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Debunked: Irish people in colonies were not slaves - they were indentured servants

Posts that are being shared on social media claim Irish people ‘experienced the horrors of slavery’ more than African people.

AS THE BLACK Lives Matter movement garnered more publicity in recent weeks following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, there has been a surge in posts on social media making claims about ‘Irish slavery’.

Irish historian Liam Hogan, who has a significant body of work in this area, has pointed to a sudden increase in online searches about ‘Irish slaves’ in the US recently:

Some posts shared on social media platforms claimed the first Irish slaves imported into American colonies were Irish – a claim we have already debunked.

In the last week, a photograph that appears to show a number of men crammed into cages has been widely shared, with text about the “Irish slave trade”.

One such post, which echoes claims made in other Facebook posts, says:

“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.”

It goes on to state: “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.”

Let’s start with the photograph that is used with these posts. A number of articles and this Italian history blog have identified this images as showing Italian coal miners in an elevator of a mine in Belgium in 1900.

It does not show slaves, or even indentured servants, and it does not appear from reports that any of these men – or the two women seen in the image – are Irish. 

Slaves v indentured servants

Indentured servitude is not the same as slavery, and to be a servant is not the same as being a slave, neither legally nor by definition.

Indentured servants had to serve for between four and seven years before being freed – in the American colonies, this was a way of ‘paying’ for their passage to the New World.

Many servants, according to historians, entered into a contract with their ‘employers’ voluntarily, though some were forcibly deported from their home countries and into indentured servitude.

Matthew Reilly, a professor of anthropology at City College of New York, has done extensive research in this area along with Jerome Handler, senior scholar at Virginia Humanities at the University of Virginia. 

Indentured servants were considered human beings under the law, while slaves were not. Reilly said the deeds and wills they reviewed from Barbados from the 1630s and 1640s demonstrate this. 

“What we see when planters [colony settlers] are transferring their property holdings to another person, whether it’s through a deed, or when they pass away in a will, we’re seeing that labourers are listed very specifically,” he told TheJournal.ie

“If an indentured servant is found on that list, their first and last name is included, recognising their point of origin, recognising their familial line going back generations by giving them a last name. And then all of those cases, we also see how much time is left to serve. So it’ll give a person’s first and last name, and then how many years they have left to serve.

Then in the next category, you’ll see a list of who will be referred to as ‘the Negroes’ on the estate and in those cases, it’s always just a first name, no last name and no time to serve. So this indicates the denial of personhood. And it also indicates that they’re denying their genealogy, their parentage, and their ancestry more or less. So it’s certainly a commentary on who also is a person and who is not.

Chattel slavery meant that people were the legal property of other people, and it wasn’t entered into voluntarily. If a woman who had been sold as a slave had a child, that child would then be legally classified as a slave.

“Early on before we have the legal precedents, this would be part of what was referred to as the custom of the country. And within that custom children born to enslaved mothers would inherit the status of their mother,” Reilly explained.

So in these cases, this is something that was fully codified into law as we get a few decades into the English colony in Barbados, and certainly something that would be adopted in other colonies like Jamaica, Virginia. So these laws were spread widely.

Reilly said this was not the case for indentured servants. In some cases there are records of parents dying and their children becoming wards of the State, but they did not inherit the indentured servant status of their parents. 

Freedom

As we’ve already mentioned, indentured servants entered into contracts and once they had served their time, they were free to move on. 

“In principle the contract of indenture would indicate that upon the completion of a period of servitude, they would then be granted their freedom along with a parcel of land or a certain amount of goods, whether in sugar or other commodities,” Reilly said.

How much this actually happened in practice is up for debate. We get very few records indicating that this may have actually happened. But what we do know is that in some cases, former indentured servants would go on to do quite well for themselves.

He cited research by Jenny Shaw, a historian at the University of Alabama, about an Irish indentured servant called Cornelius Bryan. 

Bryan was brought before the Barbados Council accused of slandering English colonists and received twenty-one lashes on his back as punishment. 

“But we then track Cornelius Bryan and a few years later on his deathbed in his will, he leaves to his heirs several enslaved Africans. So he kind of moves up the ladder in that hierarchy because he has the opportunity to do so. This is not something that would be afforded to an enslaved African,” Reilly explained.

There is no historical evidence to back up claims that Irish people “experienced the horrors of slavery as much (if not more in the 17th Century) as the Africans did”, as social media posts claim.

However Reilly said there is truth to statements about poor treatment of Irish indentured servants. 

“The work that I have been conducting, part of it is to combat this notion of white or Irish slavery, at the same time recognising the brutality of the experience. We’re not in any way trying to diminish the hardships that were suffered by countless indentured servants, many of which were sent over against their will,” he said.

“In many ways, there are similarities to the system of slavery, but there are careful distinctions that make it a very different experience on the ground, whether it’s through social principles, or legal principles.”

Misinformation

Earlier this week, historian Liam Hogan said this narrative about Irish slavery “goes much deeper than people simply unwittingly spreading misinformation, the far-right seeding disinformation or bot farms sowing discord”.

“The denial and ignorance across society about the legacy of the transatlantic slaves trade it remnant of the ideological system that sustained it”. 

Professor Reilly said he believes the sharing of these posts – and particularly the timing around them – is a kind of “historical revisionism”.

“I think the common thread running throughout many of these posts is it’s almost like the historical way of saying ‘all lives matter’. It’s a way of suggesting that ‘my genealogy is part of the story as well’. So in many ways it’s a push back against Black Lives Matter, but it’s also an inclusion in historical victimisation and historical suffering.

“It’s certainly part of this neo-liberal notion that if you work hard enough, you can overcome any type of historical suffering.”

******

There is a lot of false news and scaremongering being spread in Ireland at the moment about coronavirus. Here are some practical ways for you to assess whether the messages that you’re seeing – especially on WhatsApp – are true or not. 

STOP, THINK AND CHECK 

Look at where it’s coming from. Is it someone you know? Do they have a source for the information (e.g. the HSE website) or are they just saying that the information comes from someone they know? A lot of the false news being spread right now is from people claiming that messages from ‘a friend’ of theirs. Have a look yourself – do a quick Google search and see if the information is being reported elsewhere. 

Secondly, get the whole story, not just a headline. A lot of these messages have got vague information (“all the doctors at this hospital are panicking”) and don’t mention specific details. This is often – but not always a sign – that it may not be accurate. 

Finally, see how you feel after reading it. A lot of these false messages are designed to make people feel panicked. They’re deliberately manipulating your feelings to make you more likely to share it. If you feel panicked after reading something, check it out and see if it really is true.

TheJournal.ie’s FactCheck is a signatory to the International Fact-Checking Network’s Code of Principles. You can read it here. For information on how FactCheck works, what the verdicts mean, and how you can take part, check out our Reader’s Guide here. You can read about the team of editors and reporters who work on the factchecks here

Have you gotten a message on WhatsApp or Facebook or Twitter about coronavirus that you’re not sure about and want us to check it out? Message or mail us and we’ll look into debunking it. WhatsApp: 085 221 4696 or Email: answers@thejournal.ie

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    Mute Mick.
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    Jun 28th 2020, 11:21 AM

    We have been through this before. Irish
    servants in the Colonies and Caribbean. Not payed or given any form of renumeration. Could be sold on multiple times. Could be beaten and worked to death with no legal consequences. Fed and kept in horrendous conditions. Had a fixed term of indentured (normally 10-12 years).
    Chattel African Slaves in the Colonies and Caribbean. Not payed or given any form of renumeration. Could be sold on multiple times. Could be beaten and worked to death with no legal consequences. Fed and kept in horrendous conditions. Slavery was for life and was hereditary (could he freed if their owner so wished).
    So realistically the only difference between the to groups was the time limit of indenture. So calling one an Indentured Servant and the other Chattel Slave is sophistry.

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    Mute Les Wynan
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    Jun 28th 2020, 11:46 AM

    @Mick.: Fair enough. Have you a source (not a website) for that information?

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    Mute Dave O'Keeffe
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    Jun 28th 2020, 11:49 AM

    @Mick.: I tend to agree to a point. There can be little doubt that knowing it would end would have made it less horrific, even if just a tiny bit. But there’s also the fact that the indentured were less valuable and were therefore given the more dangerous work as they’d be lost eventually anyway.

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    Mute Mick.
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    Jun 28th 2020, 11:51 AM

    @Les Wynan: Any history book that has that period will tell you the same.
    Using the Term “Indentured Servant” is the equivalent of someone saying “Ethnic Cleansing” is just “Demographic Realignment”.

    234
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    Mute Lita Campbell
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    Jun 28th 2020, 12:00 PM

    @Mick.: Not to mention the fact that they were sent to the West Indies by force, they did not choose to go and it was part of the subjugation of the Irish people by Cromwell and other British leaders. No one can ever justify the evil that was and is slavery but it should be possible to discuss other forms of wrongdoing without being attacked. The Irish people who were forcibly shipped to the West Indies may have been ‘indentured servants’ but not by choice and apart from the horrific treatment they endured, they could never come home as they had not the means to do so.

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    Mute Mick.
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    Jun 28th 2020, 12:00 PM

    @Les Wynan: Here are just some of the Books.
    Hilary Beckles McD. “A “riotous and Unruly Lot”: Irish Indentured Servants and Freemen in the English West Indies, 1644–1713″.

    Kristen Block; “Subjects Without an Empire: The Irish in the Early Modern Caribbean”. 

    Richard S Dunne. Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624–1713. 
    The are at least another 25 further books I could mention.

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    Mute sean o'dhubhghaill
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    Jun 28th 2020, 12:02 PM

    @Lita Campbell: They were sent to the West Indies by force as it was part of the penal system. 100 years later people were sent to Australia by force. Part of the penal system.

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    Mute John Bissett
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    Jun 28th 2020, 12:21 PM
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    Mute Richard Russell
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    Jun 28th 2020, 12:51 PM

    @Mick.: have you read these books? I ask this as I know that the history I was taught in 1966 was written to make the story sound good

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    Mute Mick.
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    Jun 28th 2020, 1:07 PM

    @Richard Russell: All these books were written by expert Historians of this time period. All can be cross refernced with other literature of that period. Historical fact doesn’t change just how it’s relayed can be. The books I mentioned can all be bought on Amazon if you are interested in reading them.

