Irish Slave Facts
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 (70% of the total population of Montserrat were Irish slaves at this time).
From 1641 to 1652, over 500,000 Irish were killed by the English and over 300,000 were sold as slaves.
Ireland's population fell from about 1,500,000 to 600,000 in one single decade.
During the 1650s, over 100,000 Irish children
between the ages of 10 and 14 were forcibly taken from their parents
and sold as slaves in the West Indies, Virginia and New England.
Another 52,000 Irish (mostly women and children) were sold to Barbados and Virginia while 30,000 Irish men were sold to the highest bidder.
More @ Save Your Heritage.
In the novel, "KIDNAPPED", by Robert Louis Stevenson (also a Walt Disney movie), a Scottish orphan is sold into slavery on a Carolina plantation, a practice which was common in those days, even after England outlawed it.
ReplyDeleteIn my biological family's recorded history, when operating the Underground Railroad in Indiana, one of those whom they helped to escape slavery was "a mysterious white boy who never spoke".
Could it be that he never spoke because he only spoke Gaelic, and didn't understand English?
A few years ago, while researching United States Census records, I happened upon an 1870 census in Kentucky, where an Irish boy was living with a negro family of freed slaves.
Was that Irish boy also a freed slave?
Thanks and both may well be.
DeleteThings to ponder. One hardly ever hears about the White slaves.
ReplyDeleteFor some unknown reason only black slaves matter. Mind boggling.
All political, of course and even though the Democrats and Republicans have switched places in their beliefs.
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