The Irish-Caribbean Connection: Unmasking Myths with Dr Ellen Howley

The Irish-Caribbean Connection: Unravelling Myths and Historical Realities

In this episode, the conversation explores the complex and often misunderstood historical connections between Ireland and the Caribbean. Dr. Ellen Howley delves into Irish indentured servitude in the Caribbean, the myth of Irish enslavement, and the significant yet nuanced differences between indentured servitude and African slavery. The discussion covers various aspects, including literary influences, historical records, and the impact of British colonialism. The podcast also highlights modern-day perceptions and the ongoing academic work to uncover and disseminate a more accurate narrative of this shared history.

Dr Ellen Howley is an assistant professor at Dublin City University's School of English. Her book Oceanic Connections: The Sea in Irish and Caribbean Poetry will be published by Syracuse University Press later this year. The book examines how anglophone poets from Ireland and the Caribbean write about the sea. She completed her PhD in 2020 and has published work in academic journals and online publications. 

Website

Article: Entangled Islands exhibition explores the history of the Irish people in the Caribbean - an expert review

Resources

• EPIC The Irish Emigration Museum 
• Entangled Islands - Ireland and the Caribbean YouTube video
• Donald Harman Akenson, If the Irish Ran the World: Montserrat, 1630-1730
• Sean O'Callaghan, To Hell or Barbados
• Finola O'Kane and Ciaran O'Neill (eds.) Ireland, Slavery and the Caribbean
• Jerome S. Handler; Matthew C. Reilly, "Contesting "White Slavery" in the Caribbean: Enslaved Africans and European Indentured Servants in Seventeenth Century Barbados" https://www.jstor.org/stable/26552068
• Alison Donnell, Maria McGarrity, Evelyn O'Callaghan (eds) Caribbean Irish Connections: Interdisciplinary Perspectives
• Liam Hogan's work on the "Irish Slave" meme: https://limerick1914.medium.com/all-of-my-work-on-the-irish-slaves-meme-2015-16-4965e445802a
• Liam Hogan, Laura McAtackney and Matthew Reilly. " The Irish in the Anglo-Caribbean: Servants or Slaves?" https://works.hcommons.org/records/wdpth-94k67
•  M. M. O'Connor, Caribbean Slave Owners & Other Lesser Known Histories of County Mayo
• Karst de Jong, The Irish in Jamaica during the long eighteenth century (1698-1836) https://pure.qub.ac.uk

Transcript

Ellen:  So you do have a phenomenon where some Irish people, many before Cromwell, actually voluntarily indentured themselves to help pay for the passage um, to Caribbean islands. With Cromwell then people were forced to go, as criminals and so on, still under the system of indentured servitude. So I think it was the kind of late 19th century that this idea of white slaves first kind of appears.

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Hema: Hi Ellen. Thank you for joining me today on The Moreish Podcast.

Ellen: Hi. How are you?

Hema: I am great. I am really excited about this conversation. I came about it actually through my own travel planning. I'm heading over to Ireland for the very first time later this year, and I was doing a little bit of research of things that I could see. I know that there's a bit of an Irish Caribbean connection, And I came across your article about an exhibit in the emigration museum, I believe.

Ellen: Yep.

Hema: And your article really struck a nerve and was something I wanted to dig into a little bit more. So that's what we're gonna talk about today. But before we even get there, can you introduce yourself?

Ellen: I, of course, and, and thank you so much for having me on. I'm really, delighted to be here. So, yeah, my name is, Ellen Howley. I am working here in the school of English in, Dublin City University, where I'm an Assistant Professor. I completed my PhD in 2020 on connections between Ireland and the Caribbean through poetry.

So I'm particularly interested in kind of literary similarities, influences, and so on, and through that work, have come to a lot of, yeah, the, the stuff around some of the things that you mentioned. And then of course, yeah, there was this exhibition, a couple of years ago in the Epic Museum here in Dublin, which is a museum about Irish immigration. Um, and they had a specific, exhibition on connections between Ireland and the Caribbean. And there was some kind of interesting stuff there that I'm sure we'll, we'll talk about. 

So yeah, thanks for having me on. I'm really looking forward to the discussion.

Hema: In a lot of the podcast episodes we talk about the times of colonization, right? Which is really what changed the trajectory of the Caribbean immensely into what it is today. And we dive into the Transatlantic slave trade, the enslaved people from Africa, the indentured servants from India, because those are the two biggest groups. Butthere are other people

Ellen: Mm-hmm.