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    Mute JohnandLyn Henry
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    Jun 28th 2020, 1:50 PM

    @Mick.: @LesWynan , now that Mick has provided sources, what’s your point. Are you going to take his point, are you going to research and come back to us or was your question an attempted ‘gotcha’?

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    Mute Lita Campbell
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    Jun 28th 2020, 2:02 PM

    @sean o’dhubhghaill: Are you saying that they broke the law? Whose law? And what were their crimes, anymore than those sent to Australia were guilty in most cases of feeding their family or opposing British rule in Ireland.

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    Mute Paul Maguire
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    Jun 28th 2020, 2:06 PM

    @Mick.: the lefties always want to rewrite history and deny it happened

    63
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    Mute Gems spuds
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    Jun 28th 2020, 2:13 PM

    @Lita Campbell: there was no crime. It was a land / people clearance under Cromwell acts of settlements. They needed to divvy up the land to pay the soldiers and adventurers. see William Petty

    children sent off as prostitutes : see dunne on children and sex and children overboard as they didn’t survive

    John Patrick Prendergast
    he History of the Cromwellian Settlement of Ireland 1863,

    OF THE SEIZING OF WIDOWS AND ORPHANS, AND THE DES
    TITUTE, AND TRANSPORTING THEM TO BARBADOES, AND
    THE ENGLISH PLANTATIONS.

    WHILE the Government were employed in clearing the ground
    for the Adventurers and Soldiers (the English capitalists of that
    day), by making the nobility and gentry yield up their ancient
    inheritances, and withdraw to Oonnaught, where they could
    wish the whole nation,”* they had agents actively employed
    through Ireland, seizing women, orphans, and the destitute to be
    transported to Barbadoes 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, who might thus be made English arid Chris
    tians; t and a great benefit to the West India sugar planters, who
    desired the men and boys for their bondmen, and the women and
    Irish girls in a country where they had only Maroon women and
    Negresses to solace them.

    42
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    Mute sean o'dhubhghaill
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    Jun 28th 2020, 2:19 PM

    @Lita Campbell: Yes. They broke the law and were ‘exiled’. As 10s of 1000s of Welsh, Scottish and English also broke the laws and were exiled. The laws were in many cases extreme and unjust (see ‘The Bloody Code’) but it was still ‘the law’, not just a ’round them up and ship them out’ operation.

    15
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    Mute Gems spuds
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    Jun 28th 2020, 2:55 PM

    @sean o’dhubhghaill:

    so you keep saying Sean so show me the signed agreements these women and girls signed. what do you think solace means Sean.? I have a fair idea as a woman what it means and you will not convince me women of Ireland signed themselves into slavery to solace anyone willingly.

    perhaps you can find sources to show me where they did.

    WHILE the Government were employed in clearing the ground
    for the Adventurers and Soldiers (the English capitalists of that
    day), by making the nobility and gentry yield up their ancient
    inheritances, and withdraw to Oonnaught, where they could
    wish the whole nation,”* they had agents actively employed
    through Ireland, seizing women, orphans, and the destitute to be
    transported to Barbadoes 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, who might thus be made English arid Chris
    tians; t and a great benefit to the West India sugar planters, who
    desired the men and boys for their bondmen, and the women and
    Irish girls in a country where they had only Maroon women and
    Negresses to solace them.

    38
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    Mute David Jordan
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    Jun 28th 2020, 4:35 PM

    @Les Wynan: “Have you a source (not a website) for that information?”

    From this paper:

    McD Beckles, H., 1990. A “riotous and unruly lot”: Irish Indentured Servants and Freemen in the English West Indies, 1644-1713. The William and Mary Quarterly: A Magazine of Early American History and Culture, pp.503-522. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2937974

    The British landowners were out numbered by the Irish when they arrived in the Caribbean in the 1650s after the Cromwellian invasion of Ireland, they were paranoid of a revolt by the Irish who were prisoners of war.

    McD Beckles’ article illustrates the brutality the Irish experienced for the first few decades after their arrival and the little freedom they had. The article includes accounts by contemporary observers who visited the islands:

    “The Irish servants in general experienced servitude as an oppressive labour system in which their condition was nearer slavery than freedom.”

    Some tried to escape…

    “In 1655, for example, Gov. Searle learned that there were “several Irish and Negros out in rebellion in the Thicketts and thereabouts”

    They were captured and all were sentenced to 31 lashes each.

    “soundly laid on their bare backs by the common hangman and returned to the common gaol at the pleasure of their master”.

    And some Irish indentured servants were beaten to so badly they were left permanently disabled or were killed:

    “The severity of some masters and overseers towards Christian [Irish] servants has been such that some have lately been destroyed” – Quote from 1656″

    “Destroyed” means the servant was injured so badly by a beating they could not recover and work again.

    “In December 1656, for example, Patrick Cornelius complained in a petition to the local magistrate that his master had punished him so harshly he could no longer perform is duties. Investigation revealed that he had lost the use of his left leg.”

    Seeking legal assistance often made matters worse…

    “Irish servants could petition magistrates in the event of perceived maltreatment and breach of contract.” but “…servant petitions were few and far in number, further hardships were likely to follow the exercise of this right.”

    The British landowners could literally get away with murder:

    “The Grimin case of 1677 best illustrates how planter solidarity in Barbados developed to distort the execution of the laws. In that year, Charles Gremlin, a substantial planter, murdered his Irish maidservant. The case was heard by Gov. Johnathan Atkins, one of the few governors without landed property and how relied heavily on planters’ financial concessions to supplement his small salary from Whitehall.”

    “Gremlin was reprieved by Atkins–a decision that angered many propertyless whites. By law Grimlin should have been convicted and either fined severely or imprisoned. Atkins washed his hands of the most controversial decision; he acted, he said, at the request of “most of the Ministers and very many gentlemen of the Island”.

    It wasn’t until the 18th century that conditions improved for the Irish, and by the latter half of the 19th century, descendants Irish indentured servants were allowed jobs in local government.

    26
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    Mute Lita Campbell
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    Jun 28th 2020, 10:58 PM

    @sean o’dhubhghaill: Whose law? What right had the English government ever have in Ireland? It was all part of the land grabbing and get rich quick English planters. Your reply is arrant nonsense.

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    Mute JJandtim Dwyer
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    Jun 30th 2020, 12:04 AM

    @Mick.: take trip to Fort Mitchel(Spike Island)See the number of shipments to the penal colonies of Van Demon Land and elsewhere in Australia, for what?A loaf of Bread a sheep etc,excuses to populate the new conquests of the Crown.
    The Irish were slaves to the Crown no other way about it.

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    Mute Sean Barry
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    Jun 28th 2020, 11:19 AM

    What about the raid of Baltimore in West cork.
    Read the book “the stolen village”. Irish people brought to Algiers as slaves.

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    Mute John Mc Donagh
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    Jun 28th 2020, 11:50 AM

    @Sean Barry: I have read it. It’s very good and well researched but that was about black people enslaving whites. It’s not consistent with the type of victimhood that appears to be so popular today!

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    Mute Bob McShane
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    Jun 28th 2020, 12:05 PM

    @Sean Barry: certainly news to me: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sack_of_Baltimore?wprov=sfla1. Some interesting theories behind the origin of the raid. Slavery is as old as humanity itself.

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    Mute john doe
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    Jun 28th 2020, 2:22 PM

    @John Mc Donagh: ah come on John. Not relevant.
    Yes this slave raid happened in Baltimore but it is not comparable to BLM in the slightest.
    If the descendants of those Baltimore slaves were still living as an ethnic minority in Algeria and discriminated against on a daily basis because of their skin colour it would be a relevant comparison. Just like the situation with descendants of black African slaves in USA today.
    Slavery happened all over the world. The legacy of it in USA is very obvious where the black population have been purposely hindered from advancing by policy and racism. It is great that this history of injustice is being highlighted.

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    Mute Gems spuds
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    Jun 28th 2020, 3:04 PM

    @john doe: Its very relevant. The Gael population were banned from going into the town hence why the all the captives were English. The ransom went unpaid on this raid.

    this slave raid shows who was in charge of the ports even prior to the settlement acts under Cromwell and the role of planters subjugating the the native Gael population. you are aware that Cromwell divided the population into ” Gael” Old English” and New English. The Gael were most certainly shipped off when Irish land was used to pay the soldiers and adventurers under Cromwell. women and children were shipped off to solace in the colonies. do you have any evidence that these women and girls went willingly to that fate?

    WHILE the Government were employed in clearing the ground
    for the Adventurers and Soldiers (the English capitalists of that
    day), by making the nobility and gentry yield up their ancient
    inheritances, and withdraw to Oonnaught, where they could
    wish the whole nation,”* they had agents actively employed
    through Ireland, seizing women, orphans, and the destitute to be
    transported to Barbadoes 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, who might thus be made English arid Chris
    tians; t and a great benefit to the West India sugar planters, who
    desired the men and boys for their bondmen, and the women and
    Irish girls in a country where they had only Maroon women and
    Negresses to solace them.

    and why do you feel the need to use skin as some macabre competition in human suffering?

    46
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    Mute Dino
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    Jun 28th 2020, 11:25 AM

    Is there any editors in the Journal or do left wing media not believe in them?

    324
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    Mute Michael
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    Jun 28th 2020, 6:17 PM

    @Dino: Left wing media don’t believe in freedom of speech, differences of opinions or editors.

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    Mute Denis Reidy
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    Jun 28th 2020, 11:13 AM

    Misinformation about misinformation

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    Mute Honeybee
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    Jun 28th 2020, 11:36 AM

    @Denis Reidy: An interesting feature in that photograph is that the men appear to be wearing clogs and Irish men of the period would be barefoot or wearing worn brogues.

