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Let's stop the fake news.
Debunking a Myth: The Irish Were Not Slaves, Too
It has shown up on Irish trivia Facebook pages, in Scientific American magazine, and on white nationalist message boards: the little-known story of the Irish slaves who built America, who are sometimes said to have outnumbered and been treated worse than slaves from Africa.
But it’s not true.
Historians say the idea of Irish slaves is based on a misreading of history and that the distortion is often politically motivated. Far-right memes have taken off online and are used as racist barbs against African-Americans. “The Irish were slaves, too,” the memes often say. “We got over it, so why can’t you?”
A small group of Irish and American scholars has spent years pushing back on the false history. In 2016, 82 Irish scholars and writers signed an open letter denouncing the Irish slave myth and asking publications to stop mentioning it. Some complied, removing or revising articles that referenced the false claims, but the letter’s impact was limited.
Fact vs. Fiction
The Irish slave narrative is based on the misinterpretation of the history of indentured servitude, which is how many poor Europeans migrated to North America and the Caribbean in the early colonial period, historians said.
Without a doubt, life was bad for indentured servants. They were often treated brutally. Not all of them entered servitude willingly. Some were political prisoners. Some were children.
“I’m not saying it was pleasant or anything — it was the opposite — but it was a completely different category from slavery,” said Liam Hogan, a research librarian in Ireland who has spearheaded the debunking effort. “It was a transitory state.”
The legal differences between indentured servitude and chattel slavery were profound, according to Matthew Reilly, an archaeologist who studies Barbados. Unlike slaves, servants were considered legally human. Their servitude was based on a contract that limited their service to a finite period of time, usually about seven years, in exchange for passage to the colonies. They did not pass their unfree status on to descendants.
Contemporary accounts in Ireland sometimes referred to these people as slaves, Mr. Hogan said. That was true in the sense that any form of coerced labor can be described as slavery, from Ancient Rome to modern-day human trafficking. But in colonial America and the Caribbean, the word “slavery” had a specific legal meaning. Europeans, by definition, were not included in it.
“An indenture implies two people have entered into a contract with each other but slavery is not a contract,” said Leslie Harris, a professor of African-American history at Northwestern University. “It is often about being a prisoner of war or being bought or sold bodily as part of a trade. That is a critical distinction.”
.
Debunking a Myth: The Irish Were Not Slaves, Too
I agree. We should stop with the fake news. You can start by not posting this biased, unhistorical bullshit.
"Not all of them entered servitude willingly." Last time I checked, that's the definition of slavery. Particularly when you're talking about children, even if you do it in a casual, dismissive tone.
"I'm not saying it was pleasant or anything, but it was a completely different category from slavery." Yeah, as in it undercuts your claim to victimhood.
"It was a transitory state." In the sense that eventually they "transitioned" to being dead, I guess that's true.
"The legal differences between indentured servitude and chattel slavery were profound." Yeah, and they didn't apply to the people we're actually talking about, which is sort of the point.
"Unlike slaves, servants were considered legally human." And you can't say that's true about someone who could be killed at will by his master, with no legal penalties attaching, which was the case with the people we're talking about.
"Their servitude was based on a contract that limited their service to a finite period of time in exchange for passage to the colonies." Which ALSO did not apply to the people we're talking about. How does one "enter into a contract" when one is chained at gunpoint, herded unwillingly onto a ship, and then sold on an auction block to the highest bidder, as was the case with the ACTUAL PEOPLE WE'RE TALKING ABOUT?
"They did not pass their unfree status on to descendants." Indentured servants didn't, but the PEOPLE WE'RE ACTUALLY TALKING ABOUT did, particularly when they were forcibly bred against their will precisely for the purpose of creating those children.
"Contemporary accounts in Ireland sometimes referred to these people as slaves." Probably because they weren't deliberately trying to conflate two groups of people in order to serve an agenda.
"That was true in the sense that any form of coerced labor can be described as slavery, from Ancient Rome to modern-day human trafficking." Both of which ARE slavery, but I'll bet Mr. Hogan would try to brush THOSE off, too.
"But in colonial America and the Caribbean, the word “slavery” had a specific legal meaning. Europeans, by definition, were not included in it." Yeah, by HOGAN'S definition, I'm sure they weren't.
