Ireland, slavery and anti-slavery : 1612-1865

This book tackles a hitherto neglected topic, showing how slaves and sugar produced economic and political change in eighteenth-century Ireland and discussing the role of Irish emigrants in slave societies in the Caribbean and North America. It traces the development of the Irish anti-slavery movement explaining why it appealed to such prominent figures as Olaudah Equiano, Fredrick Douglass, and Daniel O'Connell. Ireland, Slavery and Anti-Slavery: 1612-1865 uncovers a forgotten aspect of Ireland's history and reveals the importance of the Irish in global developments surrounding the slave trade. Black slavery made fortunes for the Irish abroad as they participated in the slave trade and in the establishment of slave plantations in the Caribbean. (Should Irish 'bound servants' also involved in this process be regarded as white slaves?) At home the sale of such crops produced wealthy merchants, urban growth and an impact on politics, eventually resulting in the 1790s in an anti-slavery movement which would claim roots in the Ireland of St Patrick (Does investigation uphold this view?) Ireland played an important role in the lives of famous slaves - Olaudah Equiano and Frederick Douglass, while the Famine emigrants found themselves confronted by a United States divided over slavery Front Matter....Pages i-v Introduction....Pages 1-3 Front Matter....Pages 5-5 Slaves and Scholars....Pages 7-26 Servants and Slaves: The Seventeenth Century....Pages 27-54 Creoles and Slaves: The Eighteenth Century....Pages 55-81 Sojourners, Slaves and Stipendiaries: The Nineteenth Century....Pages 82-94 The Trade....Pages 95-115 Front Matter....Pages 117-117 Protestant, Catholic....Pages 119-144 And Dissenter....Pages 145-158 Dublin, Sweet City....Pages 159-196 Dynasties....Pages 197-229 Anti-Slavery Literature, Mostly Imaginative....Pages 230-256 Front Matter....Pages 257-257 Daniel O’Connell and Anti-Slavery....Pages 259-277 Frederick Douglass and the ‘Antieverythingarians’....Pages 278-289 Famine and War....Pages 290-311 A Special Relationship?....Pages 312-330 Conclusion....Pages 331-332 Back Matter....Pages 333-403 This book tackles a hitherto neglected topic by presenting Ireland as very much a part of the Black Atlantic world. It shows how slaves and sugar produced economic and political change in Eighteenth-century Ireland and discusses the role of Irish emigrants in slave societies in the Caribbean and North America. It traces the development of the Irish anti-slavery movement explaining why it appealed to such prominent figures as Olaudah Equiano, Fredrick Douglass and Daniel O'Connell