Ireland as the British's main source of Slaves

Yes, but the purpose of setting up these massive corn and wheat plantations is to provide food for proper Englishmen. The English never ate potatoes the way the Irish did, so these colonies would exist to work the Irish to death while exporting wheat to England.

Impossible before the railway, the steamship, and modern understanding of how to preserve food. The reason there was an agricultural price-crash in the 1870s is that it was now possible for an Englishman to eat food grown in Nebraska or Argentina or Ukraine. Previously, Englishmen ate the food grown in England, by themselves: that's how pre-industrial society worked.
 
The problem is not malaria susceptibility or lack of familiarity with tropical labor - neither matter a bit to the slaveholder. It's identifiability. You can't tell an Irishman from an Englishman until he or she opens their mouth - and particularly over time, some Irish will lose their accent altogether. Basing an entire economy on slavery only works if you have an easy way to distinguish master from slave, and branding is helpful but doesn't quite cut it.
 
The problem is not malaria susceptibility or lack of familiarity with tropical labor - neither matter a bit to the slaveholder. It's identifiability. You can't tell an Irishman from an Englishman until he or she opens their mouth - and particularly over time, some Irish will lose their accent altogether. Basing an entire economy on slavery only works if you have an easy way to distinguish master from slave, and branding is helpful but doesn't quite cut it.

how so? a big branded S on one's cheek or forehead would make it very clear what you are
 
The problem is not malaria susceptibility or lack of familiarity with tropical labor - neither matter a bit to the slaveholder. It's identifiability. You can't tell an Irishman from an Englishman until he or she opens their mouth - and particularly over time, some Irish will lose their accent altogether. Basing an entire economy on slavery only works if you have an easy way to distinguish master from slave, and branding is helpful but doesn't quite cut it.

A lot of these arguments seem to ignore the fact that there was white slavery and plenty of it. Ireland was itself long run on the basis that a small group of white men who attended the Church of Ireland were the absolute masters of the destiny of those white men who didn't, so why not Bermuda?

Also, "accent"? They would for the most part have spoken Irish.
 
Plus, as HunttheTroll and Mowque said, the Irish aren't exactly the best ethnic group for labor in the tropics. Pale skin is only one part of it, but the other is resistance to malaria. African populations naturally have some resistance to it, but as European expeditions into tropical jungles and the West Indies have shown for centuries, white people have a tougher time with malaria.

AFAIK, malaria was not present in the New World until it was introduced by settlers and slaves from areas where malaria was endemic. I don't know how serious the malaria problem was in Ireland or England at the time, but in the absence of African slaves the situation in America may not be as bad.
 

Valdemar II

Banned
We still need a why the British want to reduce Ireland to a empty wasteland. I can't see any good economical argument for it.
 

Valdemar II

Banned
they could resettle it, and I doubt it would empty at once...

Yes they could resettle it, but that would take decades and in those decades we would see cronic labour shortage, whom would drive the local lords to ruins, while the new settlers, would have much more rights than the former inhabitants of Ireland. All in all this look like a very bad idea.
 
Yes they could resettle it, but that would take decades and in those decades we would see cronic labour shortage, whom would drive the local lords to ruins, while the new settlers, would have much more rights than the former inhabitants of Ireland. All in all this look like a very bad idea.

some kind of major rising that leaves Irish lords mostly dead, the Brits are scared and view the Irish as untrustable, Irish placed into slavery, the poor of Scotland and England (at the time being made landless by the enclosure of land) are shipped over to be tenant farmers, the low number of Lords left alive as well as having the Irish work as slaves on the farms they once worked at tenants keeps the labour shortage workable rather than crushing.
 
The problem is not malaria susceptibility or lack of familiarity with tropical labor - neither matter a bit to the slaveholder. It's identifiability. You can't tell an Irishman from an Englishman until he or she opens their mouth - and particularly over time, some Irish will lose their accent altogether. Basing an entire economy on slavery only works if you have an easy way to distinguish master from slave, and branding is helpful but doesn't quite cut it.

You're looking at this from too modern a standpoint. To an Englishman Planter of the 1600s or so, an Irishman is malnourished, with black hair and noticeably different faces. This may not be completely true, but it's true enough to work on a quick basis of "That man is probably a slave."

