When you think of global superstar Rihanna, it’s for her music rather than her ancestry. But, like 25% of the Jamaican and other island populations, she claims Irish blood in her genealogy due to the Irish diaspora. Rihanna was born in Saint Michael, Barbados. Her mother is Afro- Guyanese, while her father is a Barbadian of African, Irish, English, and Scottish descent. Rihanna, like a lot of people who live in these tropical islands, shares a Celtic influence, so let’s dig deeper!
The Irish Diaspora
The dispersion or spread of any people from their original homeland is known as a diaspora. This has happened to many cultures throughout history, including the removal of Jewish people from Judea; the removal of Africans through slavery; and more recently the migration, exile, and refugees of Syrians and Ukranians in the face of war.
The Irish Diaspora is quite unique because rather than being a onetime event in Ireland’s history, it has occurred across several centuries and to many continents due to different driving forces. The Irish diaspora is the best known thanks to the Great Famine of 1845-1852. Mass emigration to the United States happened over a ten-year period.
Yet, a different, yet also turbulent time two centuries earlier also resulted in thousands of people exiting Ireland’s damp northern hemisphere for the blistering tropics of the West Indies. The voluntary settlement of Irish Catholics in the early 17th century in the West Indies was thanks to the encouragement of Irish-born governors in the Caribbean islands.
They successfully persuaded their countrymen to emigrate. By the 1650s however, the relocation of the Irish to the islands changed from being driven by the hope of acquiring their own land, to arriving as indentured labourers, thanks to the English Civil Wars.
Wars of Three Kingdoms
The English Civil Wars are widely regarded to have begun in England in August 1642, when Charles I raised an army against the wishes of Parliament, ostensibly to deal with a rebellion in Ireland. But the period of conflict technically began earlier in Scotland, with the Bishops’ Wars of 1639–40, and also in Ireland with the Ulster rebellion of 1641, hence their modern name of the Wars of Three Kingdoms.
Led by General Oliver Cromwell, Parliamentarian forces invaded Ireland in August 1649. This resulted in a bloody war until 1652 when the Confederate and Royalist coalition in Ireland was defeated. Cromwell subsequently passed many laws against Roman Catholics, who were the vast majority of the population.
He confiscated almost all lands owned by Irish Catholics and gave them to British settlers, plus he barred Catholics from the Irish Parliament, and from living in towns and marrying Protestants. During this time, 50,000 Irish Catholics were estimated to have been transported as indentured labourers to the English colonies in the USA and Caribbean. This changed the previous Irish migration to these lands from opportunity to punishment.
Irish Diaspora: Immigrants to Indentured
After the defeat of the Irish in the wars, English and Irish Protestant leaders viewed the colonies as suitable dumping grounds for rebellious Catholics or “papists” as they were derogatorily referred. In addition, many were kidnapped, particularly those living near the coast. “Barbadosed” took on the same meaning that “Shanghaied” or “Blackbirded” has today.
Some estimate that as many as 6400 people were kidnapped in Ireland and Scotland during in the 1640s and sent to the West Indies. They became known as ‘Red Legs’ which many concur was a reference to their sunburn caused by the hot tropical sun. The British West Indies is now regarded as the first region in the world where the forced displacement of Irish people on a massive scale took place.
Under Cromwell, and then under Charles II after the Restoration in 1660, the colonization of the West Indies, and particularly Jamaica, by British and Irish immigrants became a major priority for Great Britain. The many thousands of dispossessed Catholic Irish men, women and children were transported in this period to work on new sugar and tobacco plantations in Jamaica.
Barbados
They also found themselves in Barbados and the smaller Caribbean islands including St Kitts, Nevis, Antigua and Montserrat. According to James E. Doan, author of The Irish in the Caribbean, “In the early days, working conditions were brutal, and some owners cruelly punished shirkers. Religious differences between Irish Catholic servants and Anglican masters increased the abuse.
An account of Barbados from 1667 described the Irish indentured servants there as “poor men, that are just permitted to live… derided by the Negroes, and branded with the Epithite of white slaves.” During their terms of service they worked “in the parching sun without shirt, shoe or stocking” “domineered over and used like dogs,” as the governor of Barbados admitted in 1695, and when they were freed they generally fell into a hand-tomouth existence which consigned them to the very bottom of West Indian society.”
The English National Archives shares that “once in the Caribbean, many plantation owners considered servants and freemen from Ireland as a potentially subversive lot who had to be controlled and kept in a labouring status. The English government allegedly referred to the Irish as: rogues, vagabonds, rebels, neutrals, felons and military prisoners.
Punishments for attempted escapes included branding the letters ‘FT’ (Fugitive Traitor) on the servant’s forehead.” Irish indentured servitude was a historical atrocity that saw thousands of Irish people subjected to unjust conditions in a brutal colonial society. Many Irish died well before they were able to serve out their indentures due to the brutal conditions.
