memory of the Irish victims of Slavery

[dosdog]

In memory of the Irish victims of Slavery
In the 12 year period during and following the Confederation revolt, from 1641 to 1652, over 550,000 Irish were killed by the English and 300,000 were sold as slaves, as the Irish population of Ireland fell from 1,466,000 to 616,000. Banished soldiers were not allowed to take their wives and children with them, and naturally, the same for those sold as slaves. The result was a growing population of homeless women and children, who being a public nuisance, were likewise rounded up and sold. But the worse was yet to come.

But all did not go smoothly with Cromwell’s extermination plan, as Irish slaves revolted in Barbados in 1649. They were hanged, drawn and quartered and their heads were put on pikes, prominently displayed around Bridgetown as a warning to others. Cromwell then fought two quick wars against the Dutch in 1651, and thereafter monopolized the slave trade. Four years later he seized Jamaica from Spain, which then became the center of the English slave trade in the Caribbean

On 14 August 1652, Cromwell began his Ethnic Cleansing of Ireland, ordering that the Irish were to be transported overseas, starting with 12,000 Irish prisoners sold to Barbados. The infamous “Connaught or Hell” proclamation was issued on 1 May 1654, where all Irish were ordered to be removed from their lands and relocated west of the Shannon or be transported to the West Indies
giftofireland.com/IrishSlaves.htm

Cromwell and the Act Of Settlement 1652
From the Celts to the Famine
By the time the struggle was over, almost two years on, one-quarter of the Catholic population was dead and those found wandering the country orphaned or dispossessed were sold into slavery in the West Indies.

The mass exodus continued for months, with many of the old and sick dying on the journey. Cromwell’s soldiers were paid off with gifts of appropriated land, and, remaining as settlers, constituted a permanent reminder of English injustice

The penal laws to the Act of Union
In 1641, 59 percent of the land in Ireland was owned by Catholics. In 1688, the figure was 22 percent, and by 1703 it was fourteen percent.The Protestant population, about one-tenth of the total

Not only were Catholics forbidden to vote or join the army or navy, but it became illegal to educate a child in the Catholic faith; they could not teach, open their own schools or send their children to be educated abroad. Catholics could neither buy land nor inherit it, other than by the equal division of estates between all sons. There were vast rewards for turning Protes*tant; a male convert was entitled to all his brothers’ inheritance, a female to her husband’s property. Irish language, music and literature were banned, as was the saying of the Mass.
gymmuenchenstein.ch/stalder/tables%20and%20charts/wke12/history_1.htm

Do You know of Bogdan Chmielnicki?
Every Uniat and Catholic priest was hung up before his own altar, along with a Jew and a hog 1911encyclopedia.org/Bogdan_Chmielnicki

Chmielnicki Revolt
In 1648, a Ukrainian officer Bogdan Chmielnicki, with the support of the Tatar Khan of Crimea, roused the local peasants to fight with him and the Russian Orthodox Cossacks against the Jews.

The first wave of violence in 1648 destroyed Jewish communities east of the Dnieper River. Following the violence, thousands of Jews fled west, across the river, to the major cities. The Cossacks and the peasants followed them; the first large-scale massacre took place at Nemirov (a small town, which is part of present-day Ukraine). It is estimated that 100,000-200,000 Jews died in the Chmielnicki revolt that lasted from 1648-1649. This wave of destruction is considered the first modern pogrom.
jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/vjw/Poland.html

 

[celticcrusader]

question: what is the difference between Hitler and Cromwell? Answer: one was an Englishman! and if you ask, Brotherhrolf, he will tell you about the irish slaves down south. you see Black People were not the only people that were slaves in the south.

 

[RC_Matt]

question: what is the difference between Hitler and Cromwell? Answer: one was an Englishman! and if you ask, Brotherhrolf, he will tell you about the irish slaves down south. you see Black People were not the only people that were slaves in the south.

