Talk:Irish slaves myth/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

More Sources

• Public Radio International: [1]
• Associated Press, via ABC News: [2]

Semi-protected edit request on 5 November 2020

Change "A 2000 book published in Dublin,To Hell Or Barbados: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ireland, by Irish Republican Sean O'Callaghan," to "A 2000 book published in Dingle by Brandon Books,To Hell Or Barbados: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ireland, by Irish Author Sean O'Callaghan,"

~~This book was neither published in Dublin, nor was it written by the Sean O'Callaghan referred to in the article. It was published by Brandon Books Dingle, Co. Kerry and was written by a different Sean O'Callaghan; who became a journalist in London after a career with the Irish Army. He went on to work in African at several East African newspapers. He was a respected author of 14 books between 1956 and 1992; one of which was entitled 'The Slave Trade' dealing with modern slavery in Africa and The Middle East. Not the same Sean O'Callaghan cited falsely by this page - who was indeed in the Provisional IRA.~~ CillianOLongaigh (talk) 18:18, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

Done. Thank you for noting this. Dimadick (talk) 11:13, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

References

Lead ('Irish' benefitted from Slave Trade theme)

As per the standard Wikipedia Lead criteria "The lead serves as an introduction to the article and a summary of its most important contents."

I suggest removing the sentence "It is also used to suppress the history of Irish involvement in the transatlantic slave trade." as it 1) appears only in one sentance much further down the article and is thus not part of the "most important contents". 2) It is a single author claim without substantiation. Maybe here is not the place for making what a single independent historian (of which a large section of the article is based) said as an essential fact for the article. The article is good as is without highlighting speculations. 3) This individual claim Liam Hogan is making is a problematic assertion: "He also makes the point that this narrative has been used to help obscure the fact that many Irish people participated in and profited from slavery." The history is that not that many 'Irish people' were involved as discussed in this well researched piece. And 4) my problem specifically, is that 'Irish' in this instance implies some sort of national or homogeneous identity. Ireland was systematically settled, conquered, and ruled from Britain and before that the Normans. We need to make a distinction between the indigenous and the colonial settler in this case. No one claims that 'Haitian's' owned slaves, although many French colonisers were born and raised in Haiti. That would be a disturbing misrepresentation and obfuscation in its own right.

Happy with the Hogan quote later in the article, and I will continue to improve the article with well sourced, and neutral information.

Hesperian Nguyen (talk) 15:38, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

I've updated the wording and placement of this information for the time being. Hesperian Nguyen (talk) 17:04, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

To be clear: Hogan has not said or provided information demonstrating that hiding 'Irish' involvement in the slave trade is being used by white supremacists or racists (basically a US phenomenon). Rather he is saying that there is a danger in downplaying the role of 'Irish' involvement and this is being attributed to Irish nationalists of different stripes. Article needs to not change these claims to serve another. All the information is here in the article already, we don't need to pile-on imo. Hesperian Nguyen (talk) 17:27, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

@Hesperian Nguyen: I completely disagree.

First of all what you're describing as a 'well researched piece' is actually an article published in a fashion/culture magazine by a historian who is not recognised as an authority on this subject. It is not your job to determine whether or not a piece is "well researched". Wiki's RS criteria state three definitions of a source that we must adhere to: the work, the author of the work, and the publisher of the work. The work itself should have been subjected to review by other scholars (they're the ones who determine if a work is 'well researched'); the author of the work should be recognised as a subject-matter expert; the publisher should be a legit academic press. Your source fails all three criteria.

Has any historian who studies Ireland and transatlantic slavery ever cited Brian Kelly in his/her research?. I don't think so. He has no history of publishing on this subject. If he wanted to publish on this subject as a historian, he would've published through proper scholarly channels, not a fashion/culture magazine and the political magazine CounterPunch.

On the other hand, Nini Rodgers' Ireland, Slavery and Anti-Slavery, 1612 -1865, which you are trying to balance with a questionable source, checks every box on what qualifies as reliable on here. Insofar as I can tell, what you are attempting to do is essentially what the lede of the article describes ("suppressing Irish involvement in the slave trade").

Regardless of your personal views on the extent to which the Irish participated in slavery, the suppression of Irish involvement in the slave trade has been referenced numerous times by qualified historians as one of at least three motivations for the Irish Slaves Myth. For these reasons I support removing the statement sourced to Brian Kelly from the article. Other editors can weigh in here.Jonathan f1 (talk) 13:34, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

The class-based critique in Rebel which Hesperian Nguyen (HN) tries to rely on, supports the exact opposite of the obscuring edit HN proposes -- it shows that the issue of suppressing the history of Irish involvement in the slave-trade is bound up inextricably in this topic -- while no one probably is surprised that the elite and the merchant class of Ireland took the profits, the history of involvement actually does exist and is not to be obscured [3] (nor is it limited to 'in Ireland', it is in Africa and the Caribbean too) -- it would be daft for our article on this topic to attempt to obscure this facet. Alanscottwalker (talk) 13:59, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

Hi, I'm sorry I don't understand why this discussion is being resuscitated. If this is about the following sentence: "It also obscures the history of Irish involvement in the transatlantic slave trade, often serving Irish republican ends." I don't think it is a good one. It is a clumsy compromise at this point.

Re: "Irish" involvement, again it is misleading for all the sourced reasons I mentioned above, but I will also add that the significance that Ireland was not even an independent nation until 1923, at the earliest, perhaps makes my case simpler. During the Atlantic slave trade (1619-1860) Ireland was not a 'democracy' nor independent, but rather an occupied land. What those occupiers did cannot be attributed to the general masses of native Irish people. To insist on this point keeps this discussion rooted in an ahistorical morass of ethnic revenge-based politics. Do I have to explain why that should be avoided in an encyclopedia? Regards, Hesperian Nguyen (talk) 18:14, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

No. Your claim is wrong by the above sources, and your new "simple" argument is even poorer. If anything, it is your own "ethnic revenge politics" that skews your POV. Nothing about this has to do with the Irish state. The Irish state is not blamed (nor praised) for anything to do with this article. It, all along, has to do with Irish people, in Ireland, Africa and the Caribbean (and later the Irish diaspora). There is nothing that makes it impossible for Irish being involved in the world slave trade during the 16th through the 19th centuries, and according to historians they were. But now you want to deny that, against history, against sources, and are attempting to obscure it. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 18:49, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

Being determined doesn't make you right. Please provide sourced info instead of suspicions if you want to revive this dead convo about an unaltered (and unclear) sentence in the lead. What I'm saying is beyond belief simple: saying Irish in this context is confusing and un-nuanced. No encyclopedia should be confusing and un-nuanced. Sincerely, an Irish person by naturalisation Hesperian Nguyen (talk) 19:28, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

You have already been provided sources. Look up. It is unfortunate that you find the historians of your naturalized country wrong, but you have now made it abundantly plain that this is about your personal feelings and unfortunately the encyclopedia is made much worse by those who attempt to inject their personal feelings. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 20:28, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

Kind of an ironic reply you made, cause what you wrote is the definition of a personal attack. I'm not sure how to address your reading comprehension, so I won't. What I'm saying is actually really straight forward and uncontroversial, although I'm not surprised by the knee-jerk wokeism. An example: would it be the most accurate way to present information to say something like "Mexicans participated in the slave trade"?. As they were under colonial control of Spain and there are a number of issues as to what constituted being Mexican at that time and now, that there was no nation of Mexico, it seems deceptively simple and even misleading. If you don't understand that comparison or what I wrote 6 months ago, I would politely ask you to take chill pill and just read the text and not 'between the lines'. Further. since you aren't providing or proposing anything new here, I'm moving on. Hesperian Nguyen (talk) 22:31, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

No. You are the one who put forward your personal situation as being naturalized in Ireland, demonstrating your personal feelings. And you have now made it clearer this is about your personal feelings with your completely irrelevant buzzword, "wokeism". Your example has already been addressed, were RS discussing Mexican involvement, we would discuss Mexican involvement, so when RS discuss Irish involvement, we discuss Irish involvement. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 23:44, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

User:Jonathan f1 I'm not sure why you are raising this topic (and incorrectly). What I was originally addressing in the lead has since been changed and further modified, as far as I know. Further, it sounds like you are inventing new criteria about sources (WP:RS) that only you are able to determine (how did you determine that article was published by "a fashion/culture magazine"?! That is completely false, even at a glance! Or that Brian Kelly "is not recognised as an authority on this subject"?! He's an Irish labour historian focusing on race!). I think the article is actually pretty good and perhaps the only issue is that the majority of the citations come from a single person: Liam Hogan. An ideal article would have broader range of voices. Perhaps that's something to work on? As for removing Brian Kelly's good, reliable quote, I strongly oppose this. It clearly meets (WP:RS) and adds depth to the article. Hesperian Nguyen (talk) 23:00, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

Please see this recent well-researched piece on the very same matter by the same notable author published in History Ireland. Hesperian Nguyen (talk) 23:20, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

That is the same almost word for word class-based critique he published in Rebel. (The only apparent difference is that he is responding with respect to Laurence Fenton, who earlier published in the same magazine on Irish involvement). Kelly's reiterated thesis is that he wants the focus on the hierarchical class structure, and he admits several times, Irish were involved. All these voices speak of Irish involvement, including Kelly's voice. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 00:07, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

@Hesperian Nguyen: Under no reasonable interpretation of RS rules is Rebel magazine reliable for an article like this. It almost certainly does not qualify to balance content that's sourced to Nini Rodgers' book, scholarship published through an academic press and reviewed by historians. Brian Kelly is a historian of labour history in the Jim Crow South. He hasn't published one scholarly article or book on transatlantic slavery or Ireland or anything to do with Ireland's involvement in slavery. He's a labour historian who specialises in race and ethnic relations in the post-Emancipation US.

The reason why this is being brought up again is because you used Brian Kelly's Rebel magazine article to support this statement:

However, historian Michael Kelly points out that "overwhelmingly the benefits of Ireland’s involvement in transatlantic slavery went to the same class that presided over the misery that culminated in the horrors of famine and mass starvation.".

Now surely you can see why this is problematic given that one of the motivations for this myth is "to obscure the history of Irish involvement in the transatlantic slave trade" and to hyper-inflate Irish victimhood, which is then used to attack black people.

"Brian" Kelly (and it's Brian, by the way, not Michael) was mainly responding to Liam Hogan, not Nini Rodgers. To quote Padhraig Higgins' review of Ireland, Slavery and Anti-Slavery: 1612-1865, "Ireland, Slavery and Anti-Slavery is too nuanced a work to provide anything like a balance sheet of how complicit or blameless the Irish were in this trade." In other words, it makes no sense to balance Nini Rodgers with Brian Kelly, since Rodgers never even considered which "class" in Ireland was "most complicit" in slavery or enjoyed the most benefits from the slave trade. If anything, Rodgers' research demonstrated that "although Irishmen of all backgrounds had connections with slavery, very little of the slave trade profits actually wound up in Ireland." (quoting Gera Burton's review of Rodgers)

Rodgers also warned that Irish involvement in slavery was in no way confined to the Anglo-Caribbean. While we don't have exact numbers, we do know that several exiled Irishmen serving on the European continent participated in slavery as merchants or owners and some grew extravagantly wealthy. As part of the French connection in Nantes, for example, Rodgers focused on Antoine Walsh, a slave ship captain and merchant, writing that, "Philip Walsh’s son, Antoine, provided Prince Charles Edward Stuart with an armed frigate, on which they sailed together for Scotland in a bid to restore the Jacobite line. Antoine Walsh could afford this political gesture because of the wealth he had made from the slave trade. Nantes (with its close-knit Irish community) had emerged as the kingdom’s chief slaving port, a starting-point for the triangular trade—manufactures for Africa (textiles, brandy and firearms), slaves for the French West Indian colonies (Martinique, Guadeloupe and St Domingue), sugar and tobacco for Europe." An Irish presence in Spanish America as well as Dutch Saint Eustatia has also been noted.

