was confiscated by England, which drove them from their ancestral homes to forage for roots like animals, they were kidnapped, rounded up and driven like cattle to waiting ships and transported to English colonies in America, never to see their country again. They were the victims of what many called the immense "Irish Slave Trade." All writers on the 17th century American colonies are in agreement that the treatment of white servants or white slaves in English colonies was cruel to the extreme, worse than that of black slaves; that inhuman treatment was the norm, that torture (and branding FT, fugitive traitor, on the forehead) was the punishment for attempted escape. Dunn stated: "Servants were punished by whipping, strung up by the hands and matches lighted between their fingers, beaten over the head until blood ran," --all this on the slightest provocation. Ligon, an eyewitness in Barbados from 1647-1650 said, "Truly, I have seen cruelty there done to servants as I did not think one Christian could have done to another." It is a matter of great importance to realize that most of the white slaves, servants and small farmers abandoned the West Indies for the mainland colonies in America. Dunn reports: "Between 1678 and 1713, Leeward sugar planters became more rich and powerful and controlled all local councils and assemblies so white servants and small farmers abandoned the Leeward Islands." Craven said that between 1643 and 1667, about 12,000 left Barbados for other plantations and Dunn said the white population of the Leeward Islands was reduced by 30 percent between 1678 and 1708. According to Craven, in Colonies in Transition, prior to the 1680's, the hopes which sustained the Carolina venture continued to depend chiefly upon the migration of settlers from the older colonies, especially from the West Indies. Smith asserted that after 1670, the emigration of whites from the smaller islands at least equaled the immigration. Condon declared: "In [the] course of time many of those who had been transported to the West Indies in this manner found their way to the colonies on the continent, in search of greater freedom and a more healthful climate." All writers on the 17th century history agree that between one-half and two thirds of white immigrants in the British West Indies and mainland America were servants, most of them severely mistreated. Most all Irish immigrants were 'servants.' Irish were almost exclusively Catholic (at least they were when they left Ireland) and most were of ancient Irish families even though they appeared in English records as English, if recorded at all. After 20,000 Puritans arrived in the American colonies from 1630-1640, migration of English colonists all but subsided. Some writers say after 1640 only a trickle of English colonists arrived. In 1632, many Irish were on Antigua. In 1637, 69 percent of whites on Montserrat were Irish. In 1650, 25,000 Irish were on St. Kitt's and Nevis and some were on other Leeward islands. In 1652, prior to the wholesale transportation of Irish, most of 12 thousand political prisoners on Barbados were Irish.

Treatment

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. Africans and Irish were housed together and they were both property of the planter owners, but the Africans received much better treatment, food and housing. In the British West Indies, the planters routinely tortured white slaves for any infraction. Owners would hang Irish slaves by their hands and set their hands or feet afire as a means of punishment. To end this barbarity, Colonel William Brayne wrote to English authorities in 1656, urging the importation of Negro slaves on the grounds that, "the planters would have to pay much more for them so they would have an interest in preserving their lives, which was not the case of with the Irish", many of whom, he charged, were killed by overwork and cruel treatment. Africans were very expensive during the late 1600s (50 Sterling). Irish were cheap (less than 5 Sterling). If a planter whipped or branded or beat an Irish slave to death, it was never a crime. A death was a monetary setback, but far cheaper than killing a more expensive African. Africans were also more durable in the hot climate, and caused fewer problems. The biggest bonus with the Africans: they were NOT Catholic. Any heathen pagan was better than an Irish Papist. There was no racial consideration or discrimination, you were either a freeman or a slave, but there was aggressive religious discrimination. The Pope was considered by all English Protestants to be the enemy of God and civilization, and all Catholics heathens and hated. Irish Catholics were not considered Christians. On the other hand, since the Irish were literate, usually more so than the plantation owners, they were used as house servants, account keepers, scribes and teachers. Any infraction was dealt with the same severity, whether African or Irish, field worker or domestic servant. Floggings were common, and if a planter beat an Irish slave to death, it was a lesser loss than killing a more expensive African. Parliament passed the Act to Regulate Slaves on British Plantations in 1667, designating authorized punishments to include whippings and brandings for slave offenses against a Christian. Irish Catholics were not considered Christians, even if they were freemen. The planters began breeding the Irish women for pleasure and profit. Children of slaves were themselves slaves, which increased the size of the masters free workforce. Even if an Irish woman somehow obtained her freedom, her kids would remain slaves of her master. Thus, Irish moms would remain in servitude not to abandon their children. 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. The practice became so widespread that in 1681, legislation was passed forbidding the practice of mating Irish slave women to African slave men for the purpose of producing slaves for sale. This legislation was not the result of any moral or racial consideration, but rather because the practice interfered with the profits of a large slave transport company. It is interesting to note that from 1680 to 1688, the Royal African Company sent 249 shiploads of slaves to the Indies and American Colonies, with a cargo of 60,000 Irish and Africans. More than 14,000 died during passage. Following the Battle of the Boyne and the defeat of King James in 1691, the Irish slave trade had an overloaded inventory, and the slavers were making great profits. The Spanish slavers were a competition nuisance, so in 1713, the Treaty of Assiento was signed in which Spain granted England exclusive rights to the slave trade and England agreed to supply Spanish colonies with 4,800 slaves a year for 30 years. After the 1798 Irish Rebellion, England shipped tens of thousands of Irish prisoners to be sold as slaves in the Colonies 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 enough to eat. If slaves died due to accident, the loss was covered by insurance, but not if they starved to death. In 1839, a bill was passed in England forbidding the slave trade, bringing an end to Irish misery. While their decision did not stop pirates from doing what they desired, the new law slowly concluded THIS chapter of nightmarish Irish misery.

British commerce shifted to opium in China. An end to Irish misery? Well, perhaps just a pause. During the following decade, thousands of tons of butter, grain and beef were shipped from Ireland as over 2 million Irish starved to death in the great famine, and a great many others went to America and Australia. The population of Ireland fell from over 9 million to bottom out at less than 3 million. Another chapter, another time, another method. same people, same results. 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. Curiously, of all the Irish shipped out as slaves, not one is known to have returned to Ireland to tell their tales. Many, if not most, died on the ships transporting them or from overwork and abusive treatment on the plantations. The Irish that did obtain their freedom, frequently emigrated on to the American mainland while others moved to adjoining islands. On Montserrat, seven of every ten whites were Irish. Comparable 1678 census figures for the other Leeward Islands were: 26 per cent Irish on Antigua; 22 per cent on Nevis; and 10 per cent on St Christopher. Today, the pages of the telephone directories on the West Indies islands are filled with Irish names, but virtually none of these black Irish know anything about their ancestors or their history. On the other hand, many West Indies natives spoke Gaelic right up until recent years. They very likely descended from African and Irish ancestry.