How Did The Irish Influence The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade

The Irish occupy a unique place in the history of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, being white Europeans who were both slaves and slave owners, depending on which way the political and economic winds were blowing from the seventeenth century onwards. From the ruled to the rulers the Irish played a significant and almost universal role in the Trans-Atlantic slave trade and their story is one which is deserving of a greater knowledge both at home in Ireland but also worldwide. In relation to the question, what is certain is that during two centuries of the Atlantic slave trade, Irish merchants managed to build vast dynasties on the back of the suffering of astronomical numbers of innocent people and this is living proof that the Irish have not
Cromwell’s initial plan was somewhat moral as he did offer freedom to indentured Irish slaves in Barbados and give them thirty acres of their own to farm. However, when this plan was met with very little enthusiasm or success, Cromwell rethought his plans and instead offered the indentured a plot of land on completion of a certain duration of slavery in the West Indies which was usually seven years. They were given a free passage across the Atlantic in exchange for these years but had little option in deciding whether or not to go. During these years of slavery however the slave had no pay nor rights and lived in primitive conditions. The great number of these Irish emigrants were either indentured servants or prisoners and experienced conditions far worse than even the prisoners where they originally
At this time, half of the ships which sailed out of Nantes were owned or stocked by Irish merchant families including the Joyce’s, Walsh’s, McCarthy’s, O’Sheil’s, Sarsfield’s and O’Riordans. Manufactured goods, guns, textiles, liquor and knives were brought from Nantes to the Slave Coast, exchanged for slaves who were transported to the French colonies of Guadeloupe, Martinique and Saint Dominque (now Haiti) where they were sold for sugar and tobacco, which then returned to Europe. The profits made from this trading were spread far beyond Nantes. It made fortunes for the ports of Bristol, Liverpool and Amsterdam. The merchant princes of Cork, Limerick and Waterford profited greatly by supplying the ships, feeding the slaves and slavers alike to great reward and family fortunes. Huge family fortunes were built in Cork. The city centre was rebuilt and some of those dynasties that were built on the backs and bellies of millions of slaves are still with us today his trading went on for decades, with the wealth of nations and Empires built up on unimaginable human misery. For example, In 1748 Antoine Walsh left France to manage the family slave plantation in Sainte Dominque (Haiti), where he died in 1763. Ten years earlier, in 1753, Antoine had been enabled by King Louis XV of France and the family estates on