Stephen Palmie and Francisco A. Scarano’s The Caribbean: A History of the Region and Its Peoples is a sweeping 600+ page overview of the history of the Caribbean from 1492 to 2010.
The state of the art book is far too comprehensive to sum up in a short little review. It will suffice to say that this is the go to resource for any general reader trying to get a grip on why the Caribbean is the way it is today. In spite of the typical leftwing bias, I highly recommend it and any reader who grabs a copy will learn a lot from this book.
OD’s first book, Shattering The Golden Circle: The Failure of Free Society in Dixie, Haiti, and the Caribbean, will be published sometime early next year. In the meantime, this book has helped me focus and answer some of my own research questions while opening up some more fruitful veins of inquiry:
(1) What is “the Caribbean”? Which countries/islands are included and which are excluded?
The Caribbean region consists of three archipelagos: the Bahamas and Turks & Caicos islands, the Greater Antilles (Cuba, Jamaica*, Puerto Rico, Haiti and the Dominican Republic), and the Lesser Antilles (Leeward Islands and Windward Islands), as well as Belize in Central America and the Guianas in northern South America (Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana).
The Leeward Islands include the U.S. Virgin Islands, British Virgin Islands, Anguilla, St. Martin/Sint Maarten, St. Bartholomew, Saba, St. Eustatius, St. Kitts and Nevis, Antigua and Barbuda, Montserrat, Guadeloupe, Aruba, Curaçao, and Bonaire.
The Windward Islands include Martinique, Dominica, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Grenada, along with Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago which are commonly classified with them.
A few months ago, I couldn’t have named all these islands much less placed them on a map, and I knew little about their history, culture, or relationship to the United States.
*The Cayman Islands have traditionally been a dependency of Jamaica.
(2) Is there a connection between the culture of the Caribbean and the American South?
Yes.
Few Southerners are aware of our strong historical ties to the Caribbean. South Carolina was founded as a cultural extension of the British West Indies and the other Lower South states were molded in its image.
Virginia and the Upper South colonies were not founded as slave societies, but they too adopted the South Carolina model in the late seventeenth/early eighteenth century, at least in their coastal lowlands.
From the British Caribbean we borrowed negro slavery, racialism, conservatism, white supremacy, the plantation system, the slave code, anti-miscegenation laws, speech patterns, architecture, and some of our cuisine.
The American Revolution artificially severed the Southern colonies from the British Caribbean colonies and geopolitically oriented “the South” toward “the Northeast” and inland and west toward the continent and away from our previous orientation east toward the Atlantic.
In 1776, there were 26 – not 13 – British American colonies, and defense of the more valuable colonies in the British West Indies from France significantly affected the military course of the American Revolution.
In 1861, Caribbean expansion was the poison pill that killed the Crittendon Compromise and ensured the destruction of the Union. Tensions between the North and South over the failed attempts to annex Cuba was a major grievance that motivated secession in the Old Southwest (Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana).
Southerners were also motivated to secede from the Union by having spent half a century observing the post-apocalyptic fruits of abolition – the failure of free society – in Haiti and the British and French West Indies.
(3) What is the “Golden Circle”? Why would anyone think of the Caribbean as being part of a “Golden Circle”? Isn’t the Caribbean part of the “Third World”?
First, the “Golden Circle” is a phrase that was used in the antebellum South to refer to a peculiar vision of Manifest Destiny as a federation or an empire of slave states based on the U.S. South that would stretch across Central America and the Caribbean.
The Knights of the Golden Circle was an antebellum secret society that advocated the creation of a new Southern empire in the Caribbean. Its flag consisted of a crescent and fifteen stars – the crescent symbolized the rising Southern nation around the Gulf of Mexico and the fifteen stars the various parts of the Southern empire.
The Southern empire would have been an agricultural powerhouse based on plantation slavery and classical republicanism that would have controlled the world markets for cotton, tobacco, sugar, rice, and coffee.
Second, Americans tend to be grossly ignorant of world history, and one example of this is that the Caribbean used to be the richest region in the Americas and the geographic center of European imperialism during the late seventeenth, eighteenth, and early nineteenth centuries.
The plantation complex that stretched from southern North America through the Caribbean to northern South America was at the center of the world economy and produced the agricultural commodities that drove the industrialization of Europe.
The “South Atlantic System,” which refers to the same entity, was a lucrative transnational economic organism based on the Caribbean. The American South and Cuba were its northern periphery. The “Golden Circle” was a world economic engine that would have been valuable to control and develop to its full potential during its heyday.