“An indenture implies two people have entered into a contract with each other but slavery is not a contract. It is often about being a prisoner of war or being bought or sold bodily as part of a trade. That is a critical distinction.” Yeah, and by coincidence, that's exactly the distinction WE are making between two different groups of Irish people.
Tell; all that to the IRISH historians who wrote the article
So you're assuming that being Irish makes them more believable, unbiased, and lacking an agenda than if they had been blacks? But . . . doesn't that mean you're admitting that blacks are inherently untrustworthy?
Seriously, dude, you have GOT to learn to stop being such an instinctive bigot and try thinking of people as individuals, instead of members of a collective.
As it happens, there are a lot of people with their own vested interests in burying the history of Irish slavery in the New World, including the Irish themselves. Bragging about one's slave ancestors and trying to compete to see whose forebears suffered more so as to assume victim status for oneself is a very recently-developed hobby. Up until the late 20th century, it would have been shameful and humiliating to be descended from slaves, not to mention that for those only a generation or two removed from that slavery, it could be downright dangerous to cop to it. The Irish in America went to a great deal of effort to assimilate into society; bringing up Irish slavery wasn't likely to help that goal.
The term Agnostic is derived from the ancient Greek word gnosis-knowledge. By the word agnostic, the Greeks seem to have meant one who has no knowledge in a very general sense. In 1869, Thomas Huxley used the word to describe how he did not know about things metaphysical.It's from the Greek word agnōstos which means unknowable. I does not mean ignorant.
Why Agnosticism? - TheHumanist.com
Not knowing = ignorance
Sorry, the definition of agnosticism is not ignorance. It's understanding that you do not know whether god exists. Ignorance would be placing the proof of god on a book of fiction.
If there was proof of God, or proof that God does not exist, then we wouldn't need faith. Not a hard concept to grasp. Ignorance is attempting to insult the intelligence and/or sincerity of those that do not believe as you believe.
Is faith needed?
Is faith logical?
The answer to both is "No"
Your answer is nonsensical. Of course faith is needed, either to believe that God exists, or to believe that God does not exist. Without evidence, faith is all that backs the belief. And yes, faith is logical, whether based on evidence, or based on deduction.
It is a reference to ideological tunnel vision & generations of being bound by a thought process that prohibits thinking outside the box.
This is the origins of that comment and while the number could be considered off if you discount the history of Africa the point remains on target.
Rather than dig into the substance of the situation the left would rather distract you with the thoughts of a simpleton.
While this could be considered a "race" thread I hope that the moderators see that it is a hot topic in political circles and deserves to be discussed and thought out rather than relegated to the race forum which very few visit.
What exactly is thinking outside of the box? Thinking the way whites want us to think? Because vey person of color who s clamed to be thinking outside if this "box" are people of color who validate the beliefs of racist conservative whites.
The term Agnostic is derived from the ancient Greek word gnosis-knowledge. By the word agnostic, the Greeks seem to have meant one who has no knowledge in a very general sense. In 1869, Thomas Huxley used the word to describe how he did not know about things metaphysical.
Why Agnosticism? - TheHumanist.com
Not knowing = ignorance
Sorry, the definition of agnosticism is not ignorance. It's understanding that you do not know whether god exists. Ignorance would be placing the proof of god on a book of fiction.
If there was proof of God, or proof that God does not exist, then we wouldn't need faith. Not a hard concept to grasp. Ignorance is attempting to insult the intelligence and/or sincerity of those that do not believe as you believe.
Is faith needed?
Is faith logical?
The answer to both is "No"
Your answer is nonsensical. Of course faith is needed, either to believe that God exists, or to believe that God does not exist. Without evidence, faith is all that backs the belief. And yes, faith is logical, whether based on evidence, or based on deduction.
Whoa, Why do I have to have faith to not believe in some thing? I mean I can see how faith and belief are related. Faith and non-belief are opposites. Non-faith and belief are opposites.
But I am still glad physics professors don't require proof on radioactive decay theory.
We can pretty much trust than any discussion of slavery here will end up in a spirited debate about Irish slaves. This was indentured servitude and it was not slavery.
It is a reference to ideological tunnel vision & generations of being bound by a thought process that prohibits thinking outside the box.
This is the origins of that comment and while the number could be considered off if you discount the history of Africa the point remains on target.
Rather than dig into the substance of the situation the left would rather distract you with the thoughts of a simpleton.