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    Mute Dónal Mac Cormaic
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    Jun 28th 2020, 12:53 PM

    @Honeybee: it’s a photo of miners in Flanders, Belgium

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    Mute Niall Bourke
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    Jun 28th 2020, 12:22 PM

    The Universal Declaration of Human Rights describes Indebted Servitude as slavery but obviously The Journal knows better.

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    Mute Conor Bradley
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    Jun 28th 2020, 5:30 PM

    @Niall Bourke: being considered property and being tied into a fixed-term labour contract (forced or not) to pay for passage etc, is very different.

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    Mute Niall Bourke
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    Jun 28th 2020, 6:25 PM

    @Conor Bradley: I’d like to change my post by inserting the following “, Conor Bradley and three other people” after the words “The Journal”.
    Take that The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Conor and three other people know better.

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    Mute Niall Bourke
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    Jun 28th 2020, 8:20 PM

    @Conor Bradley: At no point did I in any way degrade the suffering of black slaves. I took issue with the fact that the headline and the article are adding to the false narrative that the Irish were not enslaved. The Declaration of Human Rights acknowledges that. I won’t call you names but I do think it is really sad that (I am assuming your nationality) an Irishman argues our ancestors were not enslaved when even the declaration in it’s description of slavery acknowledges it.

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    Mute Niall Bourke
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    Jun 28th 2020, 8:53 PM

    @Conor Bradley: The article is saying Irish people were not enslaved. The Declaration of Human Rights says it and you are wrong.

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    Mute Conor Bradley
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    Jun 28th 2020, 8:53 PM

    @Niall Bourke: slavery is about ownership. Forced labour is just a part of it. Of course Irish people had a hard time. Of course there were Cromwellian penal colonies which were working ‘like’ slaves and so on. But it wasn’t slavery! Chattel Slavery is one person owning another person as property. That’s it. That’s what it means. Why is it so hard for people to understand and accept that?? The only answer is a subtle undercurrent of racism. There can be no other reason for it. Reading the journal comments section feels like banging your head against a wall.

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    Mute Niall Bourke
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    Jun 28th 2020, 9:38 PM

    @Conor Bradley: The headline is wrong. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights agrees with me.

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    Mute Gems spuds
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    Jun 28th 2020, 10:15 PM

    @Conor Bradley: now explain to me why Indians on Barbados are called slaves by the same cohort of revisionists, these Indians singed contracts and their children were free. so explain how if Indians who signed contracts were slaves and Irish who didn’t sign contracts were servants.

    now explain where you found the documents to show these women and girls signed up to solace sugar slavers .

    John Patrick Prendergast
    OF THE SEIZING OF WIDOWS AND ORPHANS, AND THE DES
    TITUTE, AND TRANSPORTING THEM TO BARBADOES, AND
    THE ENGLISH PLANTATIONS.

    WHILE the Government were employed in clearing the ground
    for the Adventurers and Soldiers (the English capitalists of that
    day), by making the nobility and gentry yield up their ancient
    inheritances, and withdraw to Oonnaught, where they could
    wish the whole nation,”* they had agents actively employed
    through Ireland, seizing women, orphans, and the destitute to be
    transported to Barbadoes 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, who might thus be made English arid Chris
    tians; t and a great benefit to the West India sugar planters, who
    desired the men and boys for their bondmen, and the women and
    Irish girls in a country where they had only Maroon women and
    Negresses to solace them.

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    Mute Writeon
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    Jun 29th 2020, 8:38 AM

    @Conor Bradley: Jaysus Conor, you resorted to name calling and calling somebody a racist pretty quickly there. Probably because you had nothing to properly rebuke Niall’s point. Nobody here is saying black lives don’t matter. The article is about whether or not indentured servants could be considered slaves. So it’s perfectly acceptable to comment on that here. To say they suffered and should be considered slaves, does not mean Africans didn’t suffer. Suffering and exploitation is not the sole property of any one group

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    Jun 29th 2020, 9:21 AM

    @Writeon: the definition of chattel slavery in every other place except one source that suits a Nialls particular narrative, already rebukes his point. Chattel slavery, a system when a person owns another as property. That’s it, there ya go. And as for the name calling – you’re also a gob$hite. Have a fantastic day:)

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    Mute Pádraig Healy
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    Jun 29th 2020, 9:38 AM

    @Conor Bradley: Judging by the general level of response from yourself in this thread you’re either immature or just not a very nice person… Enough of the insults, sick of your ilk….

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    Jun 29th 2020, 10:02 AM

    @Pádraig Healy: My ‘ilk’ is also sick of people who confuse thier opinions with facts. I’ll say it again, chattel slavery – which is the slavery always brought up in the context of the Irish slaves : African slave debate, is a system where one human being owns another as property. It’s incredibly frustrating to have to keep pointing out that the sky is indeed blue and just because you have an opinion that is is purple, does not change it’s blue-ness. The only reason I’m allowing myself to get trolled into responding to these comments is that it sets a dangerous precedent to let the Irish slave narrative continue. We should be extremely empathetic to the history of slavery and any forced labour scenarios, but understand the differences between the two.

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    Mute Gems spuds
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    Jun 29th 2020, 12:11 PM

    @Conor Bradley: the indians on Barbados slaves or servants? You are using chattel as a benchmark to dismiss Irish slavery, so explain why Indians on the island are considered slaves by academics today when they signed indentures, but Irish women and girls were not slaves, the latter didn’t sign indentures. Indians on the Island were not Chattel in fact manumissions of Indian slaves was 1650′s. so were the indians slaves or not?

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    Mute Thomas McGrath
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    Jun 28th 2020, 11:17 AM

    So more fake history like calling the genocide against the Irish people a famine.

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    Mute Andrew English
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    Jun 28th 2020, 12:37 PM

    @Thomas McGrath: whatever about indentured servitude and slavery, the idea of genocide has been disproven time and time again. The Irish History Podcast has a great piece on this.

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    Jun 28th 2020, 1:36 PM

    @Andrew English: who by? sorry most people read books. try one.
    John Patrick Prendergast
    OF THE SEIZING OF WIDOWS AND ORPHANS, AND THE DES
    TITUTE, AND TRANSPORTING THEM TO BARBADOES, AND
    THE ENGLISH PLANTATIONS.

    WHILE the Government were employed in clearing the ground
    for the Adventurers and Soldiers (the English capitalists of that
    day), by making the nobility and gentry yield up their ancient
    inheritances, and withdraw to Oonnaught, where they could
    wish the whole nation,”* they had agents actively employed
    through Ireland, seizing women, orphans, and the destitute to be
    transported to Barbadoes 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, who might thus be made English arid Chris
    tians; t and a great benefit to the West India sugar planters, who
    desired the men and boys for their bondmen, and the women and
    Irish girls in a country where they had only Maroon women and
    Negresses to solace them.

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    Mute Sean Higgins
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    Jun 28th 2020, 11:21 AM

    I’d say those Irish who died while still indentured servants were glad they were not slaves…….

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    Mute Margaret Doyle
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    Jun 28th 2020, 1:57 PM

    @Sean Higgins: Ah Yes ‘Indentured servants’. I’m a hydraulic engineer-just changed the wording a bit from plumber. If the English didn’t treat us like slaves, we must’ve been very special as they treated every other Country they colonized like slaves. Oh yes there’s another word the English like to use ‘colonized ‘. That simply means ‘Robbing, plundering , torturing and murdering.

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    Mute Conor Bradley
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    Jun 28th 2020, 5:26 PM

    @Sean Higgins: Yes they probably would have been glad they didn’t die as slaves, because then thier children would have been slaves too. I really find it difficult to get my head around why people won’t accept the difference between indentured servitude and chattel slavery. Neither were good, but being property (for your entire life) is worse. No one is trying to downplay the hardships Irish people had to endure, but it’s not a f#*cking misery competition. Slaves, in general, had it worse and for much much longer periods of thier life, if not all of it.

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    Mute Conor Bradley
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    Jun 28th 2020, 5:49 PM

    @Sean Higgins: O’Connell said this (pay attention to the last sentence) : “How can the generous, the charitable, the humane, and the noble emotions of the Irish heart have become extinct amongst you? How can your nature be so totally changed as that you should become the apologists and advocates of the execrable system which makes man the property of his fellow man – destroys the foundation of all moral and social virtues – condemns to ignorance, immorality and irreligion, millions of our fellow creatures…? It was not in Ireland that you learned this cruelty…
 Over the broad Atlantic I pour forth my voice saying come out of such a land you Irishmen, or if you remain and dare continue to countenance the system of slavery that is supported there, we will recognize you as Irishmen no longer!”

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    Jun 29th 2020, 12:03 PM

    @Conor Bradley: That would be 200 years after the Cromwellian settlement. But well done you for brushing past 200 years of History.
    Former Slave Frederick Douglass was in Ireland of the time of Famine with O’ Connell and blamed Irish poor for their own plight because of lack of temperance. He also in his letters to William Lloyd Garrison refused to speak out because it might ruin his anti slavery mission. In his own words on the Irish

    The streets were almost literally alive with beggars, displaying the greatest wretchedness—some of them mere stumps of men, without feet, without legs, without hands, without arms—and others still more horribly deformed, with crooked limbs, down upon their hands and knees, slavery mission.

    You haven’t explained why Indians on Barbados who signed indentures are called slaves, whilst Irish women and children who did not sign indentures are servants. Chattel slavery is defined as owned forever and their children also. But we can see with the Indians of Barbados this is not the case. So were the Indians on Barbados slaves or not?

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    Mute tuco
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    Jun 28th 2020, 11:39 AM

    Jamaica second biggest ethnic group claim Irish heritage over 150k people.you see it with names of townlands on the island.montserrat the only other country outside of Ireland that claim a national holiday for st Patrick’s day,again loads of Irish names and accents can be heard from this island.rihanna from Barbados fathers side were called red legs.they got this name from Irish slaves brought to the islands hundreds of years ago.they claim ethnic status to the rest of Barbados.the list goes on and on how Irish were used during the slave trade.