After all, even during the Victorian era there were still racist caricatures comparing the slightly forward jutting jaws of Irish people to ape-like parodies of Africans.
 
AFAIK, malaria was not present in the New World until it was introduced by settlers and slaves from areas where malaria was endemic. I don't know how serious the malaria problem was in Ireland or England at the time, but in the absence of African slaves the situation in America may not be as bad.

There was African slavery in the Americas before they were ever the permanent home of any Englishmen, but really I know no more than you. Hmm...
 
Last edited:
AFAIK, malaria was not present in the New World until it was introduced by settlers and slaves from areas where malaria was endemic. I don't know how serious the malaria problem was in Ireland or England at the time, but in the absence of African slaves the situation in America may not be as bad.

I think I read that it was certainly a problem in Jamestown, so if the Spanish introduced it, it spread fast. So I figure it was already present in the Spanish-controlled islands that black slaves were already being imported to.
 
they could resettle it, and I doubt it would empty at once...

Resettling a large part of Ireland was the plan under Cromwell: "Hell or Connaught". But as Valdemar says, reality has a way of asserting itself, and the idea of emptying Ireland of Irish was hardly more plausible than some of the other bees in Cromwell's lobster-helmet, like the voluntary annexation of the Dutch Republic.

some kind of major rising that leaves Irish lords mostly dead, the Brits are scared and view the Irish as untrustable, Irish placed into slavery, the poor of Scotland and England (at the time being made landless by the enclosure of land) are shipped over to be tenant farmers, the low number of Lords left alive as well as having the Irish work as slaves on the farms they once worked at tenants keeps the labour shortage workable rather than crushing.

Much of this happened. The Gaelic structure of Ireland was wiped out starting in 1603 (and it was a lot easier for the Old English to become New English, as James Butler of Ormonde showed), the Irish weren't trusted, English and Scots settlers were brought in, and Irish who made trouble were liable to get shipped.
 
I was under the impression that Cromwell did ship a couple thousand Irish out to Barbados as punishment. In fact, I thought that was something of a standard practice (see Judge Jeffrey's sentences mentioned earlier). However, I wouldn't qualify it as slavery in the economic sense, but more of a penal colonization, a la Australia, but with the expectation that the prisoners would be dead rather quickly.
 
Hasn't Britain done enough in Ireland without adding to it. Actually Cromwell did send thousands of Irish people into slavery if they refused to vacate their lands and early on in the Americas inedentured white labour was used in the American colonies at first and indentured African labour but indentured labourers eventually paid off their debts and became competitors. With the departure of Cromwell enslaving British subjects would not have been acceptable and judgements in the courts that applied to domestic servants i.e the Mansfield judgement would probably have ended it.Assuming Ireland was used, the legacy of Ireland continuing as a source of slaves would have been an even greater legacy of bitterness than exists now in Ireland
 
Many would maintain it was! It was definitely a invaluable source of cheap labour post Republic of Ireland independence for them!
 
The points about malaria and the tropics are well taken, so how about giving the British somewhere that wouldn't be as big of a problem. British North Africa? If you combine Irish indentured servitude and some later convict transportation, you'll get some really interesting social issues / demographics.
 
Many would maintain it was! It was definitely a invaluable source of cheap labour post Republic of Ireland independence for them!

There's a difference between "cheap labor" and "slavery". What England did was bad enough without distorting it.
 
Elfwine,
the Irish are the only ethnic group in the UK whoose life expectancies are lower than in their own land and life expectancies by Western standards have been low enough in Ireland to begin with!
 
Elfwine,
the Irish are the only ethnic group in the UK whoose life expectancies are lower than in their own land and life expectancies by Western standards have been low enough in Ireland to begin with!

1) By "their own land" for the Irish, I presume you mean in the Irish Free State. Leaving that dispute aside for someone more familiar with northern Ireland to dispute...Statistics please.

2) And this (the situation in #1) is all England's fault HOW?

3) And any of this is related to the issue of Irish slaves HOW?

4) And they're "low enough to begin with" because of mean ol' England HOW?

5) :rolleyes:
 
Top