Commonly believed historical inaccuracies

Ash.J.Williams wrote: »

Anyone taking part in the 1916 rising was fired from the Guinness brewery and reported to the ric

May be true..



Quote
'
Following the 1916 Rising, Guinness's was one of a number of companies which dismissed staff suspected of involvement in the rebellion or sympathetic to those who took part.
In a statement to the Bureau of Military History, Robert Holland, a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood who fought with the Irish Volunteers in 1916 described the dismissals as “a form of censure for their disloyalty to His Majesty . '


.https://www.anphoblacht.com/contents/23408 and

https://thewildgeese.irish/profiles/blogs/dublin-man-samuel-geoghegan-guinness-brewery-engineer

Poor Uncle Tom wrote: »

A common American misconception, that WW2 started in 1941.

That's also a common Russian misconception - which is even weirder than any American misconception - since the Soviet Union had also been invading and occupying half a dozen of it European neighbours since September 1939.

Manach wrote: »

Scopes is not exactly a history site

Does that matter? We were asked to provide sources instead of opinions.

but one that has its own political leaning, so that source I'd take with a pinch of salt.

And what political leaning would that be? Or is it just your opinion?

There are none too savory sites with definite agendas that push "Irish as (white) slaves" as unvarnished fact.

Manach wrote: »

My opinion it that your ideological bent is quite clear in minimising the historical accuracy and traditional of Irish servative in the Carabiean with the wider context of the global history of slavery. Relying on a gatekeeping strategy to suggest that there is an issue with this is more suitable for After Hours than history.

Their fact checking appeared quite reasoned. It's not as if they were minimising or dismissing anything.

To compare the Irish with the African American experience, the industrial levels of slavery, and say they're kind of the same thing that they're even in the same ball park, which I might add the ramifications of which are still very much with us in the 21st century, is disingenuous at best.
I hate to use the word privilege as it's been bandied around by media, but we Irish have been privileged for quite some time now and have nothing placed in the way of furthering ourselves either at home or abroad.

Vologda69 wrote: »

That Queen Victoria gave only £5 in Famine Relief in the 1840s.

Excusable, they rarely carry purses.

Peregrinus wrote: »

To be honest, I think it is. While it might be true that there's a continuum of unfree labour, and exactly where we start to employ the term "slave" on that continuum can be a grey area, it's also true that in that colonial society, and at that time, indentured servants had a signficantly different, and markedly higher, social and legal status than the actual slaves who worked alongside and under them. They couldn't be bought and sold. Their children were not born into slavery or servitude. They could marry who they chose. They served for a limited time, and were entitled to payment. They had at least theorerical access to the courts to vindicate their rights. Etc. etc.

Not to deny that their treatment was horrifying, but equating them with the chattel slaves that were found in that same society at the same time is simply wrong.

There seems to be several propositions:

i) Irish were transported to the Caribbean as slaves, and were treated as bad or even worse treated than African slaves
ii) Irish were transported to the Caribbean as slaves, and may at times been as badly as or worse treated than African slaves

and this has prompted two main responses:

i) There is a difference between indentured servants and chattel slaves.
ii) Irish in the Caribbean were not slaves because they were indentured servants, rather chattel slaves.
iii) calling Irish slaves is equating their treatment with the experiences of African slaves

My thoughts on propositions
I am not sure anyone is really advocating proposition i) but it could be said to be implied in some online graphics of slaves. Such graphics or memes are pretty obscure but Liam Hogan has drawn attention to them. However proposition ii) seems to be common and I get the sense it is is what Sean O'Callaghan was arguing in 'To Hell or to Barbados'.

My thoughts on response
Response i) is valid and useful. Although response ii) seems to be largely true, it is a bit misleading because if we wholeheartedly going to accept this argument than we must be against groups like Trocaire and Concern holding campaigns against 'modern-day slavery'. Understanding the distinction between bonded labour and chattel slavery is useful but I would argue that the word slavery has always been a synonym of bonded labour. Response iii) is not valid. There are many examples of chattel slavery and some chattel slavery was pretty comfortable. Chattel slavery was commonplace in Classical Rome but we know in some situations in Rome slaves received excellent treatment and even became very wealthy but no one makes that argument here. Likewise in the post Columbian Americas, indigenous Americans received poor treatment by invading colonialists and we often call it slavery but legally they were more akin to European peasants than chattel slaves. However it is not too often you hear of the 'Indian slave myth' like you the idea of an 'Irish slave myth'. I feel that the fact that the idea that there is an 'Irish slave myth' has gone viral is really contemporary US anxieties than disparate socioeconomic outcomes.

Mick Tator wrote: »

Whatever about your thoughts, you seem to have ignored the definition of slavery and the difference between it and indentured service. Consider for example the difference between ‘indentured service’ in the Colonies and the ‘rules of apprenticeship’ that lasted in Ireland up to the late 1800’s. Or look at the rules of employment for domestic and farmhand staff in Ireland during the same era. Indentured servants had more rights than many peasants in France (up to the Revolution) and Serfs in Russia (up to the mid-1800’s)
In the early 1700’s Fr. Cornelius Nary (notoriously contoversial) put the number of Irish people transported to the Caribbean as 10-15,000 and used the term ‘slavery’. Later the United Irishmen, to drum up Nationalistic fervor, repeated the term ‘slavery’ and increased the number to ‘tens of thousands’. By 1900 Thomas Addis Emmett, in ‘having a go’ at the Brits, had the number up to 100,000. James Connolly in c1915 then increased the number to more than 100,000 ‘men women and children were sold into slavery’.
There is no doubt that Irish people were shipped out after the Cromwellian wars but it was as indentured servants, in low numbers and mainly orphaned children, particularly from the West Coast. Most of the claims circulating today are unhistorical.

The point I was making no one makes this point when talking about Native Americans unfree labour or modern day bonded labour which both are not chattel slavery.

Ash.J.Williams wrote: »

Unless somebody can prove it, I have yet to see any evidence jimi Hendrix said Rory Gallagher is the best guitarist in the world

I'd like to believe this one but I find it extremely difficult to do so. Hendrix died in 1970. Gallagher hadn't even begun his solo career by then. He was still in Taste, which was a support band at best. Don't think Gallagher's international reputation took off until the early 1970s, ie after Hendrix's death.