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    Mute CMH
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    Jun 28th 2020, 1:47 PM

    @tuco: although no longer a country, Newfoundland also celebrates St. Patrick’s Day as a national (now provincial) holiday.

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    Mute Dáinéil Ó hÍobhair
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    Jun 28th 2020, 9:05 PM

    @tuco: Yes many Irish were sent over to the Carribbean, as indentured servants. They experienced extreme hardship and cruelty. However, they weren’t chattel slaves like Africans were. They weren’t locked into a slavery system for life and their children were locked in the same system based primarily on their race. Some Irish even became slave owners over there as they were able to move up societal ranks when freed from indentured servitude.

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    Jun 28th 2020, 10:09 PM

    @Dáinéil Ó hÍobhair: The same people who deny Irish were slaves insist Indians were slaves even though Indians signed contracts and their children were not chattel. so can you explain that please?

    Yes the same people who insist Irish were slaver owners also conflate Irish with planters of Ireland. even the example here Bryan was in fact a royalist Anglo Norman landowner in Ireland and Jenny shaw , who they quoted here but omitted what Jenny wrote. Jenny Shaw posited the only way Bryan became a plantation owner was by becoming more English , which is hardly difficult when he was termed old English in Ireland before he was transported for being a royalist. He then married an English planter of Ireland family in Barbados. The reason why Jenny Shaw writes of Bryan is because it was so UNUSUAL to see an Irish person make gains never mind survive in Barbados. perhaps read some books and not hotch potch thrown together websites where a librarian lifts other peoples work and omits the important parts

    now I have asked multiple times people like you who insist all Irish were servants for proof that these women and girls signed into a contract to solace sugar slavers.. please show me

    John Patrick Prendergast
    OF THE SEIZING OF WIDOWS AND ORPHANS, AND THE DES
    TITUTE, AND TRANSPORTING THEM TO BARBADOES, AND
    THE ENGLISH PLANTATIONS.

    WHILE the Government were employed in clearing the ground
    for the Adventurers and Soldiers (the English capitalists of that
    day), by making the nobility and gentry yield up their ancient
    inheritances, and withdraw to Oonnaught, where they could
    wish the whole nation,”* they had agents actively employed
    through Ireland, seizing women, orphans, and the destitute to be
    transported to Barbadoes 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, who might thus be made English arid Chris
    tians; t and a great benefit to the West India sugar planters, who
    desired the men and boys for their bondmen, and the women and
    Irish girls in a country where they had only Maroon women and
    Negresses to solace them.

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    Mute Trevor
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    Jun 28th 2020, 11:04 AM

    I’m confused. So a guy in Néw York a guy in limerick who works as a librarian or have the journal fact checked stuff?

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    Mute Dave O'Keeffe
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    Jun 28th 2020, 11:44 AM

    @Trevor: would you prefer they didn’t defer to historians on matters of history?

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    Jun 28th 2020, 1:10 PM

    @Trevor: no they dont fact check. I raised an issue in a similar article two weeks ago on the methodologies of Liam Hogan the librarian and pointed out a very obvs omission of fact. they refused to correct.

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    Mute DERRY1973
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    Jun 28th 2020, 11:44 AM

    This Debunk could easily be debunked, based on difference of opinion, if you’re enslaved, you are a slave.

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    Mute Mairtin Antaine O Conaill
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    Jun 28th 2020, 12:34 PM

    Lies. They were removed from the country and forced to work for free. Call it what you want, they had no choice they were slaves. “Indentured servants” is just a term used by others to make them feel better about their historical achievements as a nation.

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    Mute Jay
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    Jun 28th 2020, 12:49 PM

    @Mairtin Antaine O Conaill: They were indentured servants for a fixed term followed up with citizenship to the new world…

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    Mute Mairtin Antaine O Conaill
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    Jun 28th 2020, 12:59 PM

    @Jay: a duck is a duck. You can also call the birds. But in the end they are ducks. Indentured servant is a slave.

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    Jun 28th 2020, 1:22 PM

    @Jay: who were? what do you think became of these women and children under Cromwell. how long did they have to provide their “services” for? you think they agreed to become prostitutes?

    OF THE SEIZING OF WIDOWS AND ORPHANS, AND THE DES
    TITUTE, AND TRANSPORTING THEM TO BARBADOES, AND
    THE ENGLISH PLANTATIONS.

    WHILE the Government were employed in clearing the ground
    for the Adventurers and Soldiers (the English capitalists of that
    day), by making the nobility and gentry yield up their ancient
    inheritances, and withdraw to Oonnaught, where they could
    wish the whole nation,”* they had agents actively employed
    through Ireland, seizing women, orphans, and the destitute to be
    transported to Barbadoes 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, who might thus be made English arid Chris
    tians; t and a great benefit to the West India sugar planters, who
    desired the men and boys for their bondmen, and the women and
    Irish girls in a country where they had only Maroon women and
    Negresses to solace them.

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    Jun 28th 2020, 2:51 PM

    @Jay: you have evidence these women and girls entered willingly into this slavery? show me the evidence and what do you think solace means.
    WHILE the Government were employed in clearing the ground
    for the Adventurers and Soldiers (the English capitalists of that
    day), by making the nobility and gentry yield up their ancient
    inheritances, and withdraw to Oonnaught, where they could
    wish the whole nation,”* they had agents actively employed
    through Ireland, seizing women, orphans, and the destitute to be
    transported to Barbadoes 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, who might thus be made English arid Chris
    tians; t and a great benefit to the West India sugar planters, who
    desired the men and boys for their bondmen, and the women and
    Irish girls in a country where they had only Maroon women and
    Negresses to solace them.

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    Mute You can call me anything but
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    Jun 28th 2020, 11:07 AM

    Why the stuff about coronavirus at the end. This has nothing got to do with coronavirus,

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    Mute Dave O'Keeffe
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    Jun 28th 2020, 11:46 AM

    @You can call me anything but: it’s the standard ending to all fact check articles.

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    Mute You can call me anything but
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    Jun 28th 2020, 12:54 PM

    @Dave O’Keeffe: Why?

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    Mute Bríd
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    Jun 28th 2020, 11:27 AM

    Some historians will say that Irish were slaves, others will say that Irish were indentured servants. Either way, Irish people were treated appallingly under the British Empire. What I don’t like is that white (Irish) Americans are using this information to somehow justify how black people are treated in America currently.

    The way the Irish were treated in the past should not be forgotten, but that was then. Irish people today are not subjected to racism in their own country, while black people are – and that is the difference. There is an agenda behind sharing these stories in America which I don’t like – whether they are factually correct or not.

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    Mute Tordel Back
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    Jun 28th 2020, 11:40 AM

    @Bríd: important clarification here, Brid: the ‘historians’ (and name ONE please) who say the Irish were slaves in the post-medieval and modern periods are factually incorrect. It’s not part of any ‘agenda’, because it’s a myth.

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    Mute matthew o reilly
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    Jun 28th 2020, 12:02 PM

    @Tordel Back: why does the journal write the same article every week.Are we running a top 10 which group had the worst time in history.Have Black Americans had it worse than European Jews or Chinese under the Japanese.
    There are still slaves on the African continent but no articles about present slavery

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    Mute Lita Campbell
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    Jun 28th 2020, 12:18 PM

    @Bríd: I understand and I agree with it in that context. However, I also believe that Irish people have a right to their history and it is a fact that during the land grab by the English in the 16th century, starting with James VI and especially under Cromwell, many thousands of Irish people were forcibly shipped to the West Indies, never to return. This happened, free people became ‘indentured servants’, a form of slavery, and we should be able to have it noted. However, it should not be used in any way to compare with the slavery of Africans, that is their history and completely separate to ours.

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    Mute Gems spuds
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    Jun 28th 2020, 1:19 PM

    @Tordel Back: try reading a book and not a website created by a librarian in Limerick.

    John Patrick Prendergast researched 17 YEARS writing the book
    THE CROMWELLIAN SETTLEMENT OF IRELAND.

    In 1864 Prendergast was appointed by Lord Romilly a commissioner, with Charles William Russell, for selecting official papers relating to Ireland for transcription from the Carte manuscripts in the Bodleian Library.

    sorry guys unless you burn every book including work by William Petty at the time of the acts of settlement under Cromwell, you will be laughed at with your attempts to revise history

    THESETTLEMENT OF IRELAND
    OF THE SEIZING OF WIDOWS AND ORPHANS, AND THE DES
    TITUTE, AND TRANSPORTING THEM TO BARBADOES, AND
    THE ENGLISH PLANTATIONS.

    WHILE the Government were employed in clearing the ground
    for the Adventurers and Soldiers (the English capitalists of that
    day), by making the nobility and gentry yield up their ancient
    inheritances, and withdraw to Oonnaught, where they could
    wish the whole nation,”* they had agents actively employed
    through Ireland, seizing women, orphans, and the destitute to be
    transported to Barbadoes 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, who might thus be made English arid Chris
    tians; t and a great benefit to the West India sugar planters, who
    desired the men and boys for their bondmen, and the women and
    Irish girls in a country where they had only Maroon women and
    Negresses to solace them.

    Daniel Connery, a gentleman of Clare, was sentenced, in Morison s
    presence, to banishment, in 1657, by Colonel Henry Ingoldsby, for har
    boring a priest. ” This gentleman had a wife and twelve children. His
    wife fell sick, and died in poverty. Three of his daughters, most beauti
    ful girls, were transported to the West Indies, to an island called the
    Barbadoes; and there, if they are alive, they are in miserable slavery.”
    P. 287. Morison s ” Threnodia Hiberno-Catholica,” Innsbruck: 1659.

    t A-84, p. 663. \ Ibid..

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    Mute Keith MacSuibhne
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    Jun 28th 2020, 1:23 PM

    The political spin from the journal is relentless. Thankfully most can see through it. Slavery has been a part of most cultures throughout history. Rome and Egypt for example were built on slave labour. Vikings, celts, saxons, etc all retained slaves. Many of us in Ireland would be descended from slaves and slave owners. Slavery continues today in Libya, thanks to the usa destroying Libya. To downplay our own history of modern Irish slavery is a gross disservice to the memory of the many thousands of Cromwells Irish victims forced against their will into slavery in the Caribbean, not forgetting the people taken in Baltimore by Arab slavers and sold in the slave markets of North Africa. You can dress it up by calling it indentured service it was still slavery.