Hema: that emigrated, were brought over, and the Irish is one of them. I'm just gonna go right into what your article talks about, which is the myth of the Irish Caribbean connection. And if you can start by telling us what is that myth that you're referring to?

Ellen: Yeah, so I suppose, whenever I would even tell people what I was working on for my PhD and what I'm working on now, these connections between Ireland and the Caribbean, either people would say Oh wow, I never thought of any connections there whatsoever. Or the next thing they would say is that, Irish people were slaves or enslaved in the Caribbean.

And, this is a sort of narrative that has developed over the last number of years, although there is a kind of long trajectory of it, since about kind of the 19th century, uh, but it has become more prominent, kind of in popular discussions around maybe connections, that this sense that Irish people were enslaved, in a similar way, or sometimes people suggest even more, you know, difficult con conditions than African people who were enslaved.

Um, primarily it's been touted in North American settings more so, which again, through the social media, phenomenon, has filtered back into Ireland. 

So I'm always careful to say, no, that's not really what it was. And there's been a lot of really great academic work done, um, to sort of try and dispel this myth that quote unquote, the, the Irish were slaves too.

Hema: So it's interesting that, that this myth that you're talking about, says that the Irish were enslaved and not even indentured labourers or labourers of any sort, but akin to the enslaved people from across Africa.

Ellen: Yeah. And I suppose, I suppose just to clarify, maybe when I'm, I'm using that phrase like the Irish, were a slave too with the, with the quotation marks. But yes, certainly there isn't that distinction made in these popular discussions. No.

Hema: When you say that really this myth seems to be more popular in the Americas or in North America, why you think that is?

Ellen: So there are a number of suggestions around it and, and some, some great work has been done. Liam Hogan, who is a Librarian is, is one person who's done some really, um, kind of delving in particularly to this, the memification of it that, uh, that this appears online from these North American US settings.

There are a number of things around this. I think in many ways it is to disempower arguments from uh, descendants of people, of people who had been enslaved as part of the African slave trade. It sort of suggests that, well, you know, the Irish were enslaved too and they got over it. You don't hear them talking about it every day, so just move on.

 Equally that Irish people, particularly in the US, have been quite successful. Um, and this sense again that, you know, oh, that didn't stop, the fact that they were enslaved, didn't stop them from succeeding. So when discussions around things like reparations come up, that's often sort of touted, brought out as an example to say Oh, the Irish didn't need reparations, or the Irish don't need to be compensated for their believed enslavement, therefore, why should we treat people of African descent any differently? So it has quite an insidious racist, I think motive behind it really.

Hema: And you said that thought process, that sort of belief, that narrative has started to make its way over to Ireland.

Ellen: Mm-hmm.

Hema: Before it did. What did people in Ireland actually believe of that timeframe? 

Ellen: Uh, I actually don't know if people even really thought about connections between Ireland and the Caribbean prior to that. 

So a book came out here in 2000 called To Hell or Barbados, which talks about the period when Cromwell came to Ireland and it's during this period that many rebellious Irish people, some were sent to particularly Barbados as indentured servants. Uh, but O'Callaghan’s book, which is extremely popular still in print, I see it in bookshops regularly, and I sort of wanna move it away from the, the prominent shelves. But, he, he, he completely conflates the categories of being enslaved versus indentured servitude.

Um, and this sort of myth develops around that at, at the, kind of the beginning of of the 21st century. And I think that has been very influential here. The title itself has particular resonance because the phrase that Cromwell apparently used about the Irish when he came over was when he was trying to dispossess the lands to the east, kind of better land in Ireland in the east, he was forcing people to the west. So apparently his phrase was To Hell or to Connacht, which is an area in the west of Ireland. Um, and then O'Callaghan with his book is replicating that by saying, you know, either you, you are killed or you go to Barbados and these are the kind of two options that you have.

So it's very emotive title for Irish people and because then, there's absolutely no distinction made between, well, there's many, many slippages, but for the most part, he's using the word slave. He's talking about enslavement, without any sort of differentiation of of what Irish people were experiencing there.

And I think that, um, sort of sparked interest in this idea, to the extent that it has filtered to a more popular discourse.

Hema: In your article that was about the Entangled Islands exhibit, you talk about dispelling this myth, and I would love for you just to, we've talked about what the myth is and, and talk about what has been learned over the last 20 or so years.

