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Yet another #Irishslave article that has some interesting points but seems to be to be trying to find the slimmest of angles when, without in-depth archival reference in a much more scholarly piece, there aren’t really one to be had. A (short) thread http://www.rebelnews.ie/2020/07/02/irish-slaves-debunking-myth/
The article reiterates many of the key points that have been circulating - most consistently from @Limerick1914 - re debunking the #irishslave myth as a cornerstone of the far right. However, it is disputable that this mythologizing of the ‘poor Irish’ is of such recent vintage.
It may have been five. Some form of recognizable credibility with O’Callaghan’s 2001 book but there are many historical references to comparing the lot of the emancipated Black slave with the humble Irish dating back decades before the days of the book and later internet meme.
The article is written with an angle of - the Irish were not slaves but they also had it bad - this is explicitly mentioned in every article I’ve seen refuting #irishslave memes. The reason it is not elaborated on is because it is a digression that constitutes whataboutery.
As the author also indicates the reason it is difficult to write about the experiences of Irish indentured servants is because ‘experience’ is not something we can really gauge in nuanced way through the historical records that exist for these places and period.
Having spent many a month in the archives of Montserrat - the ‘Emerald Isle of the Caribbean’ - I’ve looked at all the historical records on that island (and also those that have ended up in US, British and Irish archives) so I’ll use it as an example.
The archives of Montserrat are extremely partial, it has experienced extreme weather events and natural disasters inc historical incidents of earthquakes, hurricanes and volcanic eruptions. The surviving official archives that are accessible can be contained in two small rooms.
While there are other private records we can use to supplement our knowledge - including records of plantations, personal papers and archives of connected islands - they do not leave us with a huge range of sources to assess how people lived on the island.
It is also important to realize that historical documents are not written for historians to use to piece together centuries later; primarily they are used to record, order, legislate and rule. With the exception of some private records they are the records of those in power.
The lived experience we are attempting to recreate now is not from the people who lived those lives (they were largely illiterate) and they are not written intending to be sympathetic, rounded representations. They are written to record, count, enumerate and extract.
Any glimpse of lived experiences tend to be unintended remarks, rare finds or our interpretations. That might be an ‘affectionate’ comment written about a slave in a plantation inventory accompany a probate or laws separating servants and slaves (indicating they came together).
They can be correspondence from a commander indicating their distrust of the loyalty of lower class Irish, written to a governor also of that nation who was probably not included in the sentiments or decisions made by slave as to when they rebelled (St Patrick’s night in 1768).
There is very little we can definitively say about ‘lived experience’ of servants v slaves other than slaves were owned as chattel, there were only consequences for ‘property destruction’ if they were killed by someone other than their master (they then turn up in court records).
Indeed, in some ways, we know more basic details about the enslaved because they were listed as property so they appear in inventories and their value is always calculated in terms of currency. But what about ‘lived experience’?
Well that is where sometimes archaeology has to come in; historical archaeology has developed in many different contexts but in the colonial Caribbean and North America it has often been used to provide a material reality to add nuance and even contradict the historical records.
In many ways the things that are left behind - even if partial and incomplete - give us access to those people who did not write the records and who are the focus of the ‘who had it worse’ debates. So really it is the work of Theresa Singleton https://www.maxwell.syr.edu/anthro/Singleton,_Theresa/
Anna Agbe-Davies https://anthropology.unc.edu/person/anna-agbe-davies/ and the Society of Black Archaeologists (many members currently working on St Croix) https://www.societyofblackarchaeologists.com who are shining a light on those lived experiences silent in the archives.
Specifically look for the experiences of white indentured servants I would highlight the work of Matthew Reilly, who has a forthcoming book on Barbadian ‘red leg’ experiences and has written extensively on race, class and colonial experiences https://www.ccny.cuny.edu/profiles/matthew-reilly-0
Lastly, one way that our archaeologies can tell us something that historical records cannot is in the immediate post-emancipation periods, when the newly freed enslaved are no longer the focus of record keeping (unless that is to move from owning to criminalizing them)
I co-wrote a paper (main authors @KrystaRyzew & JohnFCherry) on a post-emancipation school on Montserrat. There are no historical records. It indicates the desire of the newly-emancipated to educate their children. We only know about it due to excavation https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10761-018-0478-x
There is also a new ‘Archaeological History’ of Montserrat by @KrystaRyzew and Cherry that brings a lot of material together on the island. Well worth a purchase! https://books.google.dk/books?id=f3zKDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA181&lpg=PA181&dq=ryzewski+and+cherry+montserrat&source=bl&ots=27IcSu5eZt&sig=ACfU3U1jis-OfMn1nPq7fxOHLLeQI13y2Q&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiHj4LQ7rDqAhXEC-wKHdhIA24Q6AEwC3oECAYQAQ#v=onepage&q=ryzewski%20and%20cherry%20montserrat&f=false