Third, the Caribbean has been a part of the “Third World” only since the disastrous experiment in abolition destroyed the prosperity of the region during the early nineteenth century by forcing slave societies to conform to the liberal social model.
(4) How did the “Golden Circle” develop? When was it destroyed?
The rise of the “Golden Circle” can be precisely dated to the transformation of Barbados into the model slave society from 1640 to 1643 and the from there to the publication of the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen in 1789.
This is followed by a crisis period during the French Revolution that resulted in the destruction of its geographic epicenter – Saint-Domingue, the richest colony in the world – and a recovery period after 1804 that saw the final expansion of the Golden Circle north into Cuba and Puerto Rico and the Cotton Kingdom in the American South and south into the new British colonies of Trinidad and Tobago and British Guiana.
The fall can be dated from 1807 when Britain and America abolished the slave trade to the final abolition of slavery in Cuba and Puerto Rico in 1886. Significant events within this time frame include British abolition in 1834 to 1838, French abolition in 1848, Dutch abolition in 1863, and American abolition in 1865.
(5) Who destroyed the Golden Circle? Why was it destroyed?
It was indisputably destroyed by metropolitan Whites in Britain, France, Spain, the Netherlands, and the northern United States, not by slave uprisings. Even Haiti would have been reconquered were it not for the Napoleonic Wars.
Britain was the animating force behind its destruction and it came in three successive waves: the end of the slave trade (1807), abolition (1834 to 1838), and free trade (1846) – the Golden Circle had survived the foolishness of the French Revolution.
The fundamental cause was a moral, religious, and ideological sea change in values in Britain that stemmed from the twin evils of evangelical Christianity and Enlightenment ideology that weakened its national character and laid the foundation for the hopelessly degenerate Britain of our own times.
(6) Is there any truth to a Jewish role in the rise of slavery?
Yes.
Interestingly enough, the anti-slavery movement was the one utopian reform movement where Jews were noticeably overshadowed by Gentiles.
In an earlier phase of their history, Jews were not notable for being anti-White. In fact, Jews seem to have played a major role in pioneering the slave trade and creating race-based plantation slavery.
My preliminary research indicates that Sephardic Jews in Brazil were heavily involved in the slave trade and kickstarting the plantation complex which they spread to the British and French West Indies after they were kicked out of northern Brazil.
From the Caribbean the plantation complex spread to southern North America where Jews were noticeably present in large numbers in colonial Charleston, New Orleans, and Savannah.
(7) What was the result of abolition and imposing “free society” on the slave societies of the American South, Haiti, and Caribbean?
We can say without qualification that the results of abolition and the triumph of freedom and equality, or “free society” as it was called by its Southern critics like George Fitzhugh, was total and unmitigated economic devastation.
The South sunk into an abyss of poverty which lasted for nearly a hundred years. The sugar industry temporarily collapsed in the Caribbean. Some places like Haiti and Jamaica never recovered their former relative prosperity.
Freedom failed. There was a collapse on the level of the western Roman Empire entering the Dark Ages. What you had was an intensely cultivated area that had been at the forefront of modern agriculture suddenly taking on an intensely archaic appearance.
Nowhere more so than Haiti.
(8) Why is Haiti so much worse off than its black neighbors in the Caribbean?
Haiti is the most extreme case of the regional social and economic collapse which I call “Shattering the Golden Circle.”
– First, 2/3 of the slaves in Saint-Domingue in 1791 had been born in Africa, so the blacks there were particularly barbaric, shook off the European yoke, retained much of their culture and wallowed in their own barbarism which was stamped out to a far greater degree elsewhere.
– Second, Haiti is the only country that succeeded in violently throwing off European rule – freedom and equality triumphed there in 1804 whereas Jamaica didn’t become independent until 1962.
Guadeloupe is the anti-Haiti – the Richepance expedition succeeded whereas the Leclerc expedition failed. Slavery, white supremacy, and colonialism were restored there in 1803. That’s why Guadeloupe, which is now the French equivalent of Hawaii, has one of the highest standard of livings in the region while Haiti is the poorest country in the Western hemisphere, even though the blacks on both islands are the same people.
– Third, the blacks in Haiti exterminated the French population and banned Europeans from owning property in Haiti, which kind of deterred foreign investment. This didn’t change until Haiti adopted a new constitution during the American occupation in 1918.