So this extends well beyond Ireland itself. Everyone knows that Ireland as a separate entity wasn't involved in the slave trade, so it is no big revelation that the benefits of slave trading accrued mostly to that social class which owed its status to the British Crown. What is significant here is that the Irish worked through the empires of others. (Rodgers)

Secondly, insofar as Irish slaves mythology is concerned, it would be remiss of a historian to ignore Montserrat, an obscure little island in the Anglo-Caribbean that figures prominently in this myth. Montserrat was relatively insignificant as far as British colonial possessions went, but it's been given new life by 'Irish slaves' traffickers who claim that two-thirds of the island's slave population consisted of Irish Catholics. In reality the exact opposite was true: Montserrat was unique among Anglo-Caribbean colonies in the sense that Irish Catholics made up over 2/3rds of the plantation class - as early as the close of the 17th Century - whereas elsewhere they would've been a visible or barely visible minority. Donald Akenson, who published the most comprehensive study of that island's colonial history (If the Irish Ran the World: Montserrat, 1630-1730), wrote that Montserrat was governed by a "Catholic mafia" and that Irish Catholic slavers were as cruel and unfeeling to their slaves as their English counterparts. It's one of the more egregious aspects of the Irish slaves myth, second only to the "forced breeding" narrative. Of course Brian Kelly never wrote anything about Montserrat.

Simply put, even if you accept Brian Kelly and Rebel magazine as a reliable source (which I don't), the statement you inserted is more suitable for an article that covers Ireland and transatlantic slavery more generally, not here where we are covering a pseudohistory and a specific set of claims that qualified historians have responded to.

And finally, Alanscottwalker's suspicions are not unfounded. Your history of contributions to this article starts with you attempting to remove any mention of how this myth has been used "to obscure the history of Irish involvement in the transatlantic slave trade" from the lede of the article. When those efforts failed, you apparently tried working your way around this and found an ally in Brian Kelly. Elsewhere on this talk page you've written that Irish people benefited from slavery by "selling pickles" at ports.

While it's true that most of Ireland benefitted from slavery in indirect ways -- mainly through the provisions trade -- and while it's also true that the profits from the provisions trade accrued mostly to the Anglo-Irish and a small number of Catholic elites, to reduce this to selling pickles is widely off the mark. Liam Hogan noted, "Many of our merchants (whether Catholic, Protestant, Huguenot, or Quaker) made fortunes trading with all of the slavocracies in the Caribbean. Shoes for enslaved people were manufactured in Belfast; and as mainly poor Irish Catholic tenants were forced off the land to make way for livestock, butter, beef, and pork were salted and exported to the colonies in enormous quantities via Cork, Dublin, Waterford, and Limerick..These provisions, especially cheap in Ireland, were essential for the operation of the slave labor camps as their constant supply meant that all the majority of the land could be used solely for cash crops (sugar cane, etc.)"

In other words, Ireland was exporting food, shoes and other provisions to the slave colonies, the slave colonies then had full use of land and resources for production, and then rum, tobacco, sugar and other cash crops produced in the colonies were imported by Ireland. The average Irish person benefitted from this in the same way consumers today benefit from free trade: they had access to a wider variety of goods that they could purchase at low prices (in other words, it raised living standards in Ireland, despite that the average Irish person, like the average consumer today, was probably oblivious to these gains). If you think this is insignificant then you may also be of the opinion that free trade agreements today don't provide any non-trivial benefits to average consumers. Few economists would agree with you. The Caribbean sugar trade built up the Catholic middle class in Ireland, just as the North American Free Trade agreement created a Mexican middle class and transformed the Mexican polity.Jonathan f1 (talk) 12:44, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

I resent that you suggest I am making one sided or non-neutral edits to this article. I have made positive contributions to this article in the ways I am able. I have respected the processes of article creation. I am in no way operating out of a veiled motive. I do not take attempts to assassinate my character lightly.

I'm sorry it sounds like you don't understand – perhaps willfully in the spirit of debate, perhaps not – what I've said on this page since day one. Including the activity of the occupying British aristocracy as 'Irish' is a misleading blanket statement. I've never said that there was no involvement on the island of Ireland nor by any single person born on the Island in the slave trade. I've argued that it needs to be qualified to be historically accurate. Something any encyclopedic entry should do. Because the article went into the subject - which you are now suggesting is itself off topic, perhaps a different conversation – it should be represented fairly in the lead. My argument started by saying this highlights a minor point of the article to spread complicity inaccurately and ahistorically. An obfuscation (of the occupying class) in its own right.

I stand by my colonial comparisons to Jamaica, Mexico, Haiti, something you both seem to skirt awkwardly around. If the article needs to talk about the 'Irish' involvement it needs to reflect the colonial occupation of Ireland by the main slave traders of the world: the British. Kelly articulates this well, and since you don't like the first publisher the second, History Ireland, is without a doubt reliable. Regarding specialisation of sources, it is always unadvisable to rely strictly on academic sources, but remember: the main singular source of this article is Liam Hogan, someone who has none of the specialist qualifications you claim necessary to use (he is a librarian in Limerick). Are you moving the goal posts?

If you have sourced information on Montserrat and it pertains to the topic and adds knowledge, then by all means add it or propose the addition.

While you are pretending your approach is somehow more neutral, it is in fact obfuscating history with a really weird strain of Identity Politics that makes British into Irish. That is motivated by anticipating how some 'bad person' could misuse the *fact* that the vast majority of Irish, during the time of the Atlantic Slave Trade, were living in horrendous conditions and poverty in their 'homeland' under the British (Or as Donoghue and other sources point out: living as indentured servants or 'bond slaves' under the same the conditions of African slaves until the end of their sentences/terms). It's not our job to preclude information. You've also made very hasty proclamations and are now including your own research and conclusions (everything you wrote about how Ireland generally benefitted is in willful contradiction to History Ireland article by Kelly) Imposing one's views like this is not what Wiki is for. Let the researched facts stand.

Hesperian Nguyen (talk) 14:29, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

@Hesperian Nguyen: One wonders why Brian Kelly, who has no history of publishing on Ireland and transatlantic slavery, is all of a sudden publishing the same criticism in multiple magazines. It's worth mentioning that Kelly is a self-styled 'Marxist', so it isn't entirely surprising that his argument is all about class.

Unfortunately he's lecturing to an empty room. As I've already explained to you, it is no deep insight to say that slave trading profits in Ireland wound up almost entirely in the hands of the ruling aristocracy, or that the profits earned via the provisions trade accrued to a small class of merchants. What's so important about this information? The same could be said of England, Spain, France, Portugal, the Netherlands. Or do you believe the average Englishman or Dutchman was involved in the slave trade? Slaves were income-producing financial assets -- the most lucrative at that time -- and trading required exorbitant amounts of capital and investment. Average Europeans were not setting up joint-stock companies and trading in slaves. The average person today wouldn't be able to do that. This was an expensive enterprise.

Of course the real reason why you want this information included is so that the article reads as if "Irish" slavers were actually "British" slavers and not "really Irish". So again we return to this issue of suppressing complicity.

First of all, "Irish" and "English" (and then later on "British") identity in the 17th -19th Century is a complicated topic well beyond the scope of this article. Please watch Jane Ohlmeyer's lectures on the Anglicisation project in Ireland in the 16th and 17th C, available on the RTE website (James Ford Lectures).

Secondly, insofar as Irish involvement in transatlantic slavery goes, I've already explained to you that Nini Rodgers' research extends well beyond Ireland itself. It is a serious error to approach this subject within the confines of Ireland or even the Anglo-Atlantic world. If you just look at Ireland then you reach a conclusion where almost no Irishmen, not even the Anglo-Irish, were directly involved in any aspect of slavery (under English law it was illegal for slave trading companies to operate out of Ireland and, as mentioned earlier, very little trading profits wound up in Ireland), and if you limit yourself to the Anglo-Caribbean or Anglo-America you're ignoring significant numbers of exiled Irishmen (mostly Catholics) who allied themselves with continental European powers. Nini Rodgers and Liam Hogan found Irish slavers working through the empires of England, Spain, France, Portugal, and even the Netherlands. Again, the Irish worked through the empires of others.

Thirdly, none of what I posted here is "original research". That the sugar trade built up Ireland's Catholic middle class is a rather uncontroversial thing to say outside 'Irish republican' circles. In the Irish Historical Studies journal, Nini Rodgers wrote, "A new and expanding component of the urban economy in the eighteenth century, sugar fueled the rise of the Catholic middle class."

This is why it's crucial that you support content with qualified sources: scholars who are recognised as subject experts, who have a history of publishing on the topic the article is about, and who publish through the appropriate channels. It is not our job to assess how well-researched an article is. Lots of things look well-researched when you aren't an expert. What you want to do is find work published through a legitimate academic press - Harvard University Press, Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, Yale University Press. Nini Rodgers' book was published by Macmillan and her journal article (I just cited) was published by Cambridge. The journal is refereed; her book was reviewed favourably by qualified historians, and is widely regarded as work that has significantly advanced the field. When it comes to a choice between primary research (original research) or secondary research (a review of earlier publications), always go with the secondary source. The philosophy on here is that the more people involved in checking and scrutinising a source the more reliable that source is.

As it concerns Liam Hogan, it's kind of funny that you're attacking his qualifications. Liam The Librarian has become a source of amusement for a lot of 'Irish slaves' proponents, who also hold the opinion that he's something of an amateur polemicist. The reason why Liam Hogan is used a lot in this article is because he's an example of one of those rare exceptions when a personal blog or website may be permitted to source Wiki content. And there are two simple reasons for this. For one, several academics who specialise in Irish history and transatlantic slavery have written open letters in support of the quality, integrity, and rigour of his scholarship. Secondly, these same historians cite Liam Hogan in their own work, which is published through appropriate scholarly channels. In other words, Liam's blog is simply a convenient repository that editors can turn to for content rather than trawling through multiple sources and piecing information together.

No, this is not "moving the goalposts". Brian Kelly is a non-entity as far as historians of Ireland and transatlantic slavery are concerned. He has no scholarly publications on the subject, he isn't cited by historians who publish on the subject, and the content you've inserted in this article is sourced to a piece he wrote in a "fashion and lifestyle" magazine, which was then re-published in a left-wing political magazine CounterPunch, and then reiterated in a History Ireland article that doesn't even have any references. On these points alone this content should be removed from the article, although I will wait for more editors to weigh in.

Don't you think it's a little convenient? First you tried removing any mention of how this myth has been used to suppress Irish complicity in slavery, and when that failed you found this Brian Kelly article which essentially deflects blame onto the British. Please explain how this isn't you doing exactly what the lead describes, in contradiction to what reliable sources say?