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    Mute Lita Campbell
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    Jun 28th 2020, 2:13 PM

    @Keith MacSuibhne: Well said.

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    Mute Optimus Prime
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    Jun 28th 2020, 11:07 AM

    People were not slaves, they were enslaved. There’s a deeper meaning to calling someone a slave, and calling them enslaved. Take a minute to think about it. Only few will understand what I mean. Let the replies begin.

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    Mute Ryanon
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    Jun 28th 2020, 11:14 AM

    @Optimus Prime: I don’t understand. I thought it means the same thing. What’s the difference?

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    Mute Dave O'Keeffe
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    Jun 28th 2020, 12:21 PM

    @Optimus Prime: here’s a question, can a person that was never free be enslaved?

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    Mute Logan Shepherd
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    Jun 28th 2020, 11:12 AM

    There are many historians that will say that Irish people were indeed slaves. That was then though, and this is now. I have been discriminated against for being Irish, but never in my own country, and it never happened in another country until I opened my mouth, and unleashed my thick bog brogue. I can’t see any comparisson to the way black people are discriminated against, simply for the colour of their skin.

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    Mute Craic_a_tower
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    Jun 28th 2020, 12:05 PM

    @Logan Shepherd: don’t forget quite recently Irish people had to sign a form saying they wouldn’t blow up the uk when travelling there. We were also not allowed into the executive lounges in UK airports. Was travelling from the uk to Dublin. They allowed my British work colleague into the lounge and stopped me as Irish flights had a special rule. He was on the same flight as me and I was stopped because I had an Irish passport. That was in the 90s.

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    Mute Logan Shepherd
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    Jun 28th 2020, 12:09 PM

    @Craic_a_tower: I had similar and maybe worse experiences than that. It was never nice, and was actually degrading in my opinion. It wasn’t because of the colour of my skin though which is the point I am making.

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    Jun 28th 2020, 12:15 PM

    @Logan Shepherd: I used to travel to the uk weekly and while the form was not mandatory for all passengers one airport police guy made me sign one every week. I had to contact the manager of the airport in the end. Many racist things were said to me by the clients about being dim witted Irish. Was late due to a flight delay and waiting outside the client MDs office they loudly discussed how the Irish were always late and slow. It doesn’t matter if it was my skin colour it was the same prejudice.

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    Mute Gary Kearney
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    Jun 28th 2020, 2:54 PM

    @Craic_a_tower: I travelled with a group of English people and I was the only one frisked and questioned.
    I went last so they would not be held up behind me. They were all shocked by it.
    I was used to it and did not even blink, it happened again when we landed in the UK as the flight was from Jersey. Same thing again.

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    Mute Earth Traveller
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    Jun 28th 2020, 12:31 PM

    I met a woman while living in the Middle East. She was from another Asian country. She worked 7 days a week and began every day at sunrise. She slept under the dining table and she had no privacy. Her ‘employer’ never paid her wages. Was she an indentured servant or a slave?

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    Mute Stephen Maher
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    Jun 28th 2020, 11:42 AM

    An absolutely terrible article, Author seems to have scraped a surface, ran out of content pretty quickly and then used coronavirus as the reason for these facts being over stated. Awful.

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    Mute Peter Denham
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    Jun 28th 2020, 12:19 PM

    The fact that Irish people chose to enter into these contacts is being championed as evidence that it wasn’t a form of slavery. It’s much more complicated than that. What was the alternative for them if they didn’t choose indentured servitude? A life of torment in Ireland due to the influence of outside oppressors? Not much of a choice is it? A fairer statement would be they that their hand was forced when entering into contracts.

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    Mute Lita Campbell
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    Jun 28th 2020, 2:11 PM

    @Peter Denham: They did not choose to go. Under Cromwell and others they were seized and forcibly transported to the West Indies.

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    Mute Aine O Connor
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    Jun 28th 2020, 4:08 PM

    @Peter Denham: In Ireland back then, when young women became destitute they were put into workhouses that were supposed to cater for say 300 but some had to house thousands. Having to stay in one of these workhouses was hell on earth as it was a case of only the fittest survived the horror. Many died from hunger and disease. Many welcomed the opportunity to be rescued from Hell on Earth. Back then been transported to Australia to become an indentured servant was far better than staying here. Records were kept and descendants can trace their origins right back to where their relative came from and why they were transported. It was not ideal but since Ireland had nothing to offer them it was better that rotting in a workhouse.

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    Mute sean o'dhubhghaill
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    Jun 28th 2020, 5:37 PM

    @Aine O Connor: There were no workhouses in Ireland until the Poor Law Act of 1834. That is about 200 years after Cromwell.

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    Mute Gems spuds
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    Jun 28th 2020, 5:44 PM

    @sean o’dhubhghaill:

    what about these girls Sean. you found the documents they signed yet?
    * Daniel Connery, a gentleman of Clare, was sentenced, in Morison s
    presence, to banishment, in 1657, by Colonel Henry Ingoldsby, for har
    boring a priest. ” This gentleman had a wife and twelve children. His
    wife fell sick, and died in poverty. Three of his daughters, most beauti
    ful girls, were transported to the West Indies, to an island called the
    Barbadoes; and there, if they are alive, they are in miserable slavery.”
    P. 287. Morison s ” Threnodia Hiberno-Catholica,” Innsbruck: 1659.

    t A-84, p. 663. \ Ibid..

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    Mute Teresa Ryan
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    Jun 28th 2020, 8:34 PM

    @Peter Denham: Did the thousands rounded up by Cromwell’s men and shipped off to the Caribbean all have a slip of paper stating they were indentured servants. The years quoted are 1630s and 40s. Cromwell came a few decades later and that’s the timeframe that O’Callaghan deals with in his book.

    Platation owners had a preference for lighter skined slaves and forced Irishwomen to breed with Africans. This practice was so prevalent that it was outlawed by Westminidter, not on any moral grounds but because it interfered with the trans -Atlantic slave trade.

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    Mute Gems spuds
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    Jun 28th 2020, 8:38 PM

    @sean o’dhubhghaill: geez Sean here even needs help to work out what

    “Printed Declaration of the Council, 12th May 1653.” meant. lol

    I mean anyone who has read a book on Irish History on the Cromwellian era would know what the council was.

    Lets give Sean a hand shall we. =

    (“Printed Declaration of the Council, 12th May 1653.” [ Acts and Ordinances of the Parliament of the Commonwealth of England: (84) p138

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    Mute Teresa Ryan
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    Jun 28th 2020, 8:46 PM

    @Peter Denham: But they didn’t chose to enter these contracts, certainly from the Cromwellian years. They were rounded up and sold in the Caribbean.

    We have the same historical nonsense with the famine numbers. One million died, one million emigrated. Nice nest round figures. The numbers dead was closer to six million. The population in 1841 census was given at 8.4 million when it was nearer to 11/12 million.

    How many ships were needed to export one million people over 5 years. We’re there enough ships.

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    Mute Lita Campbell
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    Jun 28th 2020, 11:09 PM

    @Peter Denham: They didn’t enter into contracts, they were forcibly removed from their homes I particular during the great land grab of the Cromwellian Plantation, and shipped to the West Indies.

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    Mute Bernie Williams
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    Jun 28th 2020, 12:41 PM

    What do we call that now when criminal organisations ship people into wealthier countries for a better life , but first you owe me the air fare ! You can work for me to pay it off , no you don’t have a choice to find your own job to earn money to pay me back , of course there will be interest
    SLAVE LABOUR

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    Mute Hugh Davison
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    Jun 28th 2020, 10:37 PM

    @Bernie Williams: It’s called Trafficking

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    Mute Bluepoolroad
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    Jun 28th 2020, 1:21 PM

    Oh Michelle, that’s all right then. Next article, nobody actually died of hunger in Great Famine. No forced emigration either. Just poor diet and free lifestyle choices. ;(

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    Mute Alan Carthy
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    Jun 28th 2020, 11:11 AM

    That picture was on a page recently shown how welxh coal miners went down into the pits

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    Mute Joseph Duggan
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    Jun 28th 2020, 12:47 PM

    Could your so called historians show us the law on paper please who signed it into law at that time you sittings of parliament also show us copies of indentured contracts was so called English law applicable in usa Australia carrabiean Islands

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    Mute Michael McGrath
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    Jun 29th 2020, 1:55 AM

    @Joseph Duggan: A load of papers with X’s on them because not too many in Ireland could write at the time and even the x was probably forged because the poor misfortunes were flung into the bowels of a stinking ship forcibly.

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    Mute Liberty Peacock
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    Jun 28th 2020, 12:56 PM

    Would the Journal ever do a piece on the huge existence of Slavery today, in Africa and the Middle East?

    Incredible and disgusting how this is not talked about more.

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    Mute Earth Traveller
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    Jun 28th 2020, 4:17 PM

    @Liberty Peacock: Indeed, and not often mentioned is the founder of a well-known religion who himself owned and traded slaves.

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    Mute Zmeevo Libe
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    Jun 28th 2020, 10:41 PM

    @Earth Traveller: This is from Wikipedia:
    “Slavery in the Ottoman Empire was abolished in 1924 when the new Turkish Constitution disbanded the Imperial Harem and made the last concubines and eunuchs free citizens of the newly proclaimed republic.[18] Slavery in Iran was abolished in 1929. Among the last states to abolish slavery were Saudi Arabia and Yemen, which abolished slavery in 1962 under pressure from Britain; Oman in 1970; and Mauritania in 1905, 1981, and again in August 2007.”

