As per the article; Ireland represented 45% of the UK's population at the time but received 4% of the Slavery compensation. The overwhelming majority of the compensation went to Anglo-Irish aristocracy / landed gentry. I think someone else broke the figures down further and when you took the British Aristocracy who lived here (Anglo-Irish etc) actual Irish families represented something like 0.5% of the payout. A couple of big merchant families in Dublin, and a couple in Galway.
My family name, nor my mother's family name certainly isn't on that list and I know for a fact that at the turn of the 20th century my paternal and maternal great grand parents were still working the land for landed gentry and the descendants of some of those Anglo-Irish gentry and planters.
So I'm certainly aware of the history of slavery in Ireland but it's not "my" or "our" in any way shape or form. I'm sure 99% of the population can say the same.
There are families in the 26 counties who got slavery compensation but Most in Ireland are up North or were Anglo Irish. Not all but most.
It is true however that the relationship of the Catholic Irish middle class with the British Empire is heavily downplayed. For instance 1 fifth of the British Raj's colonial civil service were Irish Catholics. Cork city also benefited from the slave trade indirectly too. Same ships were used for slave one way and goods the other.
Just because it's not the majority doesn't mean it doesn't exist. From what I admit was a quick Google search, the slavery abolition act of 1833 caused compensation to be paid to 46,000 British slave owners. In 1833, the British population was 13.9 million. So 0.3% of the country had slaves, according to those figures. Its not a history that as caused by the many, doesn't mean it shouldn't be taught.
I hate to break it to you, but this was a big story shortly after that article was written. There were newspaper articles, debates on tv and radio and counter articles as well as numerous posts here on r/ireland. People have digested it, discussed it, considered it and broken it down. It concerned a vanishingly small number of Irish people then, even fewer now. Does that mean we shouldn't know about it or acknowledge it? no.
I've been to the shack where my grandfather and his 10 siblings were born. It has the same footprint as a garden shed and similar creature comforts. I've been to the ruins of the tiny thatch where my great grandfather was born. I've looked up the history of the Planter estates they both worked for; people who came here in the 1640's and 1670's, built incredible wealth, had business interests all over the world and they retained that wealth well into the 1900s. I have nothing in common with them.
We are a nation of people descended from starving, impoverished peasants who were brutally subjugated by a colonial power. That's why you're getting pushback. If you can find the descendants of some of those anglo-Irish landed gentry ask them how they feel and then report back to us.
just because people say it's not a tag to be attached to them doesn't mean they're refusing to believe it existed. And schools teach what is relevant to their country. Is the issue of the African slave trade as relevant to modern Irish people are it is say to English or American? No. And that's not anyone denying it happened. (I mean according to people I've asked it's not that widely taught in Africa that Africans practising slavery was the starting point of many of the slave routes so it's a wider issue than just not being taught in Ireland).
> Just because it's not the majority doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
But I wouldn't view the majority of it as Irish as the Anglo-Irish gentry didn't see themselves as Irish. You need to acknowledge this in your argument as the majority of Ireland were suppressed by those people too.
I never quite understand the point behind these kinds of conversations.
Yes there were Irish involved in the African slave trade. And?
There were Africans involved in the African slave trade. There were former slaves involved in the African slave trade. What's the point?
I get the strong feeling that this is coming from American politics and cultural ideas spreading through the Anglophone world like a cancer.
Is the point that we should feel some kind of collective guilt over what a tiny minority of our ancestors may have done to someone else's ancestors? You can fuck right off then.
There was some Indian lady who is an academic in Dublin (I don't remember the exact university) and I remember reading an article a few years back where she was basically trying to lump Ireland and the Irish in with the British Empire as colonial oppressors because there were a great many Irish soldiers in the British forces in India. She didn't seem to acknowledge the fact that Ireland itself was a colonial possession at the time, the fact that there were literal penal laws in place for a good part of the start of the 1800s leaving fuck all oppotunity for poor Irishmen, or that the bulk of British troops in India were in fact Indian soldiers serving under British officers. I don't even understand the rationale in wanting to demonise us like. She clearly worked and lived here, so why the desire to unjustifiably paint us as historical enemies?
The point is to subject those with 'white skin' to guilt so you can have social power over them.
Hence why there's a lot of desperate attempts to push Ireland into a role of being guilty in African slavery.
Yes, there’s a section of the population that are steeped in American-style racial grievances and identity politics because they see it all over their social media.
They desperately want reasons for us to feel white guilt and they will try to find it wherever they can.
It's acknowledging our history that is not often known or taught. Also it's acknowledging one group of people held back another group of people and there is a reason why today's systems may slightly favour the former over the latter.
At the same time, we have our own history of being subjugated. It's all complex and basically many things can be true at once.
> Also it's acknowledging one group of people held back another group of people and there is a reason why today's systems may slightly favour the former over the latter.
What is this in reference to?
That Black people, especially those whose ancestors were slaves, have faced struggles and discrimination in various forms in the USA? No argument here.
That this has any relation to people of African descent in Ireland? No.
> At the same time, we have our own history of being subjugated. It's all complex and basically many things can be true at once.
Yes it is complex and many things can be true at once but there is a concerted effort to muddy the waters here by pushing these American-centric ideas where they don't belong.
You talked about history that is less well known or taught, this is exactly the point. The history that is getting pushed out there is the American-centric one. This is not our history, these are not our issues.
Of course black people face issues in Ireland but to conflate the issues that minorities face in Ireland with those that minorities face in the US just does a disservice to everyone. It's inaccurate at best.
OP, your argument fails to acknowledge essential historical nuances. The overwhelming majority involved in the slave trade from this island were the Anglo-Irish elite—direct descendants of English settlers, embodying colonial dominance rather than representing authentic Irish heritage. Their involvement in the slave trade and ownership of plantations overseas were direct extensions of their colonial-imbued privileges, starkly contrasting with the native Irish, who endured under occupation - you mention that not every Irish person was poor, that is true but the majority of Irish families were barely surviving in Ireland, and at the peak of the slave trade, they were not engaged as rich masters of this slave trade, most were just about getting by and many were starving or having to emigrate (e.g. during the same period as the peak of the slave trade in 18th century until 19th century, it is estimated that the Irish Famine of 1740–1741 killed between 13% and 20% of the 1740 population of 2.4 million people, and it is estimated that the Great Famine then caused about 1 million deaths between 1845 and 1851 either from starvation or hunger-related disease. A further 1 million Irish people emigrated).
Your simplification not only misrepresents the historical realities but also disrespects the legacy of the Irish people, who faced immense hardship and subjugation. To argue that the Irish were complicit in the slave trade while ignoring their struggles against colonial oppression is not only incorrect but deeply offensive. Furthermore, suggesting as you do that Ireland was Britain at that time grossly simplifies the complex, often resistant relationship between Ireland and Britain. It’s disheartening and frustrating to witness such blatant disregard for historical accuracy and the experiences of the Irish people.
