The Irish Slaves Myth

All of you know the depth of my love/hate relationship with the internet. On the one hand, I love the internet and the crazy history stories that fly around it via email and blog posts. They provide grist for the Buzzkill Institute mill, and, of course, keep us floated financially, as well as emotionally. And I hate the internet because, despite our heroic efforts, these crazy and wholly misinformed stories still seem to be convincing large sections of humanity. Some of these good folks are adults and actually have drivers licenses and may be responsible for the health and education of children.

And perhaps the worst thing about the whole internet myth machine is that, even when false (and often dangerously false) and debunked, these myths live forever in the cyber-sphere, like tribes of internet ghosts. They get revived and the whole cycle of belief in this garbage (and necessary debunking) starts again. And so here I am again, trying to save all of you from going down that spiral into historical misunderstanding. The myth we’re destroying in this episode is one of the worst, but also one of the hardiest. It’s the Irish slaves myth. Unfortunately, it seems to be getting more attention, and garnering more believers, as time goes by.

Essentially, the Irish slaves myth claims that Irish people were enslaved by the British and sent to the Americas (especially the Caribbean) to work on plantations and in other primary resource industries. In these mythological emails and Facebook posts, Irish people were enslaved between, roughly, 1640 and the late 1860s or 1870s, in greater numbers than people enslaved from Africa, and treated worse than African slaves. And, the stories claims, in later generations Irish-Americans and Irish-Canadians have never “whined” about their treatment and demanded reparations. They picked themselves up, dusted themselves off after emancipation, rebuilt their lives, and thrived because of their native industriousness and drive. Members of the Irish diaspora have risen in North American culture despite their slave origins there. In fact, as the various versions of the Irish slave myth will sometimes tell us, slavery made them stronger, as a “race.”

You may have seen this story in an email or on the internet. It’s entitled, “The Irish: the Forgotten White Slaves.” Many important, legitimate historians, specialists in Irish history, the colonial Caribbean, and the Atlantic World have spoken out against this myth and published open letters to major publications and websites who were taken in by this story, including the Scientific American website (who quickly revised their story when its ahistorical basis was pointed out). We’ve included a copy of the letter in the blog post on our website that accompanies this episode. I am particularly grateful for the work of Liam Hogan, Laura McAtackney, and Matthew Rilley for their work on debunking this myth.

Before I scorch this myth, I’d like to play a recording of the first part of the email version in case you haven’t heard or read it before. It’s read by Lynda, one of the voice actors here at the Buzzkill Institute. This first part mainly deals with numbers of Irish people “enslaved” and sent across the Atlantic.

IRISH: THE FORGOTTEN WHITE SLAVES

They came as slaves: human cargo transported on British ships bound for the Americas. They were shipped by the hundreds of thousands and included men, women, and even the youngest of children. Whenever they rebelled or even disobeyed an order, they were punished in the harshest ways. Slave owners would hang their human property by their hands and set their hands or feet on fire as one form of punishment. Some were burned alive and had their heads placed on pikes in the marketplace as a warning to other captives.

We don’t really need to go through all of the gory details, do we? We know all too well the atrocities of the African slave trade. But are we talking about African slavery? King James VI and Charles I also led a continued effort to enslave the Irish. Britain’s Oliver Cromwell furthered this practice of dehumanizing one’s next-door neighbor. The Irish slave trade began when James VI sold 30,000 Irish prisoners as slaves to the New World. His Proclamation of 1625 required Irish political prisoners to be sent overseas and sold to English settlers in the West Indies.

By the mid-1600s, the Irish were the main slaves sold to Antigua and Montserrat. At that time, 70% of the total population of Montserrat were Irish slaves. Ireland quickly became the biggest source of human livestock for English merchants. 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 and another 300,000 were sold as slaves. Ireland’s population fell from about 1,500,000 to 600,000 in one single decade.

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 auction them off as well. During the 1650s, over 100,000 Irish children between the ages of 10 and 14 were taken from their parents and sold as slaves in the West Indies, Virginia, and New England. In this decade, 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 bidder. In 1656, Cromwell ordered that 2,000 Irish children be taken to Jamaica and sold as slaves to English settlers.