Not too many people know about that one, for some reason it’s left buried in history and I’ve only ever learned about it from having Irish parents. My mother is an Ulster Catholic, and you do NOT want to get her started……

Then of course there’s the famine of 1845-51, which facilitated some very convenient and very efficient “ethnic cleansing.” The richest empire in the world allowed one million people to die from starvation and disease, while another million fled the country; the overall native population was reduced by about 20%.

These are by no means isolated incidents; Irish history is not a pleasant subject.

Slán,
Mata

 

[strngrnrth]

question: what is the difference between Hitler and Cromwell? Answer: one was an Englishman! and if you ask, Brotherhrolf, he will tell you about the irish slaves down south. you see Black People were not the only people that were slaves in the south.

And many Irish immigrants were enslaved in the “free” North as well. The majority of the Orphan Train Riders came from a small number of specific orphanages in NYC, Boston and Chicago and nearly all the children in those orphanages were from Ireland or their parents were. Some were actually not orphaned but abandoned, dropped at the orphanage gates or on their own because their parents couldn’t support them, but a huge number were taken by the gov’t in a very open effort to Protestantize the country while de-ethnicizing and depopulating the city streets. Some children walked into gov’t and charity offices, but others found themselves crammed into railcars with the seats taken out to make room, and sent west, south or just plain into the country to be indentured (the official term used) until age 18 to anyone who signed a sheet promising to take good care of them. Some say most, some say just a lot, of the riders were enslaved. When the well-meaning Children’s Aid Society verified that the children were slaves, they stopped the program in 1929, exactly 75 years into the program. At that time the government stopped the system as well. The children were not allowed to see or receive papers telling them their names or where they came from, or why their parents were gone. though some found good homes, there was no oversight or enforcement of the contracts at all. They were ostensibly free at 18, but they didn’t always know their ages. Those who were in the South, parts of the West, and parts of New England (IOW most of the USA) really couldn’t go anywhere and survive anyway at 18. Those who did survive very often had to go to great lengths to disguise their origins from the general public, passing on bits of their pre-orphanhood memories, the last halfway good things in their experiences, to their descendants in secretive forms. Many moved out to Indian Country and started their lives over as Seminoles, Cherokees, or whoever took them in.
A huge part of the cultural significance of ancestral research and ethnic clebrations comes straight from that practice.
As I said, the largest part of these young slaves were Irish, but they came from everywhere. Quite a few were Eastern Euopean Jews. There were also Poles and Italians among them in disproportionate numbers.
My reading on this has led me to think that the CAS ony wanted to save the children and were horrified at the outcome; they stopped as soon as they knew the children really were being enslaved. I think there were people influential on and within governments who knew and let it go on, as long as the kids forgot their original identities. That was a clearly stated goal of several state and federal gov’t programs.

 

[Claire_from_DE]

Fascinating! Thanks for posting. Can you recommend one or two good readable books on the topic?

 

[strngrnrth]

I’m looking. There are many out there, but I read so much I don’t usually remember the names of all the good books I’ve read. I’ll find you some sites too.

 

[RebeccaJ]

Of all the people of King Henry VIII’s court who were executed, Cromwell may well have been the only real criminal. And even then, he wasn’t executed for his mass murders, no, but for bad love advice given to the King.

 

[Kaninchen]

Of all the people of King Henry VIII’s court who were executed, Cromwell may well have been the only real criminal. And even then, he wasn’t executed for his mass murders, no, but for bad love advice given to the King.

Wrong Cromwell.

 

[RebeccaJ]

Wrong Cromwell.

lol. i will read better.

still, same point!

 

[Kaninchen]

In memory of the Irish victims of Slavery
In the 12 year period during and following the Confederation revolt, from 1641 to 1652, over 550,000 Irish were killed by the English and 300,000 were sold as slaves, as the Irish population of Ireland fell from 1,466,000 to 616,000. Banished soldiers were not allowed to take their wives and children with them, and naturally, the same for those sold as slaves. The result was a growing population of homeless women and children, who being a public nuisance, were likewise rounded up and sold. But the worse was yet to come.

