Pearl - December 07, 2025


DID YOU KNOW： White People Were Slaves Too!


Episode Stats

Length

17 minutes

Words per Minute

157.02835

Word Count

2,671

Sentence Count

132

Hate Speech Sentences

16


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

When did the Irish first become slaves? How long did the selling of the Irish continue? Who was responsible for the Irish slave trade? And why are we still paying reparations to the Irish for being sold as slaves?

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 where are my reparations i'm ready i want my reparation all right well guys welcome to my
00:00:05.520 reaction series so today we are going to learn about the truth about irish history apparently
00:00:11.520 they were the first slaves brought to america um and i'm irish so i get to i get to learn about my
00:00:17.000 people because the the narrative in america is that white people are the slave owners but
00:00:25.780 apparently we were enslaved i think i've heard this before but let's let's see the in-depth
00:00:30.000 There has been an ongoing debate as to whether the Irish were the first slaves in the Americas,
00:00:38.000 predating the first black African slaves by almost a decade.
00:00:43.000 Slavery is perhaps one of the oldest profit-making endeavors in human history,
00:00:47.000 and the Irish were a special target for a thousand years.
00:00:51.000 Throughout history, the Irish were persecuted by one faction or another,
00:00:55.000 to include enslavement and indentured servitude.
00:00:58.000 When did the Irish first become slaves?
00:01:01.500 How long did the selling of the Irish continue?
00:01:04.940 Who was responsible?
00:01:06.760 Hello, I'm Colin Heaton, former soldier, Marine Corps scout sniper, history professor, historian and book author.
00:01:12.940 And we will answer these questions and other issues on this segment of Forgotten History.
00:01:28.800 Some groups deny the Irish slavery under English and later British rule,
00:01:32.560 claiming that this was nothing more than voluntary indentured servitude, which did exist. However,
00:01:38.880 there are counter-arguments that will be challenged here. There is a legitimate dispute as to the
00:01:43.760 numbers enslaved, especially during the 17th century before the Act of Union in 1707.
00:01:50.000 The official British legal terminology used was indentured servants. Whether the servants in
00:01:55.600 question had willingly signed the indenture contract to emigrate to the Americas or were
00:02:00.120 first to go. Many were forced. Therefore, those transported unwillingly and effectively sold
00:02:06.220 were not considered to be indentured. This included political prisoners, vagrants, convicts,
00:02:12.920 political activists, thieves, prostitutes, or people who had been defined as undesirable
00:02:18.940 by the English government. The Irish introduction to slavery was during the first Viking raids in
00:02:24.240 year 795, lasting through the mid 9th century. This period saw the Irish killed and enslaved.
00:02:30.800 Just like many other societies, the Vikings attacked. Most of these early raids were along
00:02:36.080 the northern and eastern coast using hit-and-run tactics. The Vikings would then flee with treasure
00:02:41.280 and slaves and return to either their holdings in Scotland or back to Norway. Usually, many slaves
00:02:47.120 who were of value were ransomed back to their families, but others remained in captivity.
00:02:51.760 Then, from the year 837 onward, larger targets, such as the greater monastic towns of Armagh, Glendale, Kildare, Slane, Clonard, and Clonmacnoise, and Lismore, were hit by larger forces.
00:03:05.500 These large-scale raids generally spared the smaller local churches and villages far inland, but slaves were still taken, mostly to Scotland and Iceland.
00:03:14.920 In 875, Irish slaves in Iceland launched Europe's largest slave rebellion since the end of the Roman Empire,
00:03:22.280 when Holfioliv, Holmarsen's slaves killed him and fled to Vesmanegar.
00:03:27.480 In 841, the port that became known as Dublin was taken and occupied by both Olaf and Ivar the Boneless.
00:03:34.520 So you're telling me we never hear the Irish had one of the largest slave rebellions and we never hear about it.
00:03:40.340 And by 853, this part of Ireland was a Norse trading center, and slaves were a large part of it.
00:03:46.960 The slave trade did not stop with Ivar's death in 873.
00:03:51.160 Finally, in 902, driven out of Dublin by the combined forces of Brega and Leinster,