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_slavery_in_the_Muslim_world

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    Mute Raymond Lambert
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    Jun 28th 2020, 2:59 PM

    Here is the full text – without the photo – posted by Daniel Wissert on FB. Plus a very interesting documentary on the subject @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kY4rDnb11bY&t=397s

    The Irish slave trade began when 30,000 Irish prisoners were sold as slaves to the New World. The King James I Proclamation of 1625 required Irish political prisoners be sent overseas and sold to English settlers in the West Indies. By the mid 1600s, the Irish were the main slaves sold to Antigua and Montserrat. At that time, 70% of the total population of Montserrat were Irish slaves.
    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.
    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 as slaves in the West Indies, Virginia and New England. In this decade, 52,000 Irish (mostly women and children) were sold to Barbados and Virginia. Another 30,000 Irish men and women were also transported and sold to the highest bidder. In 1656, Cromwell ordered that 2000 Irish children be taken to Jamaica and sold as slaves to English settlers.
    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.
    African slaves were very expensive during the late 1600s (50 Sterling). Irish slaves came cheap (no more 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. The English masters quickly began breeding the Irish women for both their own personal pleasure and for greater profit. 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. This practice of interbreeding Irish females with African men went on for several decades and was 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.” In short, it was stopped only because it interfered with the profits of a large slave transport company.
    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 its own to end its 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.The Irish slave trade began when 30,000 Irish prisoners were sold as slaves to the New World. The King James I Proclamation of 1625 required Irish political prisoners be sent overseas and sold to English settlers in the West Indies. By the mid 1600s, the Irish were the main slaves sold to Antigua and Montserrat. At that time, 70% of the total population of Montserrat were Irish slaves.
    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.
    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 as slaves in the West Indies, Virginia and New England. In this decade, 52,000 Irish (mostly women and children) were sold to Barbados and Virginia. Another 30,000 Irish men and women were also transported and sold to the highest bidder. In 1656, Cromwell ordered that 2000 Irish children be taken to Jamaica and sold as slaves to English settlers.
    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.
    African slaves were very expensive during the late 1600s (50 Sterling). Irish slaves came cheap (no more 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. The English masters quickly began breeding the Irish women for both their own personal pleasure and for greater profit. 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. This practice of interbreeding Irish females with African men went on for several decades and was 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.” In short, it was stopped only because it interfered with the profits of a large slave transport company.
    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 its own to end its 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.The Irish slave trade began when 30,000 Irish prisoners were sold as slaves to the New World. The King James I Proclamation of 1625 required Irish political prisoners be sent overseas and sold to English settlers in the West Indies. By the mid 1600s, the Irish were the main slaves sold to Antigua and Montserrat. At that time, 70% of the total population of Montserrat were Irish slaves.
    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.
    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 as slaves in the West Indies, Virginia and New England. In this decade, 52,000 Irish (mostly women and children) were sold to Barbados and Virginia. Another 30,000 Irish men and women were also transported and sold to the highest bidder. In 1656, Cromwell ordered that 2000 Irish children be taken to Jamaica and sold as slaves to English settlers.
    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.
    African slaves were very expensive during the late 1600s (50 Sterling). Irish slaves came cheap (no more 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. The English masters quickly began breeding the Irish women for both their own personal pleasure and for greater profit. 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. This practice of interbreeding Irish females with African men went on for several decades and was 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.” In short, it was stopped only because it interfered with the profits of a large slave transport company.
    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 its own to end its 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.

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    Mute Tom kenny
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    Jun 28th 2020, 3:49 PM

    @Raymond Lambert: well done Raymond.

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    Mute sean o'dhubhghaill
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    Jun 28th 2020, 5:00 PM

    @Raymond Lambert: Copy and Paste. There are many sources on the Internet with the EXACT same script. Each have copied and pasted each other, presumably!

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    Mute Gems spuds
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    Jun 28th 2020, 5:24 PM

    @sean o’dhubhghaill: its wrong where Liam, oops sorry I mean sean.

    I see you didnt answer me when i asked you for proof the women and children under Cromwell signed up to Solace me in the colonies. can you show me where I can find these documents they signed?

    i refer you to the 17 years of research in The Cromwellian Settlement Of Ireland by Prendergast,

    what do you think Solace means in this context sean.

    OF THE SEIZING OF WIDOWS AND ORPHANS, AND THE DES
    TITUTE, AND TRANSPORTING THEM TO BARBADOES, AND
    THE ENGLISH PLANTATIONS.

    WHILE the Government were employed in clearing the ground
    for the Adventurers and Soldiers (the English capitalists of that
    day), by making the nobility and gentry yield up their ancient
    inheritances, and withdraw to Oonnaught, where they could
    wish the whole nation,”* they had agents actively employed
    through Ireland, seizing women, orphans, and the destitute to be
    transported to Barbadoes 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, who might thus be made English arid Chris
    tians; t and a great benefit to the West India sugar planters, who
    desired the men and boys for their bondmen, and the women and
    Irish girls in a country where they had only Maroon women and
    Negresses to solace them. The thirteen years war, from 1641 to
    1654, followed by the departure of 40,000 Irish soldiers, with the
    chief nobility and gentry, to Spain, had left behind a vast mass of
    widows and deserted wives with destitute families. There were
    plenty of other persons, too, who, as their ancient properties had
    been confiscated, “had no visible means of livelihood.” Just as
    the King of Spain sent over his agents to treat with the Govern
    ment for the Irish swordmen, the merchants of Bristol had agents
    treating with it for men, women, and girls, to be sent to the sugar
    plantations in the West Indies. The Commissioners for Ireland
    gave them orders upon the governors of garrisons, to deliver to
    them prisoners of war; upon the keepers of goals, for offenders in
    custody ; upon masters of workhouses, for the destitute in their
    care, “who were of an age to labour, or if women were mar
    riageable and not past breeding;” and gave directions to all in
    authority to seize those who had no visible means of livelihood,
    and deliver them to these agents of the Bristol sugar merchants,
    in execution of which latter direction Ireland must have exhibited
    “scenes in every part like the slave hunts in Africa. How many
    girls of gentle birth must have been caught and hurried to the

    * ” The garrison of Roscommon Castle yielded upon that which we
    adjudged moderate terms amongst us, which is, for the Government to
    transport a regiment for Spain, where we could wish the whole nation”
    Letter from Athlone, 12th April, 1652. ” Severall Proceedings in Parlia
    ment,” etc., p. 2148.

    t Letter of Henry Cromwell, 4th Thurloe s ” State Papers.”

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    Mute Gerry Malone
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    Jun 28th 2020, 11:38 AM

    There were plenty of Irish in America who were slave owners not slaves themselves

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    Mute Mick.
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    Jun 28th 2020, 12:44 PM

    @Gerry Malone: There were also Black American Slave owners. So your point is?

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    Mute Gems spuds
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    Jun 28th 2020, 1:26 PM

    @Gerry Malone: the largest slavers in Ireland were planters. the La tocuhe family who arrived under King Billy , the clue is in the surname btw, the Browne family who came under Cromwell and seized lands. related to Viscount Montagu. do you think Irish people are stupid when they know very well the surnames associated with colonies were the same families who planted Ireland. how else do you think they could bank roll their new plantations..

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    Mute summertime & the livin's easy
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    Jun 28th 2020, 12:24 PM

    if the options are starvation or prison? you are a slave. #capitalism

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    Mute Damon16
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    Jun 28th 2020, 1:40 PM

    @summertime & the livin’s easy: Reminds of me of that time Stalin faced resistance in the Ukraine to farm collectivization and artificially induced a famine in that country by removing its grain and sealing its borders. Millions died of starvation. Ditto North Korea, ditto Cambodia, ditto Maoist China # communism

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    Mute european liberal
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    Jun 28th 2020, 1:04 PM

    This is apparently some issue in the US that I never heard of til 2 years ago and shows further evidence that we should not import US politics or racial issues here

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    Mute Conor Kennelly
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    Jun 28th 2020, 12:33 PM

    Good article. Amazing the number of people who think that a meme substitutes as a historical source. I know if I had tried doing that when writing an essay in UCC any of my lecturers would have rightly failed me for such lazy scholarship.

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    Mute O Swetenham
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    Jun 28th 2020, 2:06 PM

    What a terrifically subtle way of telling everyone you went to college. You’re an inspiration to us all.

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    Mute Chris Cantwell
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    Jun 28th 2020, 6:07 PM

    @Gems spuds: Ah yes, and you most be the expert on Irish history, were as liam has a level 9 in GradDip Library & Information Studies, which reading studying history is a apart off. But sure go off

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    Mute Gems spuds
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    Jun 28th 2020, 8:00 PM

    @Chris Cantwell: ah yes another of Liams friends i see sitting on this article like a hen clocking eggs or is it Liam himself.
    Actually I defer to his intellectual and published betters. John Patrick Prendergast who wrote the The History of the Cromwellian Settlement of Ireland in 1863 whose work and research took 17 years. Prendergast’s manuscript collections were bequeathed to the King’s Inn, Dublin. People like Liam need permission to access and handle the work of Prendergasts calbre. Prendergast had access to documents destroyed in the war of independence.

    Liam Hogan uses lies such as 100 academics signed my letter to support his futile attempts to further his agenda, this to to add gravitas again, on closer inspection of his list we find the list includes a theatre company.

    Matthew he quotes here wrote an Op- Ed with Liam on red legs calling research into them exploitation => ” the ‘white slave’ narrative has been equally problematic in its exploitation of the ‘Redlegs’ of Barbados. The ‘poor whites’ that currently reside along the east coast of Barbados have been presented as a living fossil of the Cromwellian invasion of Ireland. Television documentaries, works of fiction and non-fiction, radio programmes, magazine articles, photography exhibitions and on-line publications all highlight the impoverishment of the contemporary Barbadian ‘Redlegs’, as they are pejoratively called”

    what they dont disclose is Matthew was on the Island at the time using these poor people are free labour in his digs whilst attempting to take some moral high ground. Matthew was waiting for his book deal , complete and utter conflict of interest.

    now back to Prendergrast, Ie a real Historian

    do you think these women and girls signed away a life to become Solace to sugar slavers if you do show me the documents they signed.

    OF THE SEIZING OF WIDOWS AND ORPHANS, AND THE DES
    TITUTE, AND TRANSPORTING THEM TO BARBADOES, AND
    THE ENGLISH PLANTATIONS.