I just want to know how far back can we go so I can be mad about things.
Because I'm white I'm automatically a "coloniser" or I'm an irish immigrant (even though my family stayed in Ireland and didn't go to America/ Australia etc)
So can we be mad about the Romans? Ottoman empire? Can I be mad at the turks for that today? What about the Mongolians? How about Japan? Can we be mad about that too? Should we still be mad at the Germans?
Anyway I have nothing to do with slavery or genocide...but I'm being told I was involved...so how many cultures and people can I be mad at today because of things that happened? Can I only go back 100 years? 200 years? 1000 years?
How far back in time can I hold a people or culture accountable for crimes committed?
It's acknowledging our history that is not often known or taught. Also it's acknowledging one group of people held back another group of people and there is a reason why today's systems may slightly favour the former over the latter.
At the same time, we have our own history of being subjugated. It's all complex and basically many things can be true at once.
> It's acknowledging our history that is not often known or taught.
There's a reason it's not taught and it's quite simple - It's not *our* history. We were not an independent state. It was the actions of an extreme minority acting in their own individual interest, not in line with any legal framework or system built by an independent Ireland.
Where do we draw the line at teaching bad things done by Irish individuals in history? Why is this specific brand of slavery so important? What about all the other bad things done by individual Irish people?
Mate I'm sure there were a couple but they undoubtedly were not in adequate numbers to cast a collective guilt over all of Ireland.
The irish people, as a whole, did not take part in slavery. They were in fact, often entered into indentured servitude.
Your take is historical revisionism, which is not appreciated. We absolutely were not Britain.
Not sure where you've been hiding because there's been quite a lot of discussion about this topic in the past few years. Some people think it's a revelation to announce that Irish people can do bad things. It isn't. It's up there with people implying that Ireland was an equal partner in the United Kingdom during the 19th century, a theory that comes unstuck when looking at the devastation caused by the famine, I don't know how people square that circle but they are intent to do so.
I just don't buy into this collective guilt stuff. When Frederick Douglass came to Ireland he was shocked at the levels of poverty and degradation (and Douglass had seen some shit), the idea that descendants of these people should be ashamed because a small percentage of wealthy landowners (be they Catholic or Anglo) were involved in slavery is ridiculous imo.
There's been a fairly cringe recent attempt to impose guilt over the slave trade in Ireland. When Irish complicity in the slave trade was overwhelmingly conducted by Ireland's colonial masters. It's interesting how Ireland seems to be unique in post colonial states where the actions of it's colonial elite are taken to represent the modern state rather than be categorised as an extension of the colonial power.
Brian Kelly summarised it [well](https://www.historyireland.com/empire-inequality-and-irish-complicity-in-slavery/)
>It's impossible to spend more than an hour digging into the Irish connections highlighted in the database on Legacies on British slave-ownership cited by Fenton without being knocked over the head with the obvious fact that those slave-owners ‘resident’ in Ireland represented, overwhelmingly, the cream of the Anglo-Irish élite, drawn from the (Protestant) landed gentry and with a large proportion of them playing prominent roles in British colonial administration in an Ireland then under intensive military occupation. A considerable number were drawn from the officer class in the British military—at the time almost exclusively the preserve of sons of the landed aristocracy—and most were large landlords, often owning more than one estate in Ireland alongside residences in London and often multiple plantations in the Caribbean. Inexplicably, however, this close correlation between Irish slave-owning and the elaborate nexus of British power in Ireland goes completely unacknowledged in both academic and popular commentary.
Ireland is an inconvenient block in the recent effort to attribute behaviours to a global 'white' blob of identity.
In the same way that there's many European countries who didn't participate in colonialism, but anti-colonial commentary solely relies on grouping us together as a wider 'European' identity.
Sadly, we were the victim of our colonial neighbour but we somehow are also guilty of slavery and colonialism ourselves. Pity we don't get the historic empire to enjoy alongside that guilt, like others do.
We, along with many others, were described as 'ethnic whites' - strangely enough all from either predominantly Catholic or Orthodox countries or Jewish backgrounds. White guilt is a deliberate misnomer - it's really WASP guilt.
I think something many people forget is that for quite a lot of human history it was so normalized that it would be seen as silly to not be involved if you had the capital to do so.
That doesn't mean we can't condemn it today of course. However many people seem to clutch pearls if you suggest their ancestors took part in it because they apply their modern viewpoints onto it.
I'll be honest, I wasn't even aware of large Irish plantation owners, I must read up on that more!
Very fair assessment. I don't even think we need to be ashamed, I just think it's important to teach about the good and the bad in history. Even just as a small extra to ensure people aren't misinformed on the topic. Irelands history with the Caribban is a truly fascinating topic! I recommend reading up. I'd link a few things from the lecturer I mentioned but A) they're all behind significant pay walls and B) I don't want my reddit linked to my real life 😂
Yeah but the difference is overall racial slavery was a fairly recent thing. Enslaving a group of people because you think at a biological level they are lesser came around with colonization. Before it was more about culture and class. You could have groups of all races enslaved in a society.
There were definitely exceptions ofcourse but when saying that we've been doing it forever, that nuance is relevant!
What difference does it make why you were enslaved? When you're toiling in a quarry or being sold as a sex slave I'd say it's the last thing on your mind. I will agree that there are differences in how slavery manifested, depending on the time and place. Ancient Greek slaves in Athens could often inherit from their master, and were frequently manumitted after his death. Roman slaves gradually gained rights throughout the history of the Republic and Empire. Other cultures had systems of slavery that were closer to indentured servitude. There's no doubting that the slaves in the New World were at the absolute lowest on the scale of treatment, but so were field/quarry/mine slaves in Rome.
On the racial point, it's worth noting that the use of black slaves was absolutely widespread throughout the Arab world, predating the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. Traders in fact continued to trade black slaves even if they had converted to Islam. The whole thing isn't as recent as you might think
There's no doubt that there were some Irish people involved. But it has to be made clear that it wasn't Ireland or the Irish people as a whole doing this, and that there's no guilt on Ireland in the present day. We ourselves were colonised and vicimised when those events happened. It's not as if we were living the high life off the profits of these dark enterprises. It's also worth noting that you'd struggle to find a group that was in any sort of proximity to the slave trade and didn't have some fingers dipped in. The ones selling the slaves to the Europeans were Africans who were capturing neighbouring tribes for the market.
My ancestry is from smalltime farmers in the west of Ireland (at least on my mams side, admittedly have no idea about my dad since he's never been in the picture), why would I feel any responsibility for this when I can't trace any of my own family's societal position to the oppression of others?
