Should companies originated in the slave trade be thrown out of Ireland?

Atlantic Dawn

There's many companies in Ireland with roots involved in slave trading, primarily involved in the insurance business, why should we allow these companies to continue to trade in this country? Surely they should be banned in conducting any legitimate business activity in this country because of their roots.

sydthebeat

No.

Don't be stupid

Atlantic Dawn

These are companies now spending tens of thousands whether to refer to someone as Eve or Steve based on a persons toilet preference but were selling slaves based on whether they looked healthy or not to attend cotton fields.

El Tarangu

I have some bad news for you if you drive a Volkswagen, OP.

Atlantic Dawn

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118260905#Comment_118260905

A completely different type of slavery.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058220956/should-companies-originated-in-the-slave-trade-be-thrown-out-of-ireland

Your ancestors impregnated young teenagers and pillaged lands. Why should we listen to someone like you?

Atlantic Dawn

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118260910#Comment_118260910

Mine didn't, your Ma was your Da. You don't have a birth cert, you have an apology letter from Durex.

knucklehead6

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118260912#Comment_118260912

Surely it'd be his parents who have the apology letter?

the_pen_turner

No .you cannot judge the past by the standards if today

Half-cocked

Shouldn't we be more concerned about modern day slavery? According to the UN, some 40 million persons are in modern slavery. Very easy to complain about the evils of the past while ignoring the evils of today.

BanditLuke

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058220956/should-companies-originated-in-the-slave-trade-be-thrown-out-of-ireland

>>>>>Typed out on my Chinese made handheld device without a hint of irony<<<<<

Gregor Samsa

Absolutely not! I can’t believe I’m reading this rubbish! Ridiculous libtard suggestion! I mean, how would I insure my slaves if this happened?

^^ Doesn't count. It's the wrong type of slavery.

ETA: Referring to the comment by BanditLuke. Pipped by Gregor

Iseedeadpixels

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118260912#Comment_118260912

Cringe

Jim2007

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058220956/should-companies-originated-in-the-slave-trade-be-thrown-out-of-ireland

Really, let’s have your long list of Irish companies involved in the slave trade then, so we can decide

patnor1011

It usually always start with harebrained ideas while covering behind "we".

Should we, shouldn't we?

OP is free to boycott anyone he likes, his preferences may be based on any perceived injustice in human history. I just do not see why would "we" have to be concerned by slave trade happening in other countries more than "we" should be concerned about stuff that happened here like famine? if "we" want to get offended by something and took up some holy fight.

SouthWesterly

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058220956/should-companies-originated-in-the-slave-trade-be-thrown-out-of-ireland

You'd have been better off sleeping at 4 a.m 😂

knucklehead6

Wait a second, is this not a pisstake thread? Is the OP actually serious?

Peregrinus

No, he's stirring. Astute readers will have noted that he hasn't actually identified any company doing business in Ireland that has its roots in slave trading, which is kind of the first think you'd do if you were serious about this.

corner of hells

Wait , Saint Patrick was a slave , wasn't he ?

Wasn't he captured and made mind sheep on a mountain or something like that.

At the very least we should throw out farmers , sheep and snakes.

And another thing , we should return the Book of Kells to Kells , teach them fcukers in Trinity a lesson.

TheValeyard

We dont judge people/companies of the past by todays standards. Judge them by their own time.

Shao Kahn

Put all the media in jail, for trying to enslave people's minds.

And the church too while you're at it.

Spook_ie

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118260905#Comment_118260905

Or anything Mitsubushi, Nissan, BMW, Krupps, Siemens etc.

Ash.J.Williams

fanta is nazi cola

Gregor Samsa

Did you know that most nurses in this country are from the same species as the people who killed Jesus, dropped the bomb on Hiroshima and wiped out the Neanderthals? Think about that for a second - we entrust the care of the most vulnerable sick people in society to people who are genetically almost identical to Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Genghis Khan, Vlad The Impaler and Fred West. The mind boggles.

whisky_galore

F**k off Amazon.

