The Black Irish of Montserrat in the Caribbean.

[ChaChaCharlie]

A lovely part of the world. I have been twice while on a cruise and will be going again in a couple of years.

[ChaChaCharlie]

This documentary focuses on the 2005 St. Patrick's Day festivities of the Caribbean island of Montserrat. The project was conceived and executed by Director David William Seitz, with the help of producers Alexandra Klaren Seitz, Erik Churchill, and Burke Olsen. Chris Campbell of Innova Recordings edited the final piece in 2007.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0v5iLqy9Ap8

[ChaChaCharlie]

Who were the Black Irish, and what is their story?



The term "Black Irish" has been in circulation among Irish emigrants and their descendants for centuries. Yet, as a subject of historical discussion, it is almost never referred to in Ireland.

There are a number of different claims as to the origin of the term, none of which are possible to entirely prove or disprove.

The term is commonly used to describe people of Irish origin who have dark features, black hair, a dark complexion and dark eyes.

A quick review of Irish history reveals that the island was subject to a number of influxes of foreign cultures. The Celts arrived on the island about the year 500 B.C.


Whether or not this was an actual invasion or rather a more gradual migration and assimilation of their culture by the native Irish is open to conjecture, but there is sufficient evidence to suggest that this latter explanation is more likely.

The next great influx came from Northern Europe, with Viking raids occurring as early as 795 A.D. The defeat of the Vikings at the Battle of Clontarf in the year 1014 by Brian Boru marked the end of the struggle with the invaders and saw the subsequent integration of the Vikings into Irish society. The migrants became 'Gaelicized' and formed septs (a kind of clan) along Gaelic lines.



The Norman invasions of 1170 and 1172 led by Strongbow saw yet another wave of immigrants settle in the country, many of whom fiercely resisted English dominance of the island in the centuries that followed. The Plantation of Ulster in the seventeenth century saw the arrival of English and Scottish colonists in Ulster after the Flight of the Earls.

Each of these immigrant groups had their own physical characteristics and all, with the exception of the Ulster Planters, assimilated to some degree into Irish society, many claiming to be "more Irish than the Irish themselves"

The Vikings were often referred to as the "dark invaders" or "black foreigners." The Gaelic word for foreigner is "gall" and for black (or dark) is "dubh."

Many of the invaders' families took Gaelic names that utilized these two descriptive words. The name Doyle is in Irish "O'Dubhghaill" which literally means "dark foreigner" which reveals their heritage as an invading force with dark intentions.

The name Gallagher is "O Gallchobhair" which translates as "foreign help." The traditional image of Vikings is of pale-skinned blond-haired invaders but their description as "dark foreigners" may lead us to conclude that their memory in folklore does not necessarily reflect their physical description.

The Normans were invited into Ireland by Dermot McMurrough and were led by the famous Strongbow. The Normans originated in France, where black-haired people are not uncommon. As with the Vikings, these were viewed as a people of "dark intentions" who ultimately colonized much of the Eastern part of the country and several larger towns.

Many families, however, integrated into Gaelic society and changed their Norman name to Gaelic and then Anglo equivalents: the Powers, the Fitzpatricks, Fitzgeralds, Devereuxs, Redmonds.

It is possible that the term "Black Irish" may have referred to some of these immigrant groups as a way of distinguishing them from the "Gaels," the people of ultimately Celtic origin.

Another theory of the origin of the term "Black Irish" is that these people were descendants of Spanish traders who settled in Ireland and even descendants of the few Spanish sailors who were washed up on the west coast of Ireland after the disaster of the Spanish Armada of 1588.


Cannon from the Spanish Armada wreckage off the coast of Sligo. Source: Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht/PA.

It is claimed that the Spanish married into Irish society and created a new class of Irish who were immediately recognizable by their dark hair and complexion. There is little evidence to support this theory and it is unlikely that any significant number of Spanish soldiers would have survived long in the war-torn place that was 16th century Ireland.

It is striking, though, how this tale is very similar to the ancient Irish legend of the Milesians who settled in Ireland having traveled from Spain.

The theory that the "Black Irish" are descendants of any small foreign group that integrated with the Irish and survived is unlikely. It seems more likely that "Black Irish" is a descriptive term rather than an inherited characteristic that has been applied to various categories of Irish people over the centuries.

