I cannot tell what Mr Barth means by "excellent" when he refers to O'Callaghan's _To Hell or Barbados_, but I must say that I found the book unreadable.  There is obviously much historical material in it, but the book is a bald polemic by a journalist whose central and constant passion is to demonize Cromwell and his forces in every lurid way possible.  If you like to read martyrology, maybe this book is for you.  I can't take more than about four or five pages of Foxe's _Book of Martyrs_ at a time, nor could I read more than about six or eight of O'Callaghan's very angry account.  However loathsome and culpable one may judge Cromwell and especially those who acted in his name are (and their exceeses and abuses were legion), is it an author's duty to spill their blood on every page?  Isn't the case much more effectively and credibly made if readers are left to or guided to this conclusion, rather than having it pounded into every paragraph?  Whether it was because it happened so long ago or that so scant a trace of them was left, the tens of thousands of Irish deported by Cromwell et al. to Virginia and the Caribbean rarely merit mention in standard histories today.  So O'Callaghan's story is clearly one that needs to be told, but not in his way or with his dodgy use of sources.  When a writer makes little or no effort to discriminate allegation from fact and the sources of many allegations are very murky, let the reader beware. Michael Montgomery Date: Sun, 28 Feb 2010 11:26:12 +0000 From: Henry Barth <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [S-I] Irish and Scots slaves To: <[email protected]> An excellent book on the 50,000+ Irish and Scots slaves sent to the Caribbean and Virginia between 1652 and 1659 is ?To Hell or Barbados? (subtitled ?The Ethnic Cleansing of Ireland?) by Sean O?Callaghan.  HB

Whew! On Feb 28, 2010, at 5:36 PM, Montgomery Michael wrote: > I cannot tell what Mr Barth means by "excellent" when he refers to > O'Callaghan's _To Hell or Barbados_, but I must say that I found the > book unreadable.  There is obviously much historical material in it, > but the book is a bald polemic by a journalist whose central and > constant passion is to demonize Cromwell and his forces in every lurid > way possible.  If you like to read martyrology, maybe this book is for > you.  I can't take more than about four or five pages of Foxe's _Book > of Martyrs_ at a time, nor could I read more than about six or eight > of O'Callaghan's very angry account.  However loathsome and culpable > one may judge Cromwell and especially those who acted in his name are > (and their exceeses and abuses were legion), is it an author's duty to > spill their blood on every page?  Isn't the case much more effectively > and credibly made if readers are left to or guided > to this conclusion, rather than having it pounded into every > paragraph?  > > Whether it was because it happened so long ago or that so scant a > trace of them was left, the tens of thousands of Irish deported by > Cromwell et al. to Virginia and the Caribbean rarely merit mention in > standard histories today.  So O'Callaghan's story is clearly one that > needs to be told, but not in his way or with his dodgy use of > sources.  When a writer makes little or no effort to discriminate > allegation from fact and the sources of many allegations are very > murky, let the reader beware. > > Michael Montgomery > > Date: Sun, 28 Feb 2010 11:26:12 +0000 > From: Henry Barth <[email protected]> > Subject: Re: [S-I] Irish and Scots slaves > To: <[email protected]> > > An excellent book on the 50,000+ Irish and Scots slaves sent to the > Caribbean and Virginia between 1652 and 1659 is ?To Hell or Barbados? > (subtitled ?The Ethnic Cleansing of Ireland?) by Sean O?Callaghan.  > > HB > > > > > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to > [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without > the quotes in the subject and the body of the message >

Well, I did read the book including the footnotes and glanced through his bibliography. The book is definitely part of the anti-English polemic that the Irish are so fond of, but that doesn't mean it is wrong. Another person could of course re-shuffle the same data and come up with a different conclusion and on and on -- fodder for future dissertations and books. However I suspect it is right. It was a huge scandal in its day (newspaper articles) when the government was discovered to be enslaving Irish. This wasn't discovered till a man of the upper classes was siezed in Ireland. It wasn't till he was sold in Virginia that it was realized who he was. The winners of these situations generally write the history and try not to leave evidence but his evidence in this case is good. Cromwell is undergoing somewhat of a rehabilitation. Being a non scholar, and poor, I don't read the journals and the latest and greatest, but I do own and have read several recent books on Cromwell in Ireland and Cromwell in general, built on an examination of contemporaneous primary evidence instead of on past vitrionics, as the Victorians were so fond of doing. Setting him in his historic context and reading primary evidence seems to show him to be much less of the bad guy than he is generally thought. This period in British history (writers always say in their forewords) has so far proven to be impossible to entirely understand -- so various authors almost always contradict each other. He who reads one book thinks he knows it all, but after two or three, one fears to say anything about it (even me!). A lot of us are still brainwashed by Victorian historians..... There apparently are amazingly good records in Barbados (bibliography of the book) and it did explain to me where several individuals I had been tracing in colonial America came from. One was confirmed to be from the West Indies. It is an important part of the North American past, whether or not one likes Cromwell. I also don't think, or rather I figure the person isn't thinking (brain became unplugged somewhere...) when they rant about Cromwell. This is particularly ahistorical when it's the descendents of people who supported him. Often these people haven't even figured that out <grin>. Oi (as my Jewish friend would say). So whether I liked the tone of the book or not, the fact that it did fill in some missing holes in my understanding of colonial America is what is convincing for me. I can't read Foxe either! Worse than a few historical books on Cromwell. Linda Merle ----- Original Message ----- From: "Montgomery Michael" <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Sunday, February 28, 2010 5:36:53 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern Subject: Re: [S-I] SCOTCH-IRISH Digest, Vol 5, Issue 39 "Irish in the Caribbean" I cannot tell what Mr Barth means by "excellent" when he refers to O'Callaghan's _To Hell or Barbados_, but I must say that I found the book unreadable. There is obviously much historical material in it, but the book is a bald polemic by a journalist whose central and constant passion is to demonize Cromwell and his forces in every lurid way possible. If you like to read martyrology, maybe this book is for you. I can't take more than about four or five pages of Foxe's _Book of Martyrs_ at a time, nor could I read more than about six or eight of O'Callaghan's very angry account. However loathsome and culpable one may judge Cromwell and especially those who acted in his name are (and their exceeses and abuses were legion), is it an author's duty to spill their blood on every page? Isn't the case much more effectively and credibly made if readers are left to or guided to this conclusion, rather than having it pounded into every paragraph? Whether it was because it happened so long ago or that so scant a trace of them was left, the tens of thousands of Irish deported by Cromwell et al. to Virginia and the Caribbean rarely merit mention in standard histories today. So O'Callaghan's story is clearly one that needs to be told, but not in his way or with his dodgy use of sources. When a writer makes little or no effort to discriminate allegation from fact and the sources of many allegations are very murky, let the reader beware. Michael Montgomery Date: Sun, 28 Feb 2010 11:26:12 +0000 From: Henry Barth <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [S-I] Irish and Scots slaves To: <[email protected]> An excellent book on the 50,000+ Irish and Scots slaves sent to the Caribbean and Virginia between 1652 and 1659 is ?To Hell or Barbados? (subtitled ?The Ethnic Cleansing of Ireland?) by Sean O?Callaghan. HB ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message