The Irish slave myth (2000- ) claims that in the 1600s the British got slaves from Ireland as well as Africa. African Americans therefore need to stop complaining about racism and pull themselves up by their bootstraps just like Irish Americans have done. This claim is even supported by photographs.
The claim is false: Just as photography was not a thing in the 1600s, neither was White slavery in British colonies. People at the time may have thought the Irish became “slaves” when they were sent across the Atlantic Ocean, but in fact the Irish became indentured servants. That was a thing.
Indentured servitude is based on a contract for a set period of time, generally four to seven years. Your contract might be bought or sold, but not you. You still had human rights, you were not mere property. It was not forever and it was not passed on to your children. It was not based on your race, so there was no unpleasant racist aftertaste, like with Black slavery.
It made the Irish no different than most White Americans of the time: convicts, “rogues, vagabonds, whores, cheats, and rabble of all descriptions raked from the gutter” of Britain and Ireland to become indentured servants in the colonies. You know, the people White nationalists call Old Stock Americans, which they see as the genetic secret sauce of US greatness. (White Liberals meanwhile romanticize them as “settlers”.)
No peaches, no cream: Although the Irish were indentured servants, their working conditions were sometimes as bad as slavery. Many died before their contracts ended. Many were made indentured servants against their will – not just the Irish prisoners of war that Cromwell sent to Barbados, but anyone in Ireland who fell on the wrong side of England’s poor laws, like those kicked off their land by the English. The capitalist demand for cheap labour by British sugar and tobacco growers was huge.
Slavery: Black slavery by the early 1800s was a well-oiled machine based on race and supported by law, religion, racist beliefs, slave patrols, and the latest science. All of that did not fall from the sky. It took over a hundred years to assemble. It grew out of indentured servitude, but by the time it had become full-blown slavery the Irish had been excluded by design: it was race-based.
The Irish slave myth comes from not scholars but from Internet memes and articles, which in turn come from a book, “To Hell or Barbados: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ireland” (2000) by Sean O’Callaghan. He was a journalist, not a historian. Yet even Scientific American repeated his claims.
In 2016 in an open letter 82 Irish scholars and writers condemned the Irish slave myth:
“This has little to do with remembering the brutality of indentured servitude and all to do with the minimisation of the scale, duration and legacy of the transatlantic and intercolonial slave trade. The racist contemporary application of such bad history can be observed spreading like a virus across social media on an hourly basis.”
– Abagond, 2018.
Sources: mainly New York Times (2017), Medium (the open letter), “A Different Mirror” (2008) by Ronald Takaki.
See also:
- Irish Americans
- Transatlantic slave trade
- White American racism in the 1600s
- coolies – Asian contract labourers of the 1800s
- Bootstrap Myth
544
Why did you exclude the plight of Redlegs of Barbados? How about all the ‘affirmative action’ via 19th century big city political machines the Irish benefited from. No accident that cops, firefighters and other civil servants are so heavily Irish.
LikeLiked by 1 person
“It made the Irish no different than most White Americans of the time: convicts, “rogues, vagabonds, whores, cheats, and rabble of all descriptions raked from the gutter” of Britain and Ireland to become indentured servants in the colonies.”
What, no saucy boys?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Just a mere three weeks ago, Congress had this to say about so-called African Americans’ journey within this demonic country:
Shown Here:
Public Law No: 115-102 (01/08/2018)
(This measure has not been amended since it was passed by the House on May 1, 2017. The summary of that version is repeated here.)
400 Years of African-American History Commission Act
(Sec. 3) This bill establishes the 400 Years of African-American History Commission to develop and carry out activities throughout the United States to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the arrival of Africans in the English colonies at Point Comfort, Virginia, in 1619.
The commission must:
•plan programs to acknowledge the impact that slavery and laws that enforced racial discrimination had on the United States;
•encourage civic, patriotic, historical, educational, artistic, religious, and economic organizations to organize and participate in anniversary activities;
•assist states, localities, and nonprofit organizations to further the commemoration; and
•coordinate for the public scholarly research on the arrival of Africans in the United States and their contributions to this country.
