Irish slaves myth

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An Internet meme espousing the pseudohistorical narrative Meme that perpetuates Irish slaves myth.png
An Internet meme espousing the pseudohistorical narrative

The Irish slaves myth is a fringe pseudohistorical narrative that conflates the penal transportation and indentured servitude of Irish people during the 17th and 18th centuries, with the hereditary chattel slavery experienced by the forebears of the African diaspora.

Contents

Some white nationalists, and others who want to minimize the effects of hereditary chattel slavery on Africans and their descendants, have used this false equivalence to deny racism against African Americans [1] or claim that African Americans are too vocal in seeking justice for historical grievances. [2] It also can hide the facts around Irish involvement in the transatlantic slave trade. [3]

The myth has been in circulation since at least the 1990s and has been disseminated in online memes and social media debates. [4] According to historians Jerome S. Handler and Matthew C. Reilly, "it is misleading, if not erroneous, to apply the term 'slave' to Irish and other indentured servants in early Barbados". [5] In 2016, academics and Irish historians wrote to condemn the myth. [6]

Common elements

Common elements to memes that propagate the myth are: [4] [6] [7]

Background

During British rule in Ireland, and particularly during the Plantations of Ireland and the Cromwellian conquest, the terms "slaves" or "bond slaves" were sometimes used to describe the time-bound system of servitude of tens of thousands of Irish. [8] [9] The official legal terminology used was "indentured servants" whether the servants in question had willingly signed the indenture contract to emigrate to the Americas or were forced to go. [9] [1] In any other form, those transported unwillingly were not considered to be indentured. This included political prisoners, vagrants, convicts, prostitutes, [10] or people who had been defined as "undesirable" by the British government.

Penal transportation of Irish people was at its height during the 17th century, most was for various felonies such as highway robbery, vagrancy (homelessness), burglary, and horse theft. Penal transportation was a general practice in Great Britain as well as Ireland. These were the offences most often punished with transportation for men in the 1670s, though for women it was theft. [11] They were then subjected to forced labour for a given period when they arrived in the Americas or Australia. [12] [5] [13] During this same period, the Atlantic slave trade was transporting millions of Africans across the Atlantic and bringing them to various European colonies in America (including British America) where they were purchased by European colonists and put to work.

Treatment of Irish indentured servants varied widely, but the transport, physical work, and living conditions have been compared by scholars to the treatment of enslaved Africans. [8] However, the usual period of indenture for an Irish person was from four years to nine years, after which they were free – able to travel freely, own property, and accumulate wealth. Additionally, the formerly indentured Irish person could now marry whom they chose and their children were born free. [8] Unlike Irish indentured servants, enslaved Africans generally were made slaves for life and this perpetual slave status was imposed on their children at birth. [4] [2]

Both systematically and legally, enslaved Africans were subjected to a lifelong, inheritable condition of slavery that indentured Irish people never were. [8] Donald Harman Akenson makes the point that in this "white indentured servitude was so very different from black slavery as to be from another galaxy of human experience". [14] Additionally, in terms of numbers, the "most likely exaggerated" high estimates of Irish laborers sent to the Caribbean, along with estimates of total numbers of prisoners and indentured servants in British America, "pales by comparison" to the millions of enslaved Africans who were transported to the Americas." [15] : 56–7  [16]

Irish involvement in the slave trade

According to historian Nini Rodgers, in the 18th century "every group in Ireland [Gaelic, Hiberno-Norman or Anglo-Irish] produced merchants who benefited from the slave trade and the expanding slave colonies." [17] [14] During this same period, the transatlantic slave trade was transporting millions of Africans across the Atlantic and bringing them to various European colonies in the Americas, where they were purchased by European colonists and put to work.