00:03:56.760 but the Vikings came back in 914 and reclaimed all the territory, taking more slaves.
00:04:02.160 But Irish resistance was not over.
00:04:03.980 In 980, the Irish, under Mel Sechnell Mac Domnell, King of Meath, fought and managed to defeat the Vikings and freed all of their slaves.
00:04:14.160 Some Vikings who remained assimilated and adapted to Christianity and became part of Irish society.
00:04:20.120 The final nail in the coffin regarding Vikings holding land and taking slaves was in 1014 at the Battle of Clontarf,
00:04:27.460 when Brian Baru, High King of Ireland, attacked Dublin, aided by his allies, the Limerick Vikings.
00:04:34.800 They fought other Irish allies to the local Vikings in Dublin, and Baru's force won,
00:04:39.180 and all the slaves were again freed, thus ending the legacy of constant Norse raids,
00:04:44.360 whether from Danes or Norwegians.
00:04:46.860 The period forced enslavement and severity...
00:04:48.840 You were enslaved for hundreds of years in a bunch of different countries all over the world.
00:04:54.360 Why don't we? Where are my reparations? I'm ready. I want my reparations.
00:05:24.360 Regardless, Henry II of England faced excommunication for the murder of Thomas a Becket, the Archbishop
00:05:30.280 of Canterbury, so it is possible.
00:05:33.360 However, Adrian's successor, Pope Alexander III, granted the lands of Ireland to Henry
00:05:38.880 II, although it was not his land to give.
00:05:41.860 The Norman Conquest of England and Ireland were cataclysmic events that would shape Ireland's,
00:05:46.460 as well as world history, and create tensions with England for the next 800 years.
00:05:51.920 The Normans were initially invited to Ireland by Dermot McMurray.
00:05:55.160 I lived in England and there's still like tension between the Irish and the British.
00:06:00.100 Isn't that crazy?
00:06:01.600 It's almost like beefs are inherited.
00:06:05.240 It's kind of, I mean, for me, I don't really care.
00:06:08.440 Like I'm Irish, I think Lithuanian, German.
00:06:11.580 I think I did a DNA thing and it said I'm maybe a little bit like Viking or something.
00:06:16.840 I just remember I looked it up and it was like from the Vikings.
00:06:20.300 So maybe someone in my history, like, I mean, the Vikings saw an Irish baddie or something.
00:06:26.060 I don't know.
00:06:26.600 The deposed king of Leinster.
00:06:28.520 He is sometimes referred to as Dermot of the Forerunners,
00:06:31.680 and his grandmother was the granddaughter of Brian Beru.
00:06:35.020 In October 1171, King Henry II landed in Ireland
00:06:38.940 and allowed Dermot to recruit soldiers and mercenaries,
00:06:42.420 as Ireland was made up of several kingdoms at war with each other.
00:06:45.520 The city of Dublin and the surrounding area were under Norman occupation and would be called the pale or the safe zone.
00:06:53.760 Going beyond that was considered foolish, hence the term we use today, going beyond the pale.
00:06:59.100 But the Normans ended the practice of slavery in Ireland, but not serfdom for at least a few hundred years.
00:07:05.340 Despite the Norman abominable...
00:07:06.340 It just seems like there's always peasants and there's always aristocratic class.
00:07:12.280 It just seems like in all societies, it was kind of just remade in a different way, you know.
00:07:20.760 ...bauchment of slavery, serfdom was still alive and well.
00:07:24.160 Serfs were, unlike slaves, bound to the land, and the land meant everything.
00:07:29.360 So selling people into slavery would have left no one to farm and conduct agriculture.
00:07:34.220 Following the Battle of Kinsale in 1601, when the Irish and Spanish alliance was defeated,
00:07:40.120 the Irish aristocracy fled to Europe, but the commoners remained, and they left the power
00:07:46.240 vacuum filled by English nobles. Reports vary, and the numbers are in dispute, but the high number
00:07:52.200 is that English forces had 30,000 captured Irish and Spanish soldiers. Other sources say half that
00:07:58.380 number, around 15,000, were engaged, with 7,000 to 8,000 being captured. The Spanish allies were
00:08:04.580 allowed to leave, but not the Irish. In 1603 or 1604, King James I of England, crowned on March
00:08:11.780 23rd, 1603, reportedly issued the order of banishment. This allowed those Irish captured
00:08:17.100 to be sold. Okay, so the British got into power basically, and they just hate the Irish. They just
00:08:22.460 beef with them. And so now they're selling them to America. Is that where we're going? A permanent
00:08:27.100 banishment. After nearly a decade, the king gave permission for the English governor general