(Sec. 5) The commission may provide: (1) grants to communities and nonprofit organizations for the development of programs; (2) grants to research and scholarly organizations to research, publish, or distribute information relating to the arrival of Africans in the United States; and (3) technical assistance to states, localities, and nonprofit organizations to further the commemoration.
(Sec. 7) The commission must prepare a strategic plan and submit a final report to Congress that contains a summary of its activities, an accounting of its received and expended funds, and its recommendations.
(Sec. 8) The commission shall terminate on July 1, 2020.
(Sec. 9) All expenditures of the commission shall be made solely from donated funds.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/1242
Nothing is within the congressional pipeline to honor so-called Irish slaves. There is a big difference between being an indentured servant and an actual slave or chattel slavery.Therefore, I guess they, the Irish, were in fact never slaves to begin with. (smmfh, stupid sh@t!)
LikeLiked by 1 person
I am not the best writer by a long shot, but this is very bad English :
“Black slavery the early 1800s was a well-oiled machine…”
Please emend it if you have any respect for the memory of the kidnapped Africans who had rum introduced into their societies by the owners of the Newport distilleries, the horrors of the middle passage and the unimaginable nightmare of life long enslavement till death in a strange land incarnated into Modern Industrial Prison Complex by greedy power-hungry slave masters/owners/traders.
There was no ‘Black slavery ‘ in the way we understand chattel slavery ,unless you are trying to allude to the practices on the African continent as exagerrared and distorted by the very people who enslaved them in the first place (to this very day).
Begorrah ,now if there were ‘Irish slaves’ in America, then every racist who employs that argument that Africans sold themselves into slavery, to exonerate (wrongly ) Whites from taking the full blame for the so-called Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, can proudly proclaim that the Irish had it hard ,too. They also sold their own into slavery! Did they sell their own for whisky?
The most important question is whodunit. Who were the masters (their names) of the indentured servants ? Would the primary historical documents for historical or public research (do not hold your breath) for indentured servitude of the Irish be inadvertently accessible like that of the slave traders, slave masters, slave owners- the alpha capitalist beneficiaries , in a similar vein to that of the ‘Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews’?
Were they fellow Proddies or Catholics?Continentals or Mad Englishmen? Or Jews?
Oh! The irony of White on White violence or was it?
LikeLiked by 1 person
According to a site called American History: From Pre-Columbian to the New Millennium, when the minority (forty percent) of indentured servants that survived their years of servitude reached the end of their terms they were given something called “freedom dues”. These dues are described as:
http://www.ushistory.org/us/5b.asp
In contrast, newly freed slaves were lucky to leave with the clothes on their backs. No Freedom Dues for slaves.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Abagond,
This type of “history” book is all over Amazon. It’s very obvious that the goal is to somehow minimize the focus on the effects of black slavery. The interesting thing is that most of these books were written after 2000. It is a clear attempt at propaganda. The book reviews always talk about the unspoken history of the one million Europeans who were enslaved by North African pirates. Ugh. False equivalency.
LikeLiked by 4 people
http://www.thejournal.ie/readme/irish-slaves-myth-2369653-Oct2015/
i saw something north ireland or some university up that way wrote a policy statement or something i’m searching
LikeLiked by 2 people
Another deflection of whites shty history of being shty humans.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I am not the best writer by a long shot, but this is very bad English: “Black slavery the early 1800s was a well-oiled machine…” – Katherine Johnson (aka PF Thought)
This was clearly meant to be a metaphor, but not to be taken literally as your perception has demonstrated. I surmise that Abagond used “well-oiled” to further illustrate how smooth the operation were of forcing people into the dark hull of a stuffy slave cargo ship; shackle their arms, legs and neck; men and women were raped by ship handlers; subjects wallowed in their own urination, defecation and women’s menstrual material all over the floor and transport across the Atlantic ocean.
Once they disembarked from the ship on average of two months later; they were escorted down an old rickety gangplank; the subjects were then sold for bondmen and bondwomen, then beaten into submission of accepting a white G-d; forced separation of husband and wife in some instances, right along with brothers and sisters; sh#tty slave masters frequently slept with a slave’s wife at any time of his choosing and raped little girls as young as 12 or 14 years old. (whisper: Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings)
So yes, this type of operation, that is commonly referred to as “Black slavery” was in fact operated as a “well-oiled machine.” In reality, only demons could operate such an odd machinery made up of humanity and that they did, without even as much of an ounce worth of compunction!