You can read about Montserrat's colonial history in Donald Akenson's If the Irish Ran the World: Montserrat, 1630-1730. This is really getting tedious now. I just mentioned this book to you the other day. It's cited in this ISM article in support of some other content. I also told you that Montserrat is an important feature of the Irish Slaves Myth, and was what historians were mainly responding to when they wrote that ISM "obscures Irish involvement in slavery". People who've been pushing this pseudohistory claim that 2/3rds of the slave population on this island were Irish Catholics, when in reality it was two-thirds of the planters. They turned the slavers into the enslaved.

Again, I fully support removing the Brian Kelly content you've added. I also think an assessment should be made on whether or not you should be editing this article.Jonathan f1 (talk) 13:48, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the bad faith, totally pedantic, and unnecessarily verbose response boss. It's no one's job to read you mansplaining why it's okay for you to cherrypick which sources fit your narrative. Meanwhile the rest of us can continue making concrete suggestions – with reliable sources – to improve articles. Hesperian Nguyen (talk) 14:23, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

@Hesperian Nguyen: What a preposterous argument. Your source is not reliable. It fails RS criteria on every count. How many times do I have to explain this to you? Do you really want me to waste my time going over to the RS board and getting second and third opinions on this? I already know what they're going to say.

The Brian Kelly content has got to go. He isn't an authority on the subject, his work was not reviewed by other historians, it was published in a fashion magazine (and re-published in at least two other magazines), and the only reason why it's in here is because one editor -- namely, you -- doesn't want Irish people associated with slavery. Please remove the statement from the article and find better sources.Jonathan f1 (talk) 15:37, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

I'm not going to repeat what I've already written to someone who is inventing conspiracies as to my motivations and who thinks an academic socialist website is a fashion blog. Good day and WP:DEADHORSE. Hesperian Nguyen (talk) 15:45, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

P.S. Please stop @ing me in your replies.

@Hesperian Nguyen: Rebel magazine is described as "a bi-annual fashion and lifestyle magazine, focusing on creative industries including designers, art, film and music." Or perhaps this is a different Rebel magazine? The homepage has categories such as "ecosocialism" and "Marx 101". Fine, it's not a fashion magazine. It still isn't a venue for historical scholarship.

I'll give it a week or so for other editors to address this and then I'll remove the content myself. As far as I'm concerned, as of now, there is already a consensus to have this taken out.Jonathan f1 (talk) 16:33, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

There's no consensus on this. Any removal of relevant, cited, and, in this case, scholarly material from notable persons and publishers because it's not to your liking would be *Vandalism*. Further you are and have been repeating the same misinformation to make your case (Try clicking on the little 'about' button the website). And mainly... your point is irrelevant as Brian Kelly was published – as Alan points out – with similar content in History Ireland, please see (again): https://www.academia.edu/44867788/Kelly_Empire_Inequality_and_Irish_Complicity_in_Slavery. Does History Ireland's credibility need to be reestablished? Or would you like to move the goalposts again? 👋🏼 Hesperian Nguyen (talk) 17:02, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

@Hesperian Nguyen: Vandalism? You sourced content to some obscure Marxist rag in an effort to "balance" legitimate scholarship. And furthermore, that something was published in History Ireland doesn't ipso facto make it reliable. Tommy Graham, the editor of HI, had to write a public apology to Liam Hogan for publishing a polemic by an AOH "historian" who attacked Liam's integrity and called him a bigot -- no professional academic journal would ever publish this sort of juvenile ad hominem. In another issue, HI published the sloppy scholarship of an American historian who tried arguing that indentured labour was basically the same as chattel slavery (see here [4][5]). As a matter of fact, McCormick described History Ireland perfectly as occupying a middle ground between scholarship and 'pop history'. Thus, HI articles should be evaluated on an individual basis and not taken for granted as reliable.

One thing I was wrong about is when I said Brian Kelly was mainly responding to Liam Hogan. He did, in fact, address Nini Rodgers, not that this helps your position. Kelly, like you, takes issue with Rodgers' claim that "every group" in Ireland produced beneficiaries of slavery. The statement is true - insofar as we can be certain of anything in history - but Kelly insists on shifting the focus to the distribution of gains across socioeconomic class. It'd be interesting to learn what ideal scenario, in Kelly's opinion, could've existed in 18th Century Ireland for Rodgers' statement to stand without objection. As a self-styled Marxist I imagine Kelly is preoccupied with wealth inequality and would probably like to see, at a minimum, a more generous distribution of economic gains. But, political ideology notwithstanding, the reality is market capitalism produces different socioeconomic classes and these classes benefit from economic activity in different ways. An upper-class aristocrat would've profited from slavery more directly, perhaps by establishing a joint-stock company and dominating the trade itself. An upper-middle class entrepreneur, however, would've likely benefited indirectly as an export merchant in the provisions trade, supplying the slave colonies. On the other hand, a rising middle class would've gained from colonial imports, whilst a rural farmer would've enjoyed so-called 'trickle-down' effects like lower prices or simply having access to rum, sugar and other goods produced in the slave colonies. Now I don't expect a Marxist to consider the relationship between prices and living standards (and I have nothing against Marxism, by the way), but the fact remains that every class in Ireland did indeed benefit from slavery and was materially better off as a result, however unequal those gains may have been. That the Caribbean sugar trade built up Ireland's Catholic middle class and augmented their political influence is a not-insignificant detail (the North American Free Trade Agreement had the same impact on Mexico).

The crucial difference between Ireland and, say, England and France was that the Irish were prohibited from operating slave trading companies directly from Irish ports, so very little trading profits accrued to any of Ireland's socioeconomic classes, including the Ascendancy. But ambitious Irishmen got around this restriction by working through other empires, which includes not only England, but also continental powers like France, Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands. Which is why I keep reminding you that Rodgers' work is far more wide-ranging than the Anglo-Atlantic and Ireland itself.

Now I see you've edited the article again to include a statement from the Gera Burton review to which I directed your attention. One would think that when you're balancing Nini Rodgers with Nini Rodgers it'd be an indicator that you're perhaps misinterpreting Nini Rodgers. You are conflating what's known as the provisions trade (indirectly profiting from the slave trade by exporting to slave colonies) and slave trading itself. When Rodgers said "every group in Ireland produced merchants that benefited from the slave trade" she was talking about investors who put their money in English trading companies and export merchants who supplied the slave colonies. The section reads in full: "Every group in Ireland produced merchants who benefited from the slave trade and the expanding slave colonies. All slave-trading voyages required minor investors. In the 1750s the Presbyterian McCammons of Newry put money into at least one Liverpool voyage and actually ended up owning a slave." She goes on to say, "Merchants in Ireland’s ports and towns were well aware of the importance of the slave trade and the slave colonies. The eighteenth-century economies of Cork, Limerick and Belfast expanded on the back of salted and pickled provisions specially designed to survive high temperatures. These were exported to the West Indies to feed slaves and planters, British, French, Spanish and Dutch. Products grown on slave plantations, sugar in the Caribbean and tobacco from the North American colonies, poured into eighteenth-century Ireland. Commercial interests throughout the island, and the parliament in Dublin, were vividly aware of how much wealth and revenue could be made from the imports....The importance of enslaved Africans in furnishing these Irish gains is vividly illustrated in a commemorative print of 1780 entitled ‘Hibernia attended by her Brave Volunteers, exhibiting her commercial freedom’. At the centre of the picture a youthful Hibernia, barefoot and barebreasted, hair flowing in the breeze, lifts up both her arms to display a banner bearing the words FREE TRADE." What you wrote was nonsensical - the original statement wasn't in reference to slave traders. That "very little slave trading profits wound up in Ireland" doesn't negate the fact that exporters, importers, consumers and investors in Ireland were profiting from the slave trade.

Your motivation for editing this article was made perfectly clear when I gave you two new pieces of information - that trading profits accrued mostly outside of Ireland, and that the sugar trade built up Ireland's Catholic middle class - and you inserted the first statement into the article (out of context) and ignored the second. You aren't trying to 'balance' anything and you're far from a neutral editor. You are trying to minimise the extent to which Irish people benefited from slavery in contradiction to a properly sourced statement in the lead. You ought to cease editing this article until other contributors review your sources and edits.Jonathan f1 (talk) 20:28, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

No individual editor can take on all positions at all times. I'm doing the best I can here in providing a balanced pov and am improving the article with sourced information. However, you're clearly missing the trees for the forest, and are becoming quixotic in your desire to attribute some sinister motivation to me. But mainly now... your argumentation is bordering on personal harassment. I am asking you now for a second time to stop. Hesperian Nguyen (talk) 20:56, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

@Hesperian Nguyen: Indeed, this conversation is done and I'll give it a week or so for a consensus to form before taking further action. In summary, here are the issues with your edits:

One, you re-worded a statement in the lead to say "It also can hide the facts around Irish involvement in the transatlantic slave trade" and then removed the source. Why did you remove the citation?

Then, in an attempt to 'balance' Nini Rodgers' statement that read "every group in Ireland [Gaelic, Hiberno-Norman or Anglo-Irish] produced merchants who benefited from the slave trade and the expanding slave colonies", you write, However, "very little of the slave trade profits actually wound up in Ireland." First of all I don't know why you added "Gaelic, Hiberno-Norman and Anglo-Irish" to that statement. Nini Rodgers didn't specify those groups, and while I have a pretty good idea of what she meant by "every group", it isn't entirely clear that these three simplistic categories capture that. More importantly, the second statement you added is highly misleading. As I've been explaining to you for days now, there were navigation laws that prohibited Irish merchants from engaging directly in slave trading, so obviously very little trading profits ended up in Ireland. But it is completely inaccurate to suggest that Ireland's economy didn't significantly benefit from slavery. Please read the Nini Rodgers article in History Ireland and try to contextualise the first statement.

Lastly, the content sourced to Brian Kelly has to go. He's not reliable.

This article is not an appropriate place to litigate who was or wasn't complicit in slavery in Ireland. That debate is well beyond the scope of this topic. This article is about the Irish Slaves Myth and how this myth is used by various groups as political propaganda. Some of these groups are American white nationalists trying to invalidate the history and legacy of black chattel slavery. Others are 'Irish republican' or 'Irish nationalist' groups in Ireland who use ISM to hyper-inflate Irish victimhood. In every circumstance attempts are made to conceal the fact that Irish people and Ireland's economy benefited from the transatlantic slave trade, as several historians have noted. If I were a reader reading this article I'd be wondering what, exactly, are they 'hiding'? It says almost nothing except that very little slave trading profits ended up in Ireland, and that most of the profits that did wind up in Ireland went to the [British] ruling class that "presided over the horrors of the Famine". And that's because you're misinterpreting and misrepresenting the sources.Jonathan f1 (talk) 23:21, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

FYI other editors: Seeing now that this user 'Jonathan f1' has an indefinite partial block on his account for "Tendentious editing in mainspace" WP:TENDENTIOUS, and a documented history of non-neutral and disruptive edits WP:DISRUPTIVE. I can see why. Main concern here are the continued threats of vandalising a well researched page. Will be keeping an eye on it and suggest archiving this ^^^ totally obsessive off topic 'back and forth'. Thanks Hesperian Nguyen (talk) 16:34, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

Republican or nationalist?