Incentivised to Island Life
After the wars, the flow of convict labour and voluntary labour slowed down. The Irish in the Caribbean transmitted the horrors of plantation living with those back in Ireland. So a preference for life in the mainland American colonies grew.
Subsequently, the governments of the US and throughout the West Indies started to incentivise white immigrants. New laws passed, requiring better treatment of white servants. Owners had to give servants a minimum amount of food and clothing, and they needed a magistrate’s permission to flog them.
Changing Times
But even with a change of conditions, life wasn’t a tropical paradise and resentment for English slave owners was strong. In 1666 the Irish servants and freemen on St. Kitts celebrated the declaration of war between England and France. They did this by rising up against the English plantation owners and aiding the French in taking control of the island, evicting 800 English planters.
The following year the Irish on Montserrat also helped the French take the island from the English. On the other side of the world, life in Ireland was still hard during the late 17th century and there were numerous motivations for Irish emigration. Poor harvests and livestock disease were so widespread in Munster during the early 1670s that servitude in the West Indies was a preferable option for some.
Meanwhile members of the defeated Catholic gentry and younger sons of the Galway Old English gentry “tribes” left Cromwell’s rule. They went on to establish businesses such as plantations and counting houses in Barbados, Montserrat and other Caribbean islands, hoping to recoup their family fortunes. In this ‘tropical new world’ the Irish did well.
Landowners
Approximately 10% of Jamaican landowners were of Irish extraction by the late 17th century. At the same time, Irish immigrants were ascending on Montserrat. The 1678 census showed a vibrant community of almost 1,900 Irish men, women and children (about 50% of the population) living as either indentured servants or freemen. Comparable figures for the other Leeward Islands were 26% Irish on Antigua, 22% on Nevis, and 10% on St Christopher.
Successive governors throughout the West Indies promised immigrants religious tolerance and easy access to land ownership. Jamaica became the leading West Indian destination for Irish and English servants departing from Kinsale, Bristol and London. But the growth of a slave-based economy from Africa throughout the 1700s steadily diminished economic opportunities for freed servants in the West Indies.
So, Irish Catholic emigrants started journeying to the mainland colonies. Ironically, by the mid-18th century, some descendants of the earlier Irish immigrants to Montserrat were in the position of being slave owners, rather than indentured servants. Sugar cane replaced tobacco and indigo.
Entrepreneurs from several Irish counties, including representatives of several aforementioned Galway “tribes” set up plantations and imported thousands of African slaves. At the close of the 18th century, trade with the West Indies counted for about 5% of Ireland’s export trade.
Today’s Living Legacy of the Irish Diaspora
The legacy of the 1600s Irish diaspora today is that on several of the Caribbean islands there are place names, celebrations and language inherited from the Emerald Isle. While Rihanna reached international fame, there are plenty of other prominent Jamaicans who proudly proclaimed their Irish ancestry including Sir Alexander Bustamante, national hero and first prime minister of Jamaica; novelist, journalist and teacher John Edgar Colwell Hearne; and poet laureate Claude McKay.
25% of Jamaicans claim Irish ancestors and Irish people are the second-largest reported ethnic group in Jamaica after Jamaicans of African ancestry. Irish influence throughout Jamaica is seen in locations such as Dublin Castle, Irish Town, Kildare and Belfast, while the last names of Madden, Murphy, Collins and more still abound. To this day, the Jamaica accent shares Irish elements from when the Irish taught the newly arrived African slaves the English language.
Montserrat
On the nearby island of Montserrat, known as the ‘Emerald Isle of the Caribbean,’ the Irish heritage lives on in the shamrock-shaped passport stamp upon arrival. The flag is a British blue ensign with Irish goddess Ériú in green bearing a black crucifix and golden harp.
There are a week’s festivities to mark St Patrick’s Day. There’s a plethora of Irish names throughout the island, such as Allen, Ryan, Daley, Farrell Riley and Sweeney. The Montserrat culture combines Leprechauns, shamrocks and Guinness with centuries of Caribbean and African culture. Traditions such as goat “water” or stew and a “freedom run” in tribute to its slave history still exist today.
After numbering in the thousands back in the 1600s, today the number of Irish descendants in Barbados has shrunk to just around 400. The Red Legs have remained an endogamous society, overwhelmingly marrying between themselves. While small in number, they boast that Rihanna is descended from the Red Leg Fenty family. This is because her surname is inherited from a Red Leg father.
From primarily painful beginnings fuelled by the defeats of Cromwell’s Wars of the Three Kingdoms, the Irish Diaspora of the 1600s has resulted in a colourful legacy throughout the West Indies. The French, British or Hispanic who freely settled in the region confined themselves to one island, if they survived their brutal servitude.
The Irish found opportunities and homes across almost all of the Caribbean Islands, thanks to their trademark zest for life in the face of adversity.
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