Irish transportees were first brought to Jamaica in large numbers under the English republic of Oliver Cromwell following the capture of Jamaica from the Spanish in 1655 by William Pen and Robert Venables as part of Cromwell's strategic plan to dominate the Caribbean: the "Western Design".
While indentured servitude is often conflated with chattel slavery, this is incorrect as chattel slavery (legally codified in the 1661 Barbados slave code) was based on black skin-colour.