I’ve have something of a problem with the figure for ‘slavery’ - not the overall figures for population reduction (which are not out of line - war, pestilence, famine - for the very slightly earlier ‘Thirty Years War’ period in Central Europe, by the way) but the ‘slavery’ figure would seem to have been stretching it logistically for the English at the time. What were the figures for Irish Slavery earlier in the century, I wonder?

 

[allhers]

Two thing’s reading the history of Ireland will do for you is make you sob like a baby, and pray all the more for Ireland and your ancestors.
My father had this little poem that he cut from an Irish paper years ago, I’d like to share it with you, it is good to read this after reading some of the sad history.

Ireland’s Queen
There were exiles all gathered together from
Different parts of the earth,
And each one told of some favorite ruler
Of the land that gave him birth.

Said Pierre of France, “Now here is a picture
Of one who is Queen of my land
Note the exquisite beauty of Marie Antoinette,
And her beautiful well formed hand”.

“Ah! Beauty is little,” the Scotsman said,
“Twill save from the hangman’s knots
Look at the face where goodness is seen
'Tis Mary Queen of the Scots”.

The Englishman smiled and quietly said
“I too have a picture to show
'Tis the noble face of Victoria the Great
The friend of the high and low”.

But Padraig Ua Cuarcain was the only one there
Who came from the land of the green
“Now boys,” said he, "I’d like you to see
The face of Ireland’s Queen.

She is noble and sweet, gentle and true,
'The Queen of the dear old sod",
And he drew from his bosom, the beautiful face
Of Mary the Mother of God.
—author unknown

 

[celticcrusader]

Then of course there’s the famine of 1845-51, which facilitated some very convenient and very efficient “ethnic cleansing.” The richest empire in the world allowed one million people to die from starvation and disease, while another million fled the country; the overall native population was reduced by about 20%.

These are by no means isolated incidents; Irish history is not a pleasant subject.

Slán,
Mata

WHAT FAMINE? if you look at Irish History and not english history you will see how england took all the food, animals&vegetables and sent it all back to england and food that was sent from USA and other countrys was intercepted and sent to england also. you must understand english mentality at the time, they thought the Irish were no different than monkeys or wild aminals and treated them as such. WE the Irish call it An Gorta Mor -the great hunger. If you go to www.aoh.com you should find some history on our web site. in more modern history there was a movie relesed last year it is called The Wind That Shakes The Barley, I give it a after watching the movie I HAD to go and purchse it. if you watch it you will see why it never made it into mainstream movies here in USA , US still has a love affair with england and this movie cast a not so good light on england.

 

[strngrnrth]

WHAT FAMINE? if you look at Irish History and not english history you will see how england took all the food, animals&vegetables and sent it all back to england and food that was sent from USA and other countrys was intercepted and sent to england also. you must understand english mentality at the time, they thought the Irish were no different than monkeys or wild aminals and treated them as such. WE the Irish call it An Gorta Mor -the great hunger. If you go to www.aoh.com you should find some history on our web site. in more modern history there was a movie relesed last year it is called The Wind That Shakes The Barley, I give it a after watching the movie I HAD to go and purchse it. if you watch it you will see why it never made it into mainstream movies here in USA , US still has a love affair with england and this movie cast a not so good light on england.

Thank you. The law said no public works project could create substantial benefit for the Irish people – that’s black and white. British politicians and editorialists said the arrival of the blight would help them get rid of the Irish if they played it right. “Aid” from the gov’t meant three things:
Forced labor – generally to death – in workhouses,
Forced labor – very often to death – building roads to places no one wanted to be and bridges in the middle of fields, so as to avoid benefitting the people,
Grain imports, way too little, way too late, after the clean water and dry fuel were almost entirely gone, while beef, honeycombs, butter, cheese, apples, sheep, salmon, cream, buttermilk, eggs and other good things rolled in long streams of wagons to the docks to ship out, and children or adults trying to eat what fell off were shot by soldiers.