While this could be considered a "race" thread I hope that the moderators see that it is a hot topic in political circles and deserves to be discussed and thought out rather than relegated to the race forum which very few visit.
What exactly is thinking outside of the box? Thinking the way whites want us to think? Because vey person of color who s clamed to be thinking outside if this "box" are people of color who validate the beliefs of racist conservative whites.
To the contrary, the people of color who claim to be thinking outside the box often invalidate the victimization claimed by far too many people of color. People of color who claim they are victims of white privilege are no different that the white people who claim they are victims of wealthy elites. Nothing more than excuses for a failure to thrive..
they were not bought and sold with families broken up and were able to flee to America. I defend the Brits in no way. A disgrace. The amount of racism in America is also a disgrace.We can pretty much trust than any discussion of slavery here will end up in a spirited debate about Irish slaves. This was indentured servitude and it was not slavery.
Prove it.
It is a reference to ideological tunnel vision & generations of being bound by a thought process that prohibits thinking outside the box.
This is the origins of that comment and while the number could be considered off if you discount the history of Africa the point remains on target.
Rather than dig into the substance of the situation the left would rather distract you with the thoughts of a simpleton.
While this could be considered a "race" thread I hope that the moderators see that it is a hot topic in political circles and deserves to be discussed and thought out rather than relegated to the race forum which very few visit.
I think the legacy of slavery is still felt in Black families but Blacks today do seem to be victims of the criminal justice system. We've all seen videos of Blacks being shot by cops and read about abuses in assigning bail and prison sentences. It is unfortunate but understandable that many Blacks consider themselves victims.
The term Agnostic is derived from the ancient Greek word gnosis-knowledge. By the word agnostic, the Greeks seem to have meant one who has no knowledge in a very general sense. In 1869, Thomas Huxley used the word to describe how he did not know about things metaphysical.
Why Agnosticism? - TheHumanist.com
Not knowing = ignorance
Sorry, the definition of agnosticism is not ignorance. It's understanding that you do not know whether god exists. Ignorance would be placing the proof of god on a book of fiction.
If there was proof of God, or proof that God does not exist, then we wouldn't need faith. Not a hard concept to grasp. Ignorance is attempting to insult the intelligence and/or sincerity of those that do not believe as you believe.
Is faith needed?
Is faith logical?
The answer to both is "No"
The answer to both is "Yes". You're just too ignorant and tunnel-visioned to realize it.
Explain how faith is needed, or logical?
You are what's ignorance, the issue is your lack of Human intellect.
It is a reference to ideological tunnel vision & generations of being bound by a thought process that prohibits thinking outside the box.
This is the origins of that comment and while the number could be considered off if you discount the history of Africa the point remains on target.
Rather than dig into the substance of the situation the left would rather distract you with the thoughts of a simpleton.
While this could be considered a "race" thread I hope that the moderators see that it is a hot topic in political circles and deserves to be discussed and thought out rather than relegated to the race forum which very few visit.
I think the legacy of slavery is still felt in Black families but Blacks today do seem to be victims of the criminal justice system. We've all seen videos of Blacks being shot by cops and read about abuses in assigning bail and prison sentences. It is unfortunate but understandable that many Blacks consider themselves victims.
You don't believe that BS because you leftists call for more powerful and unaccountable government all of the time.
.
Let's stop the fake news.
Debunking a Myth: The Irish Were Not Slaves, Too
It has shown up on Irish trivia Facebook pages, in Scientific American magazine, and on white nationalist message boards: the little-known story of the Irish slaves who built America, who are sometimes said to have outnumbered and been treated worse than slaves from Africa.
But it’s not true.
Historians say the idea of Irish slaves is based on a misreading of history and that the distortion is often politically motivated. Far-right memes have taken off online and are used as racist barbs against African-Americans. “The Irish were slaves, too,” the memes often say. “We got over it, so why can’t you?”
A small group of Irish and American scholars has spent years pushing back on the false history. In 2016, 82 Irish scholars and writers signed an open letter denouncing the Irish slave myth and asking publications to stop mentioning it. Some complied, removing or revising articles that referenced the false claims, but the letter’s impact was limited.
Fact vs. Fiction
The Irish slave narrative is based on the misinterpretation of the history of indentured servitude, which is how many poor Europeans migrated to North America and the Caribbean in the early colonial period, historians said.