One such example is that of the hundreds of thousands of Irish peasants who emigrated to America after the Great Famine of 1845 to 1849. 1847 was known as "black 47." The potato blight which destroyed the main source of sustenance turned the vital food black. It is possible that the arrival of large numbers of Irish after the famine into America, Canada, Australia and beyond resulted in their being labeled as "black" in that they escaped from this new kind of black death.

Immigrant groups throughout history have generally been treated poorly by the indigenous population (or by those who simply settled first).

Derogatory names for immigrant groups are legion and in the case of those who left Ireland include "Shanty Irish" and almost certainly "Black Irish." It is also possible that within the various Irish cultures that became established in America that there was a pecking order, a class system that saw some of their countrymen labeled as "black."

The term "Black Irish" has also been applied to the descendants of Irish emigrants who settled in the West Indies. It was also used in Ireland by Catholics in Ulster Province as a derogatory term to describe the Protestant Planters.

While it at various stages was almost certainly used as an insult, the term "Black Irish" has emerged in recent times as a virtual badge of honor among some descendants of immigrants. It is unlikely that the exact origin of the term will ever be known and it is also likely that it has had a number of different iterations, depending on the historical context. It remains, therefore, a descriptive term used for many purposes, rather than a reference to an actual class of people who may have survived the centuries.

[philipkntz]

I'm no historian but I think you missed something.
The story that I heard was that Irish slaves worked alongside African slaves in the Caribbean. Often chained together in pairs, one duty of the Irish slave was to teach the other to speak English, leaving the black slaves with Irish accents (often Cork accents). I guess interbreeding also occured

[scoobydo1]

Interesting article, video, and photos. History is fascinating to me, please keep posting them. One suggestion though, unless you are the editor of CelticLife, you should give credit to the source/author if you're going to make that long of a quote. https://celticlife.com/the-black-irish/

[ChaChaCharlie]

Interesting article, video, and photos. History is fascinating to me, please keep posting them. One suggestion though, unless you are the editor of CelticLife, you should give credit to the source/author if you're going to make that long of a quote. https://celticlife.com/the-black-irish/

Doh. I forgot the url. Well spotted man. Thank you

[ChaChaCharlie]

I'm no historian but I think you missed something.
The story that I heard was that Irish slaves worked alongside African slaves in the Caribbean. Often chained together in pairs, one duty of the Irish slave was to teach the other to speak English, leaving the black slaves with Irish accents (often Cork accents). I guess interbreeding also occured

Yeah it happened in America also on the plantations according to a few historians. It was during the region of King James the 2nd and Charles the 1st.

This is from a website called Rasta Livewire and is by John Martin

The Slaves That Time Forgot

By John Martin

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? After all, 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 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.

As an example, the African slave trade was just beginning during this same period. It is well recorded that African slaves, not tainted with the stain of the hated Catholic theology and more expensive to purchase, were often treated far better than their Irish counterparts.

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?

Do the memories of hundreds of thousands of Irish victims merit more than a mention from an unknown writer? Or is their story to be one that their English pirates intended: To (unlike the African book) have the Irish story utterly and completely disappear as if it never happened.

None of the Irish victims ever made it back to their homeland to describe their ordeal. These are the lost slaves; the ones that time and biased history books conveniently forgot.

http://afgen.com/forgotten_slaves.html

[EIFII]

I'm no historian but I think you missed something.
The story that I heard was that Irish slaves worked alongside African slaves in the Caribbean. Often chained together in pairs, one duty of the Irish slave was to teach the other to speak English, leaving the black slaves with Irish accents (often Cork accents). I guess interbreeding also occured

I’m no expert but surely the Irish didn’t speak English at that time?

[Wolverine]

I’m no expert but surely the Irish didn’t speak English at that time?

I think this history lesson is about as accurate as it is welcome

[Wolverine]

One British ship even dumped 1,302 slaves into the Atlantic Ocean so that the crew would have plenty of food to eat.

http://afgen.com/forgotten_slaves.html

This part really comes across as a load of rubbish. Ships weren't built to carry that many slaves never mind kicking overboard at a whim.
Capacity was 250 to 600 slaves.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/sp...a/page53.shtml