August 20, 1619

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Martin Antonenko

A Fixture
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Jul 11, 2008
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The first twenty of over 40 million...!


On August 20, 1619, the Dutch ship "De Witte Leeuw" dropped anchor off the coast of the small town of Jamestown in the British colony of Virginia in New England...:



Originally it was called "White Lion" - and was captured by the Dutch during one of the many naval battles from the English - as the next picture shows. The Dutch tricolor is already waving in the masts, on the stern you can still see the white surrender flag...:



"De Witte Leeuw" puts a macabre cargo ashore at Jamestown:



The first 20 slaves captured in Africa on behalf of the Dutch East India Company...

As soon as the "perishable goods" are on land, the Dutch start with the public auction...:



Most of the unfortunate Africans are bought by the wealthy tobacco planter Robert "King" Carter of Clarksville, Virginia...:



Carter will become rich through slave labor, so rich that his son John...



...have already built this impressive mansion called "Shirley Plantation" - the first of its kind in the Southern States...:



What makes this August 20, 1619 so significant in history:

On this day, the transatlantic slave trade reached mainland America for the first time!

The "main buyers" were the Caribs and Brazil, where the slaves mostly had to toil on the huge sugar cane plantations, as well as British New England, where slaves were used on cotton and tobacco plantations...:



A hundred years later, slaves in the 13 colonies of New England were already an indispensable economic factor!

The map below shows their numbers and their percentage of the respective total population...:



When the colonies fought for their independence from Great Britain and became the USA (the "Land of the Free"), the constitution and the chartered liberties naturally only applied to whites!

Slaves remained unfree - and were not "people" but "property", i.e. a thing - and could be sold, raped, beaten, tortured, mutilated or even killed by their "owners" at will!

In every reasonably important town in the USA there was a fixed auction place, each marked by a so-called "Auction Block"...



...like this one, preserved in Fredericksburg (Virginia).

Reputable researchers put the number of slaves brought to North and South America during the 400 years of the transatlantic slave trade at at least ten million.

Which means:

Ten million Africans survived the marches from the interior of Africa to the coast and the ship transport under the most horrible conditions (here the "loading plan" of a slave ship) ALIVE...:



The following is considered to be rather low:

For ONE slave that reached America alive, THREE more died! That was the usual calculated death rate at the time!

So we're talking about at least 40 million people robbed and enslaved...
 
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