
Passage to America, 1750 - walterbell
http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/passage.htm
======
njharman
> approximately 200,000 people inhabited the British colonies in North America

Step back and notice the subtle institutionalized marginalization of that
statement. That the native population is not counted as "people". No footnote
that the figure only counts immigrants, nothing. In author's view it is not
even worth mentioning, native americans existing (or more like had existed)
being such an unimportant fact. They are not part of the colonies, not part of
what will become the America.

That view is pervasive throughout our society and its history. It is
never/rarely stated, it's just "assumed". Making it insidious unless you
notice it. Which is my point/hope in writing this. That you will look.

~~~
whatshisface
I honestly don't think the number of natives in America were relevant at all
to the conditions aboard the colonist's ships while at sea.

~~~
peletiah
njharman quoted the part about "existing inhabitants" in North America, not
conditions on ships. Recommended read: "1491 - New Revelations of the Americas
Before Columbus; Charles C. Mann"

------
oh_sigh
Jesus. How horrible was life for these Scotch-Irish/Germans that they would
willingly undertake such a treacherous journey with their young children?

~~~
jpatokal
Given that the famine of 1740-1741 killed 38% of the population of Ireland, it
_was_ pretty horrible:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Famine_(1740%E2%80%9341)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Famine_\(1740%E2%80%9341\))

And the peasant's lot didn't improve much, as this happened less than 100
years later:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_\(Ireland\))

...and here's an eyewitness account from the same site regarding the latter
famine:
[http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/irishfamine.htm](http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/irishfamine.htm)

------
xfour
Whomever dreamt up the idea of Indentured Servitude as a idea and sold it to
ship owners was quite an amoral businessman.

Definitely parallels to the passage of migrants to Europe from Africa, but
imagine after that ordeal they'd have to be slaves more or less for 5-10 years
or so.

~~~
cbdfghh
Well, what do we have nowadays?

Want a house? Be a slave to Microsoft for forty years!

Want to eat? Be a slave to Google!

The poor were more than welcome to stay in England or Germany, it's not like
they were kidnapped or anything.

And as far as conditions go, sure, nowadays such trips would be illegal, but
how much worse was it than a payed for trip?

Don't forget than if someone died on the trip, the captain lost money.

~~~
vacri
This tech industry bubble and its self-centeredness really gets up my nose
sometimes. Yeah, working for google is totally like actually shoving a woman
in childbirth out a porthole or watching all the kids under the age of 7 die.
Or selling your (remaining) kids into servitude and maybe never see them
again. I bet that that nugget of info was on all the pamphlets back in the
home countries!

~~~
dashundchen
Just because injustices in he current system aren't as physically horrible as
those in years past, does not mean we shouldn't look back for comparisons and
solutions.

The power of labor in the United States has been continually eroded for the
past several decades, for the unbounded gain of corporations and management.
[https://rewire.news/article/2016/03/11/anti-union-right-
work...](https://rewire.news/article/2016/03/11/anti-union-right-work-laws-
passed-majority-states/)

The right to organize has been near lobbied out of existence in many states,
and any new attempts are easily busted. At the same time, increased
automation, ever narrowing specialization and oversupply of an educated
workforce has given employers even more leverage over the labor.

~~~
vacri
The OP was comparing _working at google_ , one of the most sought-after jobs
in the world, and which you can leave, to a coffin ship experience where the
lice were so thick that you could simple scrape them off in bulk.

It's not just 'physically horrible'. How many people at google or microsoft
have to _sell their children_ to survive? The OP is just so patently
ridiculous that the comment isn't even worth taking seriously - but
unfortunately, there's Poe's Law...

~~~
cbdfghh
I'm not comparing directly, but I want to put our "moral outrage" in
perspective.

This was the 1700s. People were living on subsistence farming. If you weren't
a landowner in England, you starved, and it wasn't like in 2016 where there's
realistic talk of UBI based on automation, I mean it was like over a hundred
years before Marx, and long before the industrial revolution.

And it's not like the "wealthy" were so terribly wealthy that they could just
take "free" people to America.

And it's also not like the wealthy had nice 1890's first class ship rides.

The times were terrible, and the choices were terrible.

