How Did The Irish Slave Trade

The Irish slave trade started when James II sold 30,000 Irish prisoners as slaves to the New World. The Proclamation of 1625 required Irish political prisoners be sent overseas and sold to English settlers in the West Indies. By the middle of the 1600’s, the Irish were some of the main slaves sold. At that time, almost three-fourths of the total population of Montserrat were Irish slaves.
Ireland became the biggest source of human livestock for English merchants very quick. The majority of the early slaves to the New World were actually white. From 1641 to 1652, over 500,000 Irish were killed by the English people and another 300,000 were sold as slaves. Ireland’s population fell from about 1,500,000 to 600,000 in ten years. Families were ripped apart as the British did not allow Irish dads to take their wives and children with them across the Atlantic. This led to a helpless population of homeless women and children. Britain’s solution was to sell them as well.
In these years, 52,000 Irish (mostly women and children) were sold to Barbados and Virginia. Another 30,000 Irish men and women were also transported and sold to the highest possible bidder. In 1656, a man named Cromwell ordered that 2,000 Irish children be taken to Jamaica and sold as slaves to English settlers.
As an example, the African slave trade was just beginning during this same time period. It’s well recorded that African slaves, not tainted with the stain of the hated Catholic theology and more money costed to purchase, were often treated far better than their Irish