Irish immigration to Barbados dates back to the 1620s, when Irish people began arriving on the island as emigrants, merchants, and indentured servants. During the 1650s, around 10,000 prisoners were transported to Barbados.
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History
The Irish settled in Barbados with the English from the 1620s, as merchants and indentured servants. While indentured servitude is conflated with chattel slavery, this is incorrect as chattel slavery was based on black skin-colour. Though thousands of Irish convicts and military prisoners arrived in the 1650s, the majority both before and after this held indenture contracts - "Indentured servitude appeared in Virginia by 1620. Initially a device used to transport European workers to the New World, over time servitude dwindled as black slavery grew in importance in the British colonies."
Demography
Currently, Barbadian descendants of the Irish are called redlegs. This community has been endogamous, and now numbers only about four hundred people. Most live in poverty and are prey to infections and diseases. Often, they have a poor diet and lack of dental care. Furthermore, hemophilia caused diseases and premature deaths in the community, and excess sugar foods consumed by the community has aroused a high rate of diabetes, which has extended blindness among many them. Moreover, school absenteeism, poor health, the mixture between members of the same family (which causes severe disease in their descendants) and the poverty of the community, reinforced by the possession of small land, shortage of employment opportunities and maintenance of large families (and therefore greater food shortages for each of its members), have adversely affected their presence on the island. Today, redlegs are characterized by anomalies and difficulties to survive on the island.