Without a doubt, life was bad for indentured servants. They were often treated brutally. Not all of them entered servitude willingly. Some were political prisoners. Some were children.
“I’m not saying it was pleasant or anything — it was the opposite — but it was a completely different category from slavery,” said Liam Hogan, a research librarian in Ireland who has spearheaded the debunking effort. “It was a transitory state.”
The legal differences between indentured servitude and chattel slavery were profound, according to Matthew Reilly, an archaeologist who studies Barbados. Unlike slaves, servants were considered legally human. Their servitude was based on a contract that limited their service to a finite period of time, usually about seven years, in exchange for passage to the colonies. They did not pass their unfree status on to descendants.
Contemporary accounts in Ireland sometimes referred to these people as slaves, Mr. Hogan said. That was true in the sense that any form of coerced labor can be described as slavery, from Ancient Rome to modern-day human trafficking. But in colonial America and the Caribbean, the word “slavery” had a specific legal meaning. Europeans, by definition, were not included in it.
“An indenture implies two people have entered into a contract with each other but slavery is not a contract,” said Leslie Harris, a professor of African-American history at Northwestern University. “It is often about being a prisoner of war or being bought or sold bodily as part of a trade. That is a critical distinction.”
.
Debunking a Myth: The Irish Were Not Slaves, Too
I agree. We should stop with the fake news. You can start by not posting this biased, unhistorical bullshit.
"Not all of them entered servitude willingly." Last time I checked, that's the definition of slavery. Particularly when you're talking about children, even if you do it in a casual, dismissive tone.
"I'm not saying it was pleasant or anything, but it was a completely different category from slavery." Yeah, as in it undercuts your claim to victimhood.
"It was a transitory state." In the sense that eventually they "transitioned" to being dead, I guess that's true.
"The legal differences between indentured servitude and chattel slavery were profound." Yeah, and they didn't apply to the people we're actually talking about, which is sort of the point.
"Unlike slaves, servants were considered legally human." And you can't say that's true about someone who could be killed at will by his master, with no legal penalties attaching, which was the case with the people we're talking about.
"Their servitude was based on a contract that limited their service to a finite period of time in exchange for passage to the colonies." Which ALSO did not apply to the people we're talking about. How does one "enter into a contract" when one is chained at gunpoint, herded unwillingly onto a ship, and then sold on an auction block to the highest bidder, as was the case with the ACTUAL PEOPLE WE'RE TALKING ABOUT?
"They did not pass their unfree status on to descendants." Indentured servants didn't, but the PEOPLE WE'RE ACTUALLY TALKING ABOUT did, particularly when they were forcibly bred against their will precisely for the purpose of creating those children.
"Contemporary accounts in Ireland sometimes referred to these people as slaves." Probably because they weren't deliberately trying to conflate two groups of people in order to serve an agenda.
"That was true in the sense that any form of coerced labor can be described as slavery, from Ancient Rome to modern-day human trafficking." Both of which ARE slavery, but I'll bet Mr. Hogan would try to brush THOSE off, too.
"But in colonial America and the Caribbean, the word “slavery” had a specific legal meaning. Europeans, by definition, were not included in it." Yeah, by HOGAN'S definition, I'm sure they weren't.
“An indenture implies two people have entered into a contract with each other but slavery is not a contract. It is often about being a prisoner of war or being bought or sold bodily as part of a trade. That is a critical distinction.” Yeah, and by coincidence, that's exactly the distinction WE are making between two different groups of Irish people.
Tell; all that to the IRISH historians who wrote the article
So you're assuming that being Irish makes them more believable, unbiased, and lacking an agenda than if they had been blacks? But . . . doesn't that mean you're admitting that blacks are inherently untrustworthy?
Seriously, dude, you have GOT to learn to stop being such an instinctive bigot and try thinking of people as individuals, instead of members of a collective.
As it happens, there are a lot of people with their own vested interests in burying the history of Irish slavery in the New World, including the Irish themselves. Bragging about one's slave ancestors and trying to compete to see whose forebears suffered more so as to assume victim status for oneself is a very recently-developed hobby. Up until the late 20th century, it would have been shameful and humiliating to be descended from slaves, not to mention that for those only a generation or two removed from that slavery, it could be downright dangerous to cop to it. The Irish in America went to a great deal of effort to assimilate into society; bringing up Irish slavery wasn't likely to help that goal.