Ellen: Yeah, so there are some great, historians doing work on this. I, myself, so I'm not an historian, so it's very much, on the basis of, of work, by others like Matthew C. Reilly, Finola O'Kane, Ciaran O'Neill, uh, people doing good work on, on this, front. So really, I suppose the first, ideas around differentiating that Irish people were not enslaved in the same way, they weren't enslaved as African people were, and what that essentially, boils down to is that people who were enslaved did not have the prospect of freedom under the kind of current, the, the, the, the way that slavery was operating. And there was a kind of hereditary aspect to that, that any children born to an enslaved person would automatically be enslaved. 

 The indentured servants, by contrast, usually were indentured for a fixed period, maybe five to seven years, and there was a sense that not only could they perhaps buy their freedom, but that certainly once their freedom was gained, that they would be given sometimes sugar, sometimes land.

You know, there was a sort of more positive outcome maybe to it that, that it could be a start. So you do have a phenomenon where, for example, some Irish people, sort of many before Cromwell actually, voluntarily indentured themselves to help pay for the passage, to Caribbean islands, and they would work there then with the kind of prospect of starting a new life in the Caribbean.

With Cromwell then people were forced to go, as criminals and so on, still under the system of indentured servitude. So it's really about kind of trying to show those differences, and also show where that collapsing has happened. 

So I think it was the late 19th century that this idea of white slaves first appears, um, but really the distinction that's made at that time is people who were forced into indentured servitude versus people who chose it. 

So still, again, it's not enslavement under the terms that the Transatlantic slave trade was operating. And so it's really about kind of trying to nuance those, those terms, which in terms of a popular narrative is not always as easy to do, but you see it filtering some way down. That exhibition did, do a decent job, I think, of talking about the difference between the two and, and the fact that the myth has been used for these racist and very underhand motives.

Hema: What time period was this, time period in history, that Irish people, I'm gonna use the term made their way because we'll talk about

Ellen: Mm.. Sure.

Hema: how that happened, but what time period was that? 

Ellen: Yeah. So again, the pre-Cromwell stuff is sort of different, but we're talking about the 1600s into the the, the long 18th century, but as the Transatlantic slave trade rose, you know, numbers kind of increased from West Africa, um, actually that that kind of need for indentured servitude sort of fell off, as the Transatlantic slave trade became, larger and more, kind of coherent, uh, if, if we want to call it that.

So it's really, the 17th century is where you see bigger numbers, and it does continue on different, and, and the Irish moved around as well. There was a couple of different islands that they're, that they're known to have been on, but that's kind of the period that, that we're talking to.

But as the Transatlantic slave trade grew, there was sort of less of a, a, a need for it. And again, these kind of differences tie into some of those myths around narratives that, Oh, you know, Irish, people who were enslaved as it's called, Oh, we're better workers, or they wanted to breed Irish women with African men because it was seen as these, mixed race children would be worth more and so on. All these that have no basis in historical fact and have no records of this whatsoever. So all of these things sort of play into that larger kind of mythic, narrative that is there.

Hema: You said that there were a handful of Caribbean islands that the Irish have, are known to have been taken to.

Ellen: Hmm.

Hema: Which ones are they?

Ellen: So I think the first Irish presence seems to have been kind of St. St. Kitts or St. Christopher's, as it was called. This was sort of seen as a mother colony for tobacco in the early 1600s. And the British were established there, Irish people seemed to have been granted tobacco farms there.

Then they moved to to Nevis or Nevis. Uh, there was issues with the Spanish, Barbados then became an island where there was a significant Irish presence, and Jamaica as well would be the other island where there was some kind of sense of Irish people establishing colonies.

But the most, uh, the island, I suppose, where Irish people were most prominent, would be Montserrat, which has a number of connections, from an Irish perspective, which you could maybe talk about as well.

Hema: And Montserrat being such a small. Island. That's an interesting

Ellen: Hmm.

Hema: one, and I, I would love to talk more about that, but I do have a question. So who was it that was taking these people, these Irish people or, or who started this process? 

Ellen: Yeah, I suppose, and another interesting part of this work is that actually pointing out that there were a number of different groups of Irish people that went over. So yes, some people were there as indentured servants, whether through their own kind of desire to, to begin a life in the Caribbean. Or through forced servitude, by the British, essentially. Um, but actually, a number of say, Protestant Irish or Anglo-Irish, families who were kind of wealthy families who prospered under Bri, the British empire in Ireland went there to create their own colonies. So they weren't being forced themselves.

There were Catholics who had been in the Virginia colony in, in the US, that eventually migrated to, to the Caribbean, and some who had been captured in, in South America and brought to the Caribbean. So there's actually part of the ongoing research, or the important research, is actually clarifying those stories.

