The Irish slave trade!

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There had been in fact indentured servants from other places than just Ireland or the rest of the British Isles. Many Germans, Dutch, French, and others had entered into indentured servitude during the days of colonization, including to America. The difference between indentured servants and later out and out slaves is, an indentured servant very often entered into that situation with a contract in order to repay a debt, or to get passage to somewhere else to start anew, rather than seen as subhuman property. Unless the master was a bastard who pulled sh*tty little tricks to keep his servant in bondage for in perpetuity (such as one who had gotten a female servant pregnant, then won a court case against her to continue to work to recover the lost time), most would be freed at the end of his or her term. In fact, many black slaves were originally treated more like indentured servants, till chattel slavery replaced indentured servitude.

So in a way slavery of Irish people was funny while the African slave trade was horrible and wrong? I honestly dont think slavery of any kind is funny but neither do I think that the descendants blaming the descendants of the slavers is ok either.

Nothing in my post said or even implied that I thought it was funny.

No, the point is being argued that persecution (ie the modern legacy of slavery) of Irish people in America manifests nowhere near as acutely as it still does to this day against black people. For example, If you're Irish in modern America you aren't more likely to be challenged by police or less likely to go to university purely by merit of your ethnic origin.

Anti Irish persecution only really existed within living memory in Britain and Northern Ireland.

Ahh ok most my Ancestors were mostly Southern Irish with the exception for my mothers side which were Northern Irish and Black Irish.

What I was taught about indentured servitude was close to Kraichgauer's description. That's not what the author was talking about, though:





I haven't checked his facts.

There's also indentured servitude which is just about like slavery and just as bad, and transporting which basically meant if you were found guilty of a crime, your penalty, rather than be hanged in Britain, was to be transported to "the new world." There were many people in the colonies who were indentured servants.

Life was full of many horrors back then. In Britain, you had places where people were sent because of debts known as debtor's prisons and you had your poor houses where people were sent only for being poor. An almshouse was not an uncommon sight. County houses, too, where they warehouses the poor. In America, quite a few were immigrants.

I've read some Charles Dickens

Doesn't sound like a very pleasant time when so many were poor, deprived of rights or enslaved and look at how people complain about every little thing nowadays. Think of how miserable it must have been at the time if you were unfortunate by birth. In Britain, they believed crime ran in the genes, too, and if you were born poor, it was due to your genes and you simply were incapable of being a good person and were only worthy of contempt.

Last edited by ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo on 28 Feb 2015, 9:29 pm, edited 1 time in total.

The way I have always seen it is that any wrong belongs only to the perpetrators of said wrongs. Blame does not lie either with those that came before them, nor the ones born after them. They had nothing to do with it, furthermore it does not entitle me to hate an entire people for the actions of a few.