Professor Bríona Nic Dhiarmada

They were taken up from the streets, or soldiers whose lives were spared by Cromwell, were taken off and sent to Barbados, across the Atlantic Ocean, landing in a place where they were then sold.

Now, there's a difference, and people, it's very controversial there because

And there was a difference.

There was a very important legal difference between an indentured servant, although they didn't sign indentures.

These were forced, basically kidnapped and forcibly working in these dreadful conditions, same conditions as the African chattel slaves.

The important difference was that an African chattel slave was owned fully by their masters.

Their children were born into slavery.

Whereas where the Irish who suffered the same conditions when they were working in the fields, malnourished, suffered very greatly from malaria,

all sorts of yellow fever, diseases like that.

They could be freed if they survived.

Many didn't.

Many, many thousands didn't because the conditions were so horrendous.

But they were then given maybe 10, 15 acres of bad land there.

And, of course, many of them would have intermarried.

Others remained, actually.

They were known as the Red Legs.

They were poor.

They had a very, very low position in that society.

And...

They would have been the remnants of the Irish transported servants, I suppose you'd call them.