The Curse of Cromwell: Revisiting the Irish Slavery Debate

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7-2017

John Donoghue Loyola University Chicago

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Recommended Citation Donoghue, John. The Curse of Cromwell: Revisiting the Irish Slavery Debate. History Ireland, 25, 4: 24-28, 2017. Retrieved from Loyola eCommons, History: Faculty Publications and Other Works,

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FEATURE—MYTH-BUSTING

The real history of Irish slavery on Barbados tobacco grow] … Transport, transplant, mo mheabhair ar Bhéarla highlights how much worse slavery was for [that’s my memory/understanding Africans in the Americas, reminding us that of English]’. While the English con- strued Irish colonisation as the work the curse of Cromwell has haunted more than of God, an Dúna reconstrued it as a just Irish history. curse. Drawing upon the colonial experience of forced migration and forced labour, the poet produced an early example of the diasporic lament, a staple of both popular THE CURSE OF ballads and the poetry of Irish dis- possession. CROMWELL: Irish historians with nationalist leanings were less lyrical and more clinical about the curse. They strove revisiting the Irish to connect the symbolic ‘enslavement’ of the Irish body politic under British colonialism to the enslave- slavery debate ment of Irish bodies in the colonies. In 1723 Fr Cornelius Nary estimated that ‘fifteen thousand to twenty By John Donoghue thousand souls’ had been transported into ‘slavery’. The United Irishmen blamed Cromwell for the ‘many thousands transported to foreign istory and nationalism Cromwell himself oversaw the parts’, especially ‘Barbadoes’. By the have long been locked in first wave of colonial transportation twentieth century the estimates had a troubled relationship. to the Caribbean. Writing to parlia- grown much higher. In Ireland under While nationalists base ment after leading the slaughter at English rule (1903), Thomas Addis Htheir appeals on history, their narra- Drogheda in September 1649, the Emmet, the American grandson of tives often rob the past of its com- general reported that the ‘officers the United Irishman of the same plexity. Take, for example, the ‘curse were knocked on the head, and every name, claimed that 120,000–130,000 of Cromwell’, a phrase immortalised tenth man of the soldiers killed, and were shipped to the colonies. A year in a poem by William Butler Yeats. the rest shipped for the Barbadoes’. later, in The fall of feudalism in Ireland, The curse, which refers to the brutal Slipping easily into imperial voice, Michael Davitt recorded that ‘all the seventeenth-century conquest of Cromwell argued that massacre and Irish who could not be shipped off Ireland, has long sustained Irish transportation were benevolent forms to England’s colonies in America and nationalism, but at the same time it of terrorism, as they would frighten the West Indies as slaves were has provided endless fodder for his- the Irish into submission and thus hunted remorselessly into torical debate. Historians have dis- ‘prevent the effusion of blood for Connaught’. James Connolly wrote agreed about the responsibility that the future’. in The re-conquest of Ireland (1915) Oliver Cromwell bears for the con- that ‘over 100,000 men, women and quest’s many atrocities. They also ‘My Day of Ruin Forever Until I children were transported to the dispute the success of the effort to Die’ West Indies, there to be sold into ‘transplant’ Catholic landholders In the 1650s, the Kerryman Éamonn slavery upon the tobacco planta- from Munster to Connacht. an Dúna worked the curse of tions’. The soaring estimates paral- Pinpointing the number of Irish Cromwell into poetic form. In a leled the increasing radicalisation of ‘transported’ to the American piece he entitled ‘My Day of Ruin Irish nationalist goals, whereby the colonies, particularly Barbados, and Forever Until I Die’, he made sure to case for an independent Ireland the nature of the bondage they suf- link the forced removal of Catholics could be made stronger in relation fered there (servitude or slavery) has to Connacht with their forced labour to the number of Irish enslaved in also proven elusive. In recent years in American colonies. Mixing English the colonies. the curse has assumed even more and Irish in his verse, an Dúna wrote importance, as white nationalists in that if the English did not ‘shoot … Liam Hogan’s contribution to the the United States, many of Irish kill … strip … tear … hack … [or] debate descent, have used the history of hang …’ tories, rebels and priests, In recent years, right-wing whites Irish ‘slavery’ to advance their racist they would ship them to the colonies have inundated social media and agendas. ‘chum tobac do dhéanamh’ [to make cyberspace with the lie that Irish