So even the Irish who went there were not all indentured servants. And again, that's where, places like Jamaica and and Montserrat become interesting because you have our Irish people essentially in the role of plantation and, and slave owners, which is another element to the story which is not captured in that kind of larger myth.

Hema: So this is really interesting because you said earlier that there were people that voluntarily went over, put themselves into indentureship. But you also said, I'm, I'm paraphrasing, people of ill repute or criminals that were forced. Can you talk about the two differences?

Ellen: Yeah. That would be like the British empire or people like Cromwell, who, part of the kind of criminal justice system, if we can call it that, that existed in, in, during those times, in the 17th and to the 18th century, it was the convicts were, were sent abroad.

There's, a, a huge story of Irish people being sent to Australia, as well. For example, people who were, a, a little bit later, uh, rebelling against the empire. This was kind of how they were dealt with, that they were sent, they were sent abroad. 

So because at, at the time of Cromwell, that's also when those colonies in the Caribbean were very much at the forefront of, of the expanding British empire. You know, that's where, where people were sent, it was a, a shorter journey than trying to send them further afield. Um, so, you know, they're, they are not having the choice to go, even though they're still being sent under this kind of indentureship process. So that's where the conflation, you know, there is a forced element to it, but it's not in perpetuity or hereditary, which is one of the key differences with obviously enslavement and, and the Transatlantic slave trade. And it's those instances and particularly, stories about people like that who were also treated quite badly sometimes, that that's where you get these kind of, oh, look at what they did to Irish people in the Caribbean. And you know, that this kind of sense of, trying to conflate it with the, with with enslavement. And so because they didn't have a choice that slippage is, is a little bit easier to, to do if, if that's your intention.

Hema: As I was digging into more research in preparation for our conversation, I have read everything from there were Irish plantation owners or people who were in charge of the enslaved people, all the way through to Irish enslaved were treated worse than the African enslaved and, and running the gamut in between all of those, which is quite a large thought process, right. They were slave owners and plantation owners all the way to they were the worst treated.

Ellen: Yeah, and I think one of, in a kind of, popular conception even of Irish people as enslaved owners is that, but they were good slave owners. Right? They were nice to all their slaves. This is very much, and even that exhibition, if there's something I would kind of criticize in it, it, it veers towards that, right?

This sense that, oh, okay. Yeah. Well, Irish people did have plantations, but you know, they, they treated their, their slaves well. And that's, it's, it's fine to be, that quote unquote good on good, uh, slave owner, which obviously of course doesn't, doesn't exist in any sense. So particularly in Ireland, that narrative, it, it alway the na, both narratives sort of end up in our favour right in, in Ireland in the sense that, okay, we were these kind of part of a larger colonial system and we were victimized by British people having been sent there. And then even if Irish people did have plantations, it's sort of seen as a lesser evil than the British or French or, or, Spanish plantations or whatever.

So there is, while there is a large gamut, as you say, the, the skew on both of them tends to not be very self-reflexive about Ireland's own role in these processes of colonization.

Hema: At the end of slavery, a lot of the British, plantation owners, who lost the right to have enslaved people, eventually received money as reparations. Did that happen with any Irish plantation owners? Did they receive money for the loss of their enslaved people?

Ellen: Yes. So, there are, ongoing research, but, a number of prominent families, particularly in the west of Ireland, I suppose it is geographically the closest place to the, to the Caribbean, who did have plantations in Caribbean islands in Jamaica and Barbados and, um, a prominent, the, the Brown family from Westport in Mayo were one such family. They owned what is called Westport House. So a big house that sustained the, the town and so on. And they owned plantations in Jamaica and enslaved people on those plantations, and they would have received reparations for that, which, in, in research by, Finola O’Kane, she's suggesting that eventually came back to Westport and helped in the building of that town and maintaining the, the property there and so on.

And I think that within these kind of public spaces in Ireland, there's certainly less of a consideration about how the Transatlantic slave trades may have sustained institutions like that or families like that. It's really not something that you see talked about. 

I've been to Westport House in in Mayo. There is a note that the family had plantations in Jamaica, but it's very much framed in the sense that the last, uh, Marcus, who was actually governor of Jamaica in 1834, just after the, the end of, or the so-called end of enslavement there in 1833, that it, it really only suggests that he was supported abolition. There's no mention of the fact that his, his entire family before that had, had plantations and, and had slaves and what that, the financial aspect of that in relation to the House. So it's, it's, I see it discussed, in say, British settings. Even if it's, you know, unfortunately quite controversial there to do so, whereas in Ireland it's just doesn't really seem to be part of the general conversation at the moment.