LikeLiked by 1 person
You are splitting hairs here , Blakksage.
How you framed i might have in similar vein. There is no disagreement here . Although it is not Black slavery. I hope you can discern the difference . It is the European enslavement of African people before they were stripped of their lands, heritage, culture, belief systems and religion and lives forever by the European Jews and Gentiles and reduced to Black. They were African human beings reduced to/in slavery.
This is the second time you have referred to me as P F Thought . Could you please explain who or what you mean by this? Are you being contrary for the sake of it?
It was the well -oiled European enslavement of Africans, Blakksage.
LikeLike
But the Jews were the most maltreated of them all. Even the Dalits of India whose ongoing sufferings of thousands of years do not count.
LikeLike
You have made the time -worn, spurious albeit, completely false assumption that Jews are the long suffering eternal victims of the world, eclipsing the true nightmares of history like the European or Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade , the misnomered Arab Slave Trade, the genocide of all aboriginal peoples in the different continents, the ongoing wars fomented on Muslim dominated regions by the USA and Israel, the colonialization of Africa and the attendant horrors of biological warfare in regions where African nations have vast deposits of mineral wealth that the West is pillaging in neo-colonialism , South African apartheid, the two world wars instigated by the eternal victims to bring about the State of Israel, the Armenian genocide by the Young Turks, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Stalin’s Red Terror, Jim Crow, the genocides of the Congolese, the Khoisan, the Herero the Holomodor. the bombing of Dresden, not forgetting the pure barbaric and savage torture and systematic genocide of the Palestianians by the Jews on their own homeland , the present systematic new -age Prison Industrial Complex that African Americans are subjected to and the recent genocides against Afghanistan ,Iraq and Syria brought about by 911 by the Jewish State of Israel . You get my drift .
If you want to compare the make-up stories of the Jews to the real horrors of which they had a direct hand in, could you please provide some historical evidence for your assertion.
The Dalits suffer terribly in India , that is true , but there is no need to make false comparisons to make their suffering any less than.
No where in history, is there any Jewish suffering even remotely comparable to that what Africans and Aboriginals have been subjected to .
I will humbly apologize to you, if you could present some facts regarding their maltreatment. Or any Irish Nationalist that can comprehensively prove how indentured servitude is the same or worse than chattel slavery .
Thank you .
LikeLike
@Katherine Johnson
I was being sarcastic. I thought that the :
“Even the Dalits of India whose ongoing sufferings of thousands of years do not count.” part of the sentence would make that clear.
I fully agree with you.
LikeLike
Ruki, so wry and dry, your humour completely went over my head.
LikeLike
Katherine Johnson / Taotesan
is banned as a sock puppet..
LikeLiked by 2 people
I appreciate this blog post about the Irish and their supposed ‘enslavement’. It is a common subject brought up by white racists whenever they invade the comment sections of any article, website, blog, video, etc., even remotely related to black Americans. I don’t know what in the world they want to hear black people say about ‘the Irish’, but my advice is that if they see Irish indentured servitude as an historical injustice, then they need to go complain to the British.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Thank you for this, Abagond. In a roundabout way, it is, in part, BECAUSE of these European indentured servants that White people and White supremacy even exists.
As you mentioned, the poor Europeans brought to the colonies were the dregs of society. Absolutely hated by the elites, they were sent here not only to work but to be out of the sight of Europeans who stayed behind and did not want to even see these they regarded as “trash people” on the streets of Europe. To get a sense of just how much they were despised, your subscribers should read the book ‘White Trash’ by Nancy Isenberg. The sentiments Southern Whites had about Blacks during the antebellum period and beyond is precisely the way elite Europeans felt about poor Europeans even before America was “discovered”. Seen as a burden to upper class society, who also thought the colonies were a waste dump in the beginning, they considered these people’s one way ticket here an act of literally throwing out the trash.