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‘slavery’ was worse than that suffered by Africans. We know about the extent of the problem thanks to Liam Hogan’s investigation of the ‘Irish slave meme’. Beginning in 2015, Hogan published several art- icles (one in this magazine [HI 24.2, March/April 2016, pp 18–22], co- authored with Matt Reilly and Laura McAtackney) and a six-part on-line series. He cites many examples of how some Irish, Irish-Americans and other white Americans equate Irish bondage with perpetual, racial slavery or claim that it was worse. Indeed, as Hogan found, most of these blog- gers and tweeters believe ‘that slavery is not about race’. That certainly would have been news to the approximately twelve million Africans who endured the Middle Passage to the Americas from the early sixteenth century through to the late nineteenth century, who, if they lived (approximately two million of them perished), faced perpetual slavery for themselves and their children, something whites never or almost never experienced. ‘White slaves were treated worse than any other race in the United States’, reads one meme, which is preposterous on its face for a host of historical reasons, not the least of which would be the US Supreme Court’s 1857 Dredd Scott decision, where Justice Roger B. Taney ruled racist political ideology. Although the States. Hogan’s fearless intervention— that the framers of the US Republican party and its ideological he has received many threats—is a Constitution ‘regarded (people of handlers in the right-wing media case-study of how scholars should African descent) as beings of an in- have long stoked racist resentment, employ relevant research to combat ferior order’ with ‘no rights which now white nationalists, having white supremacists. But has he closed the white man was bound to respect’. become part of President Donald the case of the curse of Cromwell and But the point here was less about the Trump’s base of support, have revived its connection to colonial bondage? past than the present. After claiming overt bigotry as a mainstream force that ‘white slaves’ suffered the worst in American political culture. The But slavery has taken many forms racial treatment in the US, the Irish slave meme cannot be under- As Hogan himself admits, slavery has blogger added: ‘When is the last stood apart from this political taken many forms. I would add that, time you heard an Irishman bitching context. in the long, global history of slavery, and moaning about how the world Hogan has moved beyond his racialised slavery in the Atlantic owes them a living?’ Here the blogger on-line investigation into the Irish world was not the norm; it was an draws upon racist stereotypes to slave meme with careful historical aberration. Race was an early modern portray blacks as freeloading parasites research to demonstrate the clear invention. Racial slavery was an with a false sense of historical vic- differences between Irish bondage essential innovation of global capi- timisation. The Black Lives Matter and African slavery. While attentive talism; it was atypically dehumanis- movement, organised to protest sys- to the hardships faced by Irish ing and therefore atypically prof- temic cover-ups of black deaths at indentured servants, his point is that the hands of American police officers, slavery was a condition reserved for Above: Oliver Cromwell—oversaw the first has faced white nationalist attacks people of African descent in the wave of colonial transportation to the based on this historically skewed, British Atlantic and the United Caribbean. (Buccleuch Heritage Trust)

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itable. Moreover, racial slavery’s oppressive cultural legacy has left a far deeper historical imprint than any other form of bondage. With this comparative perspective in mind, the case can be made that the Irish were forced into a form of slavery in the mid-seventeenth century, though one far less severe and consequential than what Africans endured for close to 400 years in the Americas. Had William Petty had his way, Eamon an Dúna’s curse would have been all the more bitter and the history of race and slavery in the Atlantic world dramatically different. As a young man on the Continent, Petty had studied with Hobbes and Descartes on his way to becoming a mathematician and an instructor of anatomy at Oxford. In 1652 the English Commonwealth appointed him to assess the future value of expropriated Irish land and labour. Petty collected his findings in what became known as the Down Survey and analysed them in A political anatomy of Ireland. The 1692 tract helped lay the foundation for a new field of knowledge—political economy, which Petty called ‘political arithmetic’—that guided the rise of global capitalism. His research in Ireland and his wider knowledge of the Atlantic economy led him to conclude that, rather than destroy- ing the Irish, English interests would be best served in the colonies by enslaving them like ‘negroes’:

