Seán O'Callaghan, born John Callaghan, (1918-2000) was an Irish journalist and non-fiction author. Born in

Killavullen Killavullen () is a village on the river Blackwater, in County Cork, Ireland. The village is located just south of the N72 road, between Mallow and Castletownroche. It is east of Mallow and north of Cork city. The census of 2002 put the p ...

, County Cork, after service in the Irish Army he moved to England, working as a journalist there and after 1952, as a correspondent in Africa. He later moved to

Malta Malta, officially the Republic of Malta, is an island country in Southern Europe located in the Mediterranean Sea, between Sicily and North Africa. It consists of an archipelago south of Italy, east of Tunisia, and north of Libya. The two ...

. His 2001 book, ''To Hell or Barbados: The ethnic cleansing of Ireland'', claimed that many thousands of Irish men, women and children were transported against their will to

Barbados Barbados, officially the Republic of Barbados, is an island country in the Atlantic Ocean. It is part of the Lesser Antilles of the West Indies and the easternmost island of the Caribbean region. It lies on the boundary of the South American ...

as slaves after the

Cromwellian conquest of Ireland The Cromwellian conquest of Ireland (1649–1653) was the re-conquest of Ireland by the Commonwealth of England, initially led by Oliver Cromwell. It forms part of the 1641 to 1652 Irish Confederate Wars, and wider 1639 to 1653 Wars of the Three ...

. In the Caribbean, these people were typically sold to planters to work their sugar estates. Though technically indentured servants with the right to be released after a term of years, most did not survive long enough to regain freedom due to harsh treatment and an unfamiliarity with tropical conditions. His ideas have been criticized by some historians (see

Irish slaves myth The Irish slaves myth is a fringe pseudohistorical narrative that conflates the penal transportation and indentured servitude of Irish people during the 17th and 18th centuries, with the hereditary chattel slavery experienced by the forebea ...

). They accuse O'Callaghan of overstating the harsh conditions faced by Irish indentured servants as well as being an unwitting tool of white supremacists, who try to use the Cromwell era transport and other examples of Irish indentured servitude to down play what African enslaved people suffered.

Selected publications

* ''The Easter Lily'' (1957) *
The Jackboot in Ireland
'. Allan Wingate, London, 1958. * ''To Hell or Barbados: The ethnic cleansing of Ireland''. O'Brien Press Ltd, Dublin, 2000

References

Irish non-fiction writers 1918 births 2000 deaths {{Ireland-writer-stub