This is highly significant. In Haiti, we can see what would have happened in Dixie if Reconstruction had not been overthrown in South Carolina and if the blacks had gotten the “40 acres and a mule.”
That’s why Haiti is so much worse off than its neighbors: as an independent country that was relatively ignored by Europeans until the early twentieth century, the blacks in Haiti seized political power and got their hands on the land, which was not the case in, say, America or Jamaica.
In Haiti, they exercised their freedom and equality which they associated with the rejection of the plantation system and the market economy in favor of subsistence peasant agriculture, and the result was the division of the land into small unproductive plots and the crushing rural poverty and backwardness of modern deforested and overpopulated Haiti.
(9) Some of the black countries in the Caribbean region – Bermuda, the Bahamas, the Cayman Islands, the British Virgin Islands – have high per capita incomes. If freedom has failed, how do we explain these success stories?
There is a very simple answer: offshore financial centers.
In the late twentieth century, several of these black countries developed a new role in the world economy as centers of tax evasion and money laundering and catering to the South American narcotraffickers.
Europeans and Americans pour their money into banks in places like the Cayman Islands because there is no income tax there. Corporations also incorporate there for tax reasons.
This is how a place like Bermuda which has no agriculture, manufacturing, or natural resources like oil or natural gas can have the appearance of a first world standard of living. Most of these corporations exist there only on paper and employ few natives.
Bermuda and other blacks islands have many of the same problems of the other countries like Black Undertow violent crime.
(10) Why did White settlement in the Caribbean fail?
Slavery, sugar, and disease.
It is clear that tropical diseases like malaria and yellow fever decimated the White population in the British and French West Indies. Hundreds of thousands of British and French settlers went to the Caribbean but left behind few descendants because of disease.
Further researching this matter has convinced me though that disease was an effect of slavery and sugar monoculture. Malaria and yellow fever came to the Caribbean with African slaves. The deforestation of the sugar islands created the ideal habitat for the mosquitos that transmitted these diseases.
Cuba had a strong White majority until the end of the eighteenth century. Then again, Cuba only became a deforested slave society in the early nineteenth century, which shows that White colonization of the Caribbean could have succeeded were it not for sugar and slavery.
(11) What happened to the Whites of the Caribbean?
Poor White communities exist throughout the Caribbean. The Red Legs of Barbados are probably the mist famous group. There are other White communities in places like Jamaica and Guadeloupe.
It will suffice to say that freedom and equality has progressively decimated the White population ever since the Haitian Revolution in 1791. This subject will be thoroughly covered in a chapter in my book.
(12) Are there any counterpoints to the fate of Whites in the Caribbean?
Yes.
St. Martin/Sint Maarten and St. Bartholomew are examples of the what the whole Caribbean region could be like – not to mention Hawaii, America’s own tropical sugar island – if the black population there disappeared tomorrow.
(13) What about the tourist industry?
The Caribbean used to have a reputation as a death trap before it became a “tropical paradise.”
After the Spanish-American War, the Americans invested a lot of money in bringing disease under control by eliminating the fetid mosquito breeding grounds in Cuba and Puerto Rico. Disease ceased to be a problem after the European powers learned how malaria and yellow fever were transmitted.
The elimination of disease along with long distance air travel, air conditioning, cruise ships and the like made the American and European driven tourism industry possible. As with the offshore financial centers on the Caymans or the oil industry in Trinidad and Tobago, foreign capital has created pockets of prosperity in the Caribbean like Montego Bay in Jamaica.
(14) Isn’t imperialism responsible for the poverty and backwardness of the Caribbean?
No.
First, Haiti is by far the poorest country in the region, and that is due to its success in throwing off European imperialism and exterminating the French population, whereas Guadeloupe is one of the richest islands in the Caribbean because it is part of France.
Second, Puerto Rico is far richer than Haiti or Jamaica because it is an American colony and like Guadeloupe is showered by federal welfare state spending.
Third, half of Puerto Rico now lives in the United States and 41 percent of Suriname moved to the Netherlands before independence. Hundreds of thousands of Haitians have moved to the U.S., Cuba, Canada, and the Dominican Republic.
Jamaica has exported a huge percentage of its own people to the United States, Britain, and Canada. The blacks in the Caribbean desperately want to live under white supremacy and white privilege because they lack the racial capacity to generate wealth and maintain civilization in their own countries.