‘You value the people who have been destroyed in Ireland as slaves and negroes are usually rated, viz, at about 15 one with another; men being sold for 25, children for 5 … Why should not insolvent thieves be punished with slavery rather than death. So as being slaves they may be forced to as much labour, and as cheap fare, as nature will

Above left: William Petty—in A political anatomy of Ireland (1692) he concluded that English interests would be best served in the colonies by enslaving the Irish like ‘negroes’, but his vision never came to fruition. (Welcome Images)

Left: View below deck of the slave ship Albanoz by Lt Francis Meynell, 1846. (National Maritime Museum, London)

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endure, and thereby become as two men added to the common- Seán O’Callaghan’s wealth, and not as one taken away from it.’ To Hell or Barbados As many readers of this magazine Petty’s account proves that some are surely aware, Seán very powerful members of the O’Callaghan’s To Hell or Barbados Cromwellian regime envisioned (2000) revived public interest in enslaving Irish and ‘negroes’ in par- the colonial connection to allel fashion. Significantly, in the Cromwell’s curse. Nursing nation- British Caribbean, white servants alist outrage about the conquest, O’Callaghan calculated that made up the majority of the unfree 50,000 Irish were sold in the plantation workforce until the late colonies, a number that grossly 1650s. The same held true in the inflates the estimates of modern Chesapeake until about 1690. scholars, which run from 5,000 to 20,000. Even worse, he makes little Servants and slaves treated equally to no effort in his lurid account severely to distinguish between the herit- Yet Petty’s vision never came to able, perpetual slavery of Africans fruition. In contrast to those of and the bondage suffered by the African descent, the Irish were never Irish. In fact, from reading legally nor systematically subjected O’Callaghan one would think that the Irish had it worse. Although to lifelong, heritable slavery in the seventeenth-century commenta- colonies. Richard Ligon, a planter tors such as Richard Ligon on Barbados from 1647 to 1650, remarked that ‘negroes’ could, made such a distinction. But he also depending on the master, receive will. Irish sailors voyaging to the noted that planters bought ‘servants’ better treatment than servants, West Indies on commercial ventures in the same way they purchased this was absolutely not the general or with Prince Rupert’s Royalist fleet slaves from Africa, on the very ships practice among slaveholders, and in 1652 would have seen Irish people that brought them to the island, a the claim must be qualified subjected to plantation bondage. In process known as ‘the scramble’. Both because, unlike servants, black 1655, Irish sailors had themselves servants and slaves were summoned slaves and their children served been transported after being captured to the fields early in the morning, for life. These exceptions occurred serving with Royalist forces. Their during the brief period (c. 1640– often by bells, and they both were peers petitioned the Commonwealth 70) when the inter-colonial and worked into the evening. Both were to release those it had ‘most bar- transatlantic slave trade from subject to ‘severe overseers’ who beat Africa to Barbados had just begun barously … sold and sent away … them during their labours. Ligon to deliver slaves in appreciable for slaves into some foreign planta- noted that ‘I have seen such cruelty numbers, which made them much tions’. Ligon remembered that so- there done to servants as I did not more expensive than servants. It called servants often found it impos- think one Christian could have done should hardly be necessary now sible to ‘endure such slavery’. to another’. If the servants com- to emphasise that African slavery Charles Baily agreed. Recalling plained, they were beaten again; if far outstripped both the suffering his time on a Maryland tobacco they resisted, their period of service and economic value of Irish servi- plantation, he wrote how ‘hunger, (usually from four years to nine tude. But unfortunately, as with cold, nakedness, beatings, whippings, the twentieth-century Holocaust years) could be doubled, although and the like … laid many of his in Europe, white nationalists (as terms of service were often ill defined fellow labourers … in the dust … I white supremacists now call them- in the case of the Irish. selves) in the United States, often am sure the poor creatures had better Importantly, Irish servants and drawing upon O’Callaghan, have have been hanged, than to suffer others from England and Scotland made it necessary for scholars to the death and misery they did’. referred to themselves as ‘slaves’. make the point loudly and clearly. Having been kidnapped and African slaves also regarded Irish whipped into work, Baily referred to field hands as slaves. An anonymous himself as a ‘bond-slave’, a biblical writer on Barbados, most likely Major term for a slave not held to lifelong John Scott, wrote in 1667 that the bondage. Historians have been Irish were ‘derided by the negroes, wrong in assessing such references and branded with the epithet of exploitation they endured as unfree as borrowings from seventeenth- “white slaves”’. Africans referred to plantation workers who, having been century political speech, where the Irish as slaves, as the Irish did kidnapped or transported, were vio- ‘slavery’ described the condition of themselves, to reflect the brutal lently forced to work against their those living under tyrannical gov-

