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A reminder of the Irish in Barbados

By Noreen Bowden | March 23, 2009

An Irish Independent article on property investment in Barbados also reminds us of the dark days of the sugar plantations of the seventeenth century.

Many of the Irish arrived there after Oliver Cromwell took them off their land and sold them into slavery or indenture to British planters. Estimates of the numbers of Irish transported in this way range from 12,000 to 60,000, according to a Yale University web page.

The article says:

The historic plantation houses and old churches like St John’s, which holds the graves of some of the many Irish who helped build the sugar trade, offer something very different from the usual sun, sand and sea. . . and a stark reminder of just how far both countries have travelled since the dark days of slavery and colonisation.

Read the whole article: Barbados: Mix history with sun, sea and sand for perfect holiday home

Related web pages and resources:

• “Barbadosed”: Africans and Irish in Barbados
• Irish Echo: Cromwell’s legacy of Irish slavery
• White Cargo: The Forgotten History of Britain’s White Slaves in America by Don Jordan and Michael Walsh

Of course, there were a smaller number of Irish who benefited from the slave trade in the Caribbean; historian Donald Akenson’s If the Irish Ran the World tells the story of an Irish colony that  participated in imperialism.

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