The poorest countries in the Caribbean are independent nations. The richest ones are all overseas territories of the U.S., Britain, France, and the Netherlands. And it is due to the richer black islands being in a position to reap the benefits of white privilege.
(15) Does Haiti need a Marshall Plan?
There are more NGOs operating in Haiti than any country in the world – ever since the fall of “Baby Doc” Duvalier, the NGOs have effectively run Haiti, especially over the last ten years. Let’s not forget that modern Haiti is the fruit of the first NGO in world history, the Société des amis des Noirs, or the so-called “Friends of the Blacks.”
The international community has poured an unprecedented amount of foreign aid into Haiti. I don’t have the exact figure at hand which will be in the book, but Haiti has received the equivalent of multiple Marshall Plans, even though Sean Penn recently slammed the whole fucking world at the Cannes Film Festival for Haiti fatigue.
(16) What’s your solution to the poverty and backwardness of the Caribbean?
The poverty and backwardness of the modern Caribbean was caused by the “Shattering of the Golden Circle” – led by Britain, nineteenth century liberals imposed “free society” on race-based, slave-based plantation societies with predictable catastrophic results.
I think the Caribbean could be fixed if private filibusters were allowed to operate unmolested in the region like the ones who seized Jamaica in 1655. The Caribbean needs a Norman Conquest that would reestablish white supremacy and civilization in these islands and return the black population to Africa.
(17) Does Haiti have a halo?
Haiti’s halo would be the brown ring around the toilet of the Third World. It is a failed society that was born in a Satanic anti-White voodoo ceremony. 208 years of free society should have discredited that model by now.
(18) Whal is the state of the Black Undertow in the Caribbean?
The Black Caribbean is one of the most violent regions in the world – in fact, it is significantly more violent than the United States, and the blight, the poverty, the eroded tax base, the low property values and all the other known manifestations of the Visible Black Hand of Economics have far surpassed Detroit there.
Haiti is a Fourth World country. Jamaica is a warlord democracy they caters to “garrison constituencies.” Last year, the Black Undertow violent crime in Trinidad became so bad that a national state of emergency was declared and troops were put on the street to restore order.
The Caribbean, which is the most Africanized region in the New World and home to 15 separate experiments in black freedom and equality ranging from Cuban communism to Puerto Rican capitalism, is now peripheral to the world economy.
Much of its prosperity is driven by Americans and Europeans: tourism, international business, oil and gas, all of which are sectors which are certain to be negatively affected as the global depression accelerates. Storm clouds are on the horizon.
Note: Here are some videos of my proposed filibuster solution:
Excellent article, Hunter. You have a very good grasp on the modern Caribbean, as well. Anyone who has spent time there, outside of just visiting a resort, cannot fail to notice the Potemkin village like quality of many of the islands.
Shining resorts, financial districts, and wealthy retreats along the coasts give way to the decaying remains of colonial civilization, and beyond that enormous black holes whose violence, ugliness, and squalor dwarf the urban blight found in Amurrican cities.
Deo Vindice
“In an earlier phase of their history, Jews were not notable for being anti-White. In fact, Jews seem to have played a major role in pioneering the slave trade and creating race-based plantation slavery.”
I think you just contradicted yourself.
Bonaccorsi is a cleverdick. Pray tell what is the contradiction re slavery?
Good read … I look forward to the book.
Any questions you would like to see answered in the book? I figure that the Jewish role in slavery will be a big hit.
It’s a pioneering role in Sugar. One in which they were partially edged out.
Can’t wait for the book, Hunter. I wish I had all this information in my Philosopy classes at the University while I sat and listened to a Haitian immigrant “girl” blame her countries failures on the French and assert that the whites “stole all the natural resources”.
I didnt know fertile farmland could be “stolen”. Did they sow the entire island in salt?
I was such an ignorant child. To go back now, at 30, knowing what I know…I would probably be kicked out of school.
I would really like to see you tackle “Bacon’s Rebellion”. Not the neo-diversity analysis of the last few years, but, as a White revolt against the establishment of a Spanish colonial type system in America.
Btw, there’s a new book out about Bacon’s Rebellion, but, I haven’t read it.
This is an informative summary, HW. Well done. I will have to get this book.
One issue though. I don’t think that relocating millions of Blacks from the Caribbean would be economical or possible to do in a humane manner – especially not by private filibusters. But, if a Caribbean island were taken over, the new rulers of the island could impose order to the place, eliminate democracy and equality, invite Western settlers, cut off welfare programs and offer to re-settle at no expense those who wanted to relocate to the Third World. What you would have, I think is a slow dwindling of the Third World population there. The ones who stayed would be those who could abide the system – probably middle class Blacks who would collaborate with the new rulers.
