Irish Slavery Myth

About

The Irish Slavery Myth refers to controversial claims made by historians who assert that Irish immigrants were held as chattel slaves upon their arrival in the North American colonies, with some believing that enslavement of the Irish settlers preceded that of the African and Native Americans during the 16th century. Since its online emergence in the mid-2000s, the theory has been largely refuted by those who emphasize the distinction between indentured servitude of involuntary nature and slavery.

Origin

According to an article on Slate, the first references to Irish slavery in the American colonies emerged in the 18th century as "Souther pro-slavery propaganda against the industrialized North." In 2007, the book White Cargo: The Forgotten History of Britain's White Slaves in America^[6] by Don Jordan and Michael Walsh was released, which described the poor treatment of Irish indentured servants in the North American colonies.

Spread

On March 6th, 2009, YouTuber vegasview77 uploaded a video titled "Slavery 101 – What They Never You in History Class," which argued that white people from Ireland were historically traded as slaves (shown below).

On December 14th, 2013, Redditor joobtastic submitted a post titled "How accurate is the proclamation that Irish slavery in America was as prolific as African slavery?" to the /r/AskHistorians^[2] subreddit, to which Redditor agentdcf replied "the proclamation that Irish slavery in America was as widespread as African slavery is totally, laughably untrue." On November 24th, 2015, the Alex Jones Channel YouTube channel posted a video titled "Irish Man Demands Reparations For Slavery!", which argued that hundreds of thousands of Irish people were traded as slaves in the 1600s (shown below).

On January 14th, 2015, the left-wing political news site OpenDemocracy^[1] published an article titled "‘Irish slaves’: the convenient myth", which argued that the myth serves "Irish nationalist and white supremacist causes." On September 14th, librarian Liam Hogan published an article on Medium^[4] titled "Debunking the imagery of the 'Irish slaves' meme," which revealed the origins of several photos being falsely attributed to Irish slavery on the internet (shown below).

Left: Fishermen residents of Bath Beach, Barbados. Right: Survivors of a Japanese POW camp during World War II.

On October 12th, YouTuber Kat Blaque posted a video titled "What About the Irish Slaves?", which noted that many Irish were "enslaved" as indentured servants but were not chattel slaves (shown below).

On April 2nd, 2016, Redditor CantStopWhitey submitted an image macro titled "Slavery of the Irish" to the /r/conspiracy^[3] subreddit, which claimed that the first slaves imported to the North American colonies were Irish children (shown below).

Search Interest

External References