To incentivize them to work upon arrival (they were considered lazy, shiftless, leeches), they were offered land at the end of their servitude as you mentioned. It’s important to note here that indentured servants weren’t only white-skinned, but some were also of African origin who’d previously lived in Europe after immigrating from Africa. All worked together side by side in the colonies as servants though, not as enslaved people.
Problems arose, however when two things started happening. First, there was a shortage of women for the wealthy. With all of this land and money, they needed to start families and begin to form a new society here. So they began to import young European women for that purpose. Lo and behold, though, many of these women chose African servants and native men over the wealthy ones they were brought here to breed with. That’s when laws were enacted to discourage those relationships by the threat of placing the women in servitude, etc. if they chose men of color over the landowners.
A short while later, more trouble began to brew due to wealthy landowners disrespectfully giving servants who finished their contacts land where nothing would grow or that was too close to hostile native territories to be of any good. This led to Bacon’s Rebellion where poor servants of every hue united in a bloody multi-year battle against the landowning elites until Europe had to send troops over to squash the beef. Now totally pissed at the added expense of defense and in order to protect their investment in the colonies they couldn’t allow an insurrection of that magnitude to happen again, so a divide and conquer strategy was concocted.
It was at this time that we FIRST see European people referred to as White (before then, they were Irish, English, Spanish, French, etc.). Suddenly, these poor “trash people” were now White and shared that designation with the elites who had always been their oppressors. Oh the joy they felt! Along with that distinction, they remained servants until their contacts were up BUT were afforded rights that Blacks suddenly did not have. Instantly, Blacks who’d been indentured were now counted as slaves with no end to their servitude. Their children who were previously born free were now also enslaved and all future children would be born into the same condition for life.
Black people could not sue in court, these new Whites could. Black people could not own land, the new Whites could. Black people could not be educated, new Whites could and the list goes on. In order to keep them from ever uniting again, people who’d previously worked together, lived together, socialized together, mated together, went to war together, etc. were suddenly divided by this new distinction of White and Black and the privileges that were handed out accordingly. Of course the newly minted Whites were tickled pink about their new status and suddenly being above another class of people for the first time in history. They did everything in their power to support this new hierarchy as they are still doing today.
So these Irish servants people swear were slaves not only were not so, but they were among the people used as pawns in the literal creation of “White people”, White supremacy and all that this social construct has ever encompassed. All this was done to protect the 1% by keeping a people otherwise united, separated.
Sorry to be so long and please excuse any typos as this is being written on a mobile device this morning, lol. Thanks again for your post and helping to set the record straight!
LikeLiked by 4 people
@ Laura Sands
Well said.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Damn. Red Lettered. You have to wonder about the psychological motivations of some of these types though………
Anyway, this propaganda of reversing the positions of blacks and whites has been a part of their propaganda for years.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkWS9PiXekE)
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Us15_iXt6e8)
Hmmmm. Two black man, in an army of Persians aka Iranians aka Aryans? And the one in the second scene is waving around a whip and getting lectured about freedom because he’s a slavemaster?
Let’s look again……
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CsUS028Y8Q)
Ah!! Is the messenger from 300. But wait… What’s he doing with a whip? And he’s slavemaster of all these white people? Okay then…..
Come to La La Land. Star Guy Sebastian who is white, is the one who wants to keep Jazz pure, versus the sellout John Legend who wishes to dirt iit up with his fusion Jazz. Strange…..
And that;s just the top of my head. Imagine all the reverse psychology that we haven’t identified yet….
LikeLiked by 1 person
@abagond
Is it possible that they just have the same IP?
LikeLike
Oh course, the real power behind the throne is SamJack in Django Unchained. Leo DiCaprio is just that way because he drinks too much and believes in eugenics.
LikeLike
@Laura Sands: The Nancy Isenberg book has been on my list for a couple of months heard about it on Tim Wise podcast and the podcast About Race. I enjoy reading your post whenever you come to this spot. I like your blog as well.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you @Mary Burrell! I don’t always comment, but I enjoy Abagond’s work and the discussions you and the others have here every time I visit. Isenberg’s book sheds a lot of light on”White people” and the motivations behind some of their attitudes even in the present day. I also like Dr. Jacqueline Battalora’s interviews on the Philippe Matthew’s show on YouTube. Very eye-opening facts on the history of Whiteness. I just bookmarked Wise’s podcast a couple of weeks ago, but haven’t taken the time to listen yet. I’m a fan of his work and will definitely do so soon.