Although the Navigation Acts prevented Ireland from participating directly in the slave trade, Irish merchants of different religious and social backgrounds generated significant wealth by exporting goods to overseas plantations and importing slave-produced goods into Ireland as part of the triangular trade. [18] Exports of salted and pickled provisions to slave-colonies were central to economic expansion in Georgian era Cork, Limerick, and Belfast, while imports of West Indian sugar contributed to urban growth and the rise of a Catholic middle class. Rodgers concluded that by the end of the 18th century "Ireland was very much part of the Black Atlantic world". [19]

Some Irishmen worked as "agents of empire". [20] Jane Ohlmeyer notes that by 1660, Irishmen, both Protestants and Catholics, "were to be found in the French Caribbean, the Portuguese and later Dutch Amazon, Spanish Mexico, and the English colonies in the Atlantic where they... forged commercial networks as they traded calicos, spices, tobacco, sugar, and slaves." [20] The French port of Nantes, in particular, was dominated by a community of exiled Irish Jacobites, and rose to prominence in the 18th century as France's foremost slave trading port. [21]

Irish Catholics made up more than two-thirds of the Anglo-Caribbean island of Montserrat's plantation owners as early as the 17th century, and according to historian Donald Akenson "they knew how to be hard and efficient slave masters." [22]

American historian Brian Kelly cautions against indicting "the country as a whole" as "overwhelmingly the benefits of Ireland’s involvement in transatlantic slavery went to the same class that presided over the misery that culminated in the horrors of famine and mass starvation." [23] [24] [25]

Origins and propagation

According to historian Liam Kennedy, the idea of 'Irish slavery' was popular within the nineteenth-century Irish independence movement Young Ireland. Young Irelander John Mitchel was particularly vocal in his claim that the Irish had been enslaved, although he was a supporter of the Atlantic slave trade in Africans. [26]

An Irish Times article notes that Irish republicans "are intent on drawing direct parallels between the experiences of black people under slavery and of Irish people under British rule", which has in turn been repurposed "by white supremacist groups in the US to attack and denigrate the African-American experience of slavery." [3]

According to history professor Ciaran O’Neill of Trinity College Dublin, while those most active in propagating myth – who are often located in Australia and the United States – "want to create false equivalence between the Atlantic slave trade and the phenomenon of indentured Irish labour in the Caribbean" for the purpose of undermining the Black Lives Matter movement, [27] research librarian and independent scholar Liam Hogan "also makes the point that this narrative has been used to help obscure the fact that many Irish people participated in and profited from slavery." [28]

In the Dublin Review of Books , professor Bryan Fanning states: "The popularity of the 'Irish slaves' meme cannot simply be blamed on the online propaganda of white supremacist groups. There are several elements at play beyond the deliberate falsification of the past. Widespread acceptance online of a false equivalence between chattel slavery and the treatment of Irish migrants appears to be rooted in Irish narratives of victimhood that continue to be articulated within Ireland’s cultural and political mainstreams." [1] Irish people's history has embraced both a legacy of identification with the oppressed, and elements of racism in the service of Irish nationalism, according to Fanning. [1]

In print

A number of books have been written on the subject, including White Cargo: The Forgotten History of Britain's White Slaves in America; and The Irish Slaves: Slavery, Indenture and Contract Labor Among Irish Immigrants. According to Hogan, the most influential book to assert the myth was They Were White and They Were Slaves: The Untold History of the Enslavement of Whites in Early America, self-published in the US in 1993 by conspiracy theorist and Holocaust denier [29] Michael A. Hoffman II (who blamed Jews for the Atlantic slave trade). [30]

To Hell Or Barbados: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ireland (2000), by Irish writer Sean O'Callaghan, is advertised as "a vivid account of the Irish slave trade: the previously untold story of over 50,000 Irish men, women and children who were transported to Barbados and Virginia." [31] [4] [32] The book continued the same themes as Hoffman, and introduced the concept of Irish women being forcibly bred with Africans. [33] Other authors repeated these lurid descriptions of Irish women being compelled to have sex with African men. [34] [35]

The book has been described as shoddily researched. [4] Brian Kelly calls the book "highly problematic" and writes: "The careless blurring of the lines between slavery and indenture in O’Callaghan’s work, rooted in sentimental nationalism than a commitment to white supremacy – provided an aura of credibility for the ‘Irish slaves’ meme that it would not have otherwise enjoyed." [36] According to The New York Times , "In America, [O'Callaghan's] book connected the white slave narrative to an influential ethnic group [ Irish-Americans] of over 34 million people, many of whom had been raised on stories of Irish rebellion against Britain and tales of anti-Irish bias in America at the turn of the 20th century. From there, it took off." [4]

Online

Breaker Boys, 1910, by Lewis Hine; Child laborers working in the coal industry in Pittston, Pennsylvania. Breaker Boys 1.jpg
Breaker Boys, 1910, by Lewis Hine; Child laborers working in the coal industry in Pittston, Pennsylvania.
The same Hines photo with false captions added. Irish slaves myth Breaker Boys meme.jpg
The same Hines photo with false captions added.

