Many Europeans were enslaved by the British from the 1500s to the 1700s
the Irish received some of the worst treatment
i have to admit it was not something i had heard of myself until recently
but there are plenty of articles out there for you to research
I wasn't willing to jump on or off your statement without looking first. It seems that this IS available on the web but you know the web, you've got to dig further than look at what somebody says is true. I'll pull up a couple of references and a background check on the sites posting information on this stuff.
If you don't want to read the whole thing, fine, just skim it. What you will find is that this is presented as serious stuff by zealous conspiracy theorists and white supremecists. A more careful look at history indicates the situation was bad and reflects poorly on the English of the 17th century but does not indicate that Irish forced indentured servitude was anything like the black african slave's situation.
Reference 1:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-irish-slave-trade-the-forgotten-white-slaves/31076
A quotation from it: 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.
Another quotation: 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.
Background check on the website:
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Globalresearch.ca
A couple of quotes:
What it really is
Despite presenting itself as a source of scholarly analysis, Global Research mostly consists of polemicists, many of whom accept (and use) conspiracy theories,
pseudoscience and
propaganda. The prevalent conspiracist strand relates to global power-
elites (primarily
governments and
corporations) and their New World Order.
[4] Specific featured conspiracy theories include those addressing
9/11,
[5] vaccines,
[6] genetic modification,
[7] Zionism,
[8][9] HAARP,
[10] global warming,
[11][12] Bosnian genocide denialism[13] chemtrails,
[14] and
David Kelly.
[15]
Globalresearch contributors are happy to source information from anyone who seems vaguely aligned with their ideology; during the 2011
Libyan civil war the site was an apologist for
Muammar al-Gaddafi,
[16]reproducing his propaganda and painting him as a paragon of a modern leader. In the 2014
Ukrainian crisis the site is taking the standard "anti-globalisation" stance against the
Western side and
falling into the ranks of imperial Russian propaganda instead.
“”
North Korea, a Land of Human Achievement, Love and Joy
—Everything you need to know about Globalresearch in a nutshell
[1]
Reference 2: https://www.opendemocracy.net/beyondslavery/liam-hogan/‘irish-slaves’-convenient-myth
A a few quotations:
there were many who were forcibly transplanted from the British Isles to the colonies and sold into indentured service against their will. While these forced deportees would have included political prisoners and serious felons, it is believed that the majority came from the poor and vulnerable...
Indeed this criminalisation of the poor continues into the 21st century. In any case, all bar the serious felons were freed once the term of their contract expired. edit: my underlining
“White indentured servitude was so very different from black slavery as to be from another galaxy of human experience,” as Donald Harman Akenson put it inIf the Irish Ran the World: Montserrat, 1630-1730. How so? Chattel slavery was perpetual, a slave was only free once they they were no longer alive; it was hereditary, the children of slaves were the property of their owner; the status of chattel slave was designated by ‘race’, there was no escaping your bloodline; a chattel slave was treated like livestock, you could kill your slaves while applying “moderate correction” and the homicide law would not apply
Found in the websites and forums of white supremacist conspiracy theorists, this insidiously claims that indentured servitude can be equated with chattel slavery. From Stormfront.org, a self-described online community of white nationalists, to David Icke’s February 2014 interview with Infowars.com, the narrative of the ‘White slaves’ is continuously promoted. The most influential book to claim that there was ‘white slavery’ in Colonial America was Michael Hoffman’s They Were White and They Were Slaves: The Untold History of the Enslavement of Whites in Early America. Self-published in 1993
Background check on the website: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDemocracy
openDemocracy is a website for debate about international politics and culture, offering news and opinion articles from established academics,journalists and policymakers covering current issues in world affairs. openDemocracy was founded in 2000 by Anthony Barnett, David Hayes, Susan Richards and Paul Hilder. Publishing started in May 2001.[1]
Prominent contributors to the webzine have included Kofi Annan, George Soros, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Shirin Ebadi, Sidney Blumenthal, Peter Hain,Pierre Bourdieu, Manuel Castells, Fred H
openDemocracy is owned and published through a non-profit foundation.[3] It has been funded by a number of philanthropic organisations, including the Ford Foundation, the Atlantic Philanthropies, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund,