LikeLike
This is a very enlightening post it brings to mind the incendiary comment about sht hole countries and the people from so called sht holes, the dominant culture forgets that many white Americans are descendants of Europeans who were once the dregs of society themselves. The POTUS is an ignorant man who could use a remedial lesson in world and American history.
LikeLiked by 1 person
@ sharinar
Two people emailed me pointing out that her writing style was the same. When I checked the IP address it confirmed their suspicions. Also she is active at Nomad’s blog just like taotesan was.
LikeLike
Before I say anything I want everyone to understand that slavery was slavery and indenture servitude was another form of using labor.
The two should not be mixed. The first Africans were brought to this nation as Indenture servants; however it did not take the owners of the contracts long to change the blacks to slaves. From that moment on there was no similarity between the two labor systems.
Slaves had a monetary value; therefore they were given a minimum of food and clothing to provide for the long term. The white indentured servants had no value except what work could be extracted from them and many were worked to death.
At no time should anyone make a comparative study of the two labor systems.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_United_States#Colonial_America
“In the early years of the Chesapeake Bay settlements, colonial officials found it difficult to attract and retain laborers under the harsh frontier conditions, and there was a high mortality rate.[7] Most laborers came from Britain as indentured laborers, signing contracts of indenture to pay with work for their passage, their upkeep and training, usually on a farm. The colonies had agricultural economies. These indentured laborers were often young people who intended to become permanent residents. In some cases, convicted criminals were transported to the colonies as indentured laborers, rather than being imprisoned. The indentured laborers were not slaves, but were required to work for four to seven years in Virginia to pay the cost of their passage and maintenance.[8] Many Germans, Scots-Irish, and Irish came to the colonies in the 18th century, settling in the backcountry of Pennsylvania and further south.[7]
Destination of enslaved Africans (1519–1867)[9] Destination Percentage
British mainland North America 3.7%
British Leeward Islands 3.2%
British Windward Islands and Trinidad (British 1797–1867) 3.8%
Jamaica (Spanish 1519–1655, British 1655–1867) 11.2%
Barbados (British) 5.1%
The Guianas (British, Dutch, French) 4.2%
French Windward Islands 3.1%
Saint-Domingue (French) 8.2%
Spanish mainland North and South America 4.4%
Spanish Caribbean islands 8.2%
Dutch Caribbean islands 1.3%
Northeast Brazil (Portuguese) 9.3%
Bahia, Brazil (Portuguese) 10.7%
Southeast Brazil (Portuguese) 21.1%
Elsewhere in the Americas 1.1%
Africa 1.4%
The first 19 or so Africans to reach the English colonies arrived in Jamestown, Virginia in 1619, brought by Dutch traders who had seized them from a captured Spanish slave ship. The Spanish usually baptized slaves in Africa before embarking them. As English custom then considered baptized Christians exempt from slavery, colonists treated these Africans as indentured servants, and they joined about 1,000 English indentured servants already in the colony. The Africans were freed after a prescribed period and given the use of land and supplies by their former masters. The historian Ira Berlin noted that what he called the “charter generation” in the colonies was sometimes made up of mixed-race men (Atlantic Creoles) who were indentured servants, and whose ancestry was African and Iberian. They were descendants of African women and Portuguese or Spanish men who worked in African ports as traders or facilitators in the slave trade. For example, Anthony Johnson arrived in Virginia in 1621 from Angola as an indentured servant; he became free and a property owner, eventually buying and owning slaves himself. The transformation of the social status of Africans, from indentured servitude to slaves in a racial caste which they could not leave or escape, happened gradually”
LikeLiked by 2 people
A thought that you might have about white people and other people – not black.
Approximately 60 million people were killed during World War II and uncounted white people have been killed during the past 30 years. I do not know if Africans were included in that 60 million count.
Please see the chart: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties
It does not look to me that white people like each other. Please review the Syrian Civil War or what ever you call it, the breakup of Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union and afterwards the Russian nation. How many “white people” in the Middle East have been killed and made homeless and helpless.