 

[RC_Matt]

in more modern history there was a movie relesed last year it is called The Wind That Shakes The Barley, I give it a after watching the movie I HAD to go and purchse it. if you watch it you will see why it never made it into mainstream movies here in USA , US still has a love affair with england and this movie cast a not so good light on england.

I’ll get a copy of the film, it looks interesting; go raibh maith agat.

 

[Derrickdcosta]

By Fr Michael Müller C.SS.R. “The Apostles Creed”
For over three hundred years the Irish people have suffered, struggled, and died for the faith. They suffered poverty with all its bitterness, they endured exile with all its sorrows, they suffered outrage and even death itself, rather than lose their God. The minions of hell enacted the fiendish penal laws, and soon that country, so rich and fruitful in colleges and convents, became one vast, dreary wilderness. In tracts of country, thirty, forty, fifty miles in extent, the smoke from an inhabited house, as English chroniclers themselves declare, was nowhere to be seen. The people had disappeared and left only skeletons in the land. The living were to be met only in the glens and dark caves of the mountains. There they dragged out a wretched existence, feeding on the weeds and garbage of the earth. Like shadows they moved about, haggard and wan, starving and wounded, and they endured the cruel pangs of hunger, till God, in his mercy, took them to a better world. Again and again were these harrowing scenes repeated. Ireland became prosperous again in spite of the most galling oppression; and the people of Ireland were again starved and massacred for their faith, and those that survived were shipped off to the British West Indies, and sold there as slaves. The British fleet was ordered around the coast. Over eighty thousand of the most influential and most distinguished of the Irish Catholics were packed on board, and their bones have long since rotted in the soil of the English sugar-plantations of Jamaica.

The last effort of tyranny is still fresh in the minds of many I mean the late famine years. There are, no doubt, some of my readers who have witnessed the appalling scenes of that gloomy period, and, once witnessed, they can never, never be forgotten. Ah! no. Like living fire, these horrid scenes burn into the memory, and leave there a horrid scar a mark that can never be effaced. There were thousands and thousands wasting away and dying of hunger. They were falling and dying as the leaves fall in autumn. The food that was sent to the poor people from America was kept in the harbours until it rotted. And there, in the sight of the famishing people, the wealthy Protestant, the overfed wives and daughters of the sleek, oily Protestant parsons, had plenty of food for their cattle, they had food in abundance for their pet birds or their lapdogs, whilst the poor starving Catholics wished to even eat the husks of the swine, and it was not given them.

A few years before the gloomy reign of terror, there lived near a certain town in Ireland a poor, honest farmer with his wife and children. They were poor, indeed, but yet they were contented and happy. Never did the poor or the stranger pass their door without partaking of their hospitality; and what they had, they gave with a willing heart. But the famine year came on. The good farmer was unable to pay the tithes. His little property was distrained. The police entered his farm; they seized his unreaped corn; they took away his crops; they drove his cattle to the pound. The poor unhappy man himself was expelled from that little spot of earth on which he was born, where he had lived so long, and where he had hoped to die. He was turned into the public road with his wife and children. No roof, no food, no clothing he was cast in beggary and nakedness into the cold, heartless world. He sought for a shelter for his little ones. He sought for employment, but could find none. He was a Catholic. His neighbours around were bitter Protestants of the blackest dye. They offered him shelter, food, and clothing, but on one condition that he would apostatize.