    WHILE the Government were employed in clearing the ground
    for the Adventurers and Soldiers (the English capitalists of that
    day), by making the nobility and gentry yield up their ancient
    inheritances, and withdraw to Oonnaught, where they could
    wish the whole nation,”* they had agents actively employed
    through Ireland, seizing women, orphans, and the destitute to be
    transported to Barbadoes 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, who might thus be made English arid Chris
    tians; t and a great benefit to the West India sugar planters, who
    desired the men and boys for their bondmen, and the women and
    Irish girls in a country where they had only Maroon women and
    Negresses to solace them.

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    Mute Damon16
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    Jun 28th 2020, 1:33 PM

    What’s certainly true is that slavery was practiced by virtually every major civilization throughout history from antiquity through to the middle of the 20th century. It was completely unexceptionable for most of human history. In fact, the immorality of slavery was never countenanced in any part of the world, at any time period, until the abolitionist movement which grew out of the European enlightenment. Looking at history critically is a western invention. That’s why we never hear about the Arab or Ottoman slave trades which systemically enslaved black Africans and white Europeans from medieval times right up until the late 19th century – incidentally it was the British who put an end to it. Most cultures flat out refuse to discuss their dark pasts – the threats and intimidation that Turkey engages in if anyone so much as mentions the Armenian genocide is a notable example. We should be proud that we can talk critically about our history however it shouldn’t be used as a means of ascribing collective guilt or as evidence that Western culture is somehow evil it is roots.

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    Mute Zmeevo Libe
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    Jun 28th 2020, 10:52 PM

    @Damon16: Very well put, Damon, earlier in the tread I put up the info about slavery being abolished (officially) in the near and middle East:
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_slavery_in_the_Muslim_world
    Unofficially, there is data that there are more slaves in the world today than 100 years ago. The question is, what is being done about that?

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    Mute Jay
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    Jun 28th 2020, 12:44 PM

    More narcissistic rhetoric. We were slaves. Omit some important facts. We are so special…

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    Mute Gems spuds
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    Jun 28th 2020, 1:35 PM

    @Jay: Facts Irish children were sent and died as slaves. perhaps read a book and not relay on websites for an education.

    John Patrick Prendergast

    OF THE SEIZING OF WIDOWS AND ORPHANS, AND THE DES
    TITUTE, AND TRANSPORTING THEM TO BARBADOES, AND
    THE ENGLISH PLANTATIONS.

    WHILE the Government were employed in clearing the ground
    for the Adventurers and Soldiers (the English capitalists of that
    day), by making the nobility and gentry yield up their ancient
    inheritances, and withdraw to Oonnaught, where they could
    wish the whole nation,”* they had agents actively employed
    through Ireland, seizing women, orphans, and the destitute to be
    transported to Barbadoes 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, who might thus be made English arid Chris
    tians; t and a great benefit to the West India sugar planters, who
    desired the men and boys for their bondmen, and the women and
    Irish girls in a country where they had only Maroon women and
    Negresses to solace them.

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    Mute lynda kennedy
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    Jun 28th 2020, 12:51 PM

    John Punch was an African indentured servant who tried to run away from Virginia to Maryland, in 1640. He was captured and sentenced to slavery for life. Two European indentured servants also escaped with him, and were captured but merely sentenced to an extension of their indentured servitude. Historians date the legalising of slavery in the 13 colonies to this crucial case, and it also set the precedent of distinguishing between the African chattel slave, with no hope of manumission, and the indentured servant, with a time limit to hisher servitude. This is a crucial distinction

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    Mute Gems spuds
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    Jun 28th 2020, 2:48 PM

    @lynda kennedy: and of Indian slaves? you are aware Indians entered into indentures but are called slaves?

    you have evidence these Irish women and children went willingly to be used as sex slaves , you have their bond slips, where can i see these slips.

    Daniel Connery, a gentleman of Clare, was sentenced, in Morison s
    presence, to banishment, in 1657, by Colonel Henry Ingoldsby, for har
    boring a priest. ” This gentleman had a wife and twelve children. His
    wife fell sick, and died in poverty. Three of his daughters, most beauti
    ful girls, were transported to the West Indies, to an island called the
    Barbadoes; and there, if they are alive, they are in miserable slavery.”
    P. 287. Morison s ” Threnodia Hiberno-Catholica,” Innsbruck: 1659.

    t A-84, p. 663. \ Ibid..

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    Mute @mdmak33
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    Jun 28th 2020, 2:34 PM

    So because Irish slaves kept their name, they say it wasn’t slavery, maybe these people should be put into it for 12 yrs and then tell us what they call it.

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    Mute Cian Quilty
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    Jun 28th 2020, 11:47 AM

    Good article! Black lives matter – a very positive movement against horrible and systemic institutional racism in the US against black people. These Irish were treated cruelly, in a racist way. Indentured servants – all that goes with it – no-one could or would try to defend it as a system. But the distinction made is that they were called their own names, classified as people, whereas slaves were not. We have our own history of being oppressed, being treated in a racist way. Most of us today have the benefit of having grown up well-educated, well-travelled and with positive opportunities associated with being called ‘Irish’. Live and let live, wrong when people – here, in the US, wherever – are discriminated against purely on the basis of colour, religion, ethnicity or accent …

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    Mute Vladimir Macro
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    Jun 28th 2020, 11:55 AM

    @Cian Quilty: it’s also wrong to label masses of people racist because a minority is not on an equal footing with the ethnic majority of a country.

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    Mute Gems spuds
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    Jun 28th 2020, 1:33 PM

    @Cian Quilty: Absurd .imagine thinking its some competition in suffering. Its very clear during the acts of settlement children of Ireland were removed from Ireland without signing any indentures. show me where. I can see bonds for people of England but 400 children of Ireland were shipped in one eg and not ONE bond
    do you think Irish girls signed off to become sex slaves.. show me evidence they did

    OF THE SEIZING OF WIDOWS AND ORPHANS, AND THE DES
    TITUTE, AND TRANSPORTING THEM TO BARBADOES, AND
    THE ENGLISH PLANTATIONS.

    WHILE the Government were employed in clearing the ground
    for the Adventurers and Soldiers (the English capitalists of that
    day), by making the nobility and gentry yield up their ancient
    inheritances, and withdraw to Oonnaught, where they could
    wish the whole nation,”* they had agents actively employed
    through Ireland, seizing women, orphans, and the destitute to be
    transported to Barbadoes 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, who might thus be made English arid Chris
    tians; t and a great benefit to the West India sugar planters, who
    desired the men and boys for their bondmen, and the women and
    Irish girls in a country where they had only Maroon women and
    Negresses to solace them.

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    Mute Opinionated
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    Jun 28th 2020, 1:22 PM

    Is it not also a point that at the time african slaves brought to America would not have had surname as this was a norman european tradition. Not trying to make less of the appalling treatment just that no use of a surname did not in fact make them more a slave than paddy who was ripped from wexford and sent to the west indies by Cromwell just because paddy had a second name.

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    Mute Terry Walks
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    Jun 28th 2020, 1:35 PM

    Why are people so obsessed with debunking white slave stories. Every colour of man and woman has been sold into slavery across the globe at some point in time. Either way the Irish were also slave owners in the states so we obviously got over the servant craic fairly quick.

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    Mute Mick.
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    Jun 28th 2020, 5:32 PM

    @Terry Walks: Freed Black Slaves in the US, owned Black Slaves too.
    African Slavery could have never happened without the active participation of the African tribes themselves. Tribes like the Ashanti of West Africa were notorious as Slave catchers.
    In the 1840′s When the British and French outlawed the Slave Trade it was African King’s and Chiefs that complained the loudest in London and Paris.

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    Mute Billyjoe Remarkable
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    Jun 28th 2020, 2:38 PM

    The whole publication is marxist propaganda bought and paid for by oligarchs

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    Mute Zmeevo Libe
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    Jun 28th 2020, 10:55 PM

    @Billyjoe Remarkable: Dear me. Marxist oligarchs. I’ve heard it all!

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    Mute Marius Wojlinski
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    Jun 28th 2020, 2:05 PM

    Is the important point that white Irish, whatever their deprivation, were able to assimilate into American. Society and could work their way up. Whereas African American people, a mere 6 generations after they were’ freed”, still find themselves under a glass ceiling because of the colour of their skin. BLM has gone worldwide but its genesis is rooted in the African American experience.

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    Mute Billyjoe Remarkable
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    Jun 28th 2020, 3:45 PM

    @Marius Wojlinski: Bull there has an African American President for 8 years

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    Mute Gems spuds
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    Jun 28th 2020, 5:40 PM

    @Marius Wojlinski: African people were sold at the ports by African chiefs. Irish people were sold by English. Irish people are not responsible for slavery nor will they be held accountable due to their skin. Barack Obama was white was he?

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    Mute Dino
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    Jun 28th 2020, 9:41 PM

    @Marius Wojlinski: was there not a black president recently? He’d have surely got higher if there was no glass ceiling. Plenty of black Americans doing very well for themselves and perfectly well assimilated into society so stop making excuses for the rest it does them no service. America of all countries has opportunities for people of all colours.

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    Mute Liz O'Neill
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    Jun 28th 2020, 1:23 PM

    Servant, slave,lacky, call it what you will, nobody of any race, colour, or creed deserves to be treated in a demeaning, subordinate way. However, whilst we can talk semantics for hours, we know that since the history of civilisation, man’s subjugation of others has been part of the mechanism whereby our species has been able to progress.
    But that was then and this is now, and should we not draw a line on the past, whatever culture we adhere to, and strive to treat each other with respect and dignity? Is it really necessary to turn important issues into tit for tat squabbles between skin pigments, thereby missing the bigger picture?

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    Mute Brendan Walsh
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    Jun 28th 2020, 2:15 PM

    While the Irish were not slaves and it is horrible to see right wing Americans using Ireland to attack BLM, Indentured Servant is such a mild name for the penal transportation of Irish against their will by Cromwell to Barbados, and the inhuman conditions that waited them. Only some kind of ivory tower intellectual could come up with that one. It wasn’t upstairs downstairs.