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ernments. Instead, in the accounts workers did. Contracts, which kid- world for the next two centuries. above, the slavery referred to was napped and transported people Race matters in the history of slavery economic, different from the life- without their agreement, did not and in the Janus-faced struggles for long enslavement of Africans but a prevent enslavement. Instead, con- justice in our own time. In this light, form of slavery nonetheless. Unfree tracts led to enslavement, transform- the history of Irish slavery should whites who called themselves slaves ing people into term-bound chattel lead to solidarity with—rather than or were called such by black slaves property. Contracts commodified scorn for—the deep history driving were known in law as ‘indentured more than ‘servant’ labour; they the Black Lives Matter movement. servants’. But we cannot look to commodified the person as a species Interracial solidarity may be the colonial law alone to define slavery. of capital collateral. Planters used only means by which we can lift the Whites and blacks subjected to mul- ‘servants’, like slaves, as financial curse of Cromwell that still haunts tiple forms of chattel bondage tried instruments to escape bankruptcy, to the Irish in America. to define it too, but in a much satisfy creditors, to liquidate estates, John Donoghue is an associate profes- broader fashion. We should listen to and to resolve debts and broken sor of history at Loyola University, their voices, and not just to those of contracts. Chicago. the élites who wrote colonial law, The political ‘slavery’ of English when trying to understand slavery colonialism led to the economic in the seventeenth-century Atlantic. enslavement of the Irish on colonial FURTHER READING plantations. Their plight is part of H. Beckles, White servitude and black Irish field hands itemised as Ireland’s tragic colonial history, but slavery in Barbados, 1627–1715 ‘goods and chattels’ placing it in a global perspective (Knoxville, 1989). Irish field hands called themselves increases its historical importance. P. Linebaugh & M. Rediker, The many-headed hydra: sailors, slaves, slaves because they were the term- Racial slavery and the chattel term commoners, and the hidden history bound, chattel property of the bondage imposed on the Irish and of the revolutionary Atlantic other Europeans were crucial inno- planters who purchased them. They (Boston, 2000). were itemised as the ‘goods and vations in the early history of capi- S. Newman, A new world of labor: the chattels’ of their masters on contracts talism, a history where the planta- development of plantation slavery in and in estate inventories—often tion complex took centre stage. the British Atlantic (Philadelphia, beside ‘negroes’, livestock, hardware Thousands of Irish were forced to 2013). and other household goods. Like work on Barbados and in other M. Ó Siochrú, God’s executioner: ‘negroe’ slaves, they could be sold colonies during the Cromwellian Oliver Cromwell and the conquest of again and again without their conquest. But the Cromwellian Ireland (London, 2008). consent. Historians have often regime was also the first English argued that ‘servants’ weren’t bought government to dedicate itself to Below: The Black Lives Matter movement, and sold, only their contracts were. building a plantation empire based organised to protest against systemic cover- This is a legal fiction, not a material on the permanent enslavement of ups of black deaths at the hands of American police officers, has faced white nationalist reality. Contracts did not cut sugar Africans, the form of chattel labour attacks based on the lie that Irish ‘slavery’ cane and weed tobacco fields; chattel that would dominate the Atlantic was worse than that suffered by Africans.

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