From: fledgist@weber.ucsd.edu (Fragano Ledgister)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.celtic,soc.culture.british
Subject: Re: Barbados & other Caribbean settlements (was Re: Queen &c...)
Date: 21 Dec 1992 04:51:39 GMT
Organization: University of California, San Diego
NNTP-Posting-Host: weber.ucsd.edu

In article <28093@dog.ee.lbl.gov> mike@fionn.lbl.gov (Michael Helm) writes:
>Fragano Ledgister writes:
>mike>Most of the very thin coverage of this peculiar settling of Barbados
>                                            ^^^^^^^^ 
>mike>&al that I have managed to find, sets it in Cromwellian times.
>
>>Which would be rather odd, given that Admiral Blake had to take the
>>island from the Cavaliers (Prince Rupert sought refuge there). The
>>settlement of Barbados took place under Charles I.
>
>Please, read & respond to what I wrote.


In fact, it began earlier. You might be interested in 17th century
demographic theory in England; it was thought at the time that the
country was overpopulated, and felt that 'masterless men' needed to
be sent somewhere else. That somewhere else was usually in the
Americas.

Under the Commonwealth and Protectorate, Irish rebels and other
'miscreants' were 'Barbadosed' to use a term current at the time.

>
This is also a good opportunity for me to toss this out onto the table.
>
>From "Story of English", McCrum, Cran, MacNeil, Sifton-Viking 1985,
>Ch 5 pp 179-180.
>
>History has charged the English with using Barbados as a dumping
>ground for Black slaves.  In fact, they first used the island as
>a place of penal exile for Whites.  A Jesuit priest who visited the
>island in 1634 noted that "some few Catholiques here be, both 
>English & Irish."  Oliver Cromwell used it as an internment camp
>for prisoners taken during his battles in Ireland.  IN September 1649,
>reporting the storming of Drogheda, he wrote to the Speaker of
>the English Parliament: "When they submitted, their officers were
>knocked on the head; and every tenth man of the soldiers killed; and
>the rest shipped off for  the Barbadoes."  This wholesale transportation
>of some 12,000 men gave rise to a new verb, "to barbadoes" ....

I see that we are in agreement.

>
>Initially, these involuntary exiles, now known as "redlegs", worked as
                                      ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

How old are they?   



>indentured servants and were treated almost as badly as the Blacks.
>In due course, they were joined by Scottish rebels from the Highlands
>and, after the failure of the Duke of Monmouth's rising in 1685, by
>West Country Englishmen.  With the passage of time, some of these
>luckless Barbadians became "poor Whites" and today their descendants
>live in a small, impoverished community in the St Martin's bay parish,
>speaking a kind of English which is indistinguishable from that of the
>Blacks.
>....
>
>The influence of the Irish -- names & place names -- is also found on
>the island of Montserrat, "the emerald isle of the Caribbean".  The
>Irish came here fleeing religious persecution in neiboring St Kitt's &
>in Virginia.  In 1643, an Irish priest, Father O'Hartegan, wrote of
>"French, English, & Irish, all of which are used freely in that part
>of the world."  The center of the island has a valley named Glennmo/r,
>the Irish for "big valley".  The first Irish planters here -- men with
>family names like Riley & Sweeney -- came here of their own free will.
>After Cromwell, they were joined by involuntary exiles like those on
>Barbados. WWhen the first slaves cmae from West Africa, some of the
>Irish took Black wives & mistresses, giving rise to the so called
>"Black Irish" comunity on the island.


One family in Montserrat, interestingly enough, is called Irish. 



>
>[Reference for this section points to Jill Shepperd, "The 'Redlegs' of
>Barbados" K T O Press 1977, which I have not yet found]
>
>[There is also some testimony in other books about other Irish &
>Scottish settlement in Caribbean sites but this is the most 
>coherent information I have on hand.]

I came across a reference a few years back to a book on the one
Scottish colony anywhere, the settlement at Darien in what is now
Panama, but I can't recall the title nor the author.

-- 
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Dawn over the dark sea brings on the sun;                      
She leans across the hilltop: see, the light!
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