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"More Irish people killed more Indians than anyone else"

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  • Registered Users Posts: 14,950 ✭✭✭✭Kintarō Hattori


    Gruffalox wrote: »
    General Philip Sheridan. Parents went from Co. Cavan to Ohio. He was renowned for his total war tactics against native Americans. Starved them in winter, slaughtered men, women and children with no remorse, drove them onto the reservations. A stain on his ancestors and ancestral roots.

    https://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/people/s_z/sheridan.htm

    He's American, not Irish. He may have had parents who originally came from Ireland but he was born and raised in the US. There's nothing for anyone here to be ashamed of in his actions.


  • Registered Users Posts: 7,651 ✭✭✭growleaves


    IAMAMORON wrote: »
    John Mitchel gets more divisive the more you read about him. A Presbyterian Irish nationalist who also was pro slavery. He just does not suit the stereotype of a united Irishman, even though he was one.

    His opinion on the great famine will prick your ears. He was convinced it was a genocidal conspiracy dreamt up by Sir Robert Peel and associates.

    Many United Irishmen were Presbyterian or Calvinistic belonging to one sect or another. I didn't know he was pro-slavery until recently. I have his memoir Jail Journal which I haven't read yet.

    The United Irishmen were conspirators (!) so nothing unsual about them holding conspiracy theories. They knew first-hand that conspiracies were real.

    Niccolo Machavelli tried to educate Florentines about the reality of conspiracies in his writings, which Leo Strauss said were aimed at the young who had "been brought up in teachings which, in the light of Machiavelli’s wholly new teaching, reveal themselves to be much too confident of human goodness".


  • Registered Users Posts: 15,630 ✭✭✭✭whisky_galore


    Tinytemper wrote: »
    Yes, those Irish people who committed these crimes were rightly vilified and ostracised upon return.

    Repeating yourself is not expanding on your point.


  • Registered Users Posts: 2,014 ✭✭✭tylercheribini




  • Closed Accounts Posts: 572 ✭✭✭Errashareesh


    odyssey06 wrote: »
    The Sioux probably had their hands full figuring out the differences between Anglo Americans, Irish Americans, German Americans.
    I think it might be a bit much expecting them to break it down into Irish Irish, Scots Irish, Anglo Irish...
    Absolutely.


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  • Posts: 0 [Deleted User]


    odyssey06 wrote: »
    The Sioux probably had their hands full figuring out the differences between Anglo Americans, Irish Americans, German Americans.
    I think it might be a bit much expecting them to break it down into Irish Irish, Scots Irish, Anglo Irish...

    The Sioux were probably somewhat concerned with the Spanish and/or the French as well.

    If I'm not mistaken, their homeland was under either French or Spanish control until the US government bought it under the Louisiana Purchase in 1803.


  • Registered Users Posts: 1,943 ✭✭✭tabbey


    Also that old joker Lord Haw Haw, Nazi cheerleader, was Irish. We're no different to anyone else.

    He was a complex nationality, born in the USA to a father from Mayo and a mother whose family were anything but nationalist Irish. He did grow up in Ireland, but wherever he went, he was probably seen as an outsider.


  • Registered Users Posts: 2,014 ✭✭✭tylercheribini


    So, this entire thread is predicated upon a mere claim? Would it be too much to ask for evidence to substantiate this specific claim?

    At any rate, it's quite an odd notion that Irish-born people would not be involved in crimes. Every society on earth has prisons, which acknowledges every society has bad people. Most of us know that Irish-born British soldiers served in the causes of the British Empire. We all know that it was predicated upon subjugating peoples and enriching the colonial power. 2 plus 2 = 4. However, we also know that the vast majority of Irish people do not seek to commemorate those people. Where they are commemorated - e.g. Tom Barry or Roger Casement - it is for their contribution to Irish independence/against British imperialism not for their contribution to British imperialism. They have "redeemed" themselves.

    The only people in this society who try to humanise the participation in colonial barbarism by Irish-born British/American/Australian/Spanish/French/Russian soldiers are those who seek to honour these people - most obviously the RBL/John Bruton etc campaign to commemorate Irish-born British soldiers. I personally know of no Irish person who seeks to whitewash the crimes of any of these people. I also know of no Irish person who believes all Irish people are good. So, yes, this thread is built on quite the strawman. Anyway, evidence for your initial claim? None, of course.

    I think thread is challenging a popular, well-recycled myth that the Irish abroad were as downtrodden and oppressed as any other minority eg. "No blacks, no dogs, no Irish" etc etc


  • Registered Users Posts: 25,907 ✭✭✭✭Peregrinus


    I think thread is challenging a popular, well-recycled myth that the Irish abroad were as downtrodden and oppressed as any other minority eg. "No blacks, no dogs, no Irish" etc etc
    Not reqlly. I think the basis for the "more Irish killed more Indians etc" claim and similar claims is precisely that the Irish were at the bottom of the heap, socially and economically, and so had to compete viciously with other similar outgroups, notably the native Americans and Black Americans. In the particular instance part of the argument is that an awful lot of the enlisted men in the US army forces that fought the Indian wars were Irish, who were in this low-status role precisely because they had few other options.