BurgerFace

Unfortunately it's nigh-on impossible to find a company that's 100% squeaky clean.

Motorola manufactures chips that are used in anti-personnel mine that blow the limbs off kids in countries around the world on a regular basis.

Intel the same. And all electronics companies that use their components

Tork

How about Folens schoolbooks. Company was founded by a Nazi. Poisoning kiddies minds, so they are

MarkR

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058220956/should-companies-originated-in-the-slave-trade-be-thrown-out-of-ireland

Sins of the father and all that? How far should we go back. Given that we all share a limited pool of ancestors, it looks like your ancestors started the slave trade. The neck of you! Every accusation is an admission, I always say. Then again, I am (probably) descended from some awful people.

growleaves

Viking Dublin had one of the largest slave markets in Europe, its thought to have been the centre of the slave trade by some historians.

Ash.J.Williams

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118262627#Comment_118262627

the late late show had a holocaust survivor on once and i no word of a lie they had ads for folens during the break which i found weird

El Tarangu

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118262082#Comment_118262082

Indeed.

Or any device using technology developed by IBM.

Good chat, but I have to throw away my smart phone, siya.

WrenBoy

haha good one OP..

Zebra3

Boycott businesses involved in the slave trade centuries ago while Irish people give their business (christenings, weddings, etc) to the paedos in the RC cult who much more recently used Irish kids as their sex slaves?

Maybe start closer to current times?

mariaalice

Hugo Boss

The J Stands for Jay

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118261150#Comment_118261150

All Irish people are a bit sus. How'd our ancestors get through the famine?

whisky_galore

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118268057#Comment_118268057

Boycott charities that have their roots in or are currently in the control of religious orders. Esp. Ruhama, the Laundries rebrand and relaunch.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118261025#Comment_118261025

How about rolling the clock back to 1786 when Thomas McCabe stopped the formation of a slave trading company in Belfast ?

the_pen_turner

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118272672#Comment_118272672

what that see as a bad thing at the time

neenam

There were plenty of Irish people complicit in the Atlantic Slave Trade, and those who owned plantations in the Americas.

MORE than 90 people in Ireland were listed as slave owners in 1834, controlling approximately 15,000 Caribbean slaves, according to new research.

When slavery was abolished across the British empire in the 1830s, owners of plantations in countries such as Jamaica were reimbursed for the loss of their “property”. It has emerged that Irish slave owners benefited by £375,405 — the equivalent of €60.7m in today’s money.

The research was compiled by Liam Hogan, a librarian at Limerick City Library, using data provided by University College London. He found that, while ownership of plantations was relatively low in Ireland, the revenue from them provided a significant support to the Irish economy and is an under-reported aspect of Ireland’s history.

Every group in Ireland produced merchants who benefited from the slave trade and the expanding slave colonies.

The importance of enslaved Africans in furnishing these Irish gains is vividly illustrated in a commemorative print of 1780 entitled ‘Hibernia attended by her Brave Volunteers, exhibiting her commercial freedom’. The free trade banner she is carrying is a reference to the campaign that led to the British Act of 1800 which allowed Ireland to trade with British colonies in America, West Indies and Africa on equal terms with Great Britain. A banner is illustrated under this image with the words "Vincit Amor Patriae" ["Love of Country Conquers"].

We complain how history is taught re their impact on the Irish in the UK, yet Irish history's narrative is taught in a similar way here - John Mitchel has been taught to students as a nationalist hero in Junior Cert history, but his views on pro-slavery, black people and the Confederate army in the US Civil War have been ignored. Maybe the history curriculum has changed to acknowledge the ugly side of Irish history.

It's true that the Irish were victims of colonial oppression, but it’s also true that we were perpetrators of colonial aggression elsewhere. We need to disentangle ourselves from victimology and recognise that we have a history like any other nation.

Strumms

No

but companies who treat their staff poorly/illegally now should be.

