Montserrat

Montserrat is a small (39 square miles) island in the Lesser Antilles. Its interest to scholars of Ireland is that for a time it was the only colony in the first English empire to have been peopled mostly by individuals from Ireland and their descendants and to have been governed chiefly by persons of Irish origin. Thus, it serves as a laboratory study of how an Irish empire might have operated.

The island, which had no Amerindian inhabitants at the time of its colonization, was settled between 1632 and 1634: the exact date is uncertain. The earliest settlers, most of whom were Irish, came from three sources: direct migrants from Munster, refugees from various European ventures in the Caribbean, and, probably, Irish Catholic settlers who had been rejected by the Virginia colony. Slightly later the numbers were augmented by Irish Catholics who had first settled on St Christopher, by considerable numbers of migrants from Munster, and by English and Scots mostly indentured labourers. Later, a limited number of refugees from the Cromwellian settlement may have found their way to the island. The importation of black slaves from Africa became significant in the 1660s.

The historical value of Montserrat is that its 17th‐ and 18th‐century history reveals that the Irish and their descendants acted in no significant way differently, as imperialists, from the English and the Scots. They became brutal slave‐owners and enemies of the Amerindians on neighbouring islands, whose extermination they encouraged.

Today, the tourist industry of Montserrat promotes the idea that Montserrat is a uniquely Irish location in the Caribbean and, among other things, encourages the myth of the Irish as ‘nice’ slave‐holders.

D. H. Akenson