The sentence "It also obscures the history of Irish involvement in the transatlantic slave trade, often serving Irish nationalist ends" is not backed by the source. The source refers to Sinn Féin. In Irish and Northern Irish politics, there is a spectrum that runs from Irish nationalism to Irish republicanism. Sinn Féin are commonly regarded as the latter, not the former, and this distinction is important. Please get consensus before changing this to "nationalist". Bastun^{Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ!} 17:53, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

I mean I made the change to include Irish Nationalism in the first place! There is a second source there, although we could forgo both as the lead is a summary of the entire article and those sources are already in use multiple times... but to the point Hogan specifically uses Irish Nationalism twice in an article, the Irish times paraphrases him in the one about Gerry Adams/Sinn Fein. Sinn Fein is Irish Republican, Irish Republicanism is a form of Irish Nationalism, thus Irish Nationalism covers more bases without being inaccurate. Left similar in my edit history and on your talk page. Regards. Hesperian Nguyen (talk) 18:21, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

Please note the message at the top of my talk page, which says discuss on the article's talk page (where everyone can see the relevant discussion; and not on my talk page, where only talk page stalkers will see it). Can I note I'm Irish, very familiar with Irish politics, and in that context nobody would normally describe Sinn Féin as 'Irish nationalist' when 'Irish republican' exists. See Irish republicanism - "the political movement for the unity and independence of Ireland under a Republic. Irish republicans view British rule in any part of Ireland as inherently illegitimate." Irish nationalists, however - such as the SDLP, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael - do not take such a view. The word "nationalist" does not appear in the article (reference 3) being used to support inclusion. The Hogan article (reference 4) is written for an international audience and is concerned with the Irish slaves myth, not explaining the distinctions of Irish politics, which - as evidenced here - can be nuanced. Please also note Wikipedia convention - when one is reverted, discuss and get consensus. Don't just revert. Or revert and then discuss. As you were the one inserting this content, the onus is on you to get consensus to introduce 'nationalist' instead of 'republican' here. Again - Sinn Féin are an Irish republican party, not an Irish nationalist party, and the difference is real, and important. Bastun^{Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ!} 21:39, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

You've written a lot here without addressing my response. I'll ignore the condescending puff puff stuff. It looks you feel that you are an incontrovertible expert on the subject. However, as you noted writing for an international audience is essential and not to overlook. That is why we organize and not organise on wikipedia. Time to zoom out and use the widely understood word: nationalism. I am not saying the 2 are interchangeable, I understand well however that nationalist in Ireland is often euphemistic and more inclusive thus preferable to the more politically loaded/sectarian language. In addition to covering all citations in a succinct yet still accurate way (again^^^^), this word, which unlike Republicanism, has more or less the same meaning globally. Hesperian Nguyen (talk) 23:38, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

I did address your response; I'll ignore the personal attacks. I think you're saying we use American spelling exclusively on WP? Which would be incorrect. But the actual case in point - it's covered later in the article, without using either Republican or nationalist, and this had been the case in the lede, too, until recently. We can remove reference to either. Bastun^{Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ!} 00:53, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

Nothing personal Buston. I'm saying that an international perspective is tantamount. Imo Irish history is far more complicated than most readers have experience with. Suggesting that selling pickles to slave ship crews or that Dublin Anglo landlords's 'shares' in the slave trade were somehow part of a homogenous, national, or democratic place that shared 'benefits' would be dangerously misleading. Yet that is in effect what is conveyed by "In Ireland, Africa, and in the Caribbean, Irish people benefited from the African trade, as slave traders, investors, and owners." While linguistically it is technically correct, it can be said that most Irish weren't involved and didn't benefit and still be perfectly factual.

Nationalistic people in Ireland and Irish Republicans have gravitated towards narratives that evoke as much sympathy for the Irish and/or the most disdain for the United Kingdom. Thus, the "Irish were treated horribly the same as slaves" exaggerations follow.

Outright racist people in the US, some organised groups, have proposed a massive historical revision slash conspiracy theory about huge numbers of 'forgotten' Irish slaves and other historical distortions and lies. Their conclusion: "we pulled ourselves up by the bootstraps, why should black people be on welfare?" Which 98% of this article is about.

All of this imo needs to be taken on board, otherwise facts are compromised, and there can never be justice in that. What is needed is the conveying of nuance of how stratified Ireland was and there is an indigenous population under colonial control, there is no reason to downplay the conditions endured by the Irish under colonialism while simultaneously demarcating clearly the differences and facts around African slaves during this time. That is the most historically accurate and neutral. Conveying those nuances in an understandable way to the vast majority of readers is fundamental.

My position is that after including the quote by Brian Kelly, some of this is illustrated much better. The aforementioned sentence should be rewritten. If a sentence about this in the lead must be included, then it must succinctly convey the same. Hesperian Nguyen (talk) 02:49, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

To return to the topic of this section more directly, I think there are 2 things that come to mind that also fall under the 'international perspective' thing: 1) Irish Republicans are widely celebrated in Marxist/Leninist (Tankies) and Anarchist circles, so the information relating to this may not sink in or even have an opposite effect. 2) Republicans from the US perspective always means the conservative US Republican Party, and Irish – like all ethnic notations in the US – often is intended to mean Irish-American. There is no despute over the Irish perspective on using Irish Republican, the issue is whether that will be understood much at all from an international English language perspective. Decidedly, nationalism is the correct term to use here. Hesperian Nguyen (talk) 16:10, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

I didn't really need the central subject of the article explained to me - I'm familiar with it - but thanks anyway. This article has nothing whatsoever to do with Marxism-Leninism or the U.S. Republican Party, and the article is intended for a general audience, not restricted to a U.S. one. If we are to use a term to describe Sinn Féin - and we didn't before quite recently, and still don't have to - then we should use the correct term, not an incorrect one. The correct term is Irish Republican. It's even pipelinked, for the hard of understanding. Bastun^{Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ!} 23:14, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

Concur with @Bastun: here. This article targets a broader audience than just an US one, and the terminology used is correct as regards the subject matter. Folks can click through if they're unsure - Alison ^❤ 00:44, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

Yes, I'm arguing for international perspective and for the lead to work as good summary of the article. I've quite literally said that already. "This article has nothing whatsoever to do with Marxism-Leninism or the U.S. Republican Party" again, totally my point! I also understand what you keep repeating about the SDLP not being Republican and Sinn Fein being Republican. What I don't understand is the insistence on specificity instead of inclusivity in the face of what you acknowledged: that Irish nationalism is more understandable to an international audience? If Hogan and others use it, why wouldn't we? Irish nationalism is discussed in this very same article, in Hogan's writing 1 2, in the Irish Times and elsewhere. The Irish nationalism includes a description of Sinn Fein as does the general Nationalism one. Unless there is another reason for you to be so focused on Sinn Fein? Hesperian Nguyen (talk) 14:23, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

Yes, the Irish nationalism article does indeed talk about Sinn Féin, and correctly identifies them as falling under the banner of Republican rather than Nationalist. Bastun^{Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ!} 15:18, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

It isn't worth arguing over at this length, but we should describe an Irish person using the correct local Irish terminology, not something we think Americans are more used to. Johnbod (talk) 15:33, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

Aren't you cherry picking Bastun? "The more militant strand of nationalism, as espoused by Sinn Féin, is generally described as "republican" and was regarded as somewhat distinct" Hesperian Nguyen (talk) 16:43, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

The starting point of this conversation is that the leading scholar on this Liam Hogan, also an Irish person, along with other sources (and I've provided some examples) use nationalism. It's a more inclusive term as it describes the sentiment beyond the limitations of a single political party and its representatives, and by all definitions Irish Republicanism is a form of nationalism. I am asking again, is there some other reason to only highlight Sinn Fein in lieu of this information? Starting to think Bastun is not arguing in good faith. Hesperian Nguyen (talk) 16:47, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

It is worth noting too that most of the Irish Republicanism page relies on a text titled: The Green Flag: A History of Irish Nationalism and also includes the page under the template/project of Nationalism in the United Kingdom. The absolute-ness of your position Bastun is really not as absolute as you're pretending. Hesperian Nguyen (talk) 16:54, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

Johnbod is absolutely correct, we have spent far too much time discussing this. If you have identified issues on other articles, such as Irish Republicanism, then by all means feel free to address them on those articles. Here, the consensus is currently three-to-one for using the correct terminology, i.e., Irish republicanism, not Irish nationalism. Pipelinked, if people need clarification. Please step away from the dead horse, and note your concentration on me is again verging on personal attack territory. Once again: we didn't need to describe Sinn Féin before quite recently, and we still don't have to describe them at all. But if we're going to, we'll use the correct term. Bastun^{Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ!} 17:22, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

You've ignored my comments on WP:CHERRYPICKING, WP:NEUTRAL and WP:GOODFAITH. Now, you're attributing my demonstration of contradicting material, sources, and discrepancies in your position and argumentation (on the appropriate article talk page) to 'verging' on personal attacks? That is at best a cop-out. I too am Irish and find it remarkable you're making such a stink about something that is well... the commonly accepted national and international broader term. You are perfectly capable of editing the page and/or Wikipedia:DROPTHESTICK as you see fit. Regards, Hesperian Nguyen (talk) 22:18, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

Yet still ignoring Johnbod and Alison? Look, I've made my arguments, offered a compromise (twice), and you've failed to change the consensus view. Sorry, I'm done here. Bastun^{Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ!} 23:37, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

Irish involvement in slavery

@Hesperian Nguyen:What you did was completely unprofessional. It was as if you stood up in the middle of a board meeting, pointed to a colleague across the table and announced to the entire room that he received a jaywalking violation the other week, as if that's supposed to invalidate everything he says. The issue I had with the block was a relatively minor infraction that's common among new editors and is currently getting resolved (which is why it took me so long to reply).

The section that discussed Irish involvement in slavery needs to be rewritten to cover the following points (and this is just a rough draft):

Although English navigation laws prevented Ireland from participating directly in the slave trade, many Irish merchants grew wealthy by supplying provisions and importing slave produce: exporting food, clothing and shoes to the slave colonies, and importing sugar, tobacco and other cash crops.[cite Liam Hogan, cite Nini Rodgers] Economic growth in Cork, Limerick, and Belfast in the 18th Century was driven by exports of salted and pickled provisions, while the Caribbean sugar trade gave rise to a burgeoning Catholic middle class in urban cities (particularly Dublin) and enhanced their political visibility.[cite Rodgers]

Despite English restrictions, several Irish people, Protestants and Catholics, were able to profit more directly from slavery by working through the empires of others. [cite Rodgers] Historian Jane Ohlmeyer has written that, "By 1660 Irish people, mostly men, were to be found in the French Caribbean, the Portuguese and later Dutch Amazon, Spanish Mexico, and the English colonies in the Atlantic and Asia where they joined colonial settlements, served as soldiers and clergymen, forged commercial networks as they traded calicos, spices, tobacco, sugar, and slaves." [cite Ohlmeyer]

And then something to the effect of this needs to be mentioned:

A reoccurring theme in Irish slaves mythology is a claim that Irish Catholics made up two-thirds of the slave population of the Anglo-Caribbean island of Montserrat by the close of the 17th Century. In reality, Irish Catholics comprised more than two-thirds of Montserrat's plantation class, and according to Donald Akenson ‘they well knew how to be hard and efficient slave masters’. [cite Akenson]

This is the material that needs to be covered in that section of the article. As I have explained to you several times, ISM proponents use this myth for racist or nationalist political purposes, and that invariably involves writing the Irish out of the history of transatlantic slavery. Historians have responded to these arguments with specific examples of how Irish people benefitted both directly and indirectly from slave economies, and those responses need to be summarised for readers. What you've done here is used this article as a soapbox for apologetics, downplaying the role Irish people played in slavery and deflecting the blame onto the British. This is not how any of these historians have responded to ISM claims. This is how Brian Kelly tried weighing into the debate, but Brian Kelly is not recognised as an authority on this subject and it should be rather obvious why this is.