I was completely unaware of Saint Barthelemy and it’s large White majority. What’s more interesting, is that they are the descendants of the original settlers. Very cool.
According to the Jan. 2009 census, St. Barts had 8,902 inhabitants. The island is unusual in the Caribbean in that the large majority (90-95%) of its residents are of European descent. The full-time residents are French citizens who work at establishments on the island. Most of them are descendants of the first settlers, of Breton, Normand, Poitevin, Saintonge and Angevin lineage. French is the native tongue of the population.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Barth%C3%A9lemy#Demographics
Hunter Wallace says:
‘Any questions you would like to see answered in the book? I figure that the Jewish role in slavery will be a big hit.’
Well, I would like to know more of the unfortunate White slaves who are almost never mentioned when speaking of slavery.
Please pay particular attention to the third paragraph below.
— Resort to Large-scale Chatel Irish Slavery —
Wiki:
Irish Slavery in Jamaica
The Irish arrived, mostly as slaves, in Jamaica over 350 years ago in the mid-1600s at the time of English Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell’s capture of Jamaica and not long after brutal repression of uprisings against English rule in Ireland. Some early Irish slaves were indentured but this was followed by importation of far larger numbers of IRISH CHATEL SLAVES (those under total, lifelong slavery).
Early Attempts at Indentured Irish Slavery
When English Admirals Penn and Venables failed in their expedition to take Santo Domingo from the Spanish, they turned their attention to Jamaica, not wanting to return to Cromwell empty-handed. With reinforcements from English held Barbados (many of whom were Irish) they made quick work of dispatching the weak Spanish defence and soon realized that they needed workers to support their new prize. They looked eastward to islands already under English control, Barbados, St. Lucia, St. Kitts and Montserrat, and imported young, mainly male, bonded servants, many of whom were Irish Some of these bonded servants became planters upon release as did some of their descendents.
Resort to Large-scale Chatel Irish Slavery
Cromwell was not successful in securing hoped-for large number of bonded Irish slaves For Jamaica, so he resorted to transferring entire Barbadan plantations, already stocked with Irish CHATEL SLAVES (those under total lifelong slavery, who could be individually BOUGHT AND SOLD LIKE CATTLE ) in much larger numbers to Jamaica instead. Irish chatel slavery involved tens of thousands of Irish people and was an extremely brutal practice many were WORKED TO DEATH and then BURIED in the sugar cane fields where they FELL DEAD. BRUTAL TORTURE was common for those Irish slaves who resisted or tried to escape.
Eventual Intermarriage with West African Jamaicans
Most of the Jamaican Irish slave population eventually intermarried with West African slaves or their descendents, so many modern Black Jamaicans also have some Irish ancestry. Many Jamaicans today also have Irish surnames. Irish Heritage is the second largest reported ancestry, after African, on the Island, especially common for those who self identify as mixed-race.
Hunter – have Mark Allen Seigel do the Forward.
Sam,
That’s a good topic.
BTW, the Wiki article is ridiculous.
“BTW, the Wiki article is ridiculous.”
Why?
Because indentured servants were not chattel slaves. They were contract workers. Indentured servitude had existed in England for a long time and was not slavery as it was practiced in Barbados.
Hunter Wallace says:
‘Because indentured servants were not chattel slaves. They were contract workers. Indentured servitude had existed in England for a long time and was not slavery as it was practiced in Barbados.’
The Wiki article speaks of indentured and – chatel – slaves in Jamaica. Other sources on the web address the subject. Michael Hoffman wrote about White chatel slaves. I’m not as well versed as some and am searching for more information.
Another source: The Irish Slave Trade – The Forgotten “White” Slaves
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-irish-slave-trade-the-forgotten-white-slaves/
They came as slaves; vast human cargo transported on tall British ships bound for the Americas. They were shipped by the hundreds of thousands and included men, women, and even the youngest of children.
Whenever they rebelled or even disobeyed an order, they were punished in the harshest ways. Slave owners would hang their human property by their hands and set their hands or feet on fire as one form of punishment. They were burned alive and had their heads placed on pikes in the marketplace as a warning to other captives.
We don’t really need to go through all of the gory details, do we? We know all too well the atrocities of the African slave trade.