O'Callaghan's claims were repeated on Irish genealogy websites, the Canadian conspiracy theory website GlobalResearch.ca , and Niall O'Dowd's IrishCentral. The 2008 article on GlobalResearch.ca has been a significant online source for the myth, having been shared almost a million times by March 2016. [37] The myth has been spread on white nationalist message boards,  neo-Nazi websites, the far-right conspiracy website InfoWars , and has been shared millions of times on Facebook. [4]

The myth was shared in the form of a meme, frequently used historical paintings or photographs purposefully misidentified via historical falsifications. For example, images of child labourers, paintings of Roman-era slaves, and photographs of prisoners of war were all falsely captioned as evidence of Irish slaves. [38]

"Almost all of the popular 'Irish slaves' articles are promoted by websites or Facebook groups based in the U.S. So it’s predominantly a social media phenomenon of white America." [33] The myth is especially popular with apologists for the Confederate States of America, the secessionist slave states of the South during the American Civil War. [33]

The myth has been a common trope on the white supremacist website Stormfront since 2003. [39] [40] It has circulated widely in the United States, and has recently begun to become common in Ireland after the "Irish slaves" meme went viral on social media in 2013. [41] [33] After the 2014 arrival of the Black Lives Matter movement, the myth was frequently referenced by right-wing white Americans attempting to undermine it [42] and other African-American civil rights issues, according to Aidan McQuade, director of Anti-Slavery International. [43]

In August 2015, the meme was referred to in the context of debates about the continued flying of the Confederate flag, following the Charleston church shooting. [44] [45]

In May 2016, it was referenced by prominent members of Sinn Féin, after their leader Gerry Adams, "while seeking to compare the treatment of African Americans with Catholics in Northern Ireland", [46] became involved in a controversy over his use of the word "nigger" in a false-equivalence reference to Irish nationalists in Northern Ireland. [3]

Irish Times columnist Donald Clarke criticises the myth as being racist, writing that "more commonly we see racists using the myth to belittle the suffering visited on black slaves and to siphon some sympathy towards their own clan." [47] According to The New York Times, the myth is "often politically motivated" and has been used to create "racist barbs" against African-Americans. [4]

Several online articles about "Irish slaves" substituted the 132 African victims of the 1781 Zong massacre with Irish victims. GlobalResearch.ca and InfoWars, both conspiracy websites, inflated the number from 132 victims to 1,302 during such substitutions. In 2015, independent scholar Liam Hogan theorized that the juxtaposing of the Zong massacre with Irish penal labourers originated with a 2002 article, by James Mullin, then chair of the New Jersey–based Irish Famine Curriculum Committee and Education Fund, titled, "Out of Africa". Though Mullin did not misidentify the victims of the Zong Massacre, his article nevertheless blurred the line between the history of African slavery in colonial America with the history of Irish indentured servants sent to English colonies in North America. [4] [48]

Academic criticism and responses

The Irish Examiner removed an article that cited John Martin's 'Globalresearch.ca' piece from its website in early 2016 after 82 writers, historians and academics wrote an open letter condemning the myth. [49] [4] Scientific American published a blog post in 2015, which was also debunked in the open letter, and later heavily revised the blog to remove the incorrect historical material. [50]

Writing in The New York Times, Liam Stack noted that inaccurate "Irish slavery" claims "also appeared on IrishCentral, a leading Irish-American news website." [51] In 2017 IrishCentral's publisher Niall O'Dowd then wrote an op-ed in which he states that "there is no way the Irish slave experience mirrored the extent or level of centuries-long degradation that African slaves went through." [52] In 2020, the website said that propagation of false social media about Irish slaves are "attempts to trivialize and deny centuries institutionalized, race-based slavery." [53]