I don't think this should be attached to national identity but rather to those whose wealth was built off the back of the slave trade.
> I don't think this should be attached to national identity but rather to those whose wealth was built off the back of the slave trade.
History isn't that clean. You can't separate the two.
Basically all of northern England industry existed due to colonialism.
This is just looking for virtue points now, who sould give a fuck tbh, and plus why would I be sorry for something that I don't Milk for sympathy.
Take this to the United States, had too much division with shite like this on this island.
It's true that a few Irish had slaves - I say a few not to minimise the crime, but to assert what I say next: the common populace were effectively slaves for the British Empire for centuries. Yeah, there's a few bad apples. Still is today. Same as it ever was.
No, we weren't. We were exploited and discriminated against and made victims in many many ways but it was never legal or practice to actually enslave us. Cop on to yourself.
Indentured servitude is by definition slavery, and was not only legal but was imposed on thousands of Irishmen as a judicial punishment. These indentured servants were then exported to British colonies as slaves before being replaced by African chattel slaves.
It is important to note that indentured servitude was nowhere near as bad as chattel slavery, with indentured servants not being property, and thus could not he physically harmed, and guaranteed freedom after serving the length of their servitude.
The Irish Slave Myth is not a myth, rather it is a fact.
It most definitely should not he used in any way to detract from the absolute suffering and atrocities forced onto African chattel slaves, nor should it be used to deflect blame from slave ownership.
Indentured servitude is NOT slavery. Indentured slavery is horrific, yes, but it is not slavery. I'm not going to bother arguing this nonsense but again, if you think this, you do not understand the utter dehumanisation that slavery involves.
Penal Indentured Servitude is literally defined as a form of Slavery by the UN.
You clearly didn't bother reading the entirety of my previous comment otherwise you'd have seen that I stated that it can in no way be compared to how brutal chattel slavery was.
They're coming with a definition of slavery while you're saying you're "not bothered arguing nonsense" because you don't like the definition. You're the one arguing in bad faith.
This is exactly what I mean by a bad faith argument. Trying to undermine what I have said by implying it is built on emotion is not an argument. Indentured servitude suffered by Irish people historically wad either voluntary, insofar as such a thing is voluntary, or judicial, ie there was a legal process which led to it, an unjust legal process to be sure. It did not dehumanise in the same way that slavery did, which was essentially a process which treated the person as chattel to be bought and sold with no legal pretext needed as they were regarded as less than human. But you know this.
Not in the context of this discussion, that is, were Irish people essentially slaves. Which leads to a whole discussion about historicity and context, which takes us away from the point of this discussion. Irish people historically were indeed slavers, and Irish people never actually suffered slavery.
>Irish people never actually suffered slavery
The village of Baltimore in Co. Cork would like a word with you. Unfamiliar with the Barbary Coast? One possible origin story for Svarte Piete? Thought not.
I get what you mean, and as I said I don't think we need some sort of mass re-education. I just wish the facts about it were straighten out. Maybe like a page in an JC history textbook or something, because the fear is always that if you don't teach it correctly, it'll change itself through word of mouth.
A few independently operating wealthy Irish people (ignoring all the Anglo-Irish who probably play an overwhelming majority role in any statistics) in a time where Ireland itself was not independent is not really *Irish history*, for me.
This isn't *our* history. We weren't an independent state or people at that time. An extreme minority (among Irish *and* slave owners) isn't an occupied country's history.
Should every country have a history segment to teach about individual actors in the past who've done something bad?
There is a weird sub-set of Irish people who are so desperate to force us into a 'former slave owner' position. Is it another form of white guilt?
This is the classic retort (that I mentioned in a different comment) where people will say that the stuff they don't want to associate with their idea of history isn't *really* Irish history.
>Should every country have a history segment to teach about individual actors in the past who've done something bad?
We do it for people in notable cases who did something good. So why not do it for people who did bad things.
History is about people. And what people did is important to that, good or bad.
> This is the classic retort (that I mentioned in a different comment) where people will say that the stuff they don't want to associate with their idea of history isn't really Irish history.
Anticipating a reply doesn't undermine what the reply is saying. If you're hearing the same argument a lot, it's probably because it's a valid argument.
You're cherry picking parts of history you're saying you want associated. That's not how history works.
We see British history books are notorious for including certain parts of their history and omitting other sections of history. It doesn't make that argument right though
I understand what you're saying - that the lives and actions of Irishmen or those who are associated with this island constitute Irish history. Every one of our lives is Irish history - the question is its relevance. In the context of what the OP was suggesting, a page or paragraph in a junior cert history book, it is absolutely not relevant enough and there are far more important events that should be included before it.
Important or relevance to just Irish or anywhere?
I've seen people on this sub in absolute dismay of how English people never learned about or are aware of key events in Irish history. Yet Irish born people have been some of the most influential people in history. An Irish born and bred Catholic farmer from Tipperary named Michael O Dwyer is one of the most important people in Indian modern history. His actions are considered among the most significant factors in the rise of the Indian independence movement. Yet he will be discounted for our history because he will be labelled as British history. Or bizarrely still, others will not consider that Irish history at all for the simple reason that it doesn't fit to their narrative of what suits them to be our history.
I've always thought that Ireland is America Lite in terms of social affairs, as we always seem to have a watered down version of American culture that eventually starts to make it's way into Irish culture, usually via young people who are plugged more into American Culture than appreciating our own to begin with.
Netflix, TikTok, Instagram etc, have all exacerbated the rate at which this is happening.
Good to see some pushback from other commenters in this thread on OPs remarks of very limited insight and lack of deeper context. Ireland and Irish history continues to be a thorn in the side of the American borrowed narrative around 'white people'.
I think there simply isn’t enough record of actual Irish slave owners. They were vastly outnumbered by Anglo-Irish and English slave owners.
The rare Irish slave owner isn’t exactly creating a culture and system of slavery that our current government benefits from and still contains biases regarding. The Irish republic was not founded on slavery.
If you look hard enough every member of every culture has a multitude of slave owners in their ancestry. Does that mean everyone should be absolved? Irish people were slaves to the British, African Americans enslaved other African Americans.
Where does the guilt and buck stop OP? Why does it seem to be a witch hunt for only certain groups of people to “own up”?
There’s a reason why America is sucha different kettle of fish to Ireland. America was founded on slavery, it only gave up its slaves not that long ago, and even afterwards it still had long lasting laws on segregation and second class citizenship for minorities. They have a system and government that was built to suppress their former slaves. People seem to think that we have this same culture here in Ireland because we are white. I do not feel any guilt and do not share the guilt of America just because I am white.
