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A facet of U.S. history largely unfamiliar to Americans themselves is the role of indentured servitude in the survival and growth of the original 13 colonies. The earliest settlers needed laborers, but only wealthy people could afford passage to the New World. This led to a system whereby those who lacked means were brought from Europe under contract to work off their passage, room, and board over a period of two to seven years, until they were considered to have earned their freedom. No fewer than half of the immigrants who came to the New World during the colonial period arrived as indentured servants. Among the many thousands of impoverished Europeans brought over in this fashion were men, women, and children from England, Ireland, Scotland, Germany, and elsewhere, but over the intervening centuries the notion has arisen that the Irish, in particular, were shipped to the New World as white slaves. In fact, according to an article first published on the internet in 2008 and endlessly recirculated since, Irish slaves were not only common in early America, they were more common than African slaves, and often treated more harshly. The article making these claims is usually credited to an individual named John Martin, who, in turn, found most of his facts in a 2003 article by James F. Cavanaugh called Irish Slaves in the Caribbean. It has gone by many names, but as of mid-2016, the most shared version of the Irish slave narrative was entitled Irish: The Forgotten White Slaves, and posted under the byline of a man named Ronald Dwyer. Regardless of who is or isn't credited with writing it, nearly every iteration of the piece begins in exactly the same way: Woven throughout is the implication that the reason so few Americans know anything about the so-called forgotten history of Irish slavery is that it has been excluded from biased history books. Limerick-based research librarian and historian Liam Hogan takes aim at this notion in a series of papers debunking what he calls the Irish slaves myth. There were no Irish slaves in the Americas, Hogan says. People who claim there were are conflating indentured servitude with chattel slavery — two distinct forms of servitude with more differences between them than similarities: Hogan pins a 2014 resurgence of the Irish slaves narrative to increasing racial tensions within the United States, situating it within a larger world view desirous of absolving white Europeans of blame for the transatlantic slave trade that brought an estimated 12 million Africans to the New World in lifelong bondage: That the institution of chattel slavery in America was founded on race is undeniable. Beginning in the late 1600s, the colonies all adopted slave codes which, among other things, routinely defined slaves as Negro or African, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica: The Dred Scott decision handed down by the Supreme Court in 1857 reaffirmed that racialized definition of slavery. The 7 to 2 decision in Scott v. Sanford held that plaintiff Dred Scott, a Black slave, did not qualify as an American citizen and had no standing to sue in federal court because, in part, persons imported as slaves had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order: In terms of historical accuracy, the Irish slave story is a hodgepodge. For example, the Proclamation of 1625 supposedly requiring all Irish prisoners to be sent overseas did not exist. You won't find it in any history books. There was a 1603 proclamation by James I ordering that rogues, vagabonds, idle, and dissolute persons be banished and conveyed to places and parts beyond the seas, etc., but this was not directed at the Irish in particular. It was put to use decades later in the wake of the English Civil Wars, however, as a justification for forcibly shipping thousands of Irish prisoners, vagrants, and orphans to the Caribbean as indentured servants. More than any other, this historical fact inspired the notion that the Irish were enslaved. Still, the text wildly exaggerates the number of those treated in this fashion, falsely claiming that 300,000 were sold as slaves. (Liam Hogan unravels these and similar statistical misrepresentations in A Review of the Numbers in the Irish Slaves Meme.) That thousands of Irish people were carried across the sea against their will and indentured to serve on plantations isn't disputed. It happened. What's in question is whether or not they are rightly referred to as slaves. Some writers, such as genealogist and Irish Times columnist John Grenham, ask why not: Is it mere quibbling? Generically speaking, any form of forced labor can be called slavery. But what do we gain by doing so, besides blurring historical distinctions? Consider impressment, the 18th-century British naval practice of kidnapping young men and forcing them to serve on sailing vessels. That's slavery, in a sense. So is being sentenced to hard labor in prison. But while these share features in common with the institution of chattel slavery in America, they are on a whole separate plane. It isn't bias that keeps legitimate historians from substituting the term slavery for impressment, hard labor, or even forced indentured servitude. It's a simple respect for the facts.
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