If you still don't understand why historians with expertise in the history of Ireland, Irish economics and transatlantic slavery haven't found it worth their time to respond to Brian Kelly's arguments it's because:

i. Kelly has an extremely skewed understanding of the economic conditions in Early Modern Ireland and how they compared to other European countries at the time. He writes about Irish economic conditions as if they were "extremely miserable". This view is contradicted by economic historian Liam Kennedy's work, which shows that the conditions in Ireland were closer to European averages at the time, and in many respects were even better.

ii. It is no big insight to say that wealthy people and aristocrats benefitted the most from the slave trade, or that slave trading profits accrued unequally. The same could be said of every single European country that was involved in transatlantic chattel slavery.

iii. Kelly is a labour historian who writes about economics from a Marxist perspective, and thus downplays the ways in which ordinary Irish people benefitted from slavery. He simply doesn't understand the relationship between imports, prices, and living standards as it's understood in capitalist economics. This is one of several reasons why media outlets reporting on the ISM have cited economic historian Liam Kennedy as an expert and not Brian Kelly.

iv. Irish involvement in slavery was not confined to Ireland, the Anglo-Caribbean or Anglo-America. There were Irish people who operated through the empires of France, Spain, the Netherlands, and Portugal, and these topics are covered by historians from a transnational perspective.

Basically, Kelly has an amateurish and politically biased understanding of the history of slavery and economics and it just isn't worth anyone's time to respond to him since he has virtually no influence over this debate. He's been brought up only because you dug him up to whitewash (or maybe green-wash) sections of this article with sources that even under the most liberal interpretation of Wiki's RS rules do not qualify.

If no other editors weigh in here in a day or two I am going to move this discussion over to the RS message board for third party opinions on Brian Kelly. And that'll have to do as far as consensus goes. In the meantime I would ask you again to restore the citation you removed from the lede of the article.Jonathan f1 (talk) 18:10, 19 May 2021 (UTC)

I had to look for the remarks made about your block - they're in the talk page archive, were made almost two months ago, and were archived over a month ago! Streisand effect, much? I would suggest a >5.7kb addition to a talk page is potentially going to result in a proper trouting. Brian Kelly (historian), in your opinion, might have "an amateurish and politically biased understanding of the history of slavery and economics", but as a published academic in the field, his credentials far outweigh yours. To suggest his works can't be used as a reliable source is risible. Bastun^{Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ!} 23:22, 19 May 2021 (UTC)

I didn't archive the conversation. I brought it up because it was inappropriate to mention in the first place and was used as a way to avoid having to contend with my suggestions.

What difference does it make how long ago it was? I was trying to resolve a block issue and had more important priorities than cleaning up this page.

That you and other editors here think that Brian Kelly is a reliable source for this article is an indicator that you don't know how to review academic research, much less assess the credentials of perfectly anonymous strangers. Brian Kelly does not have "credentials in the field". He's a historian of US labour relations in the post-antebellum and has no experience researching any of the topics covered in this article (Irish economic and social history, transatlantic slavery, etc). That alone is enough to disqualify him. What's worse, he published his pieces in magazines which weren't reviewed by other scholars. History Ireland is not necessarily an RS and HI articles need to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. That Marxist political magazine is most definitely not reliable for academic history topics. Why hasn't he published his works through the appropriate scholarly channels? Why haven't other scholars reviewed or responded to his work? He's simply some obscure labour historian that you and/or other editors used to green-wash sections of the article.

This article has got nothing to do with the potato famine, which class "presided over the miseries of the famine", and is most definitely not a venue to litigate which "class" was or wasn't complicit in the transatlantic slave trade.

Have it your way. I'm taking this over to the RS noticeboard right now.Jonathan f1 (talk) 23:53, 19 May 2021 (UTC)

I see you've had fun there. Only warning, stop the personal attacks. I did not "greenwash" the article in any way shape or form, and in fact am close to 100% sure I've not introduced anything related to Kelly to the article. I have defended it from white supremacists/apologists/those taken in by the likes of Seán O'Callaghan's book. Bastun^{Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ!} 08:12, 20 May 2021 (UTC)

I know you didn't make those edits (as I indicated on the noticeboard after you left), and my criticisms weren't directed at you personally or any individual editor. This whole process has just been extremely frustrating and I still feel as if I haven't effectively made my case.

Let me make this short so I don't get yelled at again. The prevailing opinion on the noticeboard appears to be that Brian Kelly is reliable because he's a historian. I would continue to insist that BK's area of expertise does not make him authoritative on the topic we are covering, but I'm not sure how reliability is assessed on those boards. On the other hand, at least two editors were leaning in the direction of undue, and one I believe was open to both undue and fringe based on how BK is being quoted here.

The same editor who quoted Kelly in this article has cited him in the Slavery in Ireland article. This is a curious thing. Why has a US labour historian been awarded so much space on articles having to do with Ireland and transatlantic slavery when there's got to be 100 reliable historians who deal with this subject more directly in their research?Jonathan f1 (talk) 15:41, 21 May 2021 (UTC)

Just for future reference: and I still feel as if I haven't effectively made my case. You needn't to and actually, after a certain point, you shouldn't, which a few editors and I have suggested.

but I'm not sure how reliability is assessed on those boards. For sources, that's WP:RS policy. We'd often determine if: the resource is self-published or reputably published, whether (and how strong) is the editorial oversight, people who write it and publish in it, if the factual accuracy is high and they are known for fact-checking (the latter concerns news organisations more), and WP:USEBYOTHERS. Be warned that "factual accuracy" does not mean "if there is inconsistency in a scholarly debate, I decide to be on the side of whatever has more appeal to me", it has more to do with more obvious cases or those that have been fact-checked (i.e. if someone is known to misquote folks, produce/propagate conspiracy theories and notoriously does not correct the inaccuracies/lies, then it fails the factual accuracy criterion). In the case of such inconsistencies, WP:BALANCE applies.

For people, often WP:DUE applies, which means we will establish if a person is a subject-matter expert, has necessary credentials for the topic and if the person has previously published at least some peer-reviewed materials on the topic in question, and if the opinion on the subject is majority, sizable minority or WP:FRINGE.

when there's got to be 100 reliable historians who deal with this subject more directly in their research? Cite them, what's the deal? Go for it. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 22:41, 21 May 2021 (UTC)

@Szmenderowiecki:The deal is, I can't edit the article even if other editors agreed to my suggestions. The last time I edited an article that was similarly low-quality I was punished with an article space block. The administrators I've been working with told me to take some time to practice using the talk pages and reaching consensus with other contributors before making an unblock request. So I can only edit talk pages for now.

Even if I could edit the article, I want to rewrite an entire section that one editor here (not Bastun) has been jealously guarding. The section having to do with Irish involvement in slavery - a topic that's been covered extensively by historians who've responded to the Irish slaves myth - is too short and what few lines have been dedicated to it are highly misleading. Readers are essentially presented with a fake debate between Nini Rodgers and Brian Kelly that makes no sense if you actually read what Rodgers has written.Jonathan f1 (talk) 21:08, 22 May 2021 (UTC)

Write out your proposal here, with citations. Alanscottwalker (talk) 21:26, 22 May 2021 (UTC)

Okay, but I may need a couple of days to find the time. I'll open up a new talk section with the proposals. In the meantime I emailed Nini Rodgers to see if she can help clarify a few issues.Jonathan f1 (talk) 21:02, 23 May 2021 (UTC)

Why no Indigenous slavery myth page?

Wiki editors who know this topic well will understand the reason the Irish were not participating in chattel slavery in the Americans is because of the legal evolution of slavery law that outlawed the enslavement of Christians. Irish suffered in all sorts of slavery-like conditions but were not chattel slaves and gave them legal protections, except in Algiers where existed under different legal status. However Irish are not the only group that are mistakenly thought of as chattel slaves. One obvious example is indigenous Americans. Indigenous Americans came under European domination under rule of Spain or other states, were converted and they existed under a legal status akin feudal subjects in Europe or in others cases entirely free. There are countless cases of exploitation of indigenous Americans under colonisation but they were not chattel slaves and they had legal privileges that Africans lacked. This is rarely acknowledged. I find it curious that there is no such Wikipedia page on the indigenous American slavery myth. Why not?Aerchasúr (talk) 21:22, 5 June 2021 (UTC)

Because there's no such myth, and between 2.5 and 5 million Native Americans were enslaved? Bastun^{Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ!} 22:34, 5 June 2021 (UTC)

Chattel slavery existed, but usually illegally or very early before they were converted. There was no legal basis for Indian chattel slaves unlike Africans. In fact it partially because Indians couldnt be legally chattel thanks to the friar Bartolomé de las Casas that colonists turned to Africa for slaves. Did you get the 2.5 and 5 million figure from this NPR interview of by Andrés Reséndez? https://www.npr.org/2017/11/20/565410514/an-american-secret-the-untold-story-of-native-american-enslavement?t=1622981857689 If so funny you forgot the following paragraph

"Unlike African slavery, which was legal for centuries and sanctioned by states and empires around the world, Indian slavery was very early on made illegal," Reséndez says. "However, because Native American labor had been essential to all of the economic activities going on during this first generation of colonialism, it was unthinkable for the European colonists to do without native slaves. And so they very quickly devised all kinds of subterfuges and euphemisms in order to continue to profit from the coerced labor of natives by calling it different names."

Indigenous Americans were not chattel slaves. However we know only too well that banning of indigenous slavery ≠ to no exploitation or abuses. The broader point is either we are annal about associating the idea of slavery with chattel slavery or not. Aerchasúr (talk) 12:26, 6 June 2021 (UTC)

If you're treated as a chattel slave, even though that's illegal, you're still a chattel slave. Chattel slavery != indentured servitude, if that's what you're angling towards. If Wikipedia is lacking an article on Native American chattel slavery, by all means, start one. This article, however, is about something else entirely, namely the Irish slaves myth, and as WP is not a forum, there doesn't seem to be anything else to say here about that. Bastun^{Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ!} 12:47, 6 June 2021 (UTC)

Is this some distraction into whataboutism? None of this is relevant, here. (see WP:NOR) If you want to write an article about your asserted claims, you need many reliable sources that directly say, myth. But you have not provided any, and this would not be the place to provide them. Moreover, your purported subject is literally all over the western hemisphere, among a multitude of various peoples, under several different regimes (for example, it is asserted by some scholars that around the 1660s as many as 50,000 indigenous were transported from North America into chattel slavery). Many indigenous never became Christian, and many who did were at knife point and many indigenous, it is well known, could not survive mere contact with Europeans or anyone from the 'Old World' over large distances, let alone close in slavery, and also indigenous had the lay of the land for avoidance, escape, and blending into their people (and then there are places like the islands where whole peoples were subject to genocide, including some worked to death, leading to import of Africans). But none of your topic belongs here. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 13:10, 6 June 2021 (UTC)

Struggling to follow your point Alanscottwalker. Harsh treatment is nothing to do with the question of slavery. Being forcibly transported does not confirm someone is a chattel slave. Many Irish were forcibly transported to the Americas, and it seems inconceivable that at points there was never chattel slaves of all nationalities (albeit illegally) in the New World. The case you mention was English colonists, which had much vaguer laws to protect Indians than the Catholic World, but I can't confirm it either way. Can you? Being forcibly or nominally converted still protected one against being a slave. Check out the bulls Inter caetera (1493), Sublimus Dei (1537), and the Valladolid debateAerchasúr (talk) 23:11, 6 June 2021 (UTC)

So, you don't know. Clearly so, since many indigenous did not convert to Catholicism. What don't you follow about your topic (that you don't know about) is irrelevant, here. It appears you are engaging in internet whataboutism and that you also have no reliable sources on indigenous myth (which even if you did would not belong here, in any event). This is not a place for you to share your unsourced internet musings, about what you claim to not even know. That is not what this talk page is for, see the notice at the top of this page and WP:NOTAFORUM. This is not a place for you to put your blogging, nor is it to be an internet chat room. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 23:31, 6 June 2021 (UTC)

Sentence in the lede

@B. M. L. Peters: The sentence you tagged in the lede was sourced but a certain editor here removed the reference and refuses to restore it (I can't do it myself right now, for reasons explained upthread). Here's the source: [6]. This is what the scholar actually wrote: The ‘Irish slaves’ myth is also a convenient focal point for nationalist histories as it obscures the critically underwritten story of how so many Irish people, whether Gaelic, Hiberno-Norman or Anglo-Irish, benefited from the Atlantic slave trade and other colonial exploits in multiple continents for hundreds of years. If you look at the edit history of this line you'll notice that the wording grew increasingly ambiguous over time and both citations were ultimately removed with no explanation.