It still seems, in a sort of academic sphere, and that kind of reckoning hasn't, hasn't really come through to any strong degree.

Hema: It seems that the narrative is being, has been cleansed, to, as you have you, you said to put Ireland in a favourable view. In whatever, whether it's as plantation owners or as enslaved, to put the Irish people in this favourable view. Now as this narrative or as the research is coming out and conversations are happening about the actuality of what happened, how is that being received by the general public or within the academic world?

Ellen: Again, I, I question to what extent it's in the general public. I mean, I think it's, it's there a little bit this sense that, that Irish people were in the Caribbean, may have have, you know, did have plantations or, this is how it's filtering through. But again, I think there is that, actually I just had a conversation very recently where I was telling someone about this, about the fact that Irish people owned, that owned enslaved people and owned plantations, and they kinda said, Oh, well, that, that was so the Anglo-Irish, like they were the ones that were closer to Britain. So there was this already, you know, this immediate distancing. Right. And generally it was Anglo-Irish. That's true. But it's almost kind of like, okay, but they weren't, they weren't the, they weren't real Irish.

And I think it's, it's part of this kind of complex colonial system whereby, yes, Ireland was colonized by the British, and there are many ramifications to that, still to this day in Ireland, but there were other people in Ireland who participated in that process. And I think sometimes in a general setting, that sense of our history of colonization and the, the many kind of brutal aspects of it sort of prevents a discussion of the trickier aspects of people who were involved in that process as well. And it's not something I think has had kind of mass, um, a mass reckoning with any of that.

Hema: I mean, these are, these are complicated, nuanced discussions that not everybody wants to participate in, because they're also difficult discussions. 

Ellen: No. Totally. And I think even that question of the, the people who were, say, quote unquote, not directly involved in the slave trade, but actually how foundational the Transatlantic slave trade was to so much of building so much of Western Europe. In the UK you still see street names like Jamaica Street and, these kind of connections are there and they're so every day that you actually don't realize the extent of it, the extent of the, kind of the, the way in which we're all implicit really, and you know, when you start to unearth that, as I started to do and when I started my reading for my research, you really realize that, that there's very little of UK society in particular and, and Irish society, I think to a certain extent as more research is being done, that wasn't involved in enslavement.

I just recently have been reading, Walter Rodney's How Europe Underdeveloped Africa and even say modern day companies that were involved in the Transatlantic slave trade and were built off, built from money made as part of the Transatlantic slave trade. You know, banks that still exist today, tire companies, car companies, and, and it's quite difficult to understand how to operate in the world once you know  these histories, I suppose, operate ethically, maybe in in the world once you know these histories, even though I think they're, they're very important to know at the same time.

Hema: You mentioned Montserrat, and that that is really a big point, a big place for the Irish Caribbean connection. Let's, let's talk about that.

Ellen: Yeah, so there's, very much on the work of others, there's a great book, called, If the Irish Rule Ruled the World or Ran the World, sorry, by, Donald Harman Akenson, and it's really here that he explores the Irish presence in, in Montserrat. Um, so really, coming from the 1630s onwards Irish people were, were on the island. There's not totally clear evidence as to why that happened. There's some suggestion of the French were there kind of sympathetic to Catholics, of course, in, in Western Europe, wars between Catholics and Protestants were, were ongoing.

So, those, sometimes those kind of religious divisions, transferred over. But certainly it was a place where Irish people did prosper, quote unquote, uh, in, in Montserrat through owning, plantations really. So sugar, tobacco and so on. And, it's really there that we see these legacies continue in the fact that St. Patrick's Day is a national holiday in Montserrat. And we might, I suppose I can talk about a little bit about that separately because the perception has changed over time. But you also do see family names, very kind of Irish names Lynch, Kelly, O'Brien, all these kind of second names that were there that still exist, in, in Montserrat today.

That's partly because if you were enslaved, you took the name of the, the plantation owner. So again, a kind of darker history that isn't maybe told when people talk about, um, the, names kind of being there. 

There was a documentary made for Irish TV a number of years ago, and they talked to people and actually even the accents sound very much like a west of West Ireland accent mixed with a kind of more typical Caribbean accent, and they're singing lilting Irish songs and so on. Um, so it is a place where those resonances are still felt. Even some of the place names like Kinsale and Cork Hill, these are all, Irish place names as well.

Hema: Let's go into you, you alluded to St. Patrick's Day.