I think a Irish history scholar knows more about Irish history than you do. .You are here saying the Irish were slaves, (a group)the you tell me to stop looking at people as a group. LOL! .
Open letter to Irish Central, Irish Examiner and Scientific American about their “Irish slaves” disinformation
To whom it may concern,
As you are aware, the Irish Central, Irish Examiner (since removed) and Scientific American (since revised) websites currently host articles about the allegedly “forgotten white Irish slaves.”
The Irish Central and Irish Examiner articles quoted extensively from an op-ed article published on the “Global Research” website based in Canada. This website supports the 9/11 Truther movement and its “Irish slaves” article, apparently authored by John Martin for opednews.com, is an exercise in racist ahistorical propaganda. The Scientific American blog used an older and equally ahistorical article from a Kavanagh family genealogy site. This blog post entitled “Irish slaves in Caribbean” was evidently an important source for the “Global Research” article.
- Irish Central, “Irish are ‘the forgotten white slaves’ claims expert”, 27 March 2015
- Irish Central, “Irish roots in the Caribbean run deep”, 20 November 2015
- Irish Examiner, “100,000 Irish children sold for slavery during 1650s”, 29 January 2013 (update: article has been removed without explanation)
- Scientific American, “It’s True: We’re Probably All a Little Irish — Especially in the Caribbean”, 17 March 2015 (update: article has been revised with explanation)
It is imperative that newspapers and scientific journals aim for truth and accuracy in everything they publish. It is thus our duty, as historians, scholars and interested parties, to inform your shareholders and your customers that you have failed to carry out any semblance of fact-checking on this particular article. More damaging still is that your promotion of it, for a number of years, has added a veneer of credibility to what is a well known white nationalist conspiracy theory more commonly found on Neo-Nazi and Neo-Confederate forums.
Journalism and scholarly historical research differ in various ways but they share one thing in common. If they are not based on reliable sources, they are worthless. Readers who may not be privy to the source of the information will likely take it at face value. Sometimes, the result is merely misinformation, but more dangerously, it can be used disingenuously to propagate a political myth. Scholarly articles undergo a process of peer review to make sure that they are evidence based and accurate. We do not expect newspapers to exercise the same level of rigour but a degree of common sense is called for since lifting material from such websites, which have no sources and are written by an unknown author, is poor journalistic practice.
Furthermore we are deeply disturbed to find that the Irish Central article (shared on social media over 150,000 times) asserts in its headline that this “Irish slaves” disinformation comes from an “expert” source. What underlines this baseless claim is the fact that every single line of the quoted article is a distortion, or a fabrication or an egregious exaggeration. We will not go through the inaccuracy of each line here, that is your responsibility,
but we will ask you two questions. Do you, the editors of Irish Central and the Irish Examiner (update: now withdrawn) stand over the claim that an “Irish Slave Trade” was abolished in 1839? Or that “Irish slaves”, not enslaved Africans, were the victims of the Zong Massacre?
The intent of the article is thus patently clear; to insidiously equate indentured servitude or penal servitude with racialised perpetual hereditary chattel slavery. This is an obscene rhetorical move which decontextualises and dehistoricises the exploitation of both groups. There have been many different forms of slavery, across space and time. That is not the issue here. We are addressing the mainstream endorsement of a growing white nationalist campaign built on the reductionist fallacy of “slavery is slavery” which is inevitably used to justify racism in the present. For example, the spurious “we went through the same thing, but we don’t complain” sentiment which is now frequently deployed to silence debate and to mock demands for justice and truth-telling.
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.
Thus your mainstream endorsement of this distorted version of history has consequences. We therefore call on you to revise these articles, to correct the errors and to remove the false claims.
Open letter to Irish Central, Irish Examiner and Scientific American about their “Irish slaves”…
If there was proof of God, or proof that God does not exist, then we wouldn't need faith. Not a hard concept to grasp. Ignorance is attempting to insult the intelligence and/or sincerity of those that do not believe as you believe.
Is faith needed?
Is faith logical?
The answer to both is "No"
The answer to both is "Yes". You're just too ignorant and tunnel-visioned to realize it.
Explain how faith is needed, or logical?
You are what's ignorance, the issue is your lack of Human intellect.