God! who shall tell the agony of that poor, heart broken father? No hope to cheer him save the hope of death; no eye to pity him save the all-merciful eye of God! He saw his poor wife dying before his eyes. He saw her wasting day by day slowly pining away, while praying and weeping over her starving children; he heard his famished children crying for food, and their piteous cries rent his very soul. Oh! he could help them, he could provide them food, clothing, and a pleasant home but then he must apostatize, he must renounce his holy faith! Oh! what a sore trial, what a cruel martyrdom! His loving wife died before his eyes died of hunger. She died with words of patience, words of hope, upon her lips. The poor husband wrung his hands in anguish. He bent over the lifeless form of his wife. Dark night was thickening around him thickening even within him; he felt the cruel pangs of hunger gnawing at his very vitals. And were he not upheld by his holy faith, he would have yielded to despair. But the cries of his children aroused him. He forgot for a moment his own sufferings. He took his two weak, starving babes in his trembling arms, and hurried away with tottering steps. He begged from house to house, from door to door; he begged for a crumb of bread for his poor, starving little ones, but no one gave him a morsel of food. They offered him food and clothing and shelter if he would only apostatize, if he would give his children to be brought up in their false creed. " But," cried the heart-broken father, "Oh! how could I give my children to be brought up in a false creed and deny their holy faith? Oh! how could I sell their souls to the Evil One for a mess of pottage? " After some time the unhappy man felt a heavy load weighing like lead upon his trembling arm. He looked. One of his poor babes had ceased moaning. It was dead cold and stiff in death.

The heart-broken father sat down beneath a tree by the wayside and prayed, but he could not weep. Ah! no; his eyes were dry, his heart was withered. In wild, passionate tones he called on heaven to witness his agony he called God to witness that he did not wish the death of his children, that he would gladly lay down his life to save his family, but he could not oh! no! no! he could not deny his holy faith; he could not sell their souls to the devil. He tried once more to obtain some food for his remaining child, but in vain, and at last the poor innocent sufferer gasped and died too in his arms. Ah! whose heart can remain unmoved at the sufferings of the Irish Catholics? Whose heart, at the same time, does not rejoice at their constancy in the faith?

 

[Kaninchen]

I found James S Donnelly’s article at this BBC site an interesting analysis of the Famine both from an economic and ideological point of view.

 

[RobHom]

What was done to Ireland…was beyond description. It was a holocaust. Sadly…few, or relatively few people outside of Ireland or the Irish really know about what happened. I have some Irish friends, and I happened to stumble on a PBS program where “Black 47” was playing their music… Quite interesting!! I bought one or two of their tapes…and started looking things up. I learned alot. I knew the general things…and I knew a little more than what was taught in public schools… I went to parochial and DOD schools as I child… What the masses do not know… the masses that compromise the “herd of sheep”…to be herded through life by a few dogs disguised as “politicians”… I know what I know…and I’m not even Irish…though I suspect that there may be some Irish blood in me for various reasons.

Beyond the human death and misery that was so wrongful… Ireland had been a repository of great books and knowledge, in fact the greatest repository known to man. The Irish went to great lengths to protect and reproduce all known writings…

And people wonder why I laugh when someone who is a “protestant”…says: I’m persecuted.

 

[strngrnrth]