Ellen: Yeah. So, obviously St. Patrick was, is the National Saint of Ireland, 17th of March the is is the celebration of his day. Interestingly, I suppose, he actually was what we might call an early form of enslavement. He was brought as a, as a slave from Wales to Ireland, a different context, obviously pre, um, the Transatlantic slave trade, but he brought Christianity to, to Ireland and he's celebrated, and of course now the festival is very much more associated with, having a party and, and music and, and drink all that. Um, so it was celebrated and, and it's the only other place in the world where it is a, a national holiday is in, or public holiday, is in Montserrat. And, for many, many years, it was very much emphasizing these more quote unquote positive links between Montserrat and Ireland and, the shamrock was there emphasizing those similarities, maybe kind of cultural similarities that might still exist.

But in 1985, it was changed from a kind of one day festival that emphasized a sort of Irish slant to actually commemorate the fact that, there was a, a rebellion of enslaved people, an uprising in 1768 that was planned for St. Patrick's Day, sort of planning that idea that, the Irish slave owners would be too busy having a good time to, to put down the, the uprising.

Now it didn't, it, it failed, unfortunately, but that kind of shift in the eighties to, it became a six day festival that really emphasizes those more West African links remembers the, uprising and, puts to the forefront that the Irish connection that exists there is, is a dark one, even if other elements kind of translate into the, the culture of Montserrat now. Um, but that actually it, it has its basis once again in plantation slavery. 

So now it's, it's a much, uh, I think it's actually grown to a 10-day festival. I've, I've never been myself, uh, but it, it's very much a mixture of kind of more, what we might associate with Carnival, West African influenced, elements alongside then you'll still see the leprechauns and, and green hats and so on. So it's that real, as, as you get in many Caribbean islands with the various cultures and, and peoples that came there, that real kind of mixture hybrid, culture can can be kind of seen there.

Hema: It's a very…complex situation, because there are, there are myths to unravel, there are thought processes to unravel, there are people like, like you said, current day in Ireland who don't even who this isn't even a thought for them. Yet on the flip side, I was talking to somebody recently, from Jamaica who said they they feel a kinship with the Irish, and, and there's this understanding of each other through language and, and she didn't really know why that was. 

So I'm looking at it from two different perspectives, from the Irish perspective, from the Caribbean perspective. And it feels like, anecdotally, the Caribbean perspective is Irish are, are kin, are friends. But that doesn't seem to be the, the case over in Ireland.

Ellen: Yes. I mean, I think, again, unfortunately the, the Caribbean is not somewhere that people have tended to think about here beyond a kind of tourist destination, or the kind of, you know, Bob Marley, Usain Bolt, that's, that's what people, when I, I, I teach a course on Jamaican literature and, and Caribbean literature previously, and when I ask people what they know Rihanna, these are the kind of things that that come up. 

I certainly think if, if there is any sense of that kinship here, it would be because the other thing people tend to say to me when I talk about my project is that, Oh well those English speaking islands we're also colonized by the British. So if there's a kinship, it is on in this sense that there is that experience of colonization by the British there. Um, but, but beyond that, I don't know how deep it goes. 

Having said all of that, again in that exhibition, one of the very nice things at the end is that they spoke to, there was a video, which is actually still available, on YouTube, of young people who have Irish and Caribbean heritage. And so they spoke to some of the kinships that they feel. So things around music, similar kind of attitudes towards maybe being a little bit more fun and relaxed about life maybe, and other kind of connections. One guy in particular was saying that in Jamaica the word ganzi is used for like a, a jumper or top or whatever, and, and that's the Irish, the, the word _____ in Irish for a jumper is, is a geansai. So even those kind of small links are there too. So I, I think they're, they're there people are sort of open to the kinship on those colonial bases. But the more complexities of the story is, as you mentioned, are not very prevalent I think in an Irish mindset.

Hema: Looking forward to today, much like with the enslaved Africans or the, the Indian indentured, many people stayed in the Caribbean. Did that happen with the Irish? Did they stay, did they establish roots, and is that presence still there?

Ellen: Yeah. So, they did, they did stay. Some did stay. And I think that the group that nowadays is most linked back to an Irish ancestry or what, what would've been known or, or were known as the Red Legs of Barbados or the poor whites in Barbados, which do have, seem to have a strong Irish ancestry there.