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    Mute Gems spuds
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    Jun 28th 2020, 2:45 PM

    @Brendan Walsh: wrong Brendan try reading a book instead of websites.

    do you think these Irish women and girls went willingly into sex slavery ? if you do its very clear you are a man. what became of these women? you have evidence they went willingly and survived?
    John Patrick Prendergast 1863

    OF THE SEIZING OF WIDOWS AND ORPHANS, AND THE DES
    TITUTE, AND TRANSPORTING THEM TO BARBADOES, AND
    THE ENGLISH PLANTATIONS.

    WHILE the Government were employed in clearing the ground
    for the Adventurers and Soldiers (the English capitalists of that
    day), by making the nobility and gentry yield up their ancient
    inheritances, and withdraw to Oonnaught, where they could
    wish the whole nation,”* they had agents actively employed
    through Ireland, seizing women, orphans, and the destitute to be
    transported to Barbadoes 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, who might thus be made English arid Chris
    tians; t and a great benefit to the West India sugar planters, who
    desired the men and boys for their bondmen, and the women and
    Irish girls in a country where they had only Maroon women and
    Negresses to solace them.

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    Mute sean o'dhubhghaill
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    Jun 28th 2020, 12:07 PM

    MOPEism is alive and well!

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    Mute IrishIndependent
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    Jun 28th 2020, 2:48 PM
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    Mute Sean Casey
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    Jun 28th 2020, 3:50 PM

    “Do they have a source for the information (e.g. the HSE website)”

    Ah yes the HSE, the bastion of truth

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    Mute john s
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    Jun 28th 2020, 12:35 PM

    Let’s face it throughout history the powerful have done unspeakable things to those who are weaker. But what sets the black treatment apart is that alot of the mistreatment continued in into modern times and institutional racism is clearly alive and well in many countries today.
    So I for one am glad of the global push for change.

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    Mute Peter Coen
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    Jun 28th 2020, 5:23 PM

    To be indentured is that meant that people were forced to work by definition that is a form of slavery is it not?

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    Mute ChronicAnxiety
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    Jun 28th 2020, 3:01 PM

    Did the vikings take Irish as slaves?

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    Mute Martello Mulligan
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    Jun 28th 2020, 2:00 PM

    The issue is not just about historical accuracy it’s about the legacy of historic injustice as it plays out in modern countries. What is the legacy of Irish indentured servitude in any country today? What is the legacy of African slavery in the U.S.A. today as it lingers down the years through Jim Crow, lynching, KKK, discrimination laws that were only changed in the 1960s, institutional discrimination, etc.? To compare both is a bit like your friend telling you how they suffered a life threatening car accident and you saying you grazed your knee once as a child. Grow up.

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    Mute Ken Browne
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    Jul 20th 2020, 11:38 AM

    This information is inaccurate and only points to a specific literal point in time of discussion. It is then generalised to play down the actual truth in regard to the slavery of Irish People which in truth at the time of slavery of African(black) people, Irish people were also exposed to slavery. This is Hostorically what actually happened and not to be miscontrued or confused to serve another agenda in favour of those who choose only to be a victim of this tyranny and time in History focussing only in on one race of people when in FACT at some time or another the human race have all suffered. Anything other than the truth can only be underlined as self centred directed towards personal agenda

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    Mute Linda Waters
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    Jun 28th 2020, 7:34 PM

    Indebtured servitude is now considered slavery in modern times. In some cases where food & lodgings (no matter how bad) r deducted from earned wage to the point the person never gets the chance to leave or own anything! It’s like saying chdren sold by church to Colonies/farms/factories was different to selling ppl into slavery. It’s not it is still commodifying ppl

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    Mute Owen Logos
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    Jul 1st 2020, 9:49 PM

    The Irish were slaves according to O’Donovan Rossa who lived through it

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    Mute Jimmy Carroll
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    Jun 29th 2020, 8:30 AM

    What about the sacking of Baltimore in co cork by the Barbary coast Muslims that went into slavery,

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    Mute sean o'dhubhghaill
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    Jun 28th 2020, 5:23 PM

    The problem with a lot of the ‘facts’ here is that the original sources are virtually impossible to track down. They are just copied ad nauseum until they are all over the Internet and accepted as truth. A few years ago I did some maths on some figures posted on Facebook regarding Irish sent into slavery by Cromwell. If the figures given by this particular poster were true it would have taken every ship in the Cromwellian (English) Navy working 12 months a year (ie through winter as well) with no lay-up for refit over 25 years to ship the claimed number of Irish slaves over to the Caribbean.

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    Mute Gems spuds
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    Jun 28th 2020, 5:34 PM

    @sean o’dhubhghaill: Most people Sean read books written at the time or by real Historians who accessed the documents of the time. So you admit you havent bothered to read real history books or research the matter but here you are attempting to push your agenda. Not everyone relies on Liam Hogan an unpublished librarian.

    again I will repeat. William Petty completed a land survey for Cromwell to remove Irish land to pay the Soldiers and adventurers. His own letters and letters in Galway confirm Irish people were at gunpoint placed on boats to the colonies..

    further the REAL HISTORIANS of the time have confirmed that woman and girls were shipped to the colonies to solace the planters and sugar traders,
    I do not believe for one min these women went willingly, or survived as slaves unless you can prove otherwise.

    * Daniel Connery, a gentleman of Clare, was sentenced, in Morison s
    presence, to banishment, in 1657, by Colonel Henry Ingoldsby, for har
    boring a priest. ” This gentleman had a wife and twelve children. His
    wife fell sick, and died in poverty. Three of his daughters, most beauti
    ful girls, were transported to the West Indies, to an island called the
    Barbadoes; and there, if they are alive, they are in miserable slavery.”
    P. 287. Morison s ” Threnodia Hiberno-Catholica,” Innsbruck: 1659.

    t A-84, p. 663. \ Ibid..

    whilst you are at it , why were wolves eating Irish children?

    ” Upon serious consideration had of the great multitudes of poore
    swarming in all parts of this nacion, occasioned by the devastation of the
    country, and by the habits of licentiousness and idleness which the gen
    erality of the people have acquired in the time of this rebellion ; insomuch
    that frequently some are found feeding on carrion and weeds, some
    starved in the highways, and many times poor children who lost their
    parents, or have been deserted by them, are found exposed to, and somo
    of them fed upon, by ravening wolves and other beasts and birds of prey.”
    ” Printed Declaration of the Council, 12th of May, 1653.” A-S4, p. 138.

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    Mute sean o'dhubhghaill
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    Jun 28th 2020, 5:47 PM

    @Gems spuds: Last sentence. One question….. what council?

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    Mute Chris Cantwell
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    Jun 28th 2020, 6:48 PM

    @sean o’dhubhghaill: DOn’t bother talking to this pleb, he doesn’t like Liam or actually history that goes against his agenda.

    To him a real historian is someone that goes with his agenda not against it.

    Selective reading at it’s finest.

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    Mute Gems spuds
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    Jun 28th 2020, 8:17 PM

    @sean o’dhubhghaill: I see you again are unable to produce any evidence women and girls signed any documents before shipment to the colonies to become sex slaves to sugar traders.. where are the signed documents Sean.. asked you multiple times today. try now, shouldn’t be too difficult for you to source something . see request above

    OF THE SEIZING OF WIDOWS AND ORPHANS, AND THE DES
    TITUTE, AND TRANSPORTING THEM TO BARBADOES, AND
    THE ENGLISH PLANTATIONS.

    WHILE the Government were employed in clearing the ground
    for the Adventurers and Soldiers (the English capitalists of that
    day), by making the nobility and gentry yield up their ancient
    inheritances, and withdraw to Oonnaught, where they could
    wish the whole nation,”* they had agents actively employed
    through Ireland, seizing women, orphans, and the destitute to be
    transported to Barbadoes 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, who might thus be made English arid Chris
    tians; t and a great benefit to the West India sugar planters, who
    desired the men and boys for their bondmen, and the women and
    Irish girls in a country where they had only Maroon women and
    Negresses to solace them

    you do realise Prendergrasts work was peer reviewed at the time because of the scandal it caused in England.

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    Mute Gems spuds
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    Jun 28th 2020, 8:21 PM

    @Chris Cantwell: what pleb. you think real Historians were wrong when they wrote of William Petty clearing of Galway when William Petty confirmed it himself. you do know who Petty was right?

    Under pretence of taking up vagrants and idle per sons, he made frequent excursions by night with armed troops into th<' country, and seized upwards of a thousand people, often without dis- crimination of rank or condition, whom he transported to the West Indies, and there had sold as slaves.

    Hardiman's Hlstory of Galway,

    James Hardiman was a librarian a published one you like librarians right?

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    Mute Gems spuds
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    Jun 28th 2020, 8:32 PM

    @sean o’dhubhghaill: oh I thought you were some expert in Irish History seems not.. you obvs didn’t know how to find a simple document and what it referred to?

    that would be the (“Printed Declaration of the Council, 12th May 1653.” [ Acts and Ordinances of the Parliament of the Commonwealth of England: (84) p138

    this is what happens when people don’t read actual books. laughable.

    will wait for evidence of those signatures or evidence the women and girls signed off to become sex slaves when shipped by Cromwell.

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    Mute CSR
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    Jun 28th 2020, 3:53 PM

    Thank you for posting. Somebody on my Facebook posted that photo with misinformation re Irish slaves and I was wondering about it. Although horrific in itself the key difference is that the Irish indentured servants had an opportunity to get out at some point and this allowed them to climb the social ladder in the US where the African American slaves at the time never had this opportunity. This is an important distinction.

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    Mute Tom kenny
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    Jun 29th 2020, 1:24 AM

    @CSR: people held against their will and forced to work for nothing is slavery!

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    Mute GinandJetfuel
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    Jun 28th 2020, 6:54 PM

    This crap was debunked 2-3 years ago. Funny how it resurfaces now.

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