In the first place, Buzzkillers, this email (and all its social media and self-published book variants) provides no evidence for any of these claims, especially the numerically “based” ones. Let me do some quick debunking.

The James VI they’re referring to here was James VI of Scotland, who became James I of England when he ascended to that throne after the death of Queen Elizabeth I in 1603. James I of England (still James VI of Scotland, by the way) died in 1625 without issuing the “proclamation” that the email claims. Charles I, James’ successor, did issue a 1625 proclamation about settling Virginia. But that proclamation did not “sell 30,000 Irish people as slaves to English settlers in the West Indies.” The proclamation was about setting up the nature of government and the tobacco economy in the “Plantation [Colony] of Virginia,” after earlier 1625 proclamations by James about the growing, harvesting, and exporting of tobacco to England hadn’t worked the way the crown wanted them to.

There were earlier proclamations from 1597 (Elizabeth I) and 1603 (James I) about banishing “rogues, vagabonds, and idle and dissolute persons” who had been convicted as criminals. These laws sent these people to “New-found Land, the East and West Indies, France, Germanie, and the Low Countries.” But, as I said, these laws were applied to individuals that Elizabethan and Stuart governments considered criminals. They included English, Scots, Welsh, and Irish people. There was no law or proclamation that specifically targeted Irish people because they were Irish. And certainly there is no evidence at all that “30,000 Irish prisoners were sold as slaves” at any time.

The next big number claimed in this myth is that, “by the mid-1600s, the Irish were the main slaves sold to Antigua and Montserrat. At that time, 70% of the total population of Montserrat were Irish slaves.” Not only is this not true, but it is also simply a case of adding the word “slaves” to a more-or-less accurate estimate about how many Irish people lived on Montserrat. The original evidence was analyzed by Richard S. Dunn of the University of Pennsylvania, and he wrote that, in the late 1630s, 69% of Montserrat’s population were Irish. Somewhere along the way, one of the promoters of this myth simply added “slaves” to “Irish,” and rounded the percentage up to 70. Small and quick textual changes, but they changed the entire meaning of sentence and the history involved.

The other numerical claims are just as fantastic, Buzzkillers. And I mean “fantastic,” as in “the product of fantasy.” I could go through this email line by line and, using the evidence-based historical analysis that genuine historians have produced, to show that numbers are just made up. But there’s only so much time allotted for each podcast episode, and there are other fantastical claims in this myth that simply must be exposed. But, quickly, 500,000 Irish people were not killed between 1600 and 1650 and the population of Ireland did not fall by nearly two-thirds. 300,000 Irish people were not sold to the West Indies between 1641 and 1652. In fact, during the entirety of the 100 years of the 17th century, only 50,000 people total migrated from Ireland to the West Indies. Again, look through what we’ve put on the Buzzkill Bookshelf and you’ll see that those numbers in the email and other versions of this myth are all just made up.

The second part of this myth tries to eliminate the central fact of what happened and tries to change the definition of the roles of the people involved. Again, Lynda, one of our Buzzkill voice actors, reads it for us.

Many people today will avoid calling the Irish slaves what they truly were: Slaves. They’ll come up with terms like “Indentured Servants” to describe what occurred to the Irish. However, in most cases from the 17th and 18th centuries, Irish slaves were nothing more than human cattle.

As an example, the African slave trade was just beginning during this same period. It is well recorded that African slaves, not tainted with the stain of the hated Catholic theology and more expensive to purchase, were often treated far better than their Irish counterparts.

The authors of this myth start this section with a shot across the bow of legitimate historians when they said, “Many people today will avoid calling the Irish slaves what they truly were: Slaves. They’ll come up with terms like ‘Indentured Servants’ to describe what occurred to the Irish.”

Legitimate and responsible historians “come up with terms like ‘Indentured Servants'” not only because is that’s the best term to describe what happened to these emigrants, to describe their legal status, and to describe the work they did in the colonies, it’s the term (the legal term) that was used at the time. Therefore, we didn’t really “come up” with the term. We call them “indentured servants” because they were indentured servants.

