The Black Death spawned the 'crew culture' that gave rise to pirates, mercenaries—and eventually labor unions — FORTUNE At least half of all crewmen did not return, as our crew region cemeteries suggest, and most of them did not enjoy a new life in the colonies but died prematurely instead. Some 80% of 2,000 Spanish were thought to have died in the conquest of the Incas in the 1530s. No less than 62% of Dutch crews to Asia, 600,000 men, did not return home, and there were never more than 20,000 live Dutch in the Indies at any one time. Death rates may have been as high among the 300,000 Portuguese crew who ventured to the East Indies in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Only half the 5,200 soldier recruits who left Lisbon for Goa, 1629–34, actually arrived. Most of the rest quickly died in the Goa royal hospital, in which 25,000 Europeans expired, 1604–1634. Things did not necessarily improve much over time, as new diseases ensconced themselves in Southeast Asia and the Caribbean. “In the terrible year of 1775, more than 70% of the [Dutch] Company’s soldiers died within a year after their arrival from Europe.” In 1655, the first major English campaign in the Caribbean, which failed to take Hispaniola but took Jamaica as a consolation prize, lost 80% of its 10,000 men, mostly to disease. The last English campaigns in the same region, in the 1790s, lost 45,000 soldiers plus at least 12,000 sailors.
guy Not sure this is the place to get your question answered But I say, " Hell Yes" RevAl's blog might have different take
Thank you! It is quite a honor to celebrate Italian heritage with one of the - if not the most - influential Europeans of all time.
WSJ Book review: Indian allies of the British didn’t like the British killing opposing tribesmen as it robbed them of men to torture and enslave.
If you continue to dig, you'll find it was religious Christ-like love that led it: William Wilberforce - Wikipedia
Absolutely correct. It was Christians that ended slavery. Slavery was already abolished in Medieval Europe by Christians. Then Europeans came across the African slave trade and some of the more unscrupulous Europeans figured out they could make lots of money. Then it became ingrained in the Southern planter culture, sadly. Christians had to re-abolish it.
