Posted by
Saltwater on Sunday, July 26, 2009 4:28:11 PM
Their
history as human chattel in the New World is disturbing.
“They
came as slaves; vast human cargo transported on tall British ships
bound for the Americas. They were shipped by the hundreds of
thousands and included men, women, and even the youngest of children.
“Whenever
they rebelled or even disobeyed an order, they were punished in the
harshest ways. Slave owners would hang their human property by their
hands and set their hands or feet on fire as one form of punishment.
They were burned alive and had their heads placed on pikes in the
marketplace as a warning to other captives.”
Harvard
professor Henry Gates, central figure in the racially charged
incident involving Cambridge police, is an ardent proponent of
reparations to Black Americans for the atrocities of the African
slave trade. However, Gates's ethnocentric outrage conveniently
ignores the full history of slavery in the Americas. The above
excerpt does not describe the plight of black slaves torn from their
families in Africa. It comes from White
Slavery: The Slaves That Time Forgot by
John Martin detailing the trade in Irish slaves.
The
story of Irish slaves is one the politically correct manage to
overlook while damning the United States for past transgressions
against blacks. It is not discussed in schools when teaching about
slavery. The history of Irish slaves is so completely buried that
students gain a false impression that slave trade began when white
Europeans raided Africa for cheap black labor. In truth, the
majority of early slaves in the New World were white, victims of that
dehumanizing practice long before the establishment of an African
slave trade.
“The
Irish slave trade began when James II sold 30,000 Irish prisoners as
slaves to the New World. His 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.”
Treatment
of the Irish people under King James II and Charles I by the likes of
Oliver Cromwell amounted to little more than state sponsored genocide
on a scale not seen again for nearly three centuries.
“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.”
Even
a growing trade in African slaves did nothing to alleviate the
hardships of Irish slaves. If anything, it only made their lot worse
as the lowest members in a perverse caste system. African slaves
were a prized commodity, often fetching prices 10 times that of the
Irish. To minimize expenses, slave owners forced Irish women and
girls (many as young as 12) to breed with African men. The “mulatto”
offspring of these rapes were more valuable than their Irish parents,
yet considerably cheaper than purchasing new Africans.
This trade in
Irish slaves continued for well over a century as England sold
thousands of Irish into slavery after the 1798 Irish Rebellion.
England finally renounced its official participation in slave trade
in 1839, far too late for those hapless Irish dragged away in chains.
The Reconstruction Amendments after America's Civil War codified the
rights of all men and women to live free of slavery's chains.
The
horrors sustained by all people subjected to slavery are undeniable.
Many freed blacks returned to their ancestral homeland to restart
their lives anew. Many more Africans migrated to America on their
own accord in search of the American dream. Yet, as the Martin
article concludes:
“None
of the Irish victims ever made it back to their homeland to describe
their ordeal. These are the lost slaves; the ones that time and
biased history books conveniently forgot.”
For
anyone such as Dr. Gates to proffer slavery as a uniquely Black
experience requiring reparations to descendants of Black Africans is
an insult to everyone of Irish ancestry. It is a ludicrous
proposition that all whites now living in America are responsible for
sins against blacks going back over 200 years, and therefore should
be held monetarily accountable. It would be equally ludicrous for me
to demand some type of payment from all blacks now living in America
for their ancestors' participation in the forced rapes of Irish women
so long ago.
However, if Gates and others insist on pushing the
reparation issue, I will be equally insistent that the Irish be the
first recipients, at least to the extent that blacks have benefited
so far. I demand the atrocities committed against the Irish be
finally recognized and taught in our schools along with those of the
Africans.
http://afgen.com/forgotten_slaves.html
Note:
Although enslavement of the Irish may have been the most egregious as
far as numbers and percent of population, the treatment of other
white European slaves from Spain, Portugal and Scotland was no less
heinous, and equally deserving remembrance.
Dennis
P. O'Neil