00:08:32.080 to collect and sell the captured Irish soldiers as slaves
00:08:35.920 and send them to the New World in the Americas.
00:08:38.960 I know one of my ancestors came 10 years after the Mayflower.
00:08:43.780 But I think this predates, okay, I don't know, Mayflower year 1620.
00:08:51.140 So they would have come in 1630.
00:08:54.860 Okay, so not, maybe I wasn't enslaved.
00:08:58.140 I just want to know if I get reparations.
00:08:59.800 The first recorded Irish slaves were sold, possibly to the Portuguese and taken to the Amazon River Basin in their colony in modern day Brazil.
00:09:08.220 This brought them to the new world.
00:09:10.360 There has been some dispute as to whether these people were indentured servants or slaves, but it is clear that they were forced.
00:09:16.620 That's always what they say, that we don't count as slaves.
00:09:19.520 I mean, they kind of don't say like the unwritten stuff, which is they don't say out loud.
00:09:25.880 It's because you're white.
00:09:27.380 But I think that's what they mean.
00:09:29.800 But last I looked into this, they had lower life expectancies than slaves, I think.
00:09:35.000 Out of Ireland to the New World, so it seems illogical and ridiculous to assume
00:09:40.620 that they went voluntarily, hence the status of slaves.
00:09:44.180 It has been chronicled that in 1625, James I's son, Charles I, issued the decree.
00:09:51.180 And it may be possible before his death in March 1625,
00:09:55.180 but given the timeline on James' death, it would appear that his son, Charles,
00:09:58.940 probably did issue the world decree authorizing the Irish slaves. This included prisoners captured,
00:10:05.200 those deemed to be common criminals and rabble rousers who were sold. They were to become the
00:10:10.000 property of the English plantation owners in the North American colonies. As a result, tens of
00:10:15.580 thousands of Irish men and women were sent to the Eastern American colonies, as well as Guiana,
00:10:20.860 Antigua and Montserrat, as well between 1629 and 1632, as other Caribbean locations over the next
00:10:30.020 few decades were infiltrated, but the exact number may never be known. By 1637, approximately 69%
00:10:36.420 of the population of Montserrat were Irish. Many were indentured servants, yet some were slaves.
00:10:42.540 The rationale was simple. Black slaves had to be purchased at a cost of around 20 to 50 pounds
00:10:47.860 sterling, a huge sum of money in those days. However, Irish slaves were sold for 900 pounds
00:10:54.220 of cotton per person, but also traded for tobacco and indigo in a straight barter system.
00:10:59.460 The Irish were cheaper. Yeah, that's what I thought it was.
00:11:01.680 It would appear that the Irish then became the largest source of slaves for English slave traders
00:11:06.080 and plantation owners at that time, far surpassing the African slave trade until
00:11:11.820 the early to mid 1700s between 1641 during the irish rebellion to 1652 it has been stated that
00:11:20.300 over 550 000 irish work wow she's beautiful i don't know if this is a movie or something
00:11:27.240 built by english forces and 300 000 more were sold as slaves wow mostly military aged men
00:11:34.780 their children especially women and girls were sold and considered quite valuable in the domestic
00:11:40.580 service roles. The greatest perpetrator of this was Oliver Cromwell, who defeated Charles I in
00:11:46.360 1649 during the English Civil War and had him executed. Cromwell, as Lord Protector, waged a
00:11:53.300 ruthless war against the Irish, starting in 1649. By 1650, it is claimed that nearly 29,000 Irish
00:12:00.740 were sold to planters in St. Kitt. During the decade of the 1650s, it is also claimed, as well
00:12:06.920 as disputed that around 100,000 Irish children, generally from 10 to 14 years of age, were taken
00:12:14.280 from their parents and were also sold and sold themselves also as slaves or indentured servants.
00:12:19.480 That is so sad. Like you got a bunch of kids.
00:12:22.240 In the West Indies, Virginia, the Carolina, and they separate them from their parents and New
00:12:27.460 England. It is also claimed that between 1651 and 1660, the Irish slaves far outnumbered the
00:12:35.020 colonists in all areas. No way! I wonder, maybe I do deserve reparations. In 1652, Cromwell ordered
00:12:42.540 that 12,000 Irish were to be sold to Barbados, and those numbers are not in dispute, only their
00:12:48.720 status. On 1 May 1654, his To Hell or To Connacht proclamation was issued during the Act of