Many of you may have heard the term “indentured servants” or “indentured servitude” either in history classes, in general discussions of history, or even in such historically-themed television shows such as the PBS blockbuster of the 1970s, Roots. There weren’t enough people in the New World colonies to meet the labor demands of the 17th century, and there were periods of high labor surplus in Europe during this time. Indentured servitude was the way that large agricultural or other business concerns tried to prosper.

Indentured servants were depicted in Roots, often as overseers or other mid-level workers on plantations. Many indentured servants worked in those types of positions or worked in and around the plantation house, and others were field hands. Essentially, indentured servants signed (or agreed to) a form of contract in their home country which said that, in return for passage to the Americas, and food and housing while they were there, the indentured servant would work for a master (“employer” is not the right legal term), for a certain number of years (usually anywhere from one to seven), which were set out in the contract.

In the vast majority of cases, they were not paid a wage for their work during their contracted years. The agreement was that their passage across the Atlantic was more or less half of their payment, and their upkeep was the other half. Once the contracted years of work were finished, the indentured servant was released from his or her servitude and could seek paid work. Sometimes, plantation owners hired back their own former indentured servants as normal workers, especially if they had shown facility with the work or had developed expertise and skills which would have become essential to the plantation’s prosperity.

Don’t get me wrong, most indentured servants lived and worked had very difficult lives, especially in the Caribbean colonies, where the conditions were harsh (both in terms of weather and expectations of the masters). There is no evidence at all that indentured servitude was easy, although the quality of life for individual servants obviously varied widely. Indentured servants were more or less tied to the contract they had agreed to. Among other things, this contract could be sold to another person. The servant would then start working for the other person for the remainder of the contracted time. This usually happened when a plantation owner went broke (or was about to go broke). The owner would then sell his slaves if he had to, and would often sell whatever indentured servitude contracts he held. This is why indentured servitude is often described as “unfree labor.” Indentured servants were legally required to work off the length of their contracts, and were punished by the legal system if they left their master before the contract terms were satisfied.

Other white unfree labor included prisoners of war, political prisoners, and convicted criminals. These people were usually treated worse than indentured servants. Their labor and treatment were more or less the same as that of convict laborers in the United States today. After they landed in the Americas, they were hired out to owners for certain work and for a certain period of time.

Just a reminder, Buzzkillers. No one is claiming that life as an indentured servant or as a white person working as an unfree laborer under different terms was easy or pleasant, or that it was an entry-level position on the train to American prosperity. While some indentured servants, particularly those who were talented at organizing and running farms and plantations, were able to use their experience to get good-paying jobs once their indentured contract was finished, and eventually to buy a piece of land and to start building their own fortunes; most indentured servants did not end up like this. Some died laboring in the harsh heat and humidity of the West Indies. Most took low-paid field hand jobs or other manual labor jobs after their contract was finished, and they lived out their lives as very poor people with little hope of economic advancement.

But they were not slaves, and certainly not held in chattel slavery like the slaves brought from Africa during this period. To suggest otherwise, and to try to bolster that suggestion with invented “facts” and invented “statistics” is ahistorical. One useful way to understand the difference between white unfree laborers and African chattel slaves is this. Indentured servants were, more or less, owned and controlled by the contact that I’ve been talking about. As I said, the contract could even be sold to another master. And, because the whole relationship was based on a recognized contract, indentured servants were subject to the legal system at the time. If they broke a law, they were subject to punishment by that legal system.

Chattel slavery was entirely different, more complete, and not subject to contracts or a legal system. Chattel slaves were the property of their owners to do whatever they wanted with them, without recourse to a legal system for mistreatment or abuse. Slave owners could even kill their own slaves, if they wished, without any threat of legal punishment. Further, and perhaps most significant and most brutal, is that chattel slavery was perpetual through the generations. Any child born to a slave was also a slave from the moment of birth onwards. If slavery hadn’t been abolished in North America, people would still be being born in bondage, an unbroken lineage of slavery to this day. And it’s very clear from the evidence available to us about the attitudes towards slavery, and the justifications used for its retention as an institution. In nearly every case since ancient times, slavery has been based on racial or ethnic grounds.