Do you have any idea how many things you take on faith, every day of your life, without even realizing it? No, you don't, because you're too busy petting your ego and preening yourself for your "intellect" and "knowledge", utterly oblivious to how much of your "knowledge" is nothing more or less than faith in what someone else told you.
Faith is necessary because none of us have time to reinvent the wheel and redo the work that others have already done to research, experiment, and discover information. The only logical way we can function is by learning from people who have already done that work, also known as "having faith in what they tell us".
Well, I told my Trig Professor that I'd be more than willing to take those identities on faith, but the bastard still demanded proof!
Let's see, on the one hand an Irish research librarian and historian, endorsed by a prominent fact-checking web site, calls it a myth while on the other side is you, an anonymous internet poster. Who would you believe?Like impoverished people of other nationalities, many emigrated from Ireland to the Americas in the 17th and 18th centuries as indentured servants; a smaller number were forcibly banished into indentured servitude during the period of the English Civil Wars; indentured servants often lived and worked under harsh conditions and were sometimes treated cruelly.That's true. But I understand the conditions of servitude were different, i.e. the Black Africans were sold into chattel slavery, meaning ownership under the same terms as inanimate property, while the Irish were transferred by the British into bonded servitude, meaning they were able to earn their freedom after a number of years in service.And yes the first slaves in America were white from Britain and Ireland. Historical fact.
Yeah . . . no. Yet another example of a simplistic, vagued-up idea of American history replacing the effort needed to learn the REAL, often complicated, history.
People like to pretend that, because there WERE indentured servants in the US, ALL white people in bondage in the US were indentured servants. However, indentured servitude is a voluntary contractual agreement, and it is documented history - although not WELL documented, since far too many people have a vested interest in preserving slavery as a special province of blacks - that English kings such as James II and Charles I made a practice of selling Irish political prisoners as slaves. And when the wives and children of Irish men sold into slavery became destitute and unable to feed themselves, they were also auctioned off into slavery.
Again, this is all sanitized and disguised as "indentured servants". But as the vast majority of these people did not choose to enter into this state and had no option available to win free of it, since it became extremely common to forcibly breed Irish women against their will in order to create even more "indentured servants" - since the law at that time was that the free status or lack thereof of a child was derived from the mother's status - since these people could be, and all too often were, tortured and maimed and killed for disobedience, I don't think an honest person can describe it as anything other than slavery.
Unlike institutionalized chattel slavery, indentured servitude was neither hereditary nor lifelong; unlike black slaves, white indentured servants had legal rights; unlike black slaves, indentured servants weren't considered property.
Limerick-based research librarian and historian Liam Hogan wrote a series of papers debunking what he calls “the Irish slaves myth.” There were no Irish slaves in the Americas, Hogan says. People who claim there were are conflating indentured servitude with chattel slavery — two distinct forms of servitude with more differences between them than similarities
More
There has been no debunking of the Irish slave reality. Its not a myth. Cromwell in particular sold slaves to all the colonies in the Caribbean and New England as well. This is a true record.
I'm sick to death of this shit where some asshole needs to "interpret and spin" historical truths for an agenda.
Lol.Let's stop the fake news.
Debunking a Myth: The Irish Were Not Slaves, Too
It has shown up on Irish trivia Facebook pages, in Scientific American magazine, and on white nationalist message boards: the little-known story of the Irish slaves who built America, who are sometimes said to have outnumbered and been treated worse than slaves from Africa.
But it’s not true.
Historians say the idea of Irish slaves is based on a misreading of history and that the distortion is often politically motivated. Far-right memes have taken off online and are used as racist barbs against African-Americans. “The Irish were slaves, too,” the memes often say. “We got over it, so why can’t you?”
A small group of Irish and American scholars has spent years pushing back on the false history. In 2016, 82 Irish scholars and writers signed an open letter denouncing the Irish slave myth and asking publications to stop mentioning it. Some complied, removing or revising articles that referenced the false claims, but the letter’s impact was limited.
Fact vs. Fiction
The Irish slave narrative is based on the misinterpretation of the history of indentured servitude, which is how many poor Europeans migrated to North America and the Caribbean in the early colonial period, historians said.
Without a doubt, life was bad for indentured servants. They were often treated brutally. Not all of them entered servitude willingly. Some were political prisoners. Some were children.
“I’m not saying it was pleasant or anything — it was the opposite — but it was a completely different category from slavery,” said Liam Hogan, a research librarian in Ireland who has spearheaded the debunking effort. “It was a transitory state.”
