IRISH SLAVES- Indentured Servitude vs. Slavery- Debate

The official British legal terminology used was indentured servants. Whether the servants in question had willingly signed the indenture contract to immigrate to the Americas or were forced to go, many were forced. Therefore, those transported unwillingly and effectively sold were not considered to be indentured. This included political prisoners, vagrants, convicts, political activists, thieves, prostitutes, or people who had been defined as undesirable by the English government. The Irish introduction to slavery was during the first Viking raids in the year 795, lasting through the mid-ninth century. This period saw the Irish killed and enslaved. Just like many other societies, the Vikings attacked. Most of these early raids were along the northern and eastern coast using hit and run tactics. The Vikings would then flee with treasure and slaves and return to either their holdings in Scotland or back to Norway. Usually, many slaves who were of value were ransomed back to their families, but others remained in captivity. Then, from the year 837 onward, larger targets such as the greater monastic towns of Armagh, Glendalough, Kildare, Slane, Clonard, and Clonmacnoise, and Lismore were hit by larger forces. These large-scale raids generally spared the smaller local churches and villages far inland, but slaves were still taken, mostly to Scotland and Iceland. In 875, Irish slaves in Iceland launched Europe's largest slave rebellion since the end of the Roman Empire, when Hulmarsen's slaves killed him and fled to Vestmannaeyjar. In 841, the port that became known as Dublin was taken and occupied by both Olaf and Ivar the Boneless, and by 853, this part of Ireland was a Norse trading center, and slaves were a large part of it. The slave trade did not stop with Ivar's death in 873. Finally, in 902, driven out of Dublin by the combined forces of Brega and Leinster, but the Vikings came back in 914 and reclaimed all the territory, taking more slaves, but Irish resistance was not over. In 980, the Irish, under Mael Seixnal Mac Domhnaill, King of Meath, fought and managed to defeat the Vikings and freed all of their slaves. Some Vikings who remained assimilated and adapted to Christianity and became part of Irish society. The final nail in the coffin regarding Vikings holding land and taking slaves was in 1014, at the Battle of Clontarf, when Brian Beru, High King of Ireland, attacked Dublin, aided by his allies, the Limerick Vikings. They fought other Irish allied to the local Vikings in Dublin, and Beru's force won, and all the slaves were again freed, thus ending the legacy of constant Norse raids, whether from Danes or Norwegians. The period forced enslavement and severity ended, a century after the Norman invasion of England, in October 1066. Subsequent Norman rulers of England eyed Ireland, and slavery in its true form was abolished in 1102. In 1155, Pope Adrian IV supposedly gave Henry II of England a papal bull, granting the king the authority to invade Ireland. However, many historians believe that this authorization was a forgery. Regardless, Henry II of England faced excommunication for the murder of Thomas of Beckett, the Archbishop of Canterbury, so it is possible. However, Adrian's successor, Pope Alexander III, granted the lands of Ireland to Henry II, although it was not his land to give. The Norman conquest of England and Ireland were cataclysmic events that would shape Ireland's, as well as world history, and create tensions with England for the next 800 years. The Normans were initially invited to Ireland by Dermot McMurrah, the deposed King of Leinster. He is sometimes referred to as Dermot of the Foreigners, and his grandmother was the granddaughter of Brian Baru. In October 1171, King Henry II landed in Ireland and allowed Dermot to recruit soldiers and mercenaries, as Ireland was made up of several kingdoms at war with each other.