In addition to simple hatred and economic selfishness, slave-owning groups have condoned slavery on the basis that their own culture or race was so superior to others (they would have said they were “genetically” superior if they’d known about genetics at the time), that not only were they justified in enslaving other groups, that slavery was a benefit for the enslaved group. Enslaved peoples might, over the centuries, gradually improve, through their exposure to superior peoples. No one thought this about the people who became indentured servants. If they had, they would have gone to the great lengths to categorize indentured servants the same as chattel slaves and would have justified it in the same way.

The final aspect of the Irish Slaves Myth that I want to address is the forced breeding of Irish slave women with African slave men. Here is the section of the email version of the myth.

African slaves were very expensive during the late 1600s (£50 Sterling). Irish slaves came cheap (no more than £5 Sterling). If a planter whipped, branded or beat an Irish slave to death, it was never a crime. A death was a monetary setback, but far cheaper than killing a more expensive African.

The English masters quickly began breeding the Irish women for both their own personal pleasure and for greater profit. Children of slaves were themselves slaves, which increased the size of the master’s free workforce.

Even if an Irish woman somehow obtained her freedom, her kids would remain slaves of her master. Thus, Irish mothers, even with this newfound emancipation, would seldom abandon their children and would remain in servitude.

In time, the English thought of a better way to use these women to increase their market share: The settlers began to breed Irish women and girls (many as young as 12) with African men to produce slaves with a distinct complexion. These new “mulatto” slaves brought a higher price than Irish livestock and, likewise, enabled the settlers to save money rather than purchase new African slaves.

This practice of interbreeding Irish females with African men went on for several decades and was so widespread that, in 1681, legislation was passed “forbidding the practice of mating Irish slave women to African slave men for the purpose of producing slaves for sale.” In short, it was stopped only because it interfered with the profits of a large slave transport company.

First off, this is a myth within the larger Irish slavery myth. We have established that there is no evidence for Irish white slavery, so it’s impossible for white Irish slaves to be forced to breed with black African slaves. But since this false history keeps getting repeated, let’s address some of these claims.

There is absolutely no evidence of forced breeding of white Irish women with African slaves in Caribbean colonies, or anywhere else. This, of course, does not mean that inter-racial relationships (and even inter-racial marriages) did not happen. The history of colonial America contains several instances of white masters having sexual relations with African slaves, and the evidence of such relations comes not only from legislation banning it, but also the obvious fact of mixed-race children on plantations and in the rest of early modern North America.

All the evidence about sexual or marital relations between black people and white people shows, in fact, that it was a crime, and that any children of such unions would be legally free. This goes directly against the grain of the argument made in the Irish slaves myth — that Irish “slave” women were used to create new slaves.

Cases where white women voluntarily married black slaves are recorded. There were only a handful of them, but, in each case, the children of those married were legally free at birth. This is the very opposite of the definition of chattel slavery.

Finally, what happened to indentured servitude? It declined greatly from the early 19th century to the early 20th century but was not banned in Britain (and its colonies) and the United States until 1917. The British banned the Atlantic slave trade in 1807, and a similar ban was placed on the importation of slaves into the US by the American government. Slavery throughout the British Empire was banned in 1833.

Historians disagree about the reasons for the decline of indentured servitude, but one of the key causes in the continental United States was the expansion of slavery. Natural increase (slaves being born to slaves) had become large enough that indentured servants were no longer needed. Even greatly increased cotton production in the early 19th century did not outstrip the supply of slave labor, and the two went hand in hand.

There are many other aspects to the Irish slavery myth, including the ways it was invented and has been spread during the 20th and 21st centuries, and how it has been used by white supremacist groups (especially in the United States). Perhaps most unfortunate of all, it’s now spread to Ireland where it has become an internet meme popular with some groups. There is even now a Scottish version of the white slaves myth, which also needs to be buzzkilled.