But, are we talking about African slavery? King James II and Charles I also led a continued effort to enslave the Irish. Britain’s famed Oliver Cromwell furthered this practice of dehumanizing one’s next door neighbor.
The Irish slave trade began when James II sold 30,000 Irish prisoners as slaves to the New World. His Proclamation of 1625 required Irish political prisoners be sent overseas and sold to English settlers in the West Indies. By the mid 1600s, the Irish were the main slaves sold to Antigua and Montserrat. At that time, 70% of the total population of Montserrat were Irish slaves.
Ireland quickly became the biggest source of human livestock for English merchants. The majority of the early slaves to the New World were actually white.
From 1641 to 1652, over 500,000 Irish were killed by the English and another 300,000 were sold as slaves. Ireland’s population fell from about 1,500,000 to 600,000 in one single decade. Families were ripped apart as the British did not allow Irish dads to take their wives and children with them across the Atlantic. This led to a helpless population of homeless women and children. Britain’s solution was to auction them off as well.
During the 1650s, over 100,000 Irish children between the ages of 10 and 14 were taken from their parents and sold as slaves in the West Indies, Virginia and New England. In this decade, 52,000 Irish (mostly women and children) were sold to Barbados and Virginia. Another 30,000 Irish men and women were also transported and sold to the highest bidder. In 1656, Cromwell ordered that 2000 Irish children be taken to Jamaica and sold as slaves to English settlers.
Many people today will avoid calling the Irish slaves what they truly were: Slaves. They’ll come up with terms like “Indentured Servants” to describe what occurred to the Irish. However, in most cases from the 17th and 18th centuries, Irish slaves were nothing more than human cattle.
John Bonaccorsi wrote: “ ‘In an earlier phase of their history, Jews were not notable for being anti-White. In fact, Jews seem to have played a major role in pioneering the slave trade and creating race-based plantation slavery.’ I think you just contradicted yourself.”
Can’t speak for Hunter, but it may be that their creation of, and assistance and co-involvement in the plantation system is not taken as anti-white activity. Therefore no contradiction intended.
Internet sources are notoriously unreliable.
There were indentured servants in Barbados, Jamaica, Virginia, and the Leeward Islands but contract laborers who worked for a short period of time, who received land after the end of their indenture, and whose children were born free were never chattel slaves in the West Indies.
I wrote chatel, should be chattel, of course.
Jewish involvement in the slave trade was more of an example of the Jew-as-Shylock than the Jew-as-Tim-Wise.
Saint Barthelemy is a most interesting exception, Hunter.
“Jewish involvement in the slave trade was more of an example of the Jew-as-Shylock than the Jew-as-Tim-Wise.” Very clear to me. The other commenter didn’t see the non-contradiction.
St. Barts needs to be put under the microscope then.
Let us know what you see there.
The rest of the article I posted above. Horrendous if even partly true. Breeding negroes with Irish women?!
African slaves were very expensive during the late 1600s (50 Sterling). Irish slaves came cheap (no more than 5 Sterling). If a planter whipped or branded or beat an Irish slave to death, it was never a crime. A death was a monetary setback, but far cheaper than killing a more expensive African. The English masters quickly began breeding the Irish women for both their own personal pleasure and for greater profit. Children of slaves were themselves slaves, which increased the size of the master’s free workforce. Even if an Irish woman somehow obtained her freedom, her kids would remain slaves of her master. Thus, Irish moms, even with this new found emancipation, would seldom abandon their kids and would remain in servitude.
In time, the English thought of a better way to use these women (in many cases, girls as young as 12) to increase their market share: The settlers began to breed Irish women and girls with African men to produce slaves with a distinct complexion. These new “mulatto” slaves brought a higher price than Irish livestock and, likewise, enabled the settlers to save money rather than purchase new African slaves. This practice of interbreeding Irish females with African men went on for several decades and was so widespread that, in 1681, legislation was passed “forbidding the practice of mating Irish slave women to African slave men for the purpose of producing slaves for sale.” In short, it was stopped only because it interfered with the profits of a large slave transport company.
England continued to ship tens of thousands of Irish slaves for more than a century. Records state that, after the 1798 Irish Rebellion, thousands of Irish slaves were sold to both America and Australia. There were horrible abuses of both African and Irish captives. One British ship even dumped 1,302 slaves into the Atlantic Ocean so that the crew would have plenty of food to eat.