The legal differences between indentured servitude and chattel slavery were profound, according to Matthew Reilly, an archaeologist who studies Barbados. Unlike slaves, servants were considered legally human. Their servitude was based on a contract that limited their service to a finite period of time, usually about seven years, in exchange for passage to the colonies. They did not pass their unfree status on to descendants.
Contemporary accounts in Ireland sometimes referred to these people as slaves, Mr. Hogan said. That was true in the sense that any form of coerced labor can be described as slavery, from Ancient Rome to modern-day human trafficking. But in colonial America and the Caribbean, the word “slavery” had a specific legal meaning. Europeans, by definition, were not included in it.
“An indenture implies two people have entered into a contract with each other but slavery is not a contract,” said Leslie Harris, a professor of African-American history at Northwestern University. “It is often about being a prisoner of war or being bought or sold bodily as part of a trade. That is a critical distinction.”
.
Debunking a Myth: The Irish Were Not Slaves, Too
I agree. We should stop with the fake news. You can start by not posting this biased, unhistorical bullshit.
"Not all of them entered servitude willingly." Last time I checked, that's the definition of slavery. Particularly when you're talking about children, even if you do it in a casual, dismissive tone.
"I'm not saying it was pleasant or anything, but it was a completely different category from slavery." Yeah, as in it undercuts your claim to victimhood.
"It was a transitory state." In the sense that eventually they "transitioned" to being dead, I guess that's true.
"The legal differences between indentured servitude and chattel slavery were profound." Yeah, and they didn't apply to the people we're actually talking about, which is sort of the point.
"Unlike slaves, servants were considered legally human." And you can't say that's true about someone who could be killed at will by his master, with no legal penalties attaching, which was the case with the people we're talking about.
"Their servitude was based on a contract that limited their service to a finite period of time in exchange for passage to the colonies." Which ALSO did not apply to the people we're talking about. How does one "enter into a contract" when one is chained at gunpoint, herded unwillingly onto a ship, and then sold on an auction block to the highest bidder, as was the case with the ACTUAL PEOPLE WE'RE TALKING ABOUT?
"They did not pass their unfree status on to descendants." Indentured servants didn't, but the PEOPLE WE'RE ACTUALLY TALKING ABOUT did, particularly when they were forcibly bred against their will precisely for the purpose of creating those children.
"Contemporary accounts in Ireland sometimes referred to these people as slaves." Probably because they weren't deliberately trying to conflate two groups of people in order to serve an agenda.
"That was true in the sense that any form of coerced labor can be described as slavery, from Ancient Rome to modern-day human trafficking." Both of which ARE slavery, but I'll bet Mr. Hogan would try to brush THOSE off, too.
"But in colonial America and the Caribbean, the word “slavery” had a specific legal meaning. Europeans, by definition, were not included in it." Yeah, by HOGAN'S definition, I'm sure they weren't.
“An indenture implies two people have entered into a contract with each other but slavery is not a contract. It is often about being a prisoner of war or being bought or sold bodily as part of a trade. That is a critical distinction.” Yeah, and by coincidence, that's exactly the distinction WE are making between two different groups of Irish people.
Tell; all that to the IRISH historians who wrote the article
Gee I guess you don't know Irish history at all. There's a bloody good reason they hate the British. BTW please note that there was a Proclamation in 1625 that all Irish political prisoners were to be sold. to English farmers in the West Indies.
You can't make up a Proclamation by the King James. It exists. And the Irish suffered greatly. As if the genocide waged against them wasn't enough, the Brits made $$$$ off them.
For crying out loud, there's freaking sale records. There's a paper trail of records. If you are against slavery, then you should be against ALL slavery. Not just one type or another depending on an agenda.
The Irish Slave Trade – The Slaves That Time Forgot
Christian WinthropMarch 7, 2017
From the article.
"The Proclamation of 1625 by James II made it official policy that all Irish political prisoners be transported to the West Indies and sold to English planters. Soon Irish slaves were the majority of slaves in the English colonies.
In 1629 a large group of Irish men and women were sent to Guiana, and by 1632, Irish were the main slaves sold to Antigua and Montserrat in the West Indies. By 1637 a census showed that 69% of the total population of Montserrat were Irish slaves, which records show was a cause of concern to the English planters. But there were not enough political prisoners to supply the demand, so every petty infraction carried a sentence of transporting, and slaver gangs combed the country sides to kidnap enough people to fill out their quotas.