    So there's no inconsistency at all in suggesting that the irish were downtrodden and oppressed and that they did more than their share of ghastly things.
    It's precisely the people who are downtrodden and oppressed who are most likely to do more than their share of ghastly things.


  • Registered Users Posts: 13,707 ✭✭✭✭Hello 2D Person Below


    I think thread is challenging a popular, well-recycled myth that the Irish abroad were as downtrodden and oppressed as any other minority eg. "No blacks, no dogs, no Irish" etc etc

    Poor argument.

    Even in the modern world it's usually those from the poorest backgrounds that are sent off to war.


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  • Registered Users Posts: 2,014 ✭✭✭tylercheribini


    Peregrinus wrote: »
    Not reqlly. I think the basis for the "more Irish killed more Indians etc" claim and similar claims is precisely that the Irish were at the bottom of the heap, socially and economically, and so had to compete viciously with other similar outgroups, notably the native Americans and Black Americans. In the particular instance part of the argument is that an awful lot of the enlisted men in the US army forces that fought the Indian wars were Irish, who were in this low-status role precisely because they had few other options.

    So there's no inconsistency at all in suggesting that the irish were downtrodden and oppressed and that they did more than their share of ghastly things.
    It's precisely the people who are downtrodden and oppressed who are most likely to do more than their share of ghastly things.

    You'll note I said "as" downtrodden, it was still far more advantageous to be poor, white and crucially English speaking than to be poor, non-vernacular and black/brown. Even the bottom-of-the-barrel Irish indentured of Montserrat ended up being slave owners relatively quickly.


  • Registered Users Posts: 2,566 ✭✭✭Yellow_Fern


    You'll note I said "as" downtrodden, it was still far more advantageous to be poor, white and crucially English speaking than to be poor, non-vernacular and black/brown. Even the bottom-of-the-barrel Irish indentured of Montserrat ended up being slave owners relatively quickly.

    It is worth bearing in mind native Americans and indeed blacks owned slaves too. In the middle of the 19th cen about 1/4 of slaves in Jamaica were owned by blacks.
    Poor argument.

    Even in the modern world it's usually those from the poorest backgrounds that are sent off to war.
    Maybe so but the low ranked officers always have higher death rates than the grunts.


  • Registered Users Posts: 2,014 ✭✭✭tylercheribini


    It is worth bearing in mind native Americans and indeed blacks owned slaves too. In the middle of the 19th cen about 1/4 of slaves in Jamaica were owned by blacks.

    Maybe so but the low ranked officers always have higher death rates than the grunts.

    I was aware of black children,often with white slaver father's, being brought back to Britain and growing up to inherit Jamaican plantations alright, this was obviously not by choice in these instances.


  • Registered Users Posts: 2,566 ✭✭✭Yellow_Fern


    I was aware of black children,often with white slaver father's, being brought back to Britain and growing up to inherit Jamaican plantations alright, this was obviously not by choice in these instances.

    It clearly was by choice in many cases. There is a lot of evidence of adult black women inheriting slaves by being a partner of wealthy white slave owners. Others gained them as payment. I would make the point that for all we know that there could have been more social mobility in black freeman communities than Irish and one would hardly know.


  • Registered Users Posts: 25,907 ✭✭✭✭Peregrinus


    In some respects black slaves had higher social capital than free but unskilled white labour. A black slave represented a capital investment; it made sense not to jeopardise your investment, or to devalue it. So really dangerous work was not assigned to black slaves, but to hired labour; if a free worker was injured or killed you suffered no loss; you could just hire another. Similarly you were stuck with your slaves - you couldn't fire them and hire others; you had to make the signficant capital investment of buying others. So that gave you a incentive to keep your slaves fit, healthy, with at least a basic level of morale and motivation; you had no similar incentive in relation to hired day-labourers who were easily replaced.

    This left unskilled free labour in a very difficult situation - they got the worst work and could be treated worse than slaves so far as conditions of employment/relations with employers were concerned. But the possibility of starting at the bottom and rising to better conditions was cut off by the fact that, for most work of anything more than utterly minimal value, it made economic sense to employ slaves rather than free labour. Thus they perceived themselves as being at the bottom of the heap, and with the only way up blocked by the people second from the bottom, the slaves.

    The result is that the interests of slave labour and free unskilled labour were fundamentally opposed, and this was the perfect environment for fostering bitter resentment between them which, because of the racialised nature of slavery, very easily turned into bitter racism.


  • Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 1,306 ✭✭✭bobbyy gee




  • Registered Users Posts: 2,566 ✭✭✭Yellow_Fern


    bobbyy gee wrote: »

    You dont think so about what?


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