It would appear as though some people just do not have any means of caring about other people. Therefore one could expect the treatment that was given to the slaves of the United States.
The US had a very small portion of slaves compared to Central and South America and the Caribbean islands yet most of the other parts are moving on toward a “common race”.
LikeLiked by 1 person
It does not look to me that white people like each other. Please review the Syrian Civil War or what ever you call it, the breakup of Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union and afterwards the Russian nation. How many “white people” in the Middle East have been killed and made homeless and helpless.
It would appear as though some people just do not have any means of caring about other people. Therefore one could expect the treatment that was given to the slaves of the United States.
The US had a very small portion of slaves compared to Central and South America and the Caribbean islands yet most of the other parts are moving on toward a “common race”. – Allen Shaw
Conflation much! (smh)
LikeLike
@ Allen Shaw
“Slaves had a monetary value; therefore they were given a minimum of food and clothing to provide for the long term. The white indentured servants had no value except what work could be extracted from them and many were worked to death.”
This is not really true. It was standard for a contract of indenturement to have a clause requiring the master to provide the indentured servant with room and board. Some contracts list the specific items of clothing to be provided as well.
Of course, it is true that some masters didn’t live up to their contractual obligations. Some indentured servants were worked to death, some were beaten to death, but most of the fatalities were probably due to illness. The other colonists, the nonindentured Europeans, also had a very high death rate, especially during the first year when they were not yet adapted to the new climate.
LikeLike
The US had a very small portion of slaves compared to Central and South America and the Caribbean islands yet most of the other parts are moving on toward a “common race”. – Allen Shaw
Hey Allen, could you please expound on this so-called “common race” that you’re referring to above. Thank you!
LikeLike
Yes they are intermarrying and having children of mixed races the same as many black in the US are doing.
The term “people of color” is becoming more popular.
Have you noticed how many black men have white wives these days. Therefore they have “common” children. Do you want another name, I am willing just give it to me.
Even in Europe it is anticipated that the white race is not replenishing itself. And when the Middle East men take their toll on the white race there will be an even faster disappearance of the white race.
“Common | Define Common at Dictionary.com
http://www.dictionary.com/browse/common
Common definition, belonging equally to, or shared alike by, two or more or all in question: common property; common interests. See more.”
LikeLike
It still concerns me that this is still a “thing”. I hated growing up with that kind of thinking in the US.
LikeLike
Not sure if I’ve ever heard of the “Irish slave myth” but, being of Irish descent and an American (in addition to knowing my history), I can tell whomever wrote this has know clue on either subject.
LikeLike
Neither do you.:
Even Snopes debunks this myth;
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/irish-slaves-early-america/
You should question why you have a vested interest in this trope. Oh, I know, ‘It happened to me too!’.
LikeLiked by 1 person
The value of words. Slaves and indentured slavery and the time they were used. Looking at Europe they had serfs and peasants. All over the world we have people who are working at the bottom of the economic scale. Today we have the poor.
The history of the Irish and how they were treated is grim. No matter how we look back, unless all of the history books are wrong, The Irish have been considered below those of the balance of the British Isles.
The first Africans brought o this nation in 1621 were not brought as slaves.
The Puritans codified slavery in 1641.
My reading indicates that indentured servants were treated more harsly then slaves because the owner of the contracts had no financial interest in the indentured servant, thus many indentured servants were worked and maybe starved to death.
Looking back to 1600 when few wrote anything and people had little knowledge about what others were doing is difficult. Reading a letter written by someone giving their opinion at that time can be dangerous by creating an opinion about how others were acting.
The primary fact is those at the bottom of the work force had very bad lives. Even if they owned their own land it was difficult.
Maybe we should place that period of time with anchient history and start anew!
LikeLike
@ Allen Shaw
“My reading indicates that indentured servants were treated more harsly then slaves because the owner of the contracts had no financial interest in the indentured servant, thus many indentured servants were worked and maybe starved to death.”
I said above, and I still believe it to be true, that this was not often the case with indentured servants, although it did happen. The owner signed a contract which bound him legally to certain obligations to the indentured servant, and the owner could be taken to court for failing to live up to those obligations — which was not an available recourse for slaves.
