On this day, 9 July 1657, English major-general William Brayne wrote home from Jamaica explaining that some soldiers who had recently arrived were sick and dying from illness. He then requested indentured servants to settle in Jamaica to help establish it as a self-sufficient colony. This straightforward request would not be noteworthy, if it were not for the fact that this letter has been subsequently distorted and misrepresented by white supremacists, Holocaust deniers and neo-Nazis who devised a myth of “Irish slaves” in the Caribbean and North America. One source of the claims is a blog post entitled “Irish slaves in the Caribbean”, in which James Cavanaugh claims that in Jamaica, enslaved “Africans received much better treatment, food and housing” than “Irish slaves”. He goes on to say: “To end this barbarity, Colonel William Brayne wrote to English authorities in 1656 urging the importation of Negro slaves on the grounds that, ‘as the planters would have to pay much more for them, they would have an interest in preserving their lives, which was wanting in the case of (Irish)….’ many of whom, he charged, were killed by overwork and cruel treatment.” Cavanaugh’s description of the letter as well as the supposed quote from it are entirely false, but it has still been cited by many other publications supporting the “Irish slaves” myth, including liberal ones like the Daily Kos. The intention of white supremacists conflating indentured servitude with chattel slavery is to try to blame Black people for their systematic disenfranchisement in the US today, essentially arguing that Irish people were treated far worse but now do not feel the need to complain about “racism”. Indentured servitude was a form of bonded labour to which around half of all white settlers came to Britain’s 13 colonies.
Pictured is a photograph of light-skinned Black enslaved children, which is often used by white supremacist websites which falsely claim it depicts “Irish slaves”. https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/2030165573835249/?type=3