Below find a link on the enslavement of Irish folk on a South Pacific Island, a mirror of earlier, English North America, the world’s largest penal colony, consisting of 13-slave nations which would one day gain greater liberty to oppress their chattel and ultimately alter it to a race-based system in its final failing form, an act which effectively—if not intentionally—used the trafficking of some 300,000 Africans into this cruel land to conceal the enslavement of some 3,000,000 Europeans in the exact same fashion.
Below are some bare facts concerning Norfolk Island, one of the southern hemisphere destinations for slaves trafficked out of the British Isles, after 1804, when The fledging United States of America decided that it would rather breed African American slaves than have to break fresh European American slaves.
The book referenced in this article is Robert Macklin’s Dark Paradise.
“There were two penal settlements on Norfolk, from 1788 to 1813, and from 1824 to 1847. It was supposed to hold the worst of the worst – people who had been transported to Australia and were then sent to Norfolk for further crimes. The exception was the Irish, most of whom were sent directly from Ireland.”
“…a policy that held if foreign sails were seen on the horizon, then any Irish on the island should be gathered into a wooden stockade. If the ship landed, the stockade was to be set alight.”
In Plantation America Irish were notorious for running away from bondage, with many becoming pirates, Indians and hillbillies. Although the article’s author was shocked by the cruelty, any student of Plantation America would not be.
When a priest won a reprieve from a hanging sentence for a number of men, they were sad, while those to be hanged were happy.
Lashes given in beatings were at a military level, in the hundreds, making treatment under the lash ten times more brutal than in British America, where 30 and 40 lashes were the rule, a reminder that the most cruelly used slaves through the entire period were the British sailor, 8 in 10 of them abducted.
The inmates even murdered each other by lottery so that both might escape life!
Such facts as this in Plantation America were ruthlessly buried under the shroud of African-only slavery. But a look at the ass-end of the British world in the early 1800s gives a hint as to the reality among Irish slaves in the 1500s, 1600s and 1700s, and perhaps answers why Irishmen ran away at such a higher rate than all other groups, because their bondage was as much designed for murder as for profit.
This heartrending. Just devastating. I understand my grandparents and great grands a lot better now. Not that this happened to them but that they understood what could happen to them and to others. My grandfather on one side was police chief, Stockton California. They had 18 kids. Most of the boys were on the police force with pops. They loved nothing better than getting drunk and really "giving it to" the people they held responsible for their lots in life. Wrong yes......somehow, legit for ebons. My family had their own quiet ways. The brothers who weren't city police were county sheriffs and deputies. There were two or three daughters, one was the DA in the county. The other two were floozies of one sort or another. All of us kids were rebels who would get the phone call before the drug raid............hence, none of us with records......it's like a (then) Smallville LA Confidential. I live within a couple of hours of hundreds of relatives and haven't seen any of them since 1970, a close, dour lot we are. happy holidays and thanks for this wee bit of sadness with me dram of rum. we couldn't be happier without it.
Wee plus wee plus wee equals three, my fellow.
Happy New Year's eve.