Sean O'Callaghan's book To Hell or Barbados in particular has been criticised by, among others, Nini Rodgers, who stated that his narrative appeared to arise from his horror at seeing white people being treated on the same social level with blacks. [54] Bryan Fanning notes the book ignored scholarly research. [1] Anthropologist Mark Auslander states in a 2017 article that the current racial climate is leaning toward denial of certain events in history: "There is a strange war on memory that's going on right now, denying the facts of chattel slavery, or claiming to have learned on Facebook or social media that, say, Irish slavery was worse, that white people were enslaved as well. Not true." [55]

Historians note that unlike slaves, many indentured servants willingly entered into contracts, served for a finite period, did not pass their unfree status on to their children, and were still considered fully human. [4] [56] In Jezebel , Matthew Reilly states clearly: "The Irish slave myth is not supported by the historical evidence. Thousands of Irish were sent to colonies like Barbados against their will, never to return. Upon their arrival, however, they were socially and legally distinct from the enslaved Africans with whom they often labored.

While not denying the vast hardships endured by indentured servants, it is necessary to recognize the differences between forms of labor in order to understand the depths of the inhumane system of chattel slavery that endured in the region for several centuries, as well as the legacies of race-based slavery in our own times." [56] According to Hogan, the debate over the exact definition of slavery allowed for a grey area in historical discourse that was then seized upon as a political weapon by white supremacists. [41] [33]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Atlantic slave trade</span>

The Atlantic slave trade or transatlantic slave trade involved the transportation by slave traders of enslaved African people to the Americas. European slave ships regularly used the triangular trade route and its Middle Passage. Europeans established a coastal slave trade in the 15th century and trade to the Americas began in the 16th century, lasting through the 19th century. The vast majority of those who were transported in the transatlantic slave trade were from Central Africa and West Africa and had been sold by West African slave traders to European slave traders, while others had been captured directly by the slave traders in coastal raids. European slave traders gathered and imprisoned the enslaved at forts on the African coast and then brought them to the Americas. Some Portuguese and Europeans participated in slave raids. As the National Museums Liverpool explains: "European traders captured some Africans in raids along the coast, but bought most of them from local African or African-European dealers." Many European slave traders generally did not participate in slave raids because life expectancy for Europeans in sub-Saharan Africa was less than one year during the period of the slave trade because of malaria that was endemic in the African continent. An article from PBS explains: "Malaria, dysentery, yellow fever, and other diseases reduced the few Europeans living and trading along the West African coast to a chronic state of ill health and earned Africa the name 'white man's grave.' In this environment, European merchants were rarely in a position to call the shots." The earliest known use of the phrase began in the 1830s, and the earliest written evidence was found in an 1836 published book by F. H. Rankin. Portuguese coastal raiders found that slave raiding was too costly and often ineffective and opted for established commercial relations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Slavery in the colonial history of the United States</span>

The institution of slavery in the European colonies in North America, which eventually became part of the United States of America, developed due to a combination of factors. Primarily, the labor demands for establishing and maintaining European colonies resulted in the Atlantic slave trade. Slavery existed in every European colony in the Americas during the early modern period, and both Africans and indigenous peoples were targets of enslavement by Europeans during the era.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Indentured servitude</span> Consensual or punitive unpaid labor

Indentured servitude is a form of labor in which a person is contracted to work without salary for a specific number of years. The contract called an "indenture", may be entered voluntarily for purported eventual compensation or debt repayment, or imposed involuntarily as a judicial punishment. The practice has been compared to the similar institution of slavery, although there are differences.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Slavery in the British and French Caribbean</span>

Slavery in the British and French Caribbean refers to slavery in the parts of the Caribbean dominated by France or the British Empire.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of slavery</span>

The history of slavery spans many cultures, nationalities, and religions from ancient times to the present day. Likewise, its victims have come from many different ethnicities and religious groups. The social, economic, and legal positions of slaves have differed vastly in different systems of slavery in different times and places.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Casor</span> American slave

John Casor, a servant in Northampton County in the Colony of Virginia, in 1655 became one of the first people of African descent in the Thirteen Colonies to be enslaved for life as a result of a civil suit.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Atlantic Creole</span> Ethnic group

Atlantic Creole is a cultural identifier of those with origins in the transatlantic settlement of the Americas via Europe and Africa.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of slavery in Massachusetts</span>

Slavery was practiced in Massachusetts bay by Native Americans before European settlement, and continued until its abolition in the 1700s. Although slavery in the United States is typically associated with the Caribbean and the Antebellum American South, enslaved people existed to a lesser extent in New England: historians estimate that between 1755 and 1764, the Massachusetts enslaved population was approximately 2.2 percent of the total population; the slave population was generally concentrated in the industrial and coastal towns. Unlike in the American South, enslaved people in Massachusetts had legal rights, including the ability to file legal suits in court.