Now, the European convicts who were transported to the Americas were another story altogether. They may well have been worked to death more often than indentured servants.
But I think it is important to remember that the financial interest an owner had in a slave was not necessarily enough to keep an owner from working the slave to death. Depending on the type of work and the availability of new slaves, the owners might not care much at all.
For instance:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2018/10/27/opinion/sugar-land-texas-graves-slavery.amp.html
Or this account of the Gowrie rice plantation in South Carolina:
https://www.sciway.net/afam/slavery/gowrie.html
LikeLike
@Solitaire Your response is quite long and I may or may not agree with all. It will take time for me to evaluate what you say, research your response and respond.
Stand by.
LikeLike
White slavery existed also in Brazil. In the 1800s, a lot of ukranian poor jewish girls were imported – by other jews – as slave prostitutes. Since they came from ( geographic) Poland, they were called “polacas”. Even now, “polaca” is sometimes used as a synonym of prostitute
LikeLike
I believe there is no value in this comparison.
Modern historians are rewriting history so my reading has become of no value (obsolete).
We will have to wait until the new historians correct all of the past history.
I will just have to delete the many article that were written in the past and wait for the corrections!
I am positive the new written word will show how much the English loved the Irish! They did not build a wall on the Island and o so many misconceptions I have.
I am waiting for the corrections of the past history.
No blacks marry any Irish!
LikeLike
@ Allen Shaw
“I am positive the new written word will show how much the English loved the Irish!”
Aw, c’mon, I most definitely never said that!
Not only did the English oppress the Irish, but they started a so-called “plantation system” in Ireland, in which you can see elements that the English later used in the American colonies in their maltreatment of both Africans and Natives. Ireland in many ways was a trial run.
The Irish did have it hard, and many indentured servants probably did as well. I just don’t agree with the idea that their plight was worse than chattel slavery.
“Modern historians are rewriting history so my reading has become of no value (obsolete).”
I wouldn’t necessarily go that far, as to say there’s no value. But it’s possible some of what you remember has since been revised by more current research. That happens to all of us at one time or another, it’s not just you!
Up until the 1960s or so, the prominent narrative that historians wrote about slavery and the Civil War was very much like what you’ve expressed above. But then a new wave of historians came in who started examining the census records and other documents, as well as recent archaeological findings. They did find evidence that changed a lot of what had been commonly understood about that era. And even up to today, the historical research continues to progress and shed new light.
LikeLike
@allen shaw
“No blacks marry any Irish!”
too late!
LikeLike
“White slavery existed also in Brazil. In the 1800s, a lot of ukranian poor jewish girls were imported – by other jews – as slave prostitutes.”
Were they recognized as property by Brazilian law? If they were not, your claim is nonsense. Slavery is, first and foremost a legal status. All sorts of exploitation have had slave like characteristics without the blessing of the State.
LikeLiked by 2 people
@gro jo:
Love you like cooked food, just saying!
LikeLike
@gro jo
Slaves, in Brazil, had some legal rights. The law was seldon respected, as in the case of these girls or in the recent case of the cuban slaves
LikeLike
@Solitaire
Going back to 1621 and forward when few people wrote letters and not much documentation was created is a fools errant.
It is doubtful if very few people could read or write during the period when the Irish were being brought to the US as indentured servants and even the people that owned the contract had little knowledge of what was in any (signed) contract.
Imagine yourself as a person who could not read or write buying a contract and living 20 miles away from anyone else having any thoughts on a piece of paper when work was to be done!
No email, no phone no telegraph maybe only a pathway thru the woods. Who was there to document the treatment. You got up at sunup and worked yourself and your indentured servant until dark. What was the average life span at that time? How much did you feed yourself or your servant?
Where is the documentation today that was not there then?
Nothing can be gained about what regular people did. Census do not show fact of daily life any more than they show them today..
Comments on this site seem to want the blacks to be the only people that suffered!
“Black slave owners loved their slaves and only had family members and did no harm!”
The facts seem to be that slaves and indenture servants were treated the way they were and rewriting based on assumption will not change anything.