There is little question that the Irish experienced the horrors of slavery as much (if not more in the 17th Century) as the Africans did. There is, also, very little question that those brown, tanned faces you witness in your travels to the West Indies are very likely a combination of African and Irish ancestry. In 1839, Britain finally decided on it’s own to end it’s participation in Satan’s highway to hell and stopped transporting slaves. While their decision did not stop pirates from doing what they desired, the new law slowly concluded THIS chapter of nightmarish Irish misery.
But, if anyone, black or white, believes that slavery was only an African experience, then they’ve got it completely wrong.
Irish slavery is a subject worth remembering, not erasing from our memories.
But, where are our public (and PRIVATE) schools???? Where are the history books? Why is it so seldom discussed?
The British are scum. Always were.
I have catholic Irish ancestry. I am quite sympathetic to the PIRA and IRA.
However, the Irish do IMHO exaggerate the treatment metered out by the British Government in the 1650s.
Slavery with Sugar does not seem to have followed the same pattern as that of Tobacco and other food farming ventures. Sugar was much more intensive and cruel. This really didn’t get started in any English colonies until blacks were brought over to work the cane. A pale redhead isn’t much use in a field under a blazing sun. The British needed colonists, needed boots on the ground to clear forests, drain swamps, kill Indians. The colonization of America needed masses of people to function. The French restricted emigration, the Spanish too. No Protestants were allowed to settle in Spanish or French colonies because they would have caused trouble. They sent regime loyalists.
British policy was to allow troublemakers to migrate. In some cases encourage trouble
makers to migrate or send prisoners to new productive lands. The Irish were simply another dissaffected population after their defeat. They were Catholic in a nation conquered by Protestants. Harsh as it might sound they were better off colonizing virgin territory. What on earth is wrong with being transported under such circumstances? Living was better in the Americas than anywhere at home at this time.
And yet your forefathers came to live in a nation settled by mostly British people….
Here’s the Irish governor of Jamaica.
William Murraugh O’Brien.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_O%27Brien,_2nd_Earl_of_Inchiquin#section_2
it’s so hard being an Irishman running the whole goddam colony.
Why are the American descendents of these Irishmen so quick to play victim?
The self abasement is disgusting. Lots of the colonies were administered by Irish. Quit acting like niggers.
and you try to lay claim to being Roman who did similar things to European people
William O’Brien Admiral of the Caribbean. Irish, descended from Irish kings. That’s a very strange form of slavery, giving the man a fleet and a governor’s mansion.
@Stonelifter
As a matter of fact, I am Roman in ancestry. My family comes from the Monti Rione neighborhood of Rome, where we take our surname from.
So now you’re crying about the Romans beating up your Ulster Scot ancestors? The supposed innocence of the Confederacy seems to have been debunked too many times on here, huh?
“The supposed innocence of the Confederacy seems to have been debunked too many times on here, huh?”
The only charge that the Confederates can be convicted of is a failure to gain enough votes in Congress to defeat the Morrill Tariff which would have proved ruinous to the South economically as Lincoln and his fellow Republicans knew only too well.
Blaming the Confederacy for the War is absurd.
John says:
‘William O’Brien Admiral of the Caribbean. Irish, descended from Irish kings. That’s a very strange form of slavery, giving the man a fleet and a governor’s mansion.’
So he wasn’t a slave. So what? Does this information negate or disprove the historical record of Irish Slaves who were often treated worse than negroes? Even if there were exaggerations, they suffered unimaginable horrors.
John says: ‘Harsh as it might sound they were better off colonizing virgin territory. What on earth is wrong with being transported under such circumstances? Living was better in the Americas than anywhere at home at this time.’
Oh, they were just colonizing virgin territory. No big deal. How can you read of their suffering and inhumane treatment and shrug it all off with flippant remarks? I’m not Irish, yet my heart bleeds reading of their plight. Your Irish side must be weeping.
I got no beef with what the Romans did ( besides growing soft). You are trying to say the Brits are scum when Romans did the same kinds of things to White people. If the Brits are scum, and if you are Roman, and if both groups did the same thing to Whites you are scum in your own mind. Which would explain a lot
And as proved on the other post, the Roman Empire ended where the Ulster Scots came from. The river tweed and the wall and all, with my people coming from north of the wall, Romans being south of it and all
Ps the Roman empire was heavily reliant on slavery, which you also spend a great deal of time criticizing, slavery and slave owners. You are batting a thousand on the self loathing
@Stonelifter
Prove to me the Romans kidnapped young white girls and forceably bred them with niggers to create homemade slave stock.