This statement only appears controversial because this same editor went into the background section of the article and removed content, reworded content, rearranged content, and added content in what was a clear and obvious pattern of non-neutral edits. I've raised some of these issues with other editors here but we're at an impasse.Jonathan f1 (talk) 22:15, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

Unfortunately I am not an experienced enough editor to be able to go back and restore those edits. But I hear you, if there is any way my opinion can help with this impasse, please let me know! B. M. L. Peters (talk) 22:23, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

Realistic Article Name

The name of the article should be changed, as Irish people were slaves during two important time periods. Irish women were enslaved for the vikings who fled with them to Iceland, and also enslavement by North Africans during the barbary slave trade. The title gives the insinuation that Irish people were not slaves ever, when there were 2 time periods that they were. The article itself is correct though about confusing Irish indentured servitude with African chattel slavery, but the title should reflect the reality of the history of Irish people and the fact that they were historically enslaved.

Most reasonable new title: "Irish 17th and 18th century slave myth"

B. M. L. Peters (talk) 01:03, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

• The hatnote more than adequately addresses that problem. --Andreas Philopater (talk) 09:37, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

Agreed. There is no claim made that Irish people were not slaves, and any such ambiguity is addressed by the hatnote. Bastun^{Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ!} 09:40, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

Was slavery in Iceland or the Barbary Coast racialised? Were Irish slaves in North Africa or Iceland listed along inventories of cattle? Were these Irish slaves subjected to a generational form of bondage?

The whole thing about the Irish Slaves Myth is that its proponents conflate different systems of slavery with the race-based generational slavery of black people, essentially claiming that all slavery is the same and white people were enslaved too. No, this is an ahistorical argument which historians have responded to within this context and without ever denying the historical existence of other forms of unfree labour, a distinction this article already clarifies. Barbadian historian Hilary Beckles described the transatlantic slave trade as a moral and legal break from any African or European tradition of labour. It constituted, furthermore, the most dehumanising, violent, socially regressive form of human exploitation known to humankind.

This article does have some massive problems, but the issue you've raised here isn't one of them.Jonathan f1 (talk) 20:11, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

The women taken as slaves from Ireland to Iceland by Vikings were enslaved as a consequence of conquest and war similar to Africans enslaving other Africans and Japanese enslaving Koreans after war or conquest, So not race based correct! The barbary slave trade was religion based, but of course the question of race is in the air for that one as they were different races (colors) unlike the Vikings and Gaels, so it was religion based, with the possibility of being race based as the North Africans did not enslave Christians from Africa or Asia as far as I know. B. M. L. Peters (talk) 22:29, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

Edit proposals for lede and background sections

The lede of the article used to contain a line sourced to The Irish Times that read, "[The Irish slaves myth] also obscures the history of Irish involvement in the transatlantic slave trade, often serving Irish republican ends." The editor Hesperian Nguyen (from now on HN) reworded the sentence and removed the citation. I've been politely asking HN to restore the cite for two months but these requests have been ignored. What Liam Hogan actually said was, "The Irish slaves myth is also a convenient focal point for nationalist histories as it obscures the critically underwritten story of how so many Irish people .. benefited from the Atlantic slave trade and other colonial exploits in multiple continents for hundreds of years."[7]

In the background section, the first sentence of the last paragraph used to read, "During this same period, the Atlantic slave trade was transporting millions of Africans across the Atlantic and bringing them to various European colonies in America (including British America) where they were purchased by European colonists and put to work." This was a good segue into a section on how Ireland and Irish people interacted with the Black Atlantic World, but was similarly removed. I would suggest rewriting this paragraph and expanding the section to cover the following material:

During this same period, the transatlantic slave trade was transporting millions of Africans across the Atlantic and bringing them to various European colonies in the Americas where they were purchased by European colonists and put to work. Although England's navigation laws prevented Ireland from participating directly in the trade, Irish merchants of different religious and social backgrounds generated significant wealth by exporting supplies to overseas plantations and importing slave produce into Ireland. Exports of salted and pickled provisions were central to economic expansion in 18th Century Cork, Limerick, and Belfast, while imports of Caribbean sugar contributed to urban growth and the rise of a Catholic middle class. Historian Nini Rodgers has written that by the 18th Century 'Ireland was very much a part of the Black Atlantic World'.

More ambitious Irishmen were able to circumvent England's mercantilist system by working through other empires. Jane Ohlmeyer notes that by the 17th Century, Irish people, both Protestants and Catholics, 'were to be found in the French Caribbean, the Portuguese and later Dutch Amazon, Spanish Mexico, and the English colonies in the Atlantic where they forged commercial networks as they traded calicos, spices, tobacco, sugar, and slaves'. The French port of Nantes, in particular, was dominated by a close-knit community of exiled Irish Jacobites, and rose to prominence in the 18th Century as France's foremost slave trading port.

A reoccurring theme in Irish slaves mythology concerns the Anglo-Caribbean island of Montserrat, where proponents of the myth claim that two-thirds of the slave population consisted of Irish Catholics. In reality, Irish Catholics made up more than two-thirds of the island's plantation class as early as the late 17th Century, and according to historian Donald Akenson 'they knew how to be hard and efficient slave masters'.

This is obviously a rough draft so word it any way you'd like. But the material that should be covered in this section is: one, how the slave trade and slavery-related commercial networks impacted on Ireland's economy; two, how Irish people in and outside of Ireland benefitted from slavery; and three, how scholars have responded to specific claims made by ISM proponents (ie Montserrat).

As it concerns the Brian Kelly content HN included, I don't know what else to say. The whole essay is essentially a postcolonial critique which by itself is a controversial method of analysis in Irish historiography, and one that Rodgers explicitly rejects. That also applies to the Gera Burton review HN sourced, which misinterpreted Rodgers' work.Jonathan f1 (talk) 21:35, 3 June 2021 (UTC)

1) What you propose adding seems reasonable, in general, except for the fact that some of it is perhaps a little off topic for this article, and may be more appropriate for Slavery_in_Ireland#Atlantic_slave_trade.

2) Please don't re-hash the Kelly argument again. Please. Kelly mentions two sentences in the whole article, total. One is a criticism of 'To Hell or Barbados'. This was already recently discussed at length with a consensus that it could be included. Bastun^{Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ!} 00:10, 4 June 2021 (UTC)

1. Maybe some of it is outside the scope of the article, but how do reliable sources cover the Irish slaves myth? Liam Hogan spends just as much time addressing Irish involvement in slavery as he does the myth itself -- not as separate interests, but part and parcel of the same discourse. In light of this I don't think devoting a couple paragraphs of one section of an article to this topic is overkill. Just my opinion.

Concerning Montserrat, this is directly related to the main subject of the article and should be covered somewhere. Liam Hogan, Laura McAtackney and Matthew Reilly have addressed this argument here [8] and here [9] among other places.

2. Let me see if I understand this correctly. There was a fiery debate some time ago and the consensus that rose out of it was: Ireland's involvement in the Atlantic slave economy is only worth four sentences, and one of them should be sourced to Gera Burton and another to Brian Kelly.

It's not Kelly's coverage of To Hell or Barbados that's at issue nor is it the number of times Burton and Kelly have been cited. It's two sentences in particular and what these two were quoted as saying.

HN wrote, However, "very little of the slave trade profits actually wound up in Ireland," and sourced it to Burton's review of Rodgers' book. Other editors may find this scholarly exchange between Burton and Rodgers illuminating [10]

Burton's whole thing is that Ireland's economy was "languishing in Britain's control". This is a common postcolonial trope and one that Kelly eloquently regurgitates in his essay. Rodgers finds this argument incoherent. She also finds sections of Burton's review misleadingly inaccurate in characterising her thesis: "At one point Burton notes the importance of urban growth in eighteenth-century Ireland, at another she states firmly that the island’s economy was ‘languishing in British control’. The text stresses that even without admission to the slave trade, within the imperial regulations laid down by Westminster, Ireland benefited from mercantile contacts with the slave plantation complex. The argument that Ireland was part of the ‘Black Atlantic’ is the thesis upon which this book is based." Rodgers also writes that slavery had an impact on "everyone from the rich and powerful to the poor and oppressed."

Which brings us to Kelly's class argument: "..overwhelmingly the benefits of Ireland’s involvement in transatlantic slavery went to the same class that presided over the misery that culminated in the horrors of famine and mass starvation."

Kelly simply scanned a UCL database which contained the names of slaveholders resident in Ireland who were financially compensated after Britain abolished the slave trade, and then made broad generalisations based on what was barely even a snapshot of nearly three centuries of slavery. Regarding the UCL database Laura McAtackney has cautioned: "The people on the UCL database are only a tiny fraction of the [people] who owned slaves historically, even at that point in time, or benefited through businesses and ventures financed through slavery." And regarding Kelly's argument about where all of the profits accrued, McAtackney said, "Let’s deal with a few of the most typical ‘whataboutery’ comments that always appear BTL with such articles. Those Irish people who directly benefited from slavery were not just the ‘Protestant upper classes’. The Catholic landed and middle classes were slave owners too."

I don't know about you, but I find it a little disconcerting that an editor covered this topic in a way that's been described by a reliable historian as a diversionary tactic used by non-historians in the comment sections of Irish slaves myth articles. Laura McAtackney doesn't agree with this statement, Liam Hogan doesn't agree with this statement, Donald Akenson doesn't agree with it, Matthew Reilly and Nini Rodgers don't agree with it. But editors here reached a consensus.

Well okay then. I appreciate your patience in addressing my concerns.Jonathan f1 (talk) 17:32, 4 June 2021 (UTC)

1) We already have a separate Slavery in Ireland article, where some of those issues can be addressed. Alanscottwalker, above, suggested you write out your proposed text, complete with references, and post it here - that's a good suggestion.

2) I, and others, previously requested on several occasions that you drop this, as it's already been covered at extreme length. I will not be responding again to 2), so please don't waste your time writing more about this. Bastun^{Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ!} 13:35, 6 June 2021 (UTC)

I did write out the proposals with references and the response I got from you was basically "sounds reasonable, but it's outside the scope of this article," or something to that effect. If Ireland's role in slavery was too off-topic for this article (and it's not, as every RS, without exception, says otherwise), why did I waste my time trying to improve that section? There are four sentences covering this, and one of them is misleading and another is a statement that has no support in any other RS.