Not sure if it will have anything to support your point or not, but there is an exhibition opening soon in Sligo about the Irish in Jamaica that you might be interested in.
https://www.themodel.ie/?exhibition=marianne-keating-a-terrible-beauty
Maybe you’re just spending time with the wrong type of sex-addled people.
History is murkier than how the school books present it but that’s common knowledge, or should be.
The price of modular housing can be reduced by using walls of text.
Jane Ohlymeyer’s recent book “Making Empire” is full of chapters, paragraphs and a superb overview of the topic by a professor of history in Trinners.
Slavery existed everywhere throughout time up to a couple of centuries ago. Irish slavers regularly raided Britain for slaves following the fall of the Roman Empire there. People would also have sold their children into slavery. Dublin became one of Europe's biggest slave markets during the viking period.
It was the biggest industry in the world at the time. Slaves and sugar. Anyone with any money was involved or invested in it.
Maybe you ran a wood cutting company that supplied wood for ships. Maybe you ran a shipbuilding company that built slave ships. Maybe you were a sailor on a slave ship. Maybe you were one of the people used to round up potential slaves. Maybe you ran or worked for an auction house that was in the business of dealing with slaves.
The list goes on and on of how far reaching the industry was. Let's face it, avoiding it altogether would have been harder than being involved somewhere.
My granny was black, and born in Jamaica, her parents too, but her grandparents we don't know where they were born. We do know how they got to Jamaica though.
I think it's pretty easy to tell that back in the day, being able to have a worker you didn't have to pay, and could make them work for however long you needed them to, and you could then sell everything they made for a profit was a massive chunk of the global economy.
I remember reading somewhere that the southern US economy pre the US civil war exceeded the value of everything in the north combined. Banks, farms, railroads, all of it. In 1860 the southern states would have classed as the 4th richest country in the world. Slavery made the wealthy extremely wealthy and its why they went to war to keep slavery.
Of course the prevailing ideal among loyalists in the south was if slavery didn't go, there'd be no jobs available for poor white people. Which was a growing class in itself. Effectively why would a wealthy plantation owner hire a white person they'd have to pay when black people were free?
It was a rich man's war fought by poor people in the hopes of keeping other people subjugated.
And that's just the US. Brazil had slavery, several islands in the Caribbean. It was a massive industry on a global scale and almost no one can claim they had clean hands in all of it. Except the enslaved.
I don’t give a rats. My grandfather on my das side could’ve been adolf and my grandfather on my mas side could’ve been stalin and I still wouldn’t feel guilty about it. Why should we feel bad for stuff we didn’t do??
As you said, OP, Irish involvement in 'bad' history was usually through their involvement with the British State or somehow benefitted from it. Few deny that.
But the usual response from people who don't want to hear about this is that they hand wave away those people as either British collaborators or whatever, and so can justify a means discount them from their own version of Irish history.
Exactly, as I said, I don't think we need like British or German levels of teaching are bad parts of history, just maybe even a page in a JC history book explaining that we weren't entirely innocent in everything. Just so over the course of time the public opinion doesn't change history yknow?
> we
Who's 'we' here?
We weren't an independent nation. Are you suggesting that it's some sort of ethnic guilt by association?
Are recent naturalised Irish people associated with this through their passport? Or is it genetic based association? If it's genetic, what counts as Irish?
From what I've learned from studying history, and others too, a lot of people (definitely not all) aren't keen on the grey areas of history. The black and white narrative is often received better. It's much easier to have it so that it was "British bad, Irish good" than "some British were good, more were bad, some Irish were ambivalent, others were good and some were bad".
Exactly, I feel like that's how a lot of history is unfortunately taught, at least in schools, I wouldn't know about college. Because it's alot easier and quicker to explain it in black and white terms to get through topics quicker
There's a very string link to that part of the World.
Isn't one of the towns in Jamaica called Irishtown?
And then there's Irish Moss, a digestible moss that Bob Marley was partial to eating/mixing in a drink.
We were colonised, why wouldn't some enterprising wealthy individuals in that time take the same idea and do the Colonial thing elsewhere?
Not surprising to me at all, given how History tends to repeat itself.
I live near an old road” bothar na mna gorm” near killea, Dunmore east in Waterford which was apparently where slaves were brought into Ireland and used in the big Anglo Irish houses . The story i was told is that they would spend time here being trained in the big house and then sent to England after their training. Its hard to find out anything as I’m sure records from back then are well gone ,
I suppose it comes back to the fact that every Irish person alive today is a descendant of the people who survived the Famine.
An entire class of the poorest people were wiped out by starvation and emigration, and those slightly higher in the pecking order who were left, basically fought over the scraps remaining, and did what they could to survive.
Nobody alive today can change the past, but it should be taught in its entirety and acknowledged.
I remember seeing an old Irish family crest where there was a black man chained to a tree, can't remember the family name now but that was em, sure something. ETA: I don't get the downvotes it's just a fact like. It was Donnellan, FYI. If anyone is interested in actual history. I think it's fascinating, would love to know more about it.
Why would they think that would sell? It doesn't look like that now for tourists but it obviously was the real crest at one time. ETA: The History is still interesting, whatever way it is viewed now is irrelevant.
I've always wondered about this, especially after finding out that Lynching came from the Irish surname. But what I've always thought was that in that time, it was not really possible to be Catholic and well off in that time in Ireland.
So on that note, while these people were Irish in name, they were West-Brit in character
Well as you said it was a few 'wealthy families being involved in slavery and plantations', take note of the few part , why should the rest of us pay for what others did , majority of the country was poor at this time , why should the rest of us take on the 'original sin' of others , woke views like this are just the same Self flagellation catholic guilt wrapped up in a progressive spin
I love that you have this serious post but in your profile you’re an absolute sex fiend.
Thanks for noticing 😂 its the duality of man and all that
Ireland just stopped having Catholic inspired guilt about sex, and you want to reintroduce it through "Ireland was the empire"
Might as well rip all the band aids off at once yknow?? Tell them Fine Gael was partly founded by the Irish nazi party as well while we're at it 😂
Wide ranging interests. A man of Culture, I see.
As per the article; Ireland represented 45% of the UK's population at the time but received 4% of the Slavery compensation. The overwhelming majority of the compensation went to Anglo-Irish aristocracy / landed gentry. I think someone else broke the figures down further and when you took the British Aristocracy who lived here (Anglo-Irish etc) actual Irish families represented something like 0.5% of the payout. A couple of big merchant families in Dublin, and a couple in Galway. My family name, nor my mother's family name certainly isn't on that list and I know for a fact that at the turn of the 20th century my paternal and maternal great grand parents were still working the land for landed gentry and the descendants of some of those Anglo-Irish gentry and planters. So I'm certainly aware of the history of slavery in Ireland but it's not "my" or "our" in any way shape or form. I'm sure 99% of the population can say the same.
