History:At the height of the War of Independence, W E B Du Bois declared that "no people can more exactly interpret the inmost meaning of the present situation in Ireland than the American Negro", writes Daire Keogh.
This support from the African American leader suggested a shared experience of the Irish and the former slave, yet later in the same article, he shattered such frothy notions asserting that "no people in the past have gone with blither spirit to 'kill niggers' from Kingston to Dehli and from Kumasi to Fiji" than the Irish.
Such contradictions are at the heart of Nini Rodgers's Ireland, Slavery and Anti-Slavery, which sets itself an ambitious task of recovering the largely forgotten and hugely neglected history of the relationship between Ireland and African slavery. Her conclusions echo those of Du Bois. Despite all that has been said about the affinity of the Irish and oppressed peoples, Ireland displayed a duality towards black bondage; sympathetic at one level, but harsh at another.
The scope of this study is impressive and the author ranges comfortably from early Ireland to post-colonial theory, from St Patrick to Edward Said. It represents a life-time of reflection on the vast literature of the subject and the complex issues which it explores. This is an old fashioned history in the very best sense of the word. It is not simply that young scholars shy from such endeavours, but the current preoccupation of universities with productivity and "Research Assessment Exercises" actively discourages such long-term projects.
The universal character of slavery is quickly established in a fascinating discussion of the institution in early Ireland which illustrates the economic realities which created it and the moral arguments subsequently employed to justify its existence. That universality is demonstrated, too, in the extent to which the problems raised by slavery in early and medieval Ireland, as expressed by St Patrick, Adomnán or Wulfstan of Worcester, prefigured the animated discourse of the 18th and 19th centuries.
This is the critical point about the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. It is not that people hadn't been enslaved before, but it is the modernity of the experience which is appalling. In Tony Blair's expression, this "most inhuman enterprise in history" arose at a time when "the capitals of Europe and America championed the Enlightenment of man". American slavery was a new institution for a modernising world, necessitated by the insatiable demand of Europeans for sugar. Yet as Eric Williams observed "unfree labour in the New World was brown, white, black and yellow; Catholic, Protestant and pagan". These included the indentured Irish servants censured in Barbadian laws (1661) for their "bold extravagancy", turbulence and tendency to join runaway slaves.
The Irish, however, provided not just labour, but enterprise and capital. In St Croix, Nicholas Tuite (1705-72) owned seven plantations and had shares in as many more, while his contemporary Antoine Walsh was the fifth most successful slaver in France. At home, too, fortunes were made provisioning the trade and Rodgers' expertise as an economic historian shines in her discussion of these mercantile families of Cork, Limerick and Belfast. In Dublin, too, the sugar-baker Edward Byrne is reputed to have paid customs duties of £100,000 annually on his imports from the Caribbean plantations. Ironically, the profits from "the trade" funded both Catholics and Dissenters in pursuit of their own political liberty in the late 18th century.
Similarly, her discussion of anti-slavery challenges bold assertions concerning the Irish contribution to Abolition at Westminster. With the exception of O'Connell, she argues that Irish members of parliament "lost the plot", in contrast to the resolute opposition to slavery expressed by individuals at home, especially Quakers, including Mary Leadbeater and the Bewleys, whose "oriental cafes" sourced their products in India rather than the slave contaminated plantations of the west.
Rodgers' pioneering analysis shatters the traditional self-congratulation that Hibernia was untainted by what Edmund Burke condemned as the "inhuman traffick of slavery".
Her perseverance has produced an immensely readable volume, peppered with colourful anecdotes, that vividly describes not merely Ireland's relations with slavery, but the complexity of Irish society itself. It is a wonderful contribution to the commemoration of the bicentenary of the Abolition Act (1807), which will form an invaluable platform for future studies of Ireland and the black Atlantic.
Daire Keogh lectures in the history department of St Patrick's College, Drumcondra. He is currently IRCHSS Government of Ireland Senior Research Fellow
Ireland, Slavery and Anti-Slavery: 1612-1856 By Nini Rodgers Palgrave, 403pp. £60