Slavery is a tough subject. I recently delivered a ten-week Open Learning course on Atlantic slavery at Queen’s University Belfast and at times found myself close to tears by the sheer inhumanity and sadism of the thing. Unfortunately, the lure of a making easy money brings out the very worst in people. In the 17th and early 18th centuries, the well-off in virtually every port in Great Britain and Ireland invested in slaving ships, the murderous .com or crypto of …
Ever since I moved to Belfast I’ve made a point of celebrating the Fourth of July, Independence Day. While I quickly learned that the parades from my childhood don’t have the same meaning here, I clung to and adapted other traditions that were a bit more portable and less sectarianized; namely, beer and barbecued meat. Also, the wearing of red, white and blue, but done discreetly, and without obvious American flag emblems masquerading as clothing (I’m looking at you, bizarre, …
We know that Ireland like most countries in Western Europe got caught up in the 18th-century slave trade and Irish merchants could benefit from the produce of the West Indies. Belfast was not exempt. The wealthy businessman Waddell Cunningham had a plantation in the Caribbean (called Belfast !) to take just one example. However there was a formidable opposition to slavery among the citizens of the growing late-18th century town, often involving radically-minded women – and a welcome was given …
Just when you think the reputation of the Irish Catholic Church can’t get any lower the Irish Independent reports on what amounts to slavery: A notorious industrial school in Limerick was paid to send boys under the age of 16 to work for traders, merchants and big farmers, according to hundreds of documents that have remained hidden for decades. Experts say the find demonstrates local communities were involved in the industrialisation and exploitation of marginalised children. There is no record …
An update to Mick’s original post on the charges of slavery following a police raid on a travellers’ site in Bedfordshire in September last year. From the BBC report on the verdicts Four members of a traveller family have been found guilty of forcing destitute men into servitude. Tommy Connors Snr, 52, his son Patrick Connors, 20, and daughter Josie, 31, kept the men in squalid conditions at Greenacres caravan park in Bedfordshire, the trial heard. Josie’s husband James John …
Don Boudreaux thinks so – The fact is that slavery disappeared only as industrial capitalism emerged. And it disappeared first where industrial capitalism appeared first: Great Britain. This was no coincidence. Slavery was destroyed by capitalism. To begin with, the ethical and political principles that support capitalism are inconsistent with slavery. As we Americans discovered, a belief in the universal dignity of human beings, their equality before the law, and their right to govern their own lives cannot long coexist …