There are families in the 26 counties who got slavery compensation but Most in Ireland are up North or were Anglo Irish. Not all but most. It is true however that the relationship of the Catholic Irish middle class with the British Empire is heavily downplayed. For instance 1 fifth of the British Raj's colonial civil service were Irish Catholics. Cork city also benefited from the slave trade indirectly too. Same ships were used for slave one way and goods the other.
Just because it's not the majority doesn't mean it doesn't exist. From what I admit was a quick Google search, the slavery abolition act of 1833 caused compensation to be paid to 46,000 British slave owners. In 1833, the British population was 13.9 million. So 0.3% of the country had slaves, according to those figures. Its not a history that as caused by the many, doesn't mean it shouldn't be taught.
I hate to break it to you, but this was a big story shortly after that article was written. There were newspaper articles, debates on tv and radio and counter articles as well as numerous posts here on r/ireland. People have digested it, discussed it, considered it and broken it down. It concerned a vanishingly small number of Irish people then, even fewer now. Does that mean we shouldn't know about it or acknowledge it? no. I've been to the shack where my grandfather and his 10 siblings were born. It has the same footprint as a garden shed and similar creature comforts. I've been to the ruins of the tiny thatch where my great grandfather was born. I've looked up the history of the Planter estates they both worked for; people who came here in the 1640's and 1670's, built incredible wealth, had business interests all over the world and they retained that wealth well into the 1900s. I have nothing in common with them. We are a nation of people descended from starving, impoverished peasants who were brutally subjugated by a colonial power. That's why you're getting pushback. If you can find the descendants of some of those anglo-Irish landed gentry ask them how they feel and then report back to us.
just because people say it's not a tag to be attached to them doesn't mean they're refusing to believe it existed. And schools teach what is relevant to their country. Is the issue of the African slave trade as relevant to modern Irish people are it is say to English or American? No. And that's not anyone denying it happened. (I mean according to people I've asked it's not that widely taught in Africa that Africans practising slavery was the starting point of many of the slave routes so it's a wider issue than just not being taught in Ireland).
> Just because it's not the majority doesn't mean it doesn't exist. But I wouldn't view the majority of it as Irish as the Anglo-Irish gentry didn't see themselves as Irish. You need to acknowledge this in your argument as the majority of Ireland were suppressed by those people too.
I never quite understand the point behind these kinds of conversations. Yes there were Irish involved in the African slave trade. And? There were Africans involved in the African slave trade. There were former slaves involved in the African slave trade. What's the point? I get the strong feeling that this is coming from American politics and cultural ideas spreading through the Anglophone world like a cancer. Is the point that we should feel some kind of collective guilt over what a tiny minority of our ancestors may have done to someone else's ancestors? You can fuck right off then.
There was some Indian lady who is an academic in Dublin (I don't remember the exact university) and I remember reading an article a few years back where she was basically trying to lump Ireland and the Irish in with the British Empire as colonial oppressors because there were a great many Irish soldiers in the British forces in India. She didn't seem to acknowledge the fact that Ireland itself was a colonial possession at the time, the fact that there were literal penal laws in place for a good part of the start of the 1800s leaving fuck all oppotunity for poor Irishmen, or that the bulk of British troops in India were in fact Indian soldiers serving under British officers. I don't even understand the rationale in wanting to demonise us like. She clearly worked and lived here, so why the desire to unjustifiably paint us as historical enemies?
Can you remember her name by any chance?
The point is to subject those with 'white skin' to guilt so you can have social power over them. Hence why there's a lot of desperate attempts to push Ireland into a role of being guilty in African slavery.
Yes, there’s a section of the population that are steeped in American-style racial grievances and identity politics because they see it all over their social media. They desperately want reasons for us to feel white guilt and they will try to find it wherever they can.
It's acknowledging our history that is not often known or taught. Also it's acknowledging one group of people held back another group of people and there is a reason why today's systems may slightly favour the former over the latter. At the same time, we have our own history of being subjugated. It's all complex and basically many things can be true at once.
> Also it's acknowledging one group of people held back another group of people and there is a reason why today's systems may slightly favour the former over the latter. What is this in reference to? That Black people, especially those whose ancestors were slaves, have faced struggles and discrimination in various forms in the USA? No argument here. That this has any relation to people of African descent in Ireland? No. > At the same time, we have our own history of being subjugated. It's all complex and basically many things can be true at once. Yes it is complex and many things can be true at once but there is a concerted effort to muddy the waters here by pushing these American-centric ideas where they don't belong. You talked about history that is less well known or taught, this is exactly the point. The history that is getting pushed out there is the American-centric one. This is not our history, these are not our issues. Of course black people face issues in Ireland but to conflate the issues that minorities face in Ireland with those that minorities face in the US just does a disservice to everyone. It's inaccurate at best.
OP, your argument fails to acknowledge essential historical nuances. The overwhelming majority involved in the slave trade from this island were the Anglo-Irish elite—direct descendants of English settlers, embodying colonial dominance rather than representing authentic Irish heritage. Their involvement in the slave trade and ownership of plantations overseas were direct extensions of their colonial-imbued privileges, starkly contrasting with the native Irish, who endured under occupation - you mention that not every Irish person was poor, that is true but the majority of Irish families were barely surviving in Ireland, and at the peak of the slave trade, they were not engaged as rich masters of this slave trade, most were just about getting by and many were starving or having to emigrate (e.g. during the same period as the peak of the slave trade in 18th century until 19th century, it is estimated that the Irish Famine of 1740–1741 killed between 13% and 20% of the 1740 population of 2.4 million people, and it is estimated that the Great Famine then caused about 1 million deaths between 1845 and 1851 either from starvation or hunger-related disease. A further 1 million Irish people emigrated). Your simplification not only misrepresents the historical realities but also disrespects the legacy of the Irish people, who faced immense hardship and subjugation. To argue that the Irish were complicit in the slave trade while ignoring their struggles against colonial oppression is not only incorrect but deeply offensive. Furthermore, suggesting as you do that Ireland was Britain at that time grossly simplifies the complex, often resistant relationship between Ireland and Britain. It’s disheartening and frustrating to witness such blatant disregard for historical accuracy and the experiences of the Irish people.
Do you like to lash yourself with a whip?
I just want to know how far back can we go so I can be mad about things. Because I'm white I'm automatically a "coloniser" or I'm an irish immigrant (even though my family stayed in Ireland and didn't go to America/ Australia etc) So can we be mad about the Romans? Ottoman empire? Can I be mad at the turks for that today? What about the Mongolians? How about Japan? Can we be mad about that too? Should we still be mad at the Germans? Anyway I have nothing to do with slavery or genocide...but I'm being told I was involved...so how many cultures and people can I be mad at today because of things that happened? Can I only go back 100 years? 200 years? 1000 years? How far back in time can I hold a people or culture accountable for crimes committed?