Capt'n Midnight

‘Hibernia attended by her Brave Volunteers, exhibiting her commercial freedom’.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118272735#Comment_118272735

No one signed up. First and last attempt to setup such a company on this island.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118276817#Comment_118276817

‘Hibernia attended by her Brave Volunteers, exhibiting her commercial freedom’.

Which volunteers ? the United Irishmen "an equal representation of all the people" were very anti-slavery.

neenam

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118277101#Comment_118277101

The volunteers are the 2 soldiers shown in the background of the lithograph image (with the 3 kneeling people in the foreground representing Europe, Africa and America). I'm assuming that these are the volunteers that were formed in 1778. I'm basing this on this line from an article in History Ireland (The Irish and the Atlantic slave trade) :

In 1779 the Dublin parliament and the Volunteers successfully worked together to make Britain’s American difficulty Ireland’s opportunity, demanding that Westminster repeal mercantile regulations to allow ‘a free trade for Ireland'.

I got the image and the information about it from "Consumption, Gender, and the Politics of "Free Trade" in Eighteenth-Century Ireland".

Galwayguy35

This sounds like something that looper Brid Smith would come out with.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118277845#Comment_118277845

Trading with foreigners is not the same as enslaving them.

neenam

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118278047#Comment_118278047

The restrictions being lifted from the Irish meant that they could trade with british colonies and enter slave trade directly in the Americas. Before that Irish traders operated from Liverpool, Bristol and Nantes. There are accounts of Irish immigrants who were trading slaves in the Caribbean. Apparently there's links of Irish merchants, plantation owners and indentured servant ancestry among the people living in the Leewards Islands, there's a youtube video of a Montserratian speaking with a obvious Irish accent.

You don't have to take my word for it, there are plenty of sources that backup what I've said. Liam Hogan goes into more detail on this.

https://twitter.com/Limerick1914/status/1288257033544835079

There's also a map and a database where you can see where people who engaged in the business resided in Ireland, a merchant and a british plantation owner lived in my home town 😮 https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/maps/britain as well as a list of people who got (or didn't get) compensations for losing their slaves in the aftermath of abolition, which includes Irish people (as if they needed the money after all the profits they made 🤦)

Peregrinus

Oh, sure, there were certainly Irish people involved in the slave trade and the slavery economy at various levels.

But, overall, the contribution of Irish people to the slave trade was pretty minor. This is not because of any superior virtue on our part but because (a) as already pointed out, legal restrictions designed to advantage Great Britain impeded Irish involvement in trade of all kinds, including the slave trade and the slavery economy; and (b) what Great Britain brought to the slave trade/slave economy was capital (to buy slaves) and manufactured goods (to trade for slaves), while Ireland was chronically undercapitalised and produced few manufactured goods. Thus we just weren't that well-positioned to be involved, and such involvement as there was was fairly minor.

As neenam points out, when slavery was abolished in British possession in the 1830s and slaveowners were compensated, about 90 people in Ireland received compensation of an aggregate amount of £375,000. To put this in context, about 2,900 people in the Great Britain received compensation of an aggregate amount of about £10 million. As a rough-and-ready indicator of the relative involvement of Ireland and Great Britain with the slave economy, that's probably not far off the mark.

(Trivial fact of the day: the database of slaveowner compensation exists today because it was compiled to answer a parliamentary question asked by Daniel O'Connell, who was staunchly anti-slavery.)

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118281579#Comment_118281579

Not so fun fact : The loan taken to pay the compensation was paid off in 2015

Princess Consuela Bananahammock

Only Amazon (are they even in Ireland?)

BeerWolf

Stop using anything you have made in China OP. Don't watch the world Cup next year in Qatar, or anything else hosted in those countries, etc etc etc.

Or are you going to selective pick your virtue signalling while turning a blind eye to others, and call it a woke'ish day?

growleaves

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118281664#Comment_118281664

I think they're in Cork, or used to be.

There was talk of building a mega-facility in Dublin but haven't heard anything lately.

I liked what one analyst said about Amazon - that they're like deniable government contractors (a reference to all the tax advantages they got from the US gov).