Slavery in Britain

Slavery in Britain existed before the Roman occupation and endured until the 11th century, when the Norman conquest of England resulted in the gradual merger of the pre-conquest institution of slavery into serfdom. Given the widespread socio-political changes, all slaves were no longer recognised separately in English law or custom. By the middle of the 12th century, the institution of slavery as it had existed prior to the Norman conquest had fully disappeared, but other forms of unfree servitude continued for some centuries.

During the British colonization of North America, the Thirteen Colonies provided England with an outlet for surplus population as well as a new market. The colonies exported naval stores, fur, lumber and tobacco to Britain, and food for the British sugar plantations in the Caribbean. The culture of the Southern and Chesapeake Colonies was different from that of the Northern and Middle Colonies and from that of their common origin in the Kingdom of Great Britain.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Slavery among Native Americans in the United States</span>

Slavery among Native Americans in the United States includes slavery by and enslavement of Native Americans roughly within what is currently the United States of America.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of slavery in Virginia</span>

Slavery in Virginia began with the capture and enslavement of Native Americans during the early days of the English Colony of Virginia and through the late eighteenth century. They primarily worked in tobacco fields. Africans were first brought to colonial Virginia in 1619, when 20 Africans from present-day Angola arrived in Virginia aboard the ship The White Lion.

John Punch was a Central African resident of the colony of Virginia who became its first enslaved person.

Irish transport to Barbados dates back to the 1620s, when Irish people began arriving on the island. The majority were emigrants, indentures, and merchants, though with an unknown number of political and convict transportees during the 1650s

Migration from Ireland to Saint Kitts and Nevis in the West Indies began in the 1620s, when the islands of Saint Kitts and Nevis became part of the British Empire, and continued into the 18th century.

Irish Caribbean people are people who live in the Caribbean, but were born in Ireland, or are descended from people who were born in Ireland. Irish Caribbean people include:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Indentured servitude in British America</span> 17th–19th century labor system in the British American colonies

Indentured servitude in British America was the prominent system of labor in the British American colonies until it was eventually supplanted by slavery. During its time, the system was so prominent that more than half of all immigrants to British colonies south of New England were white servants, and that nearly half of total white immigration to the Thirteen Colonies came under indenture. By the beginning of the American Revolutionary War in 1775, only 2 to 3 percent of the colonial labor force was composed of indentured servants.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Indian slave trade in the American Southeast</span>

Native Americans living in the American Southeast were enslaved through warfare and purchased by European colonists in North America throughout the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, as well as held in captivity through Spanish-organized forced labor systems in Florida. Emerging British colonies in Virginia, Carolina, and Georgia imported Native Americans and incorporated them into chattel slavery systems, where they intermixed with slaves of African descent, who would eventually come to outnumber them. The settlers' demand for slaves affected communities as far west as present-day Illinois and the Mississippi River and as far south as the Gulf Coast. European settlers exported tens of thousands of enslaved Native Americans outside the region to New England and the Caribbean.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Slavery in Ireland</span>

Slavery had already existed in Ireland for centuries by the time the Vikings began to establish their coastal settlements, but it was under the Norse-Gael Kingdom of Dublin that it reached its peak, in the 11th century.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Irish indentured servants</span> Irish people in indentured servitude in British Empire overseas territories

