TheIrish slaves myth is a fringepseudohistorical narrative that conflates thepenal transportation andindentured servitude ofIrish people during the 17th and 18th centuries, with the hereditarychattel slavery experienced by theforebears of theAfrican diaspora.
Somewhite nationalists, and others who want to minimize the effects of hereditary chattel slavery on Africans and their descendants, have used thisfalse equivalence to denyracism 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 thetransatlantic slave trade.[3]
The myth has been in circulation since at least the 1990s and has been disseminated in onlinememes 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 earlyBarbados".[5] In 2016, academics and Irish historians wrote to condemn the myth.[6]
Common elements tomemes that propagate the myth are:[4][6][7]
DuringBritish rule in Ireland, and particularly during thePlantations of Ireland and theCromwellian conquest, the terms "slaves" or "bond slaves" were sometimes used to describe thetime-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 includedpolitical 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 variousfelonies such as highway robbery, vagrancy (homelessness),burglary, andhorse 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 toforced 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 (includingBritish 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]
According to historian Nini Rodgers, in the 18th century "every group in Ireland (Gaelic,Hiberno-Norman orAnglo-Irish) produced merchants who benefited from the slave trade and the expanding slave colonies."[17][14] Although theNavigation Acts prevented Ireland from participating directly in the slave trade, some 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 thetriangular trade.[18] Exports of salted and pickled provisions to slave-colonies were central to economic expansion inGeorgian eraCork,Limerick, andBelfast, while imports of West Indiansugar 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 theFrench Caribbean, thePortuguese and laterDutch Amazon,Spanish Mexico, and theEnglish colonies in the Atlantic where they... forged commercial networks as they tradedcalicos,spices,tobacco, sugar, and slaves."[20] The French port ofNantes, in particular, was dominated by a community of exiled IrishJacobites, androse to prominence in the 18th century as France's foremost slave trading port.[21]Irish Catholics made up more than two-thirds of theAnglo-Caribbean island ofMontserrat'splantation owners as early as the 17th century, and according to historianDonald Akenson "they knew how to be hard and efficient slave masters."[22] American historianBrian 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 offamine and mass starvation."[23][24][25]
According to historianLiam Kennedy, the idea of 'Irish slavery' was popular within the nineteenth-century Irish independence movementYoung Ireland. Young IrelanderJohn Mitchel was particularly vocal in his claim that the Irish had been enslaved, although he was a supporter of theAtlantic slave trade in Africans.[26]
AnIrish Times article notes thatIrish 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 ofTrinity College Dublin, while those most active in propagating myth – who are often located inAustralia and theUnited 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 theBlack 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 theDublin 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]
A number of books have been written on the subject, includingWhite Cargo: The Forgotten History of Britain's White Slaves in America; andThe Irish Slaves: Slavery, Indenture and Contract Labor Among Irish Immigrants. According to Hogan, the most influential book to assert the myth wasThey Were White and They Were Slaves: The Untold History of the Enslavement of Whites in Early America, self-published in the US in 1993 byconspiracy theorist andHolocaust denier[29]Michael A. Hoffman II (whoblamed Jews for the Atlantic slave trade).[30]
To Hell Or Barbados: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ireland (2000), by Irish writerSean 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 toThe 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]
O'Callaghan's claims were repeated on Irish genealogy websites, the Canadianconspiracy theory websiteGlobalResearch.ca, andNiall O'Dowd'sIrishCentral. The 2008 article onGlobalResearch.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 onwhite nationalist message boards, neo-Nazi websites, the far-right conspiracy websiteInfoWars, 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 ofchild labourers, paintings ofRoman-era slaves, and photographs ofprisoners 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 theConfederate States of America, the secessionistslave states ofthe South during theAmerican Civil War.[33]
The myth has been a common trope on thewhite supremacist websiteStormfront 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 theBlack Lives Matter movement, the myth was frequently referenced by right-wingwhite Americans attempting to undermine it[42] and other African-American civil rights issues, according toAidan McQuade, director ofAnti-Slavery International.[43]
In August 2015, the meme was referred to in the context of debates about thecontinued flying of the Confederate flag, following theCharleston church shooting.[44][45]
In May 2016, it was referenced by prominent members ofSinn Féin, after their leaderGerry Adams, "while seeking to compare the treatment of African Americans with Catholics in Northern Ireland",[46] became involved ina 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 toThe 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 1781Zong massacre with Irish victims.GlobalResearch.ca andInfoWars, 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 theZong massacre with Irish penal labourers originated with a 2002 article, by James Mullin, then chair of theNew Jersey–based Irish Famine Curriculum Committee and Education Fund, titled, "Out of Africa". Though Mullin did not misidentify the victims of theZong Massacre, his article nevertheless blurred the line between the history ofAfrican slavery in colonial America with the history of Irish indentured servants sent to English colonies in North America.[4][48]
TheIrish 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 inThe New York Times, Liam Stack noted that inaccurate "Irish slavery" claims "also appeared onIrishCentral, a leading Irish-American news website."[51] In 2017IrishCentral'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 bookTo 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] InJezebel, 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]
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.
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.
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.
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.
Michael A. Hoffman II, a Holocaust denier and exponent of multiple conspiracy theories
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.
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'.
Inevitably the myth gained prominence in the wake of Dylann Roof's terrorist attack in Charleston and the subsequent debate about the Confederate flag.
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.
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.