The slavers were so full of zest that they sometimes grabbed non-Irishmen. On March 25, 1659, a petition was received in London claiming that 72 Englishmen were wrongly sold as slaves in Barbados, along with 200 Frenchmen and 7-8,000 Scots."
The Irish Slave Trade – The Slaves That Time Forgot
Tell this to the Irish scholars who wrote the article I posted.
It is a reference to ideological tunnel vision & generations of being bound by a thought process that prohibits thinking outside the box.
This is the origins of that comment and while the number could be considered off if you discount the history of Africa the point remains on target.
Rather than dig into the substance of the situation the left would rather distract you with the thoughts of a simpleton.
While this could be considered a "race" thread I hope that the moderators see that it is a hot topic in political circles and deserves to be discussed and thought out rather than relegated to the race forum which very few visit.
I think the legacy of slavery is still felt in Black families but Blacks today do seem to be victims of the criminal justice system. We've all seen videos of Blacks being shot by cops and read about abuses in assigning bail and prison sentences. It is unfortunate but understandable that many Blacks consider themselves victims.
If they could just shut their mouths and say yes sir, maybe they get treated differently, loud mouths have nothing to do with slavery!
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It is a reference to ideological tunnel vision & generations of being bound by a thought process that prohibits thinking outside the box.
This is the origins of that comment and while the number could be considered off if you discount the history of Africa the point remains on target.
Rather than dig into the substance of the situation the left would rather distract you with the thoughts of a simpleton.
While this could be considered a "race" thread I hope that the moderators see that it is a hot topic in political circles and deserves to be discussed and thought out rather than relegated to the race forum which very few visit.
What exactly is thinking outside of the box? Thinking the way whites want us to think? Because vey person of color who s clamed to be thinking outside if this "box" are people of color who validate the beliefs of racist conservative whites.
To the contrary, the people of color who claim to be thinking outside the box often invalidate the victimization claimed by far too many people of color. People of color who claim they are victims of white privilege are no different that the white people who claim they are victims of wealthy elites. Nothing more than excuses for a failure to thrive..
No they do not. They serve the purpose of whites who want to deny the truth of how the impact of continuing white racism is a problem that continues to do great harm to the black community. There has not been one time in history blacks have just laid down and played victim including now. Whites created this false narrative. So when a black person starts repeating that same false narrative after getting 37,500 in damages from a lawsuit they filed because they faced the racism they call everyone else a victim for describing, that is a person who has no credibility to even speak on this matter in the way this woman did..
It is a reference to ideological tunnel vision & generations of being bound by a thought process that prohibits thinking outside the box.
This is the origins of that comment and while the number could be considered off if you discount the history of Africa the point remains on target.
Rather than dig into the substance of the situation the left would rather distract you with the thoughts of a simpleton.
While this could be considered a "race" thread I hope that the moderators see that it is a hot topic in political circles and deserves to be discussed and thought out rather than relegated to the race forum which very few visit.
What exactly is thinking outside of the box? Thinking the way whites want us to think? Because vey person of color who s clamed to be thinking outside if this "box" are people of color who validate the beliefs of racist conservative whites.
To the contrary, the people of color who claim to be thinking outside the box often invalidate the victimization claimed by far too many people of color. People of color who claim they are victims of white privilege are no different that the white people who claim they are victims of wealthy elites. Nothing more than excuses for a failure to thrive..
No they do not. They serve the purpose of whites who want to deny the truth of how the impact of continuing white racism is a problem that continues to do great harm to the black community. There has not been one time in history blacks have just laid down and played victim including now. Whites created this false narrative. So when a black person starts repeating that same false narrative after getting 37,500 in damages from a lawsuit they filed because they faced the racism they call everyone else a victim for describing, that is a person who has no credibility to even speak on this matter in the way this woman did..
The woman was threatened and sued the people who threatened her, and that has nothing to do with racial victimization. She did not allow herself to be a victim.
The only false narrative here is your bullcrap excuses for many people of color who fail to thrive in America. There are as many, or more, white people who fail to thrive, and many of them claim they are victims of the wealthy elites. In actuality, They are mostly all victims of their own bad decisions in life.