Irish indentured servants were Irish people who became indentured servants in territories under the control of the British Empire, such as the British West Indies, British North America and later Australia.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 Fanning, Bryan (November 1, 2017). "Slaves to a Myth". Irish Review of Books (article). 102. Retrieved November 11, 2018.
  2. 1 2 O'Carroll, Eoin (March 16, 2018). "No, the Irish were not slaves in the Americas". Christian Science Monitor. ISSN   0882-7729 . Retrieved March 19, 2018.
  3. 1 2 3 Linehan, Hugh (May 11, 2016). "Sinn Féin Not Allowing Facts Derail Good 'Irish Slaves' Yarn". The Irish Times. Retrieved February 18, 2017.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 Stack, Liam (March 17, 2017). "Debunking a Myth: The Irish Were Not Slaves, Too". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved March 20, 2017.
  5. 1 2 Handler, Jerome S.; Reilly, Matthew C. (January 1, 2017). "Contesting "White Slavery" in the Caribbean". New West Indian Guide. 91 (1–2): 30–55. doi: 10.1163/22134360-09101056 . Archived from the original on June 25, 2020. Retrieved May 29, 2017.
  6. 1 2 Pogachnik, Shawn (March 16, 2017). "AP FACT CHECK: Irish "slavery" a St. Patrick's Day myth". Associated Press News. Dublin. Retrieved August 19, 2024– via Associated Press.
  7. ↑ Varner, Natasha (March 16, 2017). "The curious origins of the 'Irish slaves' myth". Public Radio International. Retrieved March 20, 2017.
  8. 1 2 3 4 Donaghue, John (July 2017). "The Curse of Cromwell: Revisiting the Irish Slavery Debate". Loyola ECommons. 25 (4). Retrieved August 20, 2024.
  9. 1 2 Michael Davitt (May 1904) [begun 1883]. "CHAPTER II. Section I. TORIES AND OUTLAWS". The Fall of Feudalism in Ireland (full text). Retrieved November 11, 2018– via archive.org.
  10. ↑ "Prostitution, 'On the Town', and Vagrancy". www.femaleconvicts.org.au. Retrieved August 20, 2024.
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  13. ↑ "Transportation records (Ireland to Australia) held by the National Archives of Ireland (as filmed by the AJCP)". Trove. Retrieved November 10, 2021.
  14. 1 2 "'Irish slaves': the convenient myth". openDemocracy. Retrieved March 27, 2021.
  15. ↑ Monahan, Michael J. (2011). The Creolizing Subject: Race, Reason, and the Politics of Purity (1st ed.). Fordham University Press. ISBN   978-0823234509.
  16. ↑ Christopher Tomlins, "Reconsidering Indentured Servitude: European Migration and the Early American Labor Force, 1600–1775," Labor History (2001) 42#1 pp. 5–43
  17. ↑ Rodgers, Nini (February 28, 2013). "The Irish and the Atlantic slave trade". History Ireland. 15 (3: May/June 2007). Dublin: History Publications, Ltd.
  18. ↑ Hogan, Liam (March 17, 2018). "No, The Irish Were Not Slaves Too". Pacific Standard. Retrieved June 3, 2021. In Ireland it was mainly indirect via the provisions trade. It primarily benefited the Protestant Ascendancy, the Catholic elites, and the Catholic middle class who dominated trade in the cities. Many of our merchants (whether Catholic, Protestant, Huguenot, or Quaker) made fortunes trading with all of the slavocracies in the Caribbean.
  19. ↑ Rodgers, Nini (May 1, 2007). "The Irish and the Atlantic slave trade". History Ireland. Retrieved June 3, 2021. The eighteenth-century economies of Cork, Limerick and Belfast expanded on the back of salted and pickled provisions specially designed to survive high temperatures. These were exported to the West Indies to feed slaves and planters, British, French, Spanish and Dutch. Products grown on slave plantations, sugar in the Caribbean and tobacco from the North American colonies, poured into eighteenth-century Ireland. Commercial interests throughout the island, and the parliament in Dublin, were vividly aware of how much wealth and revenue could be made from the imports.