I just said, “perhaps most unfortunate of all” is that the myth has spread to Ireland, but, of course, by far the most detrimental effect of this myth has been to negate and attempt to minimize the actual suffering of African slaves and American-born black slaves. Most versions of the myth continually claim that white Irish slaves were greater in number and suffered far more from the brutality of slavery than African slaves. Yet, so the myth goes, the Irish-American descendants never complain about their supposed history of slavery and oppression. They never ask for reparations or further consideration of the historical crimes committed against them. In other words, they say, why should we pay attention to movements like “Black Lives Matter” when Irish people “had it worse”?

Throughout this show, we’ve talked about the difficulties, genuinely harsh working conditions, and the second-class citizen status that indentured servants endured during their servitude. All of those things need to be better-known in our culture. But not at the cost of recognizing the truly inhumane nature of chattel slavery. And if “Irish slaves myth” promoters put half the energy into considering the entirety of brutality in the history of the Atlantic world that they put into retailing this myth, we’d have a much better-educated populace indeed. And that much better populace might, I hope, ask further questions about oppression. Eventually, they might ask about slavery and human trafficking in our own, 21st, century. That’s certainly a subject that needs far greater attention than it’s getting, as well as far greater energy devoted to its abolition.

And, though I rarely do this, I’d like to make a plug for an organization that’s trying to right a contemporary, as well as an historical, evil. Anti-Slavery International is the oldest international human rights organization in the world. It was founded in 1839 (six years after the abolition of slavery in the British Empire) because anti-slavery protesters knew that slavery would continue in other parts of the world. Not only has it continued, it has prospered. Millions of people in the world today are either enslaved or directly affected by slavery. Please go to antislavery.org and do what you can. Donate. Volunteer. Spread the word. After all, what good is knowing more history if one of history’s greatest evils can’t be stopped?

https://www.antislavery.org/


Here’s a copy of the “Open letter to Irish Central, Irish Examiner and Scientific American about their ‘Irish slaves’ disinformation”

To whom it may concern,
As you are aware, the Irish Central, Irish Examiner (since removed) and Scientific American (since revised) websites currently host articles about the allegedly “forgotten white Irish slaves.”
Irish Central, “Irish are ‘the forgotten white slaves’ claims expert”, 27 March 2015
Irish Central, “Irish roots in the Caribbean run deep”, 20 November 2015
Irish Examiner, “100,000 Irish children sold for slavery during 1650s”, 29 January 2013 (update: article has been removed without explanation)
Scientific American, “It’s True: We’re Probably All a Little Irish — Especially in the Caribbean”, 17 March 2015 (update: article has been revised with explanation)

The Irish Central and Irish Examiner articles quoted extensively from an op-ed article published on the “Global Research” website based in Canada. This website supports the 9/11 Truther movement and its “Irish slaves” article, apparently authored by John Martin for opednews.com, is an exercise in racist ahistorical propaganda. The Scientific American blog used an older and equally ahistorical article from a Kavanagh family genealogy site. This blog post entitled “Irish slaves in Caribbean” was evidently an important source for the “Global Research” article.

It is imperative that newspapers and scientific journals aim for truth and accuracy in everything they publish. It is thus our duty, as historians, scholars and interested parties, to inform your shareholders and your customers that you have failed to carry out any semblance of fact-checking on this particular article. More damaging still is that your promotion of it, for a number of years, has added a veneer of credibility to what is a well known white nationalist conspiracy theory more commonly found on Neo-Nazi and Neo-Confederate forums.

Journalism and scholarly historical research differ in various ways but they share one thing in common. If they are not based on reliable sources, they are worthless. Readers who may not be privy to the source of the information will likely take it at face value. Sometimes, the result is merely misinformation, but more dangerously, it can be used disingenuously to propagate a political myth. Scholarly articles undergo a process of peer review to make sure that they are evidence based and accurate. We do not expect newspapers to exercise the same level of rigour but a degree of common sense is called for since lifting material from such websites, which have no sources and are written by an unknown author, is poor journalistic practice.