The Romans did a lot of horrible things, especially during the reign of Nero, but they were a pagan race and had a different morality than 17th century Christians. The British in the Caribbean should have been better than that.
Stonelifter says:
September 7, 2012 at 3:39 am
“and you try to lay claim to being Roman who did similar things to European people”
Actually the Romans didn’t necessarily get their hands dirty, their soldiers did. Towards the end, they drew their soldiers from all over the Empire. They became full blown multicult towards the end.
Sam you are whiny. The airish are whiny. They got to have a gigantic diaspora that they would have otherwise missed out on. Ireland is a tiny little place that can’t support more than a few million people. The North American continent vast and fecund. Stop whining.
Irland can barely support 3 a million population. It has some good soil but nothing like enough to keep a growing population. America provided that outlet so that the quantity of people could grow. It also provided the raw political muscle to get Irish independence with a vast rich Irish diaspora there ready to pressure the UK by other means. Most people would give their right arm to get to the Americas. Some others complain about it.
your are such a hypocrite Chris. How about all that rage about lazy slave owners when your “roman” ancestors were world class slavers…. Spin it which ever way that lets you keep your two faces
Need a NORMAN invasion?! Not Norman, but a Saxon one! Profound difference.
Yes, and another Alfred son of Ethelwulf, this time for President.
“another Alfred son of Ethelwulf”: I do not imply that we see one presently.
@Stonelifter
No one in my family ever owned a slave. The Romans ended slavery after they Christianized under Constantine. And as I said before, two thousand years ago they were a different people in a different time with a different morality. Your Southron ancestors on the other hand, WERE “Christians”, and knew damn well the disgusting things they were doing to other human beings. YOU are the fucking hypocrite.
@John
“Most people would give their right arm to get to the Americas. Some others complain about it.”
Yeah, like YOU. Here you are, living here and even acknowledging how desirable a country it is, but then insulting all the REAL, native-born Americans by dismissing our history as illegitimate, mocking our country as being beyond repair, and having the nerve to suggest that it be torn apart and divided, utterly oblivious to the personal histories of the people who America belongs to. As if you’d even have the right to a single grain of dirt in this country. You’re a bigger hypocrite than Stonelifter.
313Chris
“Southron ancestors on the other hand, WERE “Christians”, and knew damn well the disgusting things they were doing to other human beings. YOU are the fucking hypocrite.”
Not sure what you are ranting about there. The bible does not take a moral stand against slavery.
Ephesians 6:5-9
New International Version (NIV)
“5 Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. 6 Obey them not only to win their favor when their eye is on you, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart. 7 Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not people, 8 because you know that the Lord will reward each one for whatever good they do, whether they are slave or free.
9 And masters, treat your slaves in the same way. Do not threaten them, since you know that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no favoritism with him.”
“When a man strikes his male or female slave with a rod so hard that the slave dies under his hand, he shall be punished. If, however, the slave survives for a day or two, he is not to be punished, since the slave is his own property. (Exodus 21:20-21 NAB)”
“20 And if a man smite his servant, or his maid, with a rod, and he die under his hand; he shall be surely punished.
21 Notwithstanding, if he continue a day or two, he shall not be punished: for he is his money.”
On the Irish,
I’d like to know how many were really Scots, coming through Northern Ireland, since that’s such a lost piece of history for so many upper Southerners and Appalachians, through WV, KY, TN especially.
And Bacon’s Rebellion in something other than as that rainbow rebellion taught in school would be good.
Although, HW, I do read these posts mostly because you’re a great writer.
Real experience with Carribean: broke up with a Northeast man who tried to take me there on a vacation. I sort of thought, if slavery is over why do we have to go there? LOL.
@ Mosin Nagant says:
Need a NORMAN invasion?! Not Norman, but a Saxon one! Profound difference….
That’s my feeling. Don’t really understand HW’s attachment to the Norman thing.
And the upper-lower South difference is key, also, since they really are and were very different.
He’s trying to make the case that the South is really Latin.
I’ve wondered, in a sense, if he’s just trying to legitimate the current neo-feudal “integration of the continent” (romanizing the u.s. and re-colonizing it with africans and spanish speakers)—- and yet he does seem to speak against the u.s. fed empire.
Perhaps he wants a southern latin empire. (Which is what all the neo-cons want).