  20. 1 2 Ohlmeyer, Jane (March 12, 2021). "Ireland, Empire, and the Early Modern World: watch the lectures". RTE. Retrieved June 3, 2021. By 1660 Irish people, mostly men, were to be found in the French Caribbean, the Portuguese and later Dutch Amazon, Spanish Mexico, and the English colonies in the Atlantic and Asia where they joined colonial settlements, served as soldiers and clergymen, forged commercial networks as they traded calicos, spices, tobacco, sugar, and slaves.
  21. ↑ Rodgers, Nini (2007). "The Irish in the Caribbean 1641 -1837: An Overview" (PDF). Irish Migration Studies in Latin America. 5 (3): 150. Retrieved June 3, 2021. To make this journey in reverse became more common as the Irish merchant community on the Atlantic coast found itself at the centre of France's slave trade and sugar imports. Back in France, money from the slave trade and plantations helped to fund the Irish college in Nantes and Walsh's regiment in the Irish brigade, which received its name from Antoine's nephew, coming from a new generation determined to put trade behind them. Despite enormous losses in both areas during the upheavals of the Revolution, these families survive today in France as titled and chateaux-owning.
  22. ↑ Akenson, Donald (1997). If the Irish Ran the World: Montserrat, 1630-1730. McGill-Queen's University Press. p. 119. ISBN   978-0773516304.
  23. ↑ Kelly, Brian (January–February 2021). "Empire, inequality, and Irish complicity in slavery". History Ireland: 14–15 – via academia.edu.
  24. ↑ "Ireland and Slavery: Framing Irish Complicity in the Slave Trade". CounterPunch.org. August 7, 2020. Retrieved March 27, 2021.
  25. ↑ "Framing Irish Complicity in the Slave Trade". REBEL. July 13, 2020. Retrieved November 9, 2020.
  26. ↑ Kennedy, Liam (2015). Unhappy the Land: The Most Oppressed People Ever, the Irish?. Dublin: Irish Academic Press. p. 19. ISBN   9781785370472.
  27. ↑ Carroll, Rory (March 7, 2021). "Trinity College reckons with slavery links as Ireland confronts collusion with empire". The Guardian. ISSN   0029-7712 . Retrieved March 25, 2021.
  28. ↑ Linehan, Hugh. "Sinn Féin not allowing facts derail good 'Irish slaves' yarn". The Irish Times. Retrieved March 30, 2021.
  29. ↑ Barkun, Michael (2003). "Millennialism, Conspiracy, and Stigmatized Knowledge". A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America. University of California Press. p. 34. ISBN   9780520238053 . Retrieved March 15, 2013. Michael A. Hoffman II, a Holocaust denier and exponent of multiple conspiracy theories
  30. ↑ "Ernst Zundel interviews Michael A. Hoffman author of They Were White and They Were Slaves". DavidDuke.com. April 20, 2008.
  31. ↑ Hogan, Liam; McAtackney, Laura; Reilly, Matthew C. (February 29, 2016). "The Irish in the Anglo-Caribbean: Servants or Slaves?". History Ireland.
  32. ↑ "The O'Brien Press - To Hell or Barbados - The ethnic cleansing of Ireland By Sean O'Callaghan". www.obrien.ie. Retrieved October 16, 2020.
  33. 1 2 3 4 5 Amend, Alex. "How the Myth of the "Irish slaves" Became a Favorite Meme of Racists Online". Hatewatch (blog). Southern Poverty Law Center. Retrieved February 18, 2017.
  34. ↑ Kelleher, Lawrence R. (January 15, 2001). To Shed a Tear: A Story of Irish Slavery in the British West Indies. Writers Club Press. p. 73. ISBN   0595169260. Some of the physically larger blacks were made guards and were given certain privileges, namely Irish women. There had been several Irish killed trying to protect the Irish women from being assaulted by these savage blacks.
  35. ↑ Nixon, Guy (2011). Slavery in the West: The Untold Story of the Slavery of Native Americans in the West. Xlibris Corporation. p. 12. ISBN   9781462865253. This African would serve as a stud for the inexpensive Irish women slaves…[these breeding programs were stopped] because it was reducing the profits of the Royal African Company…[but] due to the profitability of these breeding programs the practice continued until well after the end of Ireland's 'Potato Famine'.
  36. ↑ "Ireland and Slavery: Debating the 'Irish Slaves Myth'". CounterPunch.org. August 6, 2020. Retrieved March 27, 2021.
  37. ↑ Costello, Norma (March 17, 2016). "Black Lives Matter and the 'Irish slave' Myth". aljazeera.com. Retrieved February 18, 2017.