 They became known as the Red Legs because when they were sent, as indentured servants, this is the story anyway, that their skin would burn and they became the Red Legs. And that is, one group that, that, as far as I'm aware, that those kind of communities of white people in Barbados who are quite poor, or, or kind of lower socio socioeconomic background, seem to have Irish Heritage and, and Irish names. And again, that book, the Sean O'Callaghan, To Hell or Barbados, the final chapters of his book he, he meets, um, a couple of people who consider themselves as Red Legs and have Irish descendants. But I suppose the picture he draws of the contemporary grouping is maybe not, not extremely flattering.

And I think again, tying into as, as other historians have suggested, this kind of victimization narrative. Because I think he goes with a certain view in mind, and he finds them to be sort of closed off, and he is, this just sort of reemphasizes for him this sense that these are kind of people who are victimized and so on. Whereas that sort of denies the everyday lives that that people are trying to lead, and also kind of solidarities that have developed between those communities and say Afro-Caribbean communities as well. You know, they're still sort of seen as this, more exclusive, separate, community where, which may not actually reflect the reality of, of their day-to-day lives.

Hema: As the research continues and more is unveiled and revealed and written about, I'm really gonna be keeping an eye on this to see what else we learn. We, the historians, what I can learn from them, and what is unfolding, because we understand that much of what was written and talked about was from the perspective of the colonizers, we are slowly unravelling that and revealing a different perspective. And from the Indigenous and from the enslaved and the labourers. And I think that's probably gonna be the same thing with Ireland is, is that connection that Irish Caribbean connection will continue to unravel and be revealed.

Ellen: Yes, absolutely. And, and what you often find in the kind of historical research is that somebody begins tracing a family and their presence and then, you know, these, these multiple kind of intricacies, around why they were there. You know, you alluded to the different kind of groups that were there.

Why? What's the difference between going as an indentured servant voluntarily, or a criminal, or someone who's been convicted, or someone who's a Protestant landowner, or someone who's a persecuted Catholic going there. You know, there are many nuances even to that story, which is, a smaller part of the larger Caribbean story, but I think it's, it, you get those interesting individual case studies that can then tell us more about, what was happening in terms of the Irish British relationship, but then also what's going on once they get to the Caribbean. So there's, there's much, uh, interesting stuff there I think that, that the good work of the historians will uncover.

Hema: Do the records exist of the people who, the Irish people, who ended up in the Caribbean. So for example, with the Transatlantic slave trade, a lot of records were kept. My family is, is Indo Caribbean, so fro, ancestry from India, not all of the records were kept. And if they were, some of them were not digitized. Can I trace my lineage? Maybe, maybe not. Were the records kept of the Irish people taken?

Ellen: I, I'm not actually totally sure the, the full extent to to answer your question, as I said, I don't have that kind of historical background. There are records because again, records of the um, so indentured servants could also be listed as part of kind of larger property.

Again, they would've been distinguished from, from enslaved people, but they  would have been listed there as well. There are accounts, firsthand accounts of people who went as indentured servants that do exist as well, often these are things around poor treatment, which have been manipulated to boy up the myth of Irish enslavement. But there are, there are records and accounts that do exist, but I, I wouldn't know myself the extent of them.

Hema: That's okay. We referenced your article and a number of books. I will leave links in the show notes so people can dive a little bit more if they're interested. 

I wanna take a little change of topic here and, find out from you why was it this connection, this Irish Caribbean connection, that drew your interest in, and why did you dive into this?

Ellen: So I actually, when I was in say, secondary school here we read Derek Walcott, at that time, the poet from St. Lucia, and I just loved his stuff when I was 16, 17, and was always kind of, had him sort of in, in the back of my mind as someone to come back to when I was doing my studies in English literature.

Um, unfortunately, during my undergraduate degree, we didn't study any Caribbean writers at all. So when I came to do my Master's, then I came back to Walcott and was thinking about him, as somebody to work on. 

And he, in a similar way to, the friend that you spoke to about kind of kinship with Irish people, Walcott, spoke about this sense that the Irish writers, he says, and I'm quoting here, that they were colonials like us, and he finds a lot of resonance between people like James Joyce and W.B. Yates who were writing under empire, um, about Irish Ireland being part of the British empire in that sense of trying to create their own literature, create their own identity. So he finds a lot of connections there, which made me kind of interested in that topic more broadly. 

He was also very good friends with, Seamus Heaney who, like Walcott, won a Nobel Prize and he won three years later. They were very friendly and, and there was a shared interest there. So I was kind of interested less on this sense of how Irish literature influenced Caribbean literature, which in some ways can sort of for me at least reaffirm that hierarchy of Ireland as a kind of centre. The reason that Walcott knew some of these, um, writers is because of Irish missionary work in the Caribbean. So there's kind of problematic links there, for my perspective. 