Not at the start I read something like that, a table showing that for most years of the “famine” more grain was going in than going out. Yet I think it only showed one type of grain, maybe two, per year, and didn’t talk about the aforementioned cattle, butter, fruit, asparagus, cabbage, onions, sheep, goats, hens, eggs, honey, fish…all going out under armed guard. Many times the amount of food it would have taken to feed the country. Nor the fact that to receive gov’t food aid generally meant working at labor that killed, and produced nothing at all. Nor the fact that the pols trying to get aid sent to Ireland faced fierce opposition from the majority of the people in power. Nor the speeches, letters and other documents in which numerous men in the British gov’t declard the blight to be a chance to get rid of the Irish. Nor the plan to fill Canada and empty Ireland by encouraging evictions and then offering (at least a few times forcing) passage to Canada, where the passengers werre told a gov’t agent would meet them upriver with packages of food, clothing, fuel, cash and more if they would travel deeper into the wilderness, and there was of course no such agent or package, and they were dumped off in the frozen forests to survive or die. That there were more ships to Canada than to the US and many were part of that program to fill Canada with the strongest and let the weaker ones die. That one of the most deadly scenes in the"famine" was the walk/crawl south into the USA to avoid further exploitation. That that is why Chicago, Milwaukee, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Detroit, and the cities of Ohio grew so fast. They were on the Canadian border. The immigrants learned they had crossed the border and they stopped walking. During that walk it wasn’t uncommon for men, women, children and whole families literally to die on their feet.
That the blight had been on every continent in the world but caused famine in just two places and a six-year famine in just one: Ireland. The other place where the blight caused death was Scotland. It wasn’t on the same scale at all.
That rents rose through most of the Hunger, and those who couldn’t pay (nearly everyone in some areas) were evicted en masse, then arrested for “vagrancy” and dragged into labor camps to be finished off.
Few people are aware that most emigrants during the Great Hunger didn’t land in the USA. A larger number wen to England, Scotland, Wales, Australia, NZ, and the Continent. Many went to the Carribean, Cnetral America, Mexico and South America. They went where freighters went – around the world. They were counted leaving the ships, not boarding, and the many thrown namelessly overboard the coffin ships were never accounted for. Because the vast majority of the Irish lived in the West and South, where the records were scantest and the deaths fastest, no one actually knows how many died, how many emigrated and how many descendants they had. Some estimate that a quarter of Ireland’s people died in those years, over a quarter emigrated, and less than half really remained.

 

[Kaninchen]

I don’t have a horse in this race, I was mainly interested in the ‘ideology + economics’ aspect to it.

I think one of the great historical ‘what ifs?’ is just what would have happened to the English peasantry if the technological/industrial revolution hadn’t turned up ‘in the nick of time’ - the ‘Enclosure Movement’ was making huge numbers of small farmers landless and the laboring poor workless - the new factories and industrial cities provided work (and the landless peasantry provided the cheap labor) in quite appalling conditions but what would have happened if not?

While I agree with the ‘anti-Irish prejudice’ argument, it’s not that difficult to find much the same attitudes to the English poor amongst the English ruling classes as was shown, more horrifically, in Ireland.

Funny how much of the same ideology towards the poor and their responsibility for being poor is echoed to this day.

 

[mothom]

I’m about 4/5 Irish. I am by no means an expert on the Irish famines, but I’ve been studying up on it a lot this year. My info comes from what’s on the web. It seems there were 29 or so “famines” in Ireland from the 1600s into the 1800s. I put “famines” in quotation marks because it seems that what they all had in common was that Ireland exported to England enough food to feed three times the population of Ireland during each famine. The reason why the potato “famines” were so deadly was because that potatoes were the only food the Irish were allowed to eat. At least that is what I read. It was genocide, imo. Nazi Germany was punished for her crimes against humanity. England hasn’t been punished for hers. But I will hold no grudge. Vengeance belongs to God, not me. I do not hold against today’s English what their ancestors did to mine. That wouldn’t be Christ-like. I too can not read Irish history without sobbing. The cavalry unit that got slaughtered during the “Charge of the Light Brigade” in the Crimean war was a unit that was stationed in Ireland during the “great hunger.” It shames me that the Protestants claimed to be Christian and at the same time deliberately starved their neighbors to death because of differences in religious beliefs. By their actions they told the whole world they themselves weren’t Christians. By their fruits ye shall know them. They either never read or forgot the parable of the good Samaritan, and Jesus’ command to feed our enemy if he hungers, and give him drink if he thirst. Of course if they believe in OSAS, it’s no wonder they behaved the way they did. But anyway, it would be wrong for those of us with Irish ancestry to hold what people years ago did to the Irish against today’s descendants of those same criminals. But yet I am of the sentiment that Northern Ireland should be handed over to the Republic of Ireland.