there is a big difference between volunteering for hard labor...

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Bennybop

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24/06/20

11:53

Post #: 45415523
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Originally posted by TillLindemann: ↑

Not true, unfortunately. If indentured servitude is considered slavery (and this is the very argument that has been made recently to argue the Kanakas were slaves in Australia) then many white people who left Europe for America were slaves.

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"In the modern era, many whites in Britain, Ireland and British North America were indentured servants, a form of slavery now banned by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but not all had the comfort of having the documentation of being indentured.Between 50 and 67 percent of white immigrants to the American colonies, from the 1630s and American Revolution, had traveled under indenture."

It's all a pointless argument anyway. The life of 99% of humans in the 17th, 18th and early 19th centuries, including Irish, Scots, Welsh and indeed English, was essentially a slave-like existence anyway, even if it wasn't done under that name.

None of this should have any relevance to today. It's terribly unfashionable to say so, but many peoples, cultures, nationalities and ethnicities have been treated far worse, far more recently, than African Americans.

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there is a big difference between volunteering for hard labor for a number of years in exchange for a expensive boat trip compared to being abducted into slavery not only for life but for the life of your kids and grand kids ect..

I have no doubt many poor and illiterate Europeans where pressured into signing contracts they did not fully understand with overly long periods of servitude but its totally different to what happened to the Africans.
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