  38. ↑ "Debunking the Imagery of the 'Irish Slaves' Meme". ShowerOfKunst.com. Retrieved November 12, 2020.
  39. ↑ Riley, Ricky (March 18, 2016). "Myth Busted: Scholars Fire Back Against Memes Pushing Narrative of Irish Slaves in the Americas". atlantablackstar.com. Retrieved February 18, 2017.
  40. ↑ Deignan, Tom (May 7, 2016). "Racial Tensions of 2016 and the Myth of Irish Slavery - Opinion". nj.com. Retrieved February 18, 2017.
  41. 1 2 Hogan, Liam (January 12, 2015). "'Irish Slaves': The Convenient Myth". opendemocracy.net. Retrieved February 18, 2017.
  42. ↑ Kireini, Douglas (March 8, 2018). "Any attempts to rewrite history must be rebuffed". Business Daily. Retrieved March 19, 2018.
  43. ↑ Ferguson, Amanda (May 2, 2016). "Adams Comparing US Slavery with Nationalist Plight 'Overblown'". The Irish Times. Retrieved February 18, 2017.
  44. ↑ Tucker, Neely (August 18, 2015). "In Mississippi, Defenders of State's Confederate-Themed Flag Dig In". The Washington Post. Retrieved February 17, 2017.
  45. ↑ Hogan, Liam; McAtackney, Laura; Reilly, Matthew Connor (October 6, 2015). "The Unfree Irish in the Caribbean Were Indentured Servants, Not Slaves". Yahoo News. Archived from the original on February 17, 2017. Retrieved February 17, 2017. Inevitably the myth gained prominence in the wake of Dylann Roof's terrorist attack in Charleston and the subsequent debate about the Confederate flag.
  46. ↑ "Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams apologises for racial slur". www.yahoo.com. Archived from the original on May 3, 2016. Retrieved October 16, 2020.
  47. ↑ Clarke, Donald (July 30, 2016). "Free Us From Myth of US Irish Slavery". The Irish Times. Retrieved February 16, 2017.
  48. ↑ Mullin, James. "Out of Africa, Out of Ireland". Archived from the original on October 27, 2002.
  49. ↑ Dempsey, James (March 9, 2016). "Irish Historians Add Their Names to Open Letter Criticising the "Racist Propaganda" of 'Irish slavery'". Newstalk. Retrieved February 18, 2017.
  50. ↑ D'Costa, Krystal (March 17, 2015). "It's True: We're Probably All a Little Irish—Especially in the Caribbean". blogs.scientificamerican.com. Retrieved February 18, 2017.
  51. ↑ Stack, Liam (March 17, 2017). "Debunking a Myth: The Irish Were Not Slaves, Too". NY Times. Retrieved July 29, 2018. Mr. O'Callaghan's work was repeated or repackaged on Irish genealogy websites, in a popular online essay, and in articles in publications like Scientific American and The Daily Kos. The claims also appeared on IrishCentral, a leading Irish-American news website.
  52. ↑ O'Dowd, Niall (March 30, 2017). "Why the Irish were both slaves and indentured servants in colonial America". Irish Central. Retrieved July 22, 2018. The controversy has arisen because some far-right groups have claimed that the experience of Irish slaves was interchangeable with (or even in some cases worse than) the experience of black slaves, and have used that as justification for an array of abhorrent racist statements and ideas. To be clear, there is no way the Irish slave experience mirrored the extent or level of centuries-long degradation that African slaves went through. But the Irish did suffer tremendously and there is a clear tendency to undermine that truth. Adults and children were torn from their homes, transported to the colonies in bondage against their will, and sold into a system of prolonged servitude. Some would even call it slavery.
  53. ↑ O'Brien, Shane (July 2, 2020). "Facebook post falsely claiming Irish were slaves shared one million times". IrishCentral.com. Retrieved September 16, 2020.
  54. ↑ Rodgers, Nini (January 31, 2007). Ireland, Slavery and Anti-Slavery. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN   978-0-333-77099-3.
  55. ↑ Eversley, Melanie (February 17, 2017). "Slavery-Era Embroidery Excites Historians, Evokes Heartbreak of Its Time". USA Today. Retrieved February 18, 2017.
  56. 1 2 Davies, Madeleine (March 17, 2016). "Let's Squash the Myth That the Irish Were Ever American Slaves". jezebel.com.

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