Furthermore we are deeply disturbed to find that the Irish Central article (shared on social media over 150,000 times) asserts in its headline that this “Irish slaves” disinformation comes from an “expert” source. What underlines this baseless claim is the fact that every single line of the quoted article is a distortion, or a fabrication or an egregious exaggeration. We will not go through the inaccuracy of each line here, that is your responsibility, but we will ask you two questions. Do you, the editors of Irish Central and the Irish Examiner (update: now withdrawn) stand over the claim that an “Irish Slave Trade” was abolished in 1839? Or that “Irish slaves”, not enslaved Africans, were the victims of the Zong Massacre?

The intent of the article is thus patently clear; to insidiously equate indentured servitude or penal servitude with racialized perpetual hereditary chattel slavery. This is an obscene rhetorical move which decontextualises and dehistoricises the exploitation of both groups. There have been many different forms of slavery, across space and time. That is not the issue here. We are addressing the mainstream endorsement of a growing white nationalist campaign built on the reductionist fallacy of “slavery is slavery” which is inevitably used to justify racism in the present. For example, the spurious “we went through the same thing, but we don’t complain” sentiment which is now frequently deployed to silence debate and to mock demands for justice and truth-telling.

This has little to do with remembering the brutality of indentured servitude and all to do with the minimisation of the scale, duration and legacy of the transatlantic and intercolonial slave trade. The racist contemporary application of such bad history can be observed spreading like a virus across social media on an hourly basis.

Thus your mainstream endorsement of this distorted version of history has consequences. We therefore call on you to revise these articles, to correct the errors and to remove the false claims.

