Irish Slavery

The transportation of Irish people to slavery in the Americas predates Oliver Cromwells reign with the first Irish political prisoners being sent to Virginia in 1620 under the reign of James I.

In the 1650s, Oliver Cromwell succeeded in capturing the island of Jamaica from the Spanish and was keen to colonise it and put it to work for England. It was a much larger island than any other previously colonised in the Caribbean and required a new approach to populate it and make it viable. The initial plan was to offer freedom to indentured Irish slaves on the island of Barbados and elsewhere or to take more rebellious Irish slaves and transport them to Jamaica where they would be offered their freedom and 30 acres of land to work.

Following the Confederation wars and Irish Rebellion of 1641, Oliver Cromwell set sail for Ireland from Milford Haven in 1649. His mission was to revenge the massacres of 1641 and to bring Ireland firmly under English rule. His forces numbered about 20,000 troops and the slaughter and

The islands of the West Indies began to be colonised by English planters in the 1600s, growing sugar and tobacco for export to Europe. This trade required large quantities of manual labourers to toil in the fields, once the native Carrib peoples had been suppressed.

There began a policy of bringing Irish and English people to the