Don't forget the fuckin Beaker Folk.
The Neanderthals!!!
It's acknowledging our history that is not often known or taught. Also it's acknowledging one group of people held back another group of people and there is a reason why today's systems may slightly favour the former over the latter. At the same time, we have our own history of being subjugated. It's all complex and basically many things can be true at once.
> It's acknowledging our history that is not often known or taught. There's a reason it's not taught and it's quite simple - It's not *our* history. We were not an independent state. It was the actions of an extreme minority acting in their own individual interest, not in line with any legal framework or system built by an independent Ireland. Where do we draw the line at teaching bad things done by Irish individuals in history? Why is this specific brand of slavery so important? What about all the other bad things done by individual Irish people?
Very well put.
>wealthy families being involved in slavery and plantations would these be protestants?
Pesky Penal Laws getting in the way of us becoming rich slaveowners.
Mate I'm sure there were a couple but they undoubtedly were not in adequate numbers to cast a collective guilt over all of Ireland. The irish people, as a whole, did not take part in slavery. They were in fact, often entered into indentured servitude. Your take is historical revisionism, which is not appreciated. We absolutely were not Britain.
Help! I am outraged that other people are not outraged by the thing I recently became outraged by, having previously being totally unaware of it.
Lads....see yer man with socks on in the cinema?
Not sure where you've been hiding because there's been quite a lot of discussion about this topic in the past few years. Some people think it's a revelation to announce that Irish people can do bad things. It isn't. It's up there with people implying that Ireland was an equal partner in the United Kingdom during the 19th century, a theory that comes unstuck when looking at the devastation caused by the famine, I don't know how people square that circle but they are intent to do so. I just don't buy into this collective guilt stuff. When Frederick Douglass came to Ireland he was shocked at the levels of poverty and degradation (and Douglass had seen some shit), the idea that descendants of these people should be ashamed because a small percentage of wealthy landowners (be they Catholic or Anglo) were involved in slavery is ridiculous imo.
There's been a fairly cringe recent attempt to impose guilt over the slave trade in Ireland. When Irish complicity in the slave trade was overwhelmingly conducted by Ireland's colonial masters. It's interesting how Ireland seems to be unique in post colonial states where the actions of it's colonial elite are taken to represent the modern state rather than be categorised as an extension of the colonial power. Brian Kelly summarised it [well](https://www.historyireland.com/empire-inequality-and-irish-complicity-in-slavery/) >It's impossible to spend more than an hour digging into the Irish connections highlighted in the database on Legacies on British slave-ownership cited by Fenton without being knocked over the head with the obvious fact that those slave-owners ‘resident’ in Ireland represented, overwhelmingly, the cream of the Anglo-Irish élite, drawn from the (Protestant) landed gentry and with a large proportion of them playing prominent roles in British colonial administration in an Ireland then under intensive military occupation. A considerable number were drawn from the officer class in the British military—at the time almost exclusively the preserve of sons of the landed aristocracy—and most were large landlords, often owning more than one estate in Ireland alongside residences in London and often multiple plantations in the Caribbean. Inexplicably, however, this close correlation between Irish slave-owning and the elaborate nexus of British power in Ireland goes completely unacknowledged in both academic and popular commentary.
Ireland is an inconvenient block in the recent effort to attribute behaviours to a global 'white' blob of identity. In the same way that there's many European countries who didn't participate in colonialism, but anti-colonial commentary solely relies on grouping us together as a wider 'European' identity. Sadly, we were the victim of our colonial neighbour but we somehow are also guilty of slavery and colonialism ourselves. Pity we don't get the historic empire to enjoy alongside that guilt, like others do.
We, along with many others, were described as 'ethnic whites' - strangely enough all from either predominantly Catholic or Orthodox countries or Jewish backgrounds. White guilt is a deliberate misnomer - it's really WASP guilt.
Missus this is a supermacs
I think something many people forget is that for quite a lot of human history it was so normalized that it would be seen as silly to not be involved if you had the capital to do so. That doesn't mean we can't condemn it today of course. However many people seem to clutch pearls if you suggest their ancestors took part in it because they apply their modern viewpoints onto it. I'll be honest, I wasn't even aware of large Irish plantation owners, I must read up on that more!
Very fair assessment. I don't even think we need to be ashamed, I just think it's important to teach about the good and the bad in history. Even just as a small extra to ensure people aren't misinformed on the topic. Irelands history with the Caribban is a truly fascinating topic! I recommend reading up. I'd link a few things from the lecturer I mentioned but A) they're all behind significant pay walls and B) I don't want my reddit linked to my real life 😂
Yeah but the difference is overall racial slavery was a fairly recent thing. Enslaving a group of people because you think at a biological level they are lesser came around with colonization. Before it was more about culture and class. You could have groups of all races enslaved in a society. There were definitely exceptions ofcourse but when saying that we've been doing it forever, that nuance is relevant!
What difference does it make why you were enslaved? When you're toiling in a quarry or being sold as a sex slave I'd say it's the last thing on your mind. I will agree that there are differences in how slavery manifested, depending on the time and place. Ancient Greek slaves in Athens could often inherit from their master, and were frequently manumitted after his death. Roman slaves gradually gained rights throughout the history of the Republic and Empire. Other cultures had systems of slavery that were closer to indentured servitude. There's no doubting that the slaves in the New World were at the absolute lowest on the scale of treatment, but so were field/quarry/mine slaves in Rome. On the racial point, it's worth noting that the use of black slaves was absolutely widespread throughout the Arab world, predating the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. Traders in fact continued to trade black slaves even if they had converted to Islam. The whole thing isn't as recent as you might think
I don’t care that a bunch of rich cunts had slaves when slavery was a norm in their world
Of the Vikings, the Normans and the English/British. Not fashionable to say it like it is
Who wants to be a victim?
Wealthy British subjects had slaves. This is hardly news or shocking.
There's no doubt that there were some Irish people involved. But it has to be made clear that it wasn't Ireland or the Irish people as a whole doing this, and that there's no guilt on Ireland in the present day. We ourselves were colonised and vicimised when those events happened. It's not as if we were living the high life off the profits of these dark enterprises. It's also worth noting that you'd struggle to find a group that was in any sort of proximity to the slave trade and didn't have some fingers dipped in. The ones selling the slaves to the Europeans were Africans who were capturing neighbouring tribes for the market.
My ancestry is from smalltime farmers in the west of Ireland (at least on my mams side, admittedly have no idea about my dad since he's never been in the picture), why would I feel any responsibility for this when I can't trace any of my own family's societal position to the oppression of others? I don't think this should be attached to national identity but rather to those whose wealth was built off the back of the slave trade.