Signed

Susan Dwyer Amussen, Professor of History, University of California, Merced
Ana Lucia Araujo, Professor of History, Howard University
Catherine Barry, Historian and Philosopher, Kildare
Stephanie Boland, PhD candidate and editor, London
Rodney Breen, Archivist, Dublin
Dr. Margaret Brehony, President of Society for Irish Latin American Studies (SILAS)
Dr Conrad Brunstrom, Maynooth University
Emma Burns, Doctoral Researcher, CDLP, NUI Galway
Dean Buckley, Poet, Tipperary
Susan Campbell, retired prof. of Caribbean History, Vancouver, Canada
Dr Brian Carey, Researcher, University of Limerick
Jasmine Chorley, MGA Candidate, University of Toronto
Alexis Coe, Author, New York
Zoe Coleman, BA Hist (UCD), MLitt Art Hist (Glas), Dublin
Aidan Connolly, Engineer, Cork
Patrick Corbett BA, Galway
Laurence Cox, Lecturer, Maynooth University
Gerard Cunningham, Freelance journalist, Kildare
Patrick Denny, Adjunct Prof. of Electronic Engineering, NUI Galway
Dr Seán Patrick Donlan, University of the South Pacific
Dr Timothy R. Dougherty, Assistant Professor of English, West Chester University of PA
Paul Duane, Producer/Director, Screenworks, Dublin
Dr Katherine Ebury, Lecturer in Modern Literature, University of Sheffield.
Professor Bryan Fanning, University College Dublin
Ciarán Ferrie MRIAI, Rathmines, Dublin
Luke Field, PhD candidate and Lecturer, School of Politics and International Relations, University College Dublin
Dr Graham Finlay, School of Politics and International Relations, University College Dublin
Stephanie Fleming B.Sc, Dublin
Tom Gallagher, History Postgraduate, University College Cork
Ultan Gannon, International Politics and Philosophy, UCD
David T. Gleeson, Professor of American History, Northumbria University.
Peter Gray, Professor of Modern Irish History, Queen’s University Belfast
Michael Guasco, Associate Professor of History, Davidson College, North Carolina
Johanna Haban, MA student in Gaelic Literature, University College Cork
Dr Brendan Halpin, Senior Lecturer in Sociology, University of Limerick
Dr Brian Hanley, Historian, Dublin
Felicity Hayes-McCoy, Writer, Dingle, Co. Kerry
Domhnall Hegarty, MA Irish History, Saint Louis University
Liam Hogan, Independent Scholar and Librarian, Limerick
Matt Horton, Graduate student, UC Berkeley
Professor Liam Irwin, Head of History (Rtd), Mary Immaculate College, Limerick
Evan Jones, Goldsmiths, University of London
Karst de Jong, PhD candidate, Queen’s University Belfast
Liz Loveland, Independent Researcher, Boston, Massachusetts
Dr Neil Kennedy, Associate Professor of Atlantic History, Memorial University, Newfoundland
Dr Sharon L Krossa, Scottish Medieval Historian, California
Naomi McArdle, Adare, Co. Limerick
Dr Laura McAtackney, Associate Professor in Sustainable Heritage Management (Archaeology), Århus University, Denmark
Kate McCabe, Director of Éist, Brooklyn, New York
Sarah McCrann, London
Dr Ken McDonagh, School of Law and Government, Dublin City University
Simon McGarr, Solicitor, Dublin
Maria McGarrity, Ph.D, Professor of English, Long Island University
Thérèse McIntyre, Independent Oral Historian, NUI Galway
Patricia McIsaac, Teacher, Boston Massachusetts
Conor McLoughlin, BA Sci (TCD)BA English Phil (UCD), Dublin
Carly McNamara, MSc Medieval History, University of Edinburgh
Dr Damian Mac Con Uladh, Historian and journalist, Corinth, Greece
Erin MacLeod, PhD, Vanier College, Montréal, QC, Canada
Adrian Martyn, Independent Scholar, Galway
Dr Lucy Michael, Lecturer in Sociology, University of Ulster
Dr Joss Moorkens, Researcher, Dublin City University
John Moynes, Writer, Dublin
Dr John Mulloy, Lecturer in Art History, Heritage and Applied Social Studies, GMIT Galway & Mayo
Ruaidhrí Mulveen, Galway
Maeve O’Brien, PhD Candidate, Ulster University
Tomás Ó Brógáin, BA Hons Irish History and Politics, Ulster University
Aileen O’Carroll, Irish Qualitative Data Archive, Maynooth University
Carrie O’Connell, Lecturer of Media Studies, San Diego State University
John O’Donovan, Independent Scholar, Cork
Terry O’Hagan, Researcher, University College Dublin
Nicole O’Loughlin, Northwell Health Systems, New York
Dr John Ó Néill, Head of Lifelong Learning, IT Tallaght, Dublin
Dr Sean Phelan, Senior Lecturer in Communication and Media, Massey University, Wellington
Dr Juan J Ponce-Vázquez, Assistant Professor of History, University of Alabama
Dr Niamh Puirséil, Historian, Dublin
Dr Stephanie Rains, Media Studies Dept, Maynooth University
Dr. Robert L. Reece, Duke University, North Carolina
Dr Joe Regan, History Dept., NUI Galway
Dr Matthew Reilly, Brown University, Rhode Island
F. Stuart Ross, Political Historian, Queen’s University Belfast
Ms Ebony Ryan, Dun Laoghaire
Zoé Samudzi, Writer and Academic, University of California San Francisco
Barry Sheppard, Post Graduate scholar, Queen’s University Belfast
David Sim, Lecturer in US History, University College London
Sharon Slater, Historian (MA), Limerick
Catherine Sloan, D. Phil researcher, Oxford University
Dr Sheamus Sweeney, Lecturer in Film and Television, Boston University Dublin Programs
Dr Robert Taber, University of Florida
Dr Gavan Titley, Lecturer in Media Studies, Maynooth University
Michael W. Twitty, Culinary Historian, Washington D.C.
Natasha Varner, PhD, Historian and Writer, Duwamish Territory/Seattle, WA
Dr Brian Vaughan, Lecturer and Course Chair MSc Creative Digital Media, DIT, Dublin
Haydyn Williams, Independent Archaeologist and researcher (former RCAHMS & British Museum), Scotland
Professor Patricia Wood, York University, Toronto, Canada
Catherine Walsh, poet, Independent scholar, teacher, Limerick
Cormac Watters, MA, London

Buzzkill Bookshelf:

Donald Harman Akenson, If the Irish Ran the World: Montserrat, 1630-1730 (1997).

If the Irish Ran the World provides interesting insights into whether ethnicity was central to the making of the colonial world and the usefulness of studies of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English imperialism in the Americas.

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