The Irish Slave Myth
Colonialism's First Wounds: The Irish and English Rule
The Irish Slave myth is a term used to describe the alleged enslavement of the Irish under English colonialism. It is a controversial and debated topic among historians. While the term “slave,” to American ears, doesn’t quite accurately characterize the Irish experience when compared to the chattel slavery endured by Africans, it does not erase the severe oppression the Irish faced under English rule, especially in the mid-17th century. As Americans, we focus on the enslavement of the Africans because that is primarily what we did. Like all peoples, Americans mostly concentrate on their own history; in fact, I argue that is what should be the norm. It is weird to focus on atrocities committed by others abroad rather than problems and history at home. One should rightly take priority over the other, and one should learn the basics of their country’s history first. Nevertheless, it is important also to know the history of others, especially those countries like Ireland, which are so closely tied to the history of the American mother country, England.
The Irish story in the 17th century is one of dispossession, forced removal, and systemic subjugation, particularly at the hands of the Puritan English after the English Civil War. Their plight, while distinct, can be compared and linked to that of African slaves. And the Native Americans, too.
First, the Irish Slave myth is not entirely a myth. The Irish were cruelly oppressed by the Puritan English Commonwealth government, but not to the same degree as the African slaves. The Irish could be called the first victims of English colonialism. Unlike the Spanish method of exploitation mixed with levels of amalgamation and absorption, the English Puritans didn’t seek to make the Irish into English folks.
One of the central themes in Irish history is its “forever” struggle against English domination. The English first arrived in the 12th century, during the Norman period in the Middle Ages, and stayed in Ireland until 1922, or until today, if you consider Northern Ireland to still be under English domination rather than an equal and integral part of the British state. The Irish can be regarded as the first victims of English colonialism, which started during the Tudor conquest of Ireland in the 16th century under King Henry VIII, the one who liked to behead his wives. Henry declared himself King of Ireland in 1542. He didn’t consult the natives.
Unlike the Spanish colonizers in the New World, who allowed a degree of cultural absorption in their colonial territories with a graduated identity system, the casta, the English—especially the Puritans saw things as more binary, more black and white. To them, the Irish were backward and uncivilized, irredeemably Catholic, justifying harsh policies of land confiscation, forced displacement, and economic exploitation. Irish lands were seized and redistributed to English settlers, with little regard for the welfare or rights of the native population. Sound familiar?
They didn’t really try to make them Protestants or assimilate the Irish into being English. They took their land and removed resisters from Ireland. During the Wars of the Three Kingdoms (1638-1653), the tyrannical Puritan leader Oliver Cromwell sent thousands of Irish POWs to the Caribbean to work the plantations. Worked many of them to death. Just like the enslaved Africans would for two centuries afterward. From the Age of Discovery to the 19th century, the Caribbean was an extra deadly forced labor zone on islands including Antigua, Barbados, Jamaica, Montserrat, Nevis, and St Kitts. More enslaved Africans were sent to the Caribbean than elsewhere because they had to replenish the supply, so many were killed by the system of slavery.
First, there was overwork and exhaustion. Then, malnutrition due to lack of food and variety of food. Added to this were the accidents from swinging machetes when exhausted and malnourished, then falling in the sugarcane as it was crushed to produce its juice - again due to exhaustion, and finally, the threat of the heat from the boiling houses where the sugarcane juices were refined into sugar which burned and further exhausted the laborers. And finally, on top of all of these, malaria, yellow fever, smallpox, dysentery, and typhoid hit the already malnourished and exhausted workers. This killed the African slaves by the hundreds of thousands. Many hundreds of Irish died this way, too. They were not chattel slaves like the Africans; the Irish were more like convict labor, though their crime was fighting for their home, hardly a just sentence. So they could theoretically reacquire freedom. But that is if they survived and if they had the means to book passage back home to Ireland. Some Irish stayed and indeed acquired property and, sadly, even acquired African slaves of their own. But many died like slaves. In the colonies, during the Pequot War in the 1630s, the Puritan Pilgrims of New England, led by the Massachusetts Bay colony, also sold Native American POWs into slavery in the Caribbean. Irish, Indigenous, and Africans toiled and died on the Caribbean plantations. You could also argue that the involuntary Irish laborers were political prisoners, and the Caribbean was their gulag. In some cases, it is reported that Irish sent to the Caribbean under these conditions were branded, not with the initials of a slave owner as the Africans suffered, but with an equally clear mark of their status as far as the English saw it: “Fugitive Traitor.” But there was no mass constant for-profit traffic in Irish forced labor; their children were not born slaves.
The exploited Irish, though, retained legal status as persons and had the chance, a slim hopeful chance, to eventually gain their freedom. Unfortunately, some did not live long enough to benefit from this distinction. Different from chattel slavery, still cruel.
The Puritans accelerated the policy of seizing and stealing Irish lands, especially from Irish nobles, removing their leadership and forcing them onto specific land reserved for them, where they could be monitored and controlled. Yes, the Reservation system used against Indigenous Amerindians was started by the English and inflicted first on the Irish, which the Puritans made worse both in Ireland and New England and eventually, Americans spread the system across the continent. The Act for the Settlement of Ireland (1652) systematically dismantled the Irish aristocracy, cementing English control over the island and establishing patterns of land theft that would be repeated in other British colonies. The methods for oppressing and exploiting the Irish were perfected in the New World.
Later the Scots would eagerly join the English in exploiting the weakness of the Irish. Scots led the way in taking over Ulster after the Glorious Revolution drove the Catholic King James II, favored by the Irish, from his throne. These Ulster Scots—later known as Scots-Irish— were Presbyterians who also harbored suspicion and animosity toward Catholics, and they benefitted from taking land in Ireland. The continued resentment and discrimination faced by the Irish Catholics in Ulster exploded in 1969 as the Troubles. The first time I visited the UK, I met a British soldier serving at the Tower of London; he had served in Northern Ireland. I was a curious undergraduate, so he indulged my questions. He told me then that nowadays, the conflict was not simply religious; the Ulster-Scots were, in his words, “one side who is British, and the other who are Irish.” It was very much a national struggle with latent or ancestral religious animus. The Ulster Scots remain the primary upholders of British rule in Northern Ireland. Ironically, just prior to the outbreak of the Troubles, the Northern Irish adopted the protest method of Martin Luther King Jr because they saw the success of the African American Civil Rights Movement as a hopeful inspiration. Give the Irish their due.
We don’t need myths. The Irish have earned the right to their own story. The Irish weren’t slaves like the Africans but can rightly be called the first victims of the British Empire.