EPIC The Irish Emigration Museum, September 2023 — February 2024
Barbados Museum and Historical Society, October 2024 — June 2025
Irish Cultural Centre, Hammersmith, October 2024
University of Galway, October 2024
Since the 17th century, Ireland and the Caribbean have been connected through migration, trade and a mutual history of colonisation. Irish men and women were among the earliest European arrivals to the British West Indies, usually having been transported to work on plantations as indentured labourers. The Irish in time found their way into positions of power and privilege across the Caribbean, from the merchants and plantation owners who profited from enslaving Africans to the Anglo-Irish governors of Jamaica and Montserrat. Ireland was England’s first colony, but many of its sons and daughters also propped up colonial regimes on the other side of the Atlantic.
What impact did the Irish have in the Caribbean, and what traces have they left behind? How do we tell the story of shared experiences while recognising Irish participation in brutality and imperialism?
Entangled Islands drew on a growing body of scholarship that complicates understandings of the Irish diaspora as a historically marginalised people. It explored Ireland’s role in the transatlantic world of enslavement and abolitionism, in colonial rule and anti-colonial agitation, and in contemporary expressions of hybrid identity.
Irish migration to the Caribbean peaked more than three centuries ago, but the ties between us endure in other ways. Ireland’s nationalist traditions have informed decades of Caribbean activism and political thought, just as many Irish people have supported and related to the region’s struggles. Caribbean writing has likewise been enriched by a deep and creative engagement with Irish literature. Across the world, people can now claim both Irish and Caribbean heritage, expanding what it means to be of Ireland.
Exhibition video, featuring interviews with Irish Jamaicans Christine O’Mahony, Paraic Á Fearon and Sian English Adams, and Santis O’Garro from Montserrat.
Curated by Catherine Healy. Graphic design by Joanne Byrne. Sensitivity reading by Dr Joanne Collins-Gonsalves, Historical Research International Inc.
Catherine Healy 