Talk:Irish slaves myth

Well this is irresponsible at best and purposefully misleading at worst

There was indentured servitude, but when most people speak of Celtic or Irish slaves they are either talking about the women who were spoils of war and then sold off as slaves.. or in more recent times (later 1600s) the over 50,000 Irish slaves here in America that were sold for 900lbs of cotton a piece. The book "to hell or Barbados" is about the Irish slaves in america. Calling it a myth is disrespectful. Saying that another group of people were enslaved doesn't take away from the abomination that was the enslaving of africans. The fact that slavery is still happening at an alarming scale around the world is a problem that people just pretend isn't happening bc it doesn't affect them.I get ignorant racist people try to use the Irish slavery as a gotcha(even though most aren't Irish). My family (Roche/De La Roche) dates back to the 12th century in the country Cork area of Ireland and my first ancestor John Roche arrived in Virginia in the late 1600s. 2600:6C63:447F:8FBC:C001:E31C:D6AD:1F99 (talk) 19:18, 12 January 2025 (UTC)

Have you actually read the article? O'Callaghan's book has been widely criticised and discredited, as outlined in two sections in the article. Your ancestry, like mine, is irrelevant. Bastun^{Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ!} 22:56, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

this is patently false. I'm the decendant of a slave from the 1690 rebellion. Most were sent to Jamaica but my relative landed on a Tobacco operation. His name was William de Clifton. He was not indentured. 2601:8C:402:1B50:444A:C98:A672:9D19 (talk) 11:11, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

What rebellion would that be? Do you in fact mean the Williamite War in Ireland? That resulted in the Treaty of Limerick, which certainly did not have provisions for enslavement of the defeated! Some 14,000 defeated Jacobites chose exile, joining European armies (mostly French); 1,000 returned home unharmed; some 2,000 joined the Williamite army. The treaty saw land and holdings returned to the defeated (at least for a time). Again, your ancestry, like mine, is irrelevant, but it's quite possible some misinformation, exaggeration or embellishment may have occurred at some point over the intervening 300+ years. Indentured servitude was no picnic, especially where it was involuntary, but it was a far cry from chattel slavery, and indentured servitude doesn't even seem to have been a thing following the Williamite war. Bastun^{Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ!} 12:01, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 7 April 2025

Much of this article is historically inaccruate and tinged with a strong leftist bias. Without out any doubt the African slaver trade was an abomination; that is no way should belittle the English's enslavement of Irish peoples for sale and abuse in America. It is well documented that the primary driver of the irish slaving economy was that Irish slaves cost 10&* of a :healthy negro" (as sick as that is) Bmahanes (talk) 22:27, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

You need to provide references that support your argument, not unsupported assertions. Acroterion (talk) 23:23, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

You should fact check Wikipedia

In 30 minutes of research I have seen most of your references are from .com sites that are not acceptable references for research purposes. Whereas .edu and .gov sites which are acceptable references say the opposite of your article. I would never consider myself a racist but I also wouldn't lie about history to support my own opinion. Multiple legal government documents say the Irish were slaves and that they were classified as colored and not white in the eyes of the US government even after the Civil War 2600:100B:B00E:B345:0:6B:D486:B101 (talk) 19:49, 21 May 2025 (UTC)

Um... our verifiability and reliable source policies certainly don't preclude the use of .com sources! All of the sources used are WP:RS, but if you have a problem with a particular one, please outline it and indicate why it doesn't meet the RS criteria. Likewise, if you have access to "multiple legal government documents" that say the Irish were slaves, etc., by all means, list those sources. Thing is, there are multiple reliable sources that debunk such claims already listed. Bastun^{Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ!} 20:03, 21 May 2025 (UTC)

Slaves "Myth"

Speaking as someone who:

- Has a degree in History

- Works in History

- Is generally left-wing

Indentured servants are not the same as chattel slaves. Nor are chattel slaves the same as house slaves, nor was chattel slavery in the USA the same as chattel slavery in Haiti, etc. There are many different forms of slavery. Slavery is being forced to work for another as property against their will.

Indentured servants often - though not exclusively - mark every single one of those definitions. There is perhaps some nuance to be drawn when the indentured willingly agreed to be a slave, but 1) not all did and 2) consenting in the outset is not the same as consenting in an ongoing fashion. Even if one is to bring up the hypothetical temporary nature of indentured servitude, many indentures died as a direct result of their conditions as servants.

There is no "myth". It's just a conflagration between two different forms of slavery used for the sake of political narratives.

Yet the title and much of this article - while perhaps not explicitly denying the existence of Irish indentured servitude - is written from the perspective as if indentured servitude is either unambiguously NOT slavery, or otherwise implying that Irish indentured servitude never occurred. And the fact that this talk page is full of others also questioning the validity of the positions in the article is telling.

Frankly, I think this entire article should be deleted and what unbiased content there is should be relegated to a section of the article on Irish indentured servitude. 208.251.163.162 (talk) 13:06, 4 June 2025 (UTC)

This article isn't about Irish people who were taken abroad as indentured servants (and nobody is denying that occurred!) It is about the myth - and it is a myth - that the Irish were chattel slaves. And it is about the propagation of that myth by white nationalists, using, for example, photographs of child labourers from the 20th century as "evidence" of the existence of Irish slaves in the 17th and 18th centuries, or baseless claims that Irish women were forcibly bred with African men. That all fairly clear from the article. We should probably include more similar examples, though, to make it even clearer. Bastun^{Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ!} 14:15, 4 June 2025 (UTC)