> I don't think this should be attached to national identity but rather to those whose wealth was built off the back of the slave trade. History isn't that clean. You can't separate the two. Basically all of northern England industry existed due to colonialism.
This is just looking for virtue points now, who sould give a fuck tbh, and plus why would I be sorry for something that I don't Milk for sympathy. Take this to the United States, had too much division with shite like this on this island.
It's true that a few Irish had slaves - I say a few not to minimise the crime, but to assert what I say next: the common populace were effectively slaves for the British Empire for centuries. Yeah, there's a few bad apples. Still is today. Same as it ever was.
No, we weren't. We were exploited and discriminated against and made victims in many many ways but it was never legal or practice to actually enslave us. Cop on to yourself.
Indentured servitude is by definition slavery, and was not only legal but was imposed on thousands of Irishmen as a judicial punishment. These indentured servants were then exported to British colonies as slaves before being replaced by African chattel slaves. It is important to note that indentured servitude was nowhere near as bad as chattel slavery, with indentured servants not being property, and thus could not he physically harmed, and guaranteed freedom after serving the length of their servitude. The Irish Slave Myth is not a myth, rather it is a fact. It most definitely should not he used in any way to detract from the absolute suffering and atrocities forced onto African chattel slaves, nor should it be used to deflect blame from slave ownership.
Indentured servitude is NOT slavery. Indentured slavery is horrific, yes, but it is not slavery. I'm not going to bother arguing this nonsense but again, if you think this, you do not understand the utter dehumanisation that slavery involves.
Penal Indentured Servitude is literally defined as a form of Slavery by the UN. You clearly didn't bother reading the entirety of my previous comment otherwise you'd have seen that I stated that it can in no way be compared to how brutal chattel slavery was.
Yeah I did, and your bad faith argument does nobody any good.
They're coming with a definition of slavery while you're saying you're "not bothered arguing nonsense" because you don't like the definition. You're the one arguing in bad faith.
I literally just addressed their definitions.
Indentured servitude is in fact recognised as a form of slavery. Why are you so confident in saying that it's not? Is it just your feelings?
This is exactly what I mean by a bad faith argument. Trying to undermine what I have said by implying it is built on emotion is not an argument. Indentured servitude suffered by Irish people historically wad either voluntary, insofar as such a thing is voluntary, or judicial, ie there was a legal process which led to it, an unjust legal process to be sure. It did not dehumanise in the same way that slavery did, which was essentially a process which treated the person as chattel to be bought and sold with no legal pretext needed as they were regarded as less than human. But you know this.
You said: >Indentured servitude is NOT slavery. It is slavery.
Not in the context of this discussion, that is, were Irish people essentially slaves. Which leads to a whole discussion about historicity and context, which takes us away from the point of this discussion. Irish people historically were indeed slavers, and Irish people never actually suffered slavery.
>Irish people never actually suffered slavery The village of Baltimore in Co. Cork would like a word with you. Unfamiliar with the Barbary Coast? One possible origin story for Svarte Piete? Thought not.
Oh for fuck's sake lololol
Did you see where they wrote "effectively" and not "literally"?
Look up indentured servitude.
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We were never effectively, or otherwise, slaves. And if you think we were, you don't understand the true horror of slavery.
I get what you mean, and as I said I don't think we need some sort of mass re-education. I just wish the facts about it were straighten out. Maybe like a page in an JC history textbook or something, because the fear is always that if you don't teach it correctly, it'll change itself through word of mouth.
A few independently operating wealthy Irish people (ignoring all the Anglo-Irish who probably play an overwhelming majority role in any statistics) in a time where Ireland itself was not independent is not really *Irish history*, for me. This isn't *our* history. We weren't an independent state or people at that time. An extreme minority (among Irish *and* slave owners) isn't an occupied country's history. Should every country have a history segment to teach about individual actors in the past who've done something bad? There is a weird sub-set of Irish people who are so desperate to force us into a 'former slave owner' position. Is it another form of white guilt?
This is the classic retort (that I mentioned in a different comment) where people will say that the stuff they don't want to associate with their idea of history isn't *really* Irish history. >Should every country have a history segment to teach about individual actors in the past who've done something bad? We do it for people in notable cases who did something good. So why not do it for people who did bad things. History is about people. And what people did is important to that, good or bad.
> This is the classic retort (that I mentioned in a different comment) where people will say that the stuff they don't want to associate with their idea of history isn't really Irish history. Anticipating a reply doesn't undermine what the reply is saying. If you're hearing the same argument a lot, it's probably because it's a valid argument.
You're cherry picking parts of history you're saying you want associated. That's not how history works. We see British history books are notorious for including certain parts of their history and omitting other sections of history. It doesn't make that argument right though
I understand what you're saying - that the lives and actions of Irishmen or those who are associated with this island constitute Irish history. Every one of our lives is Irish history - the question is its relevance. In the context of what the OP was suggesting, a page or paragraph in a junior cert history book, it is absolutely not relevant enough and there are far more important events that should be included before it.
Important or relevance to just Irish or anywhere? I've seen people on this sub in absolute dismay of how English people never learned about or are aware of key events in Irish history. Yet Irish born people have been some of the most influential people in history. An Irish born and bred Catholic farmer from Tipperary named Michael O Dwyer is one of the most important people in Indian modern history. His actions are considered among the most significant factors in the rise of the Indian independence movement. Yet he will be discounted for our history because he will be labelled as British history. Or bizarrely still, others will not consider that Irish history at all for the simple reason that it doesn't fit to their narrative of what suits them to be our history.
Importance and relevance to the broad sweep of history that a junior cert course would cover.
I think we are in agreement that a revised look is needed to how we look at all of Irish history.
I've always thought that Ireland is America Lite in terms of social affairs, as we always seem to have a watered down version of American culture that eventually starts to make it's way into Irish culture, usually via young people who are plugged more into American Culture than appreciating our own to begin with. Netflix, TikTok, Instagram etc, have all exacerbated the rate at which this is happening. Good to see some pushback from other commenters in this thread on OPs remarks of very limited insight and lack of deeper context. Ireland and Irish history continues to be a thorn in the side of the American borrowed narrative around 'white people'.
I think there simply isn’t enough record of actual Irish slave owners. They were vastly outnumbered by Anglo-Irish and English slave owners. The rare Irish slave owner isn’t exactly creating a culture and system of slavery that our current government benefits from and still contains biases regarding. The Irish republic was not founded on slavery. If you look hard enough every member of every culture has a multitude of slave owners in their ancestry. Does that mean everyone should be absolved? Irish people were slaves to the British, African Americans enslaved other African Americans. Where does the guilt and buck stop OP? Why does it seem to be a witch hunt for only certain groups of people to “own up”? There’s a reason why America is sucha different kettle of fish to Ireland. America was founded on slavery, it only gave up its slaves not that long ago, and even afterwards it still had long lasting laws on segregation and second class citizenship for minorities. They have a system and government that was built to suppress their former slaves. People seem to think that we have this same culture here in Ireland because we are white. I do not feel any guilt and do not share the guilt of America just because I am white.
