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Slavery in Ireland
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Slavery in Ireland
Slavery had already existed in Ireland for centuries by the time the Vikings began to establish their coastal settlements, but it was under the Norse-Gael Kingdom of Dublin that it reached its peak, in the 11th century.
Early medieval legal texts provide a wealth of knowledge on the practice of slavery. Gaelic raiders kidnapped and enslaved people from across the Irish Sea for two centuries after the Fall of the Western Roman Empire destabilising Roman Britain; Saint Patrick was kidnapped by Gaelic raiders.
In the Brehon Laws, Senchus Mór [Shanahus More] and the Book of Acaill [Ack'ill], a "daer fuidhir" ("servile inferior") was a name applied to all who did not belong to a clan, whether born in the clan territory or not. This was the lowest of the three classes of the non-free people. This class also was sub-divided into saer and daer, the daer fuidhirs being the class most closely resembling slaves. Even this lowest condition was not utterly hopeless; promotion was possible, and in constant operation. Therefore all families did not remain permanently in this kind of servitude but had the possibility of gradually rising from a lower to a higher degree according to a certain scale of progress, unless they committed some crime which would arrest that progress and cast them down again further. Slaves could be obtained through war, purchase and marriage to outsiders. The inheritability of slavery depends on the precise original relationship, while fuidher have been seen as a transitional status, after three generations serving the same lord, their children fell under the category senchléithe, akin to a semi hereditary serf status, while the law texts also provide details of downward mobility as well.
From the 9th to the 12th century Viking/Norse-Gael Dublin in particular was a major slave trading centre which led to an increase in slavery. In 870, Vikings, most likely led by Olaf the White and Ivar the Boneless, besieged and captured the stronghold of Dumbarton Castle (Alt Clut), the capital of the Kingdom of Strathclyde in Scotland, and the next year took most of the site's inhabitants to the Dublin slave markets.
When the Vikings established early Scandinavian Dublin in 841, they began a slave market that would come to sell thralls captured both in Ireland and other countries as distant as Muslim Spain, as well as sending Irish slaves as far away as Iceland, where Gaels formed 40% of the founding population, and Anatolia. In 875, Irish slaves in Iceland launched Europe's largest slave rebellion since the end of the Roman Empire, when Hjörleifr Hróðmarsson's slaves killed him and fled to Vestmannaeyjar.[citation needed] Almost all recorded slave raids in this period took place in Leinster and southeast Ulster; while there was almost certainly similar activity in the south and west, only one raid from the Hebrides on the Aran Islands is recorded.
Slavery became more prevalent throughout Ireland in the 11th century as port cities built up by Vikings flourished, with Dublin becoming the biggest slave market in Western Europe. Its main sources of supply were the Irish hinterland, Wales and Scotland. The Irish slave trade began to decline after William the Conqueror consolidated control of the English and Welsh coasts around 1080, and was dealt a severe blow when the Normans abolished slavery in 1102. The 1171 Council of Armagh freed all Englishmen and women who were enslaved in Ireland. where contemporary sources detail that the English sold their children as slaves, as stated in the Decree of the Council of Armagh, . "For the English people hitherto throughout the whole of their kingdom to the common injury of their people, had become accustomed to selling their sons and relatives in Ireland, to expose their children for sale as slaves, rather than suffer any need or want.".
Baltimore, County Cork, was depopulated in 1631 in the Sack of Baltimore, a raid by Barbary pirates from either Ottoman Algeria or Salé (Morocco). Between 100 and 237 people were abducted and sold into the Barbary slave trade, of whom only two or three ever saw Ireland again.
As was true for societies across Europe, Asia, & Africa during this time, there were individuals born in Ireland who became involved with the Atlantic slave trade between 1660 and 1815. Librarian Liam Hogan has described how Irish merchants profited from the trade, mostly indirectly as provisioners.
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Slavery in Ireland
Slavery had already existed in Ireland for centuries by the time the Vikings began to establish their coastal settlements, but it was under the Norse-Gael Kingdom of Dublin that it reached its peak, in the 11th century.
Early medieval legal texts provide a wealth of knowledge on the practice of slavery. Gaelic raiders kidnapped and enslaved people from across the Irish Sea for two centuries after the Fall of the Western Roman Empire destabilising Roman Britain; Saint Patrick was kidnapped by Gaelic raiders.
In the Brehon Laws, Senchus Mór [Shanahus More] and the Book of Acaill [Ack'ill], a "daer fuidhir" ("servile inferior") was a name applied to all who did not belong to a clan, whether born in the clan territory or not. This was the lowest of the three classes of the non-free people. This class also was sub-divided into saer and daer, the daer fuidhirs being the class most closely resembling slaves. Even this lowest condition was not utterly hopeless; promotion was possible, and in constant operation. Therefore all families did not remain permanently in this kind of servitude but had the possibility of gradually rising from a lower to a higher degree according to a certain scale of progress, unless they committed some crime which would arrest that progress and cast them down again further. Slaves could be obtained through war, purchase and marriage to outsiders. The inheritability of slavery depends on the precise original relationship, while fuidher have been seen as a transitional status, after three generations serving the same lord, their children fell under the category senchléithe, akin to a semi hereditary serf status, while the law texts also provide details of downward mobility as well.
From the 9th to the 12th century Viking/Norse-Gael Dublin in particular was a major slave trading centre which led to an increase in slavery. In 870, Vikings, most likely led by Olaf the White and Ivar the Boneless, besieged and captured the stronghold of Dumbarton Castle (Alt Clut), the capital of the Kingdom of Strathclyde in Scotland, and the next year took most of the site's inhabitants to the Dublin slave markets.
When the Vikings established early Scandinavian Dublin in 841, they began a slave market that would come to sell thralls captured both in Ireland and other countries as distant as Muslim Spain, as well as sending Irish slaves as far away as Iceland, where Gaels formed 40% of the founding population, and Anatolia. In 875, Irish slaves in Iceland launched Europe's largest slave rebellion since the end of the Roman Empire, when Hjörleifr Hróðmarsson's slaves killed him and fled to Vestmannaeyjar.[citation needed] Almost all recorded slave raids in this period took place in Leinster and southeast Ulster; while there was almost certainly similar activity in the south and west, only one raid from the Hebrides on the Aran Islands is recorded.
Slavery became more prevalent throughout Ireland in the 11th century as port cities built up by Vikings flourished, with Dublin becoming the biggest slave market in Western Europe. Its main sources of supply were the Irish hinterland, Wales and Scotland. The Irish slave trade began to decline after William the Conqueror consolidated control of the English and Welsh coasts around 1080, and was dealt a severe blow when the Normans abolished slavery in 1102. The 1171 Council of Armagh freed all Englishmen and women who were enslaved in Ireland. where contemporary sources detail that the English sold their children as slaves, as stated in the Decree of the Council of Armagh, . "For the English people hitherto throughout the whole of their kingdom to the common injury of their people, had become accustomed to selling their sons and relatives in Ireland, to expose their children for sale as slaves, rather than suffer any need or want.".
Baltimore, County Cork, was depopulated in 1631 in the Sack of Baltimore, a raid by Barbary pirates from either Ottoman Algeria or Salé (Morocco). Between 100 and 237 people were abducted and sold into the Barbary slave trade, of whom only two or three ever saw Ireland again.
As was true for societies across Europe, Asia, & Africa during this time, there were individuals born in Ireland who became involved with the Atlantic slave trade between 1660 and 1815. Librarian Liam Hogan has described how Irish merchants profited from the trade, mostly indirectly as provisioners.
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