00:12:55.980 Settlement of 1662. This was when the English began confiscating all Irish-held lands, and the
00:13:02.320 native Irish were relocated west of the Shannon River. Those who resisted were sent to the West
00:13:06.960 Indies as slaves or executed. His own words proclaimed, quote, those who fail to transplant
00:13:13.080 themselves into Connacht or County Clare with his six months shall be attained of high treason,
00:13:19.700 are to be sent to America or other parts beyond the seas. Those banished who return ought to
00:13:25.880 suffer the pains of death as felons by virtue of this act without benefit of clergy, end quote.
00:13:31.520 The English could kill the Irish without penalty, but selling them offered great profit.
00:13:36.360 It is claimed that over 80,000 more Irish were sold, with 52,000 going to the colonies
00:13:42.040 of Barbados and Virginia, but again we cannot verify the exact numbers.
00:13:46.780 Many argue that these were indentured servants, not slaves, yet there are no records of contracts
00:13:51.500 between those forcibly removed and their benefactors.
00:13:54.680 One may assume that, given the barter system of using tobacco and cotton as a trade item
00:13:59.240 for workers, that these deported Irish were, in fact, slaves. In 1656, the Council of State
00:14:05.440 ordered the roundup of 1,000 Irish girls and 1,000 Irish boys in their early teens,
00:14:10.820 even some children, to be rounded up and sold to Jamaican planters.
00:14:15.360 That's interesting. So a lot of them were sold into the Caribbean.
00:14:18.700 Okay.
00:14:19.180 Numbers are in dispute, but do seem reasonable, as these would be children whose parents were
00:14:23.980 already deported. Part of this order was an edict, passed on October 2, 1665, which stated,
00:14:30.000 quote, upon report of Committee for America concerning proposals for transporting persons
00:14:35.320 from Long Island to Jamaica to confer with the Committee for Jamaica, end quote. The persons
00:14:42.340 were Irish, and no indentured servant would be released to go to Jamaica. These had to be
00:14:47.780 forcibly exported Irish, who were already present in New York. In fact, some of the English
00:14:53.940 receiving these Irish slaves, seemed rather concerned, hence this following report,
00:14:58.540 Commission appointing Cornelius Holland, Colonel Owen Rowe, Sir Thomas Roth, and 14 others
00:15:05.880 a company, by the name of the Governor and Company of the City of London, for the plantation
00:15:11.260 of the Somers Islands, to take into consideration the present condition of those plantations,
00:15:17.500 many well-affected persons there, having been much oppressed and unjustly dealt with,
00:15:22.640 in relation to matters of conscience, end quote. Whitehall, 1653, June 28th. This situation with
00:15:31.240 the forcibly removed Irish not being a people to take subjugation lightly appeared to have created
00:15:36.260 the fear of an uprising, and this seems to be explained in the Whitehall document from November
00:15:40.740 18th, 1656, quote, the Council of State to Captain Wilkinson, importance of the summer's islands to
00:15:48.720 the interest of the commonwealth. Supposition that the Spaniards will endeavor to get a footing
00:15:53.580 there. Doubtful that a principle of disaffection may yet be retained by some of the inhabitants,
00:16:00.760 he is encouraged to attend to his duties as commander of the fort, to keep a vigilant eye
00:16:06.080 upon the malignant and discontented party, that they may have the less opportunity to prejudice
00:16:12.200 the island's safety, and to use his best endeavors to secure the interest of the commonwealth.
00:16:17.420 end quote this referred to the lyris population that must have been slaves and they feared an
00:16:23.500 uprising no reason to worry about indentured servants so whether one accepts the reality
00:16:28.780 of irish slavery or not the fact remains that there were irish people forced into slavery
00:16:33.480 however the exact numbers may never be known yeah in the time period that that's the the challenge
00:16:39.260 is they're just never even if it's true they are never going to let this history come out it's why
00:16:45.720 don't love going back in time and like talking about history even though it's really interesting
00:16:49.240 because people are just going to find a way to manipulate it um basically to extract resources
00:16:55.480 from white people so anyways guys make sure you like the video subscribe to the channel and i'll
00:16:59.760 see you next time