What does census have to do with anything! Census counts heads, that is all!
In the past people were cruel! An individuals life was almost worthless. For someone today who is far more advanced it is inconceivable to believe what could happened to people in the past.
I served with 350 black men in Germany after WW II (1946 -1949) and they were treated with no care whatsoever. What ever human care that was displayed was forced on the white officers and black Non Commissioned Officers who controlled those men!
Cruel people exist in all races! Cruel people exist today!
In a real world people do what they must do to get along!
Academic idealism ends at the end of college life! Why do we have so many unemployed or underemployed college graduates
This is a very serious subject and it is important that blacks get it right. I will try not to respond anymore to this subject and I thank you and others for responding to me!
LikeLike
@v8driver I have to be careful about your response. I do not understand what you are doing or implying.
I believe if you go to the north eastern range of the Appalachian Mountain range the DNA might surprise you. West of the states that had Irish indentured servants and black indentured servants/slaves.
Let me know when you have checked. I can than correct my erroneous thoughts.
LikeLike
@ Allen Shaw
“Going back to 1621 and forward when few people wrote letters and not much documentation was created is a fools errant.”
There is much more documentation than you think. I will give you one example, my own ancestor who arrived in 1620. There is extant a 1652 contract of indenturement in which he bound one of his daughters to the Winslow family for seven years.
His own status is uncertain but he is believed to have been indentured to the Winslow family as well when he first arrived here. He does not appear on the lists of freemen until 1633, although he is mentioned in the colony’s records at least 5 times in the 1620s.
After 1633, his name appears several times in land transactions and allotments, tax records, jury and surveyor assignments, court cases, and militia rolls. His will is also extant.
Unless someone was extremely adventurous, living all alone at the edge of the frontier, they would have been associated with a community and a church. Records were kept by clergy and government officials.
Census records can actually tell us a lot. All members of a household were counted, not just the family but all the slaves and/or servants (indentured or not) who lived there too. It’s possible to use census records to trace patterns in life expectancy, number of slaves owned, primary causes of death, etc.
LikeLike
@Alberto Monteiro
Al, you seem not to have understood my question, so I’ll ask it again. Were the “polacas” recognized as the legal possessions of the people you claim owned them? if a “polaca” ran away, did her “owner” go to the Brazilian equivalent of a sheriff to retrieve her? Were her children his possession as well? Can you tell us of the “polaca” equivalent of the Dredd case where the US Supreme Court found that a slave had no rights? Was there a professional class of “polaca” catchers as there was for runaway Black slaves in Brazil? Please answer the question I asked, not the one you want to.
“…or in the recent case of the cuban slaves” Do tell!
LikeLike
I am descended from the only group of Irish who were truly enslaved, these were not the Indentured, but The Butcher’s (Cromwell) victims sold into chattel slavery. While I agree that white racists have promoted a despicable revisionist narrative, lets not forget that this did happen, as well as Cromwell killing and enslaving nearly 2/3 of the Irish population at the time. An act the UN has recognized as the first instance of modern state-sanctioned genocide. I know as I am descended from one who escaped and went to live with the Shawnee on the mainland.Like most true things the issue is complicated. I have a complicated history and present, my brothers and sister joke that we are ‘first generation white’ ie – we are the first generation that can ‘blend in’ in my family. Mom got called names, had bottle through at her, grandma rode in the back of the bus, and we can’t escape this reality, even though we do not experienced it. I have to see all the facets as different: race has no bearing in anything factual outside of the personal and institutional prejudice one faces, heritage is the culture, stories, language, and values we are passed down one generation to the next, genealogy is your genetic mix and your family tree, identity is the beliefs you have fostered and grown within you, the lens you try to see the world through. These are all SEPARATE things and should not be confused.
And I have a warning for white people: ‘If civil rights are not granted equally to everyone at all time, then they are merely privileges, and privileges can be taken away. So think about that next time you think ‘it doesn’t affect me’.
Talk all we want about race, but class is the true separation. Power. Our system is Broken. Why fight for a bigger slice of a system that leaves Mumia behind bars all these years? Why should I fight for that? I’d rather fight to topple that.
LikeLike