So I was more interested in thinking about how poets in particular writing at similar times with, some elements of shared history, but obviously vast differences between Ireland and the Caribbean, how they may end up approaching topics or, or ideas in maybe similar ways, and then where those differences occur, what that can kind of tell us about each, each tradition. So that's where the project developed. But yeah, I always call Walcott's kind of my gateway drug into, into Caribbean literature.

Hema: And you've written or you are writing a book? 

Ellen: Yeah, so the book is, is finished. It should be out, later this year. Oceanic Connections. So it's, it's really that PhD project has been rewritten as a book, and I'm particularly interested in how these writers are, are writing about the sea so that is where, the, the kind of similarities come in as thinking about maybe from an environmental perspective as well.

I've done some other work on, other Caribbean poets like David Dabydeen, and, uh, M. NourbeSe Philip who wrote about, the Zong Massacre. There's no Irish connection in that, in that piece, but, um, uh, yeah, so I've done that. And then also other little bits on the Irish literature side as well, but still, interest in those kind of links between the two places.

Hema: Are those publications all linked on your website?

Ellen: Yeah, there are. So yeah, I have, yeah, so ellenhowley.com. I have a list of stuff that's both academic stuff, and then more I, I've done a bit for general readership as well, which I think is, is always nice. 

Again, I think part of, the reason I'm so delighted to be here and the importance of podcasts like this is that I don't think this research should be confined to the academy or that kind of idea of the, the ivory tower. And if any of those conversations around, Ireland's role in, in colonization or the, the, the Irish picture of the larger Caribbean are to filter through, I think it is through venues like this. So I think that's important work that that's happening in that, that sphere as well.

Hema: Yeah, this is, this is my hope in, in this podcast is having these conversations and making these conversations accessible.

Ellen: Mm-hmm.

Hema: We're not academics, we're not historians. We're having accessible conversations and leaving people with the opportunity to dive more into it if they want to. But even just opening up a conversation and sparking some interest, I think is important.

Ellen: No, absolutely, and, and people are much more curious I think, sometimes than we give them, them credit for, especially in this you know, everything's so immediate and we're thinking about social media and the sound bite and everything. But actually, I think there's, there's great appetite for, for things like this and people who want to know about something that they may never have thought about before.

Hema: Exactly. I mean, you, you don't know what you don't know. And if we can put this in front of them as something

Ellen: Mm-hmm.

Hema: um, then maybe it will spark an interest.

Ellen: Absolutely.

Hema: If we could, if you could leave people with a thought or something that you hope they take away from this conversation, what would that be?

Ellen: Yeah, I suppose from the the Irish perspective, it is very much this sense that we as a, a country and a people have a much more complex relationship with empire than I we might like to proclaim. Yes, many things happened in Ireland under the British empire, and it is important to, to understand that.

But uh, we are more implicated, I think, than people realize or, or maybe want to admit. And yeah, certainly here I would like to see more, more reckoning with that really.

Hema: There's, there's people who really take offense to, and maybe offense is a strong word, to sometimes when I point these things out because they feel like we're, we're pointing fingers and placing blame. And really the truth is we're unearthing history and we're talking about things that happened in facts.

And I don't think that this conversation is meant to point fingers and place blame, but we're, we just want the truth to be known, the, the reality to be known. And it's not you or I that were directly involved, but you and I can share that history so that it doesn't get lost.

Ellen: Absolutely. And I think, again, in an Irish setting, we're very happy for those kind of conversations around things that British people were doing in Ireland, but when that mirror gets turned back on ourselves, we're, yeah, as you say, it becomes that, that moral, we're trying to blame us or take and, and also take away from the suffering of say something like the, the famine and so on.

Like, it's, it's there. It's nothing to do with that, as you say, it is about providing that fuller picture, unearthing things that, that people haven't known about or, or wanted to think about. And, giving, giving that fuller picture. I think it's absolutely crucial if we're going to progress in the world.

And I mean, you know, if we're going to show solidarity with other peoples and and so on, it's important to, to recognize our own history as well. And we can still have those moments of solidarity, but with the full sense of, of our own history as well. I think it's important.

Hema: It's very important. 

I really appreciate you taking the time today to, we just scratched the surface of this conversation, but you left us with a lot of books that we can read, articles. I'll link all of this in the show notes if people are interested in diving a little bit more into this conversation.

Ellen: Great. Thank you so much. It was such a pleasure to to talk to you. I really appreciate it. Thank you.