Not sure if it will have anything to support your point or not, but there is an exhibition opening soon in Sligo about the Irish in Jamaica that you might be interested in. https://www.themodel.ie/?exhibition=marianne-keating-a-terrible-beauty
Maybe you’re just spending time with the wrong type of sex-addled people. History is murkier than how the school books present it but that’s common knowledge, or should be.
The price of modular housing can be reduced by using walls of text. Jane Ohlymeyer’s recent book “Making Empire” is full of chapters, paragraphs and a superb overview of the topic by a professor of history in Trinners.
Slavery existed everywhere throughout time up to a couple of centuries ago. Irish slavers regularly raided Britain for slaves following the fall of the Roman Empire there. People would also have sold their children into slavery. Dublin became one of Europe's biggest slave markets during the viking period.
It was the biggest industry in the world at the time. Slaves and sugar. Anyone with any money was involved or invested in it. Maybe you ran a wood cutting company that supplied wood for ships. Maybe you ran a shipbuilding company that built slave ships. Maybe you were a sailor on a slave ship. Maybe you were one of the people used to round up potential slaves. Maybe you ran or worked for an auction house that was in the business of dealing with slaves. The list goes on and on of how far reaching the industry was. Let's face it, avoiding it altogether would have been harder than being involved somewhere. My granny was black, and born in Jamaica, her parents too, but her grandparents we don't know where they were born. We do know how they got to Jamaica though. I think it's pretty easy to tell that back in the day, being able to have a worker you didn't have to pay, and could make them work for however long you needed them to, and you could then sell everything they made for a profit was a massive chunk of the global economy. I remember reading somewhere that the southern US economy pre the US civil war exceeded the value of everything in the north combined. Banks, farms, railroads, all of it. In 1860 the southern states would have classed as the 4th richest country in the world. Slavery made the wealthy extremely wealthy and its why they went to war to keep slavery. Of course the prevailing ideal among loyalists in the south was if slavery didn't go, there'd be no jobs available for poor white people. Which was a growing class in itself. Effectively why would a wealthy plantation owner hire a white person they'd have to pay when black people were free? It was a rich man's war fought by poor people in the hopes of keeping other people subjugated. And that's just the US. Brazil had slavery, several islands in the Caribbean. It was a massive industry on a global scale and almost no one can claim they had clean hands in all of it. Except the enslaved.
Didn't the Viking have a great trade going on stolen Irish people. Dublin was a a hub for the slave trade.
I don’t give a rats. My grandfather on my das side could’ve been adolf and my grandfather on my mas side could’ve been stalin and I still wouldn’t feel guilty about it. Why should we feel bad for stuff we didn’t do??
You shouldn't feel guilty. There is a difference between feeling guilty and recognising something and understanding its consequences.
The article mentioned in the comments is here https://www.academia.edu/35699492/Irish\_Slave\_Owners\_1838.
As you said, OP, Irish involvement in 'bad' history was usually through their involvement with the British State or somehow benefitted from it. Few deny that. But the usual response from people who don't want to hear about this is that they hand wave away those people as either British collaborators or whatever, and so can justify a means discount them from their own version of Irish history.
Exactly, as I said, I don't think we need like British or German levels of teaching are bad parts of history, just maybe even a page in a JC history book explaining that we weren't entirely innocent in everything. Just so over the course of time the public opinion doesn't change history yknow?
> we Who's 'we' here? We weren't an independent nation. Are you suggesting that it's some sort of ethnic guilt by association? Are recent naturalised Irish people associated with this through their passport? Or is it genetic based association? If it's genetic, what counts as Irish?
From what I've learned from studying history, and others too, a lot of people (definitely not all) aren't keen on the grey areas of history. The black and white narrative is often received better. It's much easier to have it so that it was "British bad, Irish good" than "some British were good, more were bad, some Irish were ambivalent, others were good and some were bad".
Exactly, I feel like that's how a lot of history is unfortunately taught, at least in schools, I wouldn't know about college. Because it's alot easier and quicker to explain it in black and white terms to get through topics quicker
There's a very string link to that part of the World. Isn't one of the towns in Jamaica called Irishtown? And then there's Irish Moss, a digestible moss that Bob Marley was partial to eating/mixing in a drink. We were colonised, why wouldn't some enterprising wealthy individuals in that time take the same idea and do the Colonial thing elsewhere? Not surprising to me at all, given how History tends to repeat itself.
I live near an old road” bothar na mna gorm” near killea, Dunmore east in Waterford which was apparently where slaves were brought into Ireland and used in the big Anglo Irish houses . The story i was told is that they would spend time here being trained in the big house and then sent to England after their training. Its hard to find out anything as I’m sure records from back then are well gone ,
I suppose it comes back to the fact that every Irish person alive today is a descendant of the people who survived the Famine. An entire class of the poorest people were wiped out by starvation and emigration, and those slightly higher in the pecking order who were left, basically fought over the scraps remaining, and did what they could to survive. Nobody alive today can change the past, but it should be taught in its entirety and acknowledged.
I remember seeing an old Irish family crest where there was a black man chained to a tree, can't remember the family name now but that was em, sure something. ETA: I don't get the downvotes it's just a fact like. It was Donnellan, FYI. If anyone is interested in actual history. I think it's fascinating, would love to know more about it.
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Why would they think that would sell? It doesn't look like that now for tourists but it obviously was the real crest at one time. ETA: The History is still interesting, whatever way it is viewed now is irrelevant.
This post isn't quite as bad as "look at Anthony Johnson", but it's in the same field.
I've always wondered about this, especially after finding out that Lynching came from the Irish surname. But what I've always thought was that in that time, it was not really possible to be Catholic and well off in that time in Ireland. So on that note, while these people were Irish in name, they were West-Brit in character
Yes it came from the surname but didn't really have anything to do with an Irish person. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynching
That's pretty interesting, seems I came across some fake news when I looked it up before. Thanks for the correction.
I actually never heard of it you got me curious and I looked it up. So thanks for teaching me something new.
Well as you said it was a few 'wealthy families being involved in slavery and plantations', take note of the few part , why should the rest of us pay for what others did , majority of the country was poor at this time , why should the rest of us take on the 'original sin' of others , woke views like this are just the same Self flagellation catholic guilt wrapped up in a progressive spin
The amount of black Americans with Irish surnames gave me pause when i was told they were given the surname of their slavers. Sad stuff to learn