I really don't enjoy arguing with you about this. But even ignoring the Burton and Kelly edits, there's a troubling pattern of non-neutral edits in that section.Jonathan f1 (talk) 17:34, 6 June 2021 (UTC)

Apologies, Jonathan - I misread your main contribution above and, for whatever reason, didn't realise that was actually the proposed text. My bad. I'll re-read that tomorrow in comparison to the existing text. Bastun^{Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ!} 20:40, 6 June 2021 (UTC)

Okay, but again that's just a rough draft. I'm not insisting all of it should be included, and of course it could be condensed. I have more sources as well.Jonathan f1 (talk) 05:13, 7 June 2021 (UTC)

Jonathan f1, I've added most of what's above to a new subsection of the 'Background' section. It probably does still need condensing, but having re-read it and the sources earlier, I support inclusion. Bastun^{Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ!} 11:02, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

@Bastun: I agree it should be condensed. Also, do you think it's a good idea to segue twice into the same point? The first line of the first paragraph states that During the colonial period of British rule..a number of people benefitted from slavery in Ireland, and the first line of the next paragraph reads like another segue into that same topic. The second paragraph initially opened as a segue from covering indentured servitude vs chattel slavery to Irish involvement in slavery, which can still be done if both of these topics are separated in different subsections (which would require moving the Montserrat content, and probably rewording a few lines so that the prose flows naturally).

• Regarding the indentured servitude vs slavery material, what this editor did to this section is astounding. The first paragraph covering indentured servitude is excessively focused on Irish servants who were forced into labour after the Cromwellian campaigns. This certainly deserves some coverage, but the whole paragraph? What the sources say is that the majority of Irish servants signed indentures willingly. Sources also emphasize that signing indentures was a common means by which poor Europeans crossed the Atlantic. But this editor removed all the sourced content mentioning English, Scottish and non-Irish European servants (look at the edit history), and even linked to the Wiki article on "forced labour". There is a way to balance this material without giving readers the false impression that most Irish servants were pressed into labour against their will, or that this system of servitude was unique to the Irish.

• The first line of the next paragraph is just obscene. This editor wrote, Treatment of Irish indentured servants varied widely, but the transport, physical work, and living conditions are compared to those of African slaves, and sourced it to a piece of pseudohistory called The curse of Cromwell. What happened with this Donaghue piece is that some scholar from Loyola University smuggled an essay into History Ireland arguing that Irish people were chattel slaves in the Caribbean while everyone else was paying attention to a dispute between Liam Hogan and some AOH 'historian' who was pushing the same myth in that same magazine. But at least one historian took notice of Donaghue's essay and called him out [11]. (There is an exchange between Donaghue and McCormick BTL that you may find interesting. Donaghue essentially concedes that the sources he relied on were specious, but swears it was an honest mistake. He then continues to insist that "Irish slavery" is a legitimate topic of debate.)

Let this sink in for a moment: there's content in this article sourced to an essay promoting the Irish slaves myth.

Do you see what I'm talking about now Bastun? This editor didn't just fall off the turnip truck. She knows how Wikipedia works and knew the best way to go about weaseling her politics into the article. But when you look at the edits she made in this section, and consider them in conjunction with the Burton and Kelley edits, it's impossible to conclude that this was a neutral and objective way to cover this material.Jonathan f1 (talk) 20:28, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

References

Semi-protected edit request on 17 January 2022

Cited readings at end of article are not from a substantial source, and the whole article is therefore based on nothing of substance. Cite a scholarly journal or something, not USA today gossip reading. 172.119.56.203 (talk) 20:10, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

 Not done: Suggested further reading and citations are different things entirely. Cannolis (talk) 20:33, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

This article is a bigoted anti-Irish Catholic sectarian diatribe

All talk comments on it are being removed as the article exists due to partisan and polarised American politics which act to vandalise and delete the histories of other peoples and cultures such as the experience of the Cromwellian massacres and forced indenture of Irish Catholics. 37.228.227.72 (talk) 11:01, 14 August 2022 (UTC)

• The comments are being removed because Wikipedia is not a forum for your opinions, or your anger. We're just here to report the facts, backed up by reliable sources - that's all. As an Irish person - Dublin born and a Gaeilgóir - this also relates to my culture and heritage, but I get to leave that at the door when I edit here as we all do. Also - as the article clearly states - indentured servitude is not the same as chattel slavery. We've been over that one many times before - Alison ^talk 19:25, 14 August 2022 (UTC)

Talk page guidelines

Please do not add multiple edits to multiple talk page sections, some of which haven't been touched in months. Those debates are over. Please see WP:TPG, and WP:NOTFORUM. Bastun^{Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ!} 15:02, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 26 October 2022

Please just delete the entire thing it’s completely not true and a very biased opinion and quite frankly damaging. Please think before you write an entirely made up biased opinion to suit your narrative how this can affect an entire nation and community. I understand although it wasn’t the same it was during the same time period and a lot of ancestors people suffered including the Irish. Thank you. Bye. 2A02:C7C:3416:CE00:D13C:212F:4061:F3C8 (talk) 05:16, 26 October 2022 (UTC)

 Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. Cannolis (talk) 06:20, 26 October 2022 (UTC)

Irish were slaves in Saint kitts and America not Ireland

Legal case did not get uploaded onto the web. Court documents in legal section of library. Few cases where Irish children were kidnapped and sold by a captain into slavery. Court session I read about stood to appeal slavery for 2 men who were kidnapped and enter indentured servitude. Men were allowed to enter court because a law that said to have papers in order came into effect around 1660. Court declared sale was lawful between captain and slave owner. 70.40.87.115 (talk) 21:36, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

Irish citizen site used to have a related document online but were asked to take it down because people were citing it in racist comments. Irish citizen respectfully accepted this request. Phynxlili (talk) 23:32, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

Irish Involvement in Slave Trade Rephrasing

As written, the reference to "Irish involvement in the slave trade" in the introductory paragraph of the article would give the reader the impression that this involvement was substantial, even though that section of the article seems to suggest otherwise. I have no opinion on whether that sentence should be removed or merely nuanced, but I do think it's a bit misleading as written.

That section of the article also could use a bit of work; it doesn't give a very good sense of how large Irish involvement was relative to other parts of the UK, and if indeed the bulk of the participation in the slave trade was by Anglo-Irish elites rather than the Irish Catholics who the myth purports were enslaved, then that should probably be the main focus of the section. 47.55.91.94 (talk) 23:32, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

The plight of the Irish diaspora while horrific is entirely separate from the African slave trade and shouldn't be directly compared as if the atrocities black slaves endured needs to compete. Their enslavement isn't diminished by bringing up the potato famine, nor does their torture, rape, murder and slavery belittle Irish suffering.

But this page goes too far in trying to dispel the myth that it even begins to label the Irish as the oppressors.

> It also can hide the facts around Irish involvement in the transatlantic slave trade.

This is reminiscent of racists bringing up that there was African slave owners, as if an individual African's actions justify the institutional slavery in the US.

> According to historian Nini Rodgers, in the 18th century "every group in Ireland [Gaelic, Hiberno-Norman or Anglo-Irish] produced merchants who benefited from the slave trade and the expanding slave colonies." However, historians have noted that "very little of the slave trade profits actually wound up in Ireland."

Being born in Ireland and profiting off slaves doesn't mean Ireland was driving slavery or reaping the rewards. It is inappropriate to victim blame the Irish when the Irish slave myth is so riddled with falsehoods and pseudo-history it's trivial to disprove. BeardedChimp (talk) 14:03, 4 February 2023 (UTC)

The section "suggests otherwise" because some editor keeps tampering with it. The line that "historians" claim that "very little slave trade profits ended up in Ireland" is sourced to one review of a Nini Rodgers' book which is not appropriate balance. Rodgers is recognized as a subject-matter expert; Burton is not and her review does not support the wording "historians".

Even bringing up "slave trade profits" is ambiguous and misleading. If we're talking about profits generated from actual slave trading, then of course Ireland did not benefit much from this activity; English navigation laws prohibited trading out of Irish ports. But what about the provisions trade? The fact that major Irish cities expanded on the back of indirect profiteering from slavery is certainly significant yet obscured by this line. The fact that imported slave produce created a (mostly Catholic) merchant class and urban middle class is also significant yet confused by this one line.

And don't get me started on Brian Kelly's piece at the end. Kelly is no subject specialist and thus no authority on "framing complicity". This isn't even about "framing" anything but understanding the extent to which Ireland and Irish people were involved in this trade.

The person who added these lines merely purports to be improving this article, when what she is really doing is polemic. The lines are not neutral or appropriately sourced or worded and I've raised several objections to this some time ago. Jonathan f1 (talk) 16:31, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

"However, historians have noted..

that "very little of the slave trade profits actually wound up in Ireland."

When I wrote this section I asked that this line not be included on several grounds where it violates the encyclopedia's policies.

One, "historians" haven't said any such thing. The sentence is sourced to a single solitary review of Nini Rodgers' work by Gera Burton. Assuming Gera Burton is a reliable source, it would have to read something like "According to Gera Burton..," and then readers can look up and find out just who Gera Burton is. Which brings us to problem two..

Gera Burton is not a historian in the first place. She's another literature professor and postmodernist who writes about Ireland from a postcolonial pov[12]. As highlighted in her reply to Burton's review, Rodgers (the historian of the two) stated that this approach is not suitable to the topic her book covers, and quickly dispensed with Burton's weak arguments[13].

So Gera Burton does not speak for all historians, is not a historian herself, and wrote a rather confused review of a book that is well outside her general area of expertise. I would ask again that this line be removed from the section or at least reworded to reflect the literature professor's personal opinion. And then maybe we could discuss why we need to cite a literature professor in a history section and what value this is adding to the article. Jonathan f1 (talk) 17:37, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 16 February 2023

Smhylolxd (talk) 05:38, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

This should not even be here. Irish people WERE ENSLAVED DURING THE 16th CENTURY! ASK ANY HISTORIAN! Sources that proof my point https://muse.jhu.edu/article/412036/pdf One article discussing the events during the time period. https://www.ewtn.com/catholicism/library/englands-irish-slaves-10927 A second article discussing WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED during that time period. http://www.theoldjailmuseum.com/ A Museum of what was a early 18th century Jail for Irish Slaves who were hung to death in the prison.

This entire Wikipedia page is HIGHLY OFFENSIVE and blatantly FALSE! It's no wonder most HS Teachers taught us to NEVER USE THIS WEBSITE!

I ask that you kindly take this portion of your website DOWN! As it is nothing but false inaccurate one-sided propaganda!

 Not done: read the article and cited sources Cannolis (talk) 07:25, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

Student project..

Since this article is now the subject of a school project, it is probably a good idea to document (once again) some sources of misinformation that have yet to be corrected. First example:

"Treatment of Irish indentured servants varied widely, but the transport, physical work, and living conditions have been compared by scholars to the treatment of enslaved Africans.":

The claim "by scholars" is nonsense and it appears to be a pattern on here where one obscure source becomes the voice of multiple historians. The line is actually sourced to a single essay by one scholar who, unlike the other historians in this article, actually believes in the idea of Irish slavery and refers to Irish transports as "time-bound chattel." For a rebuttal see here[14].

