Irish emigrants ruined native cultures, professor says

Irish emigrants and their offspring were imperialists who destroyed native cultures and stripped lands of their natural resources, a major international conference on emigration has been told. Irish missionaries were the most prominent and effective of those who displaced and destroyed indigenous cultures, according to Prof Donald Akenson of the University of Kingston in Ontario, Canada.

The smashing of native cultures was accompanied by "criminal" levels of physical and sexual abuse, Prof Akenson claimed in his keynote address to "The Scattering" conference in University College, Cork.

"Not all clerics and teachers participated in these activities, but it would have been a rare institution in which the activities did not occur," he said.

Irish religious and educational institutions, both Catholic and Protestant, were more effective in breaking down indigenous cultures than were "entire regiments of the armies of the British Empire or of the various American government".

While present-day Irish missionaries were culturally sensitive, the purpose of their predecessors was to destroy the value-systems and beliefs of native peoples and replace these beliefs with ones of their own, he asserted.

In Canada, for example, a nationwide campaign spearheaded by religious groups sought to destroy aboriginal cultures by taking children out of their homes and driving a wedge between them and their parents.

Described as the largest conference on Irish migration, The Scattering includes innovative features, such as a live "Webcast" of proceedings on the Internet aimed at the 70 million people of Irish descent around the world. Details are available on The Irish Times Website.

According to Prof Akenson's analysis, Irish migration since 1600 formed a part of the overall expansion of Europe. Emigration has come to be considered as a sort of "forever tragedy" when it should be looked at from the point of view of those people living in the countries to which the Irish migrated.

The diaspora nearly always implied some form of imperialism, he said. "Irish migrants and their offspring acted in the several New Worlds in which they prospered as co-imperialists, destroying native cultures, strip-mining primary resources, manufacturing implements of economic domination - in other words, acting as ordinary good citizens of the empires in which they settled."

That Ireland was itself shamefully abused explained this conduct, but it did not excuse it: "The horrors of English imperialisms were exactly what made so many Irish out-migrants so good at doing unto others as had been done unto them."

Prof Akenson gave the example of Montserrat, the Caribbean island which he said was under Irish control in the 17th century. Irish Catholic and Protestant landowners worked together to retain control and meted out a "vile litany" of punishments on the natives.

One man who was convicted of stealing pigs was cut to pieces and his bowels burned. Another had his right ear cut off and was branded with a hot iron. A third was suspended in chains and given no food or water until he died.

"Irish migrants and their children bought into this system. Rich, middling, and just-above-white-trash, they all did so."

The relationship between the Irish and empires was the single most avoided matter in Irish migration studies, Prof Akenson said. Academics needed to analyse how successive ranks of Irish migrants became, however unconsciously, the "foot soldiers" of empire.

The historian, Mr Tim Pat Coogan, said he did not feel the Irish in the US were particularly anti-black. The education system there was heavily influenced by the British public school, "which certainly didn't stint on punishment". In Montserrat, he said, the landowners were following a British penal code.