Should also mention that this section used to include content on English, Scottish and German indentured servants (who were subject to the same laws as the Irish), but someone went in there and removed every mention of other European nationalities as a way of singling out the Irish. This content was sourced, should've never been removed and was not removed by consensus. Jonathan f1 (talk) 23:32, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

This is straying into solicitation of proxy edits from inexperienced editors. Acroterion (talk) 00:36, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

Indeed. Editor in question isn't permitted to edit articles, given past behaviour. Bastun^{Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ!} 08:51, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

Deleting my comment again? Another NPOV issue I see. Jonathan f1 (talk) 23:30, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

As my edit summary said, None of these comments are relevant to the "student project" section. Reinsert them in a more appropriate section, or create a new section. Bastun^{Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ!} 23:48, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

I already opened an NPOV section because I am clearly wasting my time trying to instill sound editing advice into unreceptive heads. These are very simple disputes that could've been resolved a long time ago. Jonathan f1 (talk) 00:12, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

The line maybe, but it seems there are a lot of sources that talk about the Irish being compared to slaves (it is the subject of the article after all). As to removing stuff about non-Irish servants, again, this article is about the IRISH slave myth. Slatersteven (talk) 10:40, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

So the argument is that because the article is about the Irish slaves myth, no talk of other Europeans permitted.

This is exactly the kind of feedback you'd expect from someone who hasn't read all the sources and thus isn't aware of how this subject is typically covered by historians. Virtually every ISM critique from a historical pov makes mention of English, Scottish and even German indentured servants -why do you suppose that is? The answer is obvious.

As to this nonsense:

"seems there are a lot of sources that talk about the Irish being compared to slaves"

Educate yourself[15]. Jonathan f1 (talk) 20:05, 18 February 2023 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 24 April 2023

In the External links section, please change [https://www.acast.com/the-irish-passport/episode-10-the-irish-slaves-myth "Episode 10: The Irish Slaves Myth"] (dead link) to [https://www.theirishpassport.com/podcast/episode-10-the-irish-slaves-myth/ The Irish Slaves Myth"], The Irish Passport (the original and still live page). 2001:BB6:47ED:FA58:C5A7:D706:B26C:ECE (talk) 15:27, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

@2001:BB6:47ED:FA58:C5A7:D706:B26C:ECE Done Milo8505 (talk) 09:23, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

 Already done M.Bitton (talk) 23:24, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

Biased article

Not appropriate for Wikipedia 2601:CB:8001:F080:7487:EB82:9EFD:26F5 (talk) 15:31, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

Yup, it's biased for WP:BESTSOURCES. If you have a problem with that, you should leave this website. tgeorgescu (talk) 15:45, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

Yes i don't think a poorly written racist tirade belongs on this website 2600:1016:B112:6F72:0:33:4860:A601 (talk) 15:40, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

John Donaghue

Unlike the other historians cited in this article, Donaghue believes in the idea of Irish slavery and argues for it in the essay cited here. On that point alone it should be removed.

Then there is the actual content it is supporting:

"Treatment of Irish indentured servants varied widely, but the transport, physical work, and living conditions have been compared by scholars to the treatment of enslaved Africans."

By scholars? This is one controversial opinion from a questionable source. Read Handler and Reilly on this topic[16].

"Despite general similarities in their material lives and work regimens, it is difficult, if not futile, to meaningfully compare the living conditions of slaves and servants over the seventeenth century...there are simply insufficient qualitative/literary or quantitative data to make a thorough comparison."

Jonathan f1 (talk) 20:26, 18 February 2023 (UTC)

There's actually a whole section in the Irish Indentured Servants article titled "Comparisons to slavery" that cites a number of scholars, some of whom argue in favor of comparison and some of whom argue against it. Perhaps some of those sources could be brought into the article to address this concern.

Although looking at your other edits on this talk page you seem to be driven more by personal angst than a real desire to improve the encyclopedia. 2601:86:C37F:CD80:EC64:4ED4:F683:C211 (talk) 19:06, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

Chuckle -so the editor who compared "Irish" indentured servants (why not all?) to black slaves is "improving the encyclopedia", but my well-sourced objection is "driven by personal angst"?

These feeble attempts to defend this content says more about you than me. The evidence is inconclusive and most historians see little value in this type of speculation. And the fact that you just articulated a neutrality violation and then asked if the section should be balanced says something about your ability to follow the encyclopedia's rules.

If you're really going to venture into covering a scholarly debate on the treatment of servants vs slaves, find better sources than Donaghue (who is literally claiming the Irish were Caribbean slaves in the piece cited). The one person who's supposedly watching this article is asleep at the wheel. Jonathan f1 (talk) 22:23, 6 May 2023 (UTC)

References

Semi-protected edit request on 8 July 2023

Historian David Brown at Trinity College Dublin has recently published an article on unfree labor in Ireland and Barbados, focusing on the period 1620-1660. Brown relies on newly available archival sources and long neglected primary sources which have not been systemically examined since the 1930s. Brown's article convincingly demonstrates that the Irish were subject to a form of slavery which was distinct from both African slavery and various forms of servitude. Coupled with Hilary Beckles' 1980 dissertation, it is increasingly evident that while there is an "Irish slaves myth" which is employed to advance a particular white supremacist narrative, there is also a historical form of labor exploitation to which the Irish were subject during the Cromwellian period which—while distinct from African slavery— is itself a form of early modern chattel slavery based in ethno-religous difference. The Wikipedia page should be revised accordingly. Please see the following source:

Ireland, slavery and the Caribbean Interdisciplinary perspectives Editors: Finola O’Kane and Ciaran O’Neill

Chapter 3: Free, and unfree Ireland and Barbados, 1620–1660 in Ireland, slavery and the Caribbean David Brown

Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.7765/9781526151001.00012 Online Publication Date: 07 Mar 2023 219.76.26.109 (talk) 15:07, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

 Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. — Paper9oll (🔔 • 📝) 18:09, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

Start by removing the word ‘myth’. The Irish were slaves and forced into ‘indentured servitude’ - they were notably forced into it which takes the freewill out it which is ‘slavery’.

The corruption of ‘Indentured servitude’ did not become apparent until Slavery was abolished in America in 1865, Indentured Slavery was abolished in 1917. Indentured Slavery was abused by the British to enslave the Irish and was abused by America to enslave African-Americans after Slavery was abolished. Both are now abolished and both were forms of slavery. RoryLPatrick (talk) 15:18, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

The article specifically calls out that there is a significant difference between chattel slavery and indentured servitude. You're conflating them here by inventing the term "indentured slavery". And we've all been over these topics on the page here for literally years - Alison ^talk 16:03, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

What a strange request. Your link doesn't support any notion of Irish 'chattel slaves'. It talks about the presence of Irish servants in the Caribbean which is well known and covered in this article. And contrary to what you might reasonably conclude from the tone of this article, English paupers and convicts made up the largest class of servants in the Caribbean and North America, and some estimates suggest as many as half of all white colonists in North America had signed indentures. Scots and Germans were also servants in the Americas and all of these groups outnumbered the Irish.

Once upon a time this article made mention of the ethnic origins of European servants until some totally objective, unbiased and neutral editor who happens to reside in Ireland removed the content with no explanation. I've been adamant about getting this restored -it's important historical context and is covered in many reliable sources (see Liam Hogan's work). Jonathan f1 (talk) 22:00, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

Why would this article - about the myth of Irish slavery in the Americas, usually (ab)used by American white supremacists - make mention of the ethnic origins of settlers/servants who weren't Irish? WP:UNDUE. Bastun^{Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ!} 09:38, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

For the simple fact that reliable sources like Liam Hogan frequently cover the European origins of indentured servants. For one thing, the myth zeroes in on the Irish and conflates indentured servitude with chattel slavery. Secondly, purveyors of the myth prey on the gullibility of the public in accepting without question that "the Irish" were singled out for special treatment.

Why do you think Liam Hogan mentions this in his pieces? Jonathan f1 (talk) 05:53, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

For the benefit of other editors, here are some sources. Here's Liam Hogan, Laura McAtackney and Matthew C. Reilly writing in History Ireland:

"This case demonstrates that servants had legal redress and that the sufferings of servants were not limited to the Irish; English, Scottish, Welsh, German and French servants also experienced hardship in Barbados."[17]

Jerome Handler and Matthew Reilly:

"Indentured servants, largely young males from England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales (that is the British Isles), were present from the first year of settlement and continued to arrive in subsequent years." and,

"During the English Civil War (1642–51) and the following decade, when Barbados’s sugar economy was flourishing, many thousands prisoners of war were shipped to the island and sold as servants. These included Cromwell’s political enemies as well as thousands captured in military campaigns in Ireland and Scotland in 1649–50. Roughly 10,000 Scottish, English, Irish, and even German prisoners from the 1651 Battle of Worcester, the final battle of the English Civil War, were also transported to the Americas as servants."[18]

So again this is presented as historical background info and to make the point that not even convict or POW transports were specifically aimed at the Irish, as argued by Sean O'Callaghan and others.

The real issue here is that this content in the background section was sourced then removed by a single editor shouting "undue weight!" without discussing the changes. If I did something like that I'd be edit blocked, someone else does it and it's totally fine. Jonathan f1 (talk) 16:29, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

Myth origin

The lede says the myth 'has been in circulation since the 1990s', while in the article body, under 'Origins and propagation', it says it was popular amongst Young Irelanders in the 19th century like John Mitchel (before skipping to the present day). I think a bit more clarity and information on the history of the myth would be useful to the reader. Did it just disappear throughout the 20th century until the 1990s? Where did it appear from in the 90s? Was 'They Were White and They Were Slaves' drawing on an older mythology? You get the idea. LastDodo (talk) 14:21, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

Hines photograph

The Hines photograph is from 1910. It is not being used as "fair use", it is in the public domain. The second image, uploaded by Hesperian Nguyen, is being legitimately used under fair use terms, and complies in full with WP's fair use policy. Specifically, use is allowed under WP:NFC#CS and WP:NFCI. Bastun^{Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ!} 10:22, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

"Non-free images that reasonably could be replaced by free content images are not suitable for Wikipedia."

As much as I would hate doing it, I (or anyone else with Photoshop) could make a racist meme incorporating the Irish slaves myth for illustrative purposes, then release it under a free license. As it stands, the text in the meme is not public domain (it is too long).

The Hines photograph would not make sense in the context of the article without the meme incorporating it. Thus, I removed it, even though it is in the public domain.

Respectfully, Bremps... 14:27, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

I don't think that's a valid interpretation of the policy, to be honest. It would essentially be WP:OR. To quote from WP:NFC#CS:

Two of the most common circumstances in which an item of non-free content can meet the contextual significance criterion are:

• where the item is itself the subject of sourced commentary in the article, or
• where only by including such non-free content, can the reader identify an object, style, or behavior, that is a subject of discussion in the article.

The online memes, including this one, are discussed in the article, and it is necessary to depict the memes that are being discussed. Bastun^{Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ!} 18:19, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. We could move the meme featuring the green fist (which is freely licensed) in the lede down to the body instead. Bremps... 20:20, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

@Bastun Do we have a consensus? Bremps... 20:33, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I'm not clear on what you're proposing. I'm not too bothered about placement, but as far as I'm concerned, the Hines photo and the meme based off it are valid for inclusion and should be retained. Bastun^{Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ!} 13:09, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

Concur with this - Alison ^talk 19:16, 25 November 2023 (UTC)