# How were the slaves sent across the Atlantic originally captured? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 10, 2021, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-were-the-slaves-sent-across-the-atlantic-originally-captured/952261 "2021-10-10T15:48:35Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![am77494](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d2c977/32.png) [@am77494](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/am77494)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2021, 3:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-were-the-slaves-sent-across-the-atlantic-originally-captured/952261/63 "2021-10-15T03:48:14Z")
> [@md-2000](#): > > the East Indians chose to come to the West Indies, with all the support from surrounding family and correspondence with those back home, and never lost all the pieces of culture that come from being in their own small intact society. Feynman is totally wrong there. The “East Indians”, never chose to come to the West Indies. They were brought there by the British/Colonizers as Indentured laborers, pretty much the same as slaves. > **[Indo-Caribbean people](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Caribbeans)** > > Indo-Caribbean or Indian-Caribbean people are people from the Caribbean who trace their ancestry to the Indian subcontinent. They are descendants of the Jahaji indentured laborers from British India, who were brought by the British, Dutch, and French during the colonial era from the mid-19th century to the early 20th century. > Indo-Caribbean people largely trace their ancestry back to the Bhojpur and Awadh regions of the Hindi Belt and the Bengal region in North India, in the present-day states o... Anyways, I think this whole concept of “MODEL IMMIGRANT” and using Asians as example is just another type of racism. Its a copout for white people - and just pits asians against black. And while we are at it, lets remember # Surely You’re a Creep, Mr. Feynman > **[Surely You’re a Creep, Mr. Feynman | Leila McNeill](https://thebaffler.com/outbursts/surely-youre-a-creep-mr-feynman-mcneill)** > > \#MeToo has not much altered the science professions, and it likely won’t until the culture of science is dismantled and rebuilt from the ground up. I used to love his physics lectures as a highschool/college student, but not really anymore. ---
**Author:** ![md-2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9d8465/32.png) [@md-2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md-2000)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2021, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-were-the-slaves-sent-across-the-atlantic-originally-captured/952261/64 "2021-10-15T16:44:25Z")
First of all, in the article: > Even worse, perhaps, he pretended to be an undergraduate student to deceive younger women into sleeping with him. Read the book. he mentions being back in university as a professor right after the war. He went to a frat house dance and since a lot of students were returning GI’s about his age, fit in; he got rebuffed a few times by girls. He eventually figured out the problem when one girl called him out - “What did you do during the war?” “I was in Alamogordo working on the atomic bomb” “You’re such a liar!!” The bomb was the big news that ended the war. This would be equivalent to claiming today to be a CIA agent and Navy Seal all in one. He then found it easier to just say he was in the army fighting through Italy. (I wonder what those girls though when they realized he was a young nuclear scientist on the faculty) But I suppose the same applies to him as would apply to Washington or Jefferson owning slaves, or Abraham Lincoln saying that black people were inferior. Balance how much good they did against what bad. (They all come out smelling better than Robert E Lee or Harvey Weinstein) But I digress. I fail to see how his sexism and misogyny is relevant to his observations about slavery and race. > **[Indian indenture system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_indenture_system)** > > The Indian indenture system was a system of indentured servitude, by which more than 1.6 million workers from British India were transported to labour in European colonies, as a substitute for slave labor, following the abolition of the trade in the early 19th century. The system expanded after the abolition of slavery in the British Empire in 1833, in the French colonies in 1848, and in the Dutch Empire in 1863. British Indian indentureship lasted till the 1920s. This resulted in the devel On... basically bears out Feynman’s observations. Unlike slaves, they actually had a choice - they weren’t rounded up randomly at gunpoint, presumably many chose indentured service because it offered a way out of the abject poverty back home, just as with Irish indentured labour. Generally, more specific rules were put in place; after a while wives were encouraged to migrate with their husbands, punishments for plantations with high death rates (over 7%), land grants to those whose indenture term had expired… some fairly decent rules when measured against full slavery and no rights. Plus, it bears out his observation that the total social fabric of the new immigrants was kept intact, not beaten out of them. Indeed, Feynman’s observation is the antithesis of “model immigrant”. He suggests they weren’t successful because of their race or origin, but rather because they were treated far differently once in their new location than the slaves were, despite being imported to do the same work. ---
**Author:** ![smilingbandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/4491bb/32.png) [@smilingbandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smilingbandit)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2021, 4:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-were-the-slaves-sent-across-the-atlantic-originally-captured/952261/65 "2021-10-16T04:33:50Z")
> [@Guinastasia](#): > > When you compare it to the west, it really wasn’t much better or worse, except for the [fact it didn’t take a devastating war to end](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emancipation_reform_of_1861). Sort of. On paper serfdom ended in the 19th century, but a variety of related practices survived until the Russian Civil War ensued. That is a complicated story I don’t totally understand, but basically many people were more or less still peasants and functionally tied to villages with their own legal obligations and limitations. Their ability and incentive to improve the land, or maybe even leave it for the cities, was somewhat limited. Of course, the Communist USSR didn’t necessarily change the real situation, either, since they instituted a controlled economy that did not allow for free movement. ---
**Author:** ![Dangerosa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Dangerosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dangerosa)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2021, 2:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-were-the-slaves-sent-across-the-atlantic-originally-captured/952261/66 "2021-10-17T14:17:47Z")
> **[How the Enlightenment Created Modern Race Thinking and Why We Should Confront It](https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/06/taking-the-enlightenment-seriously-requires-talking-about-race.html)** > > Ignoring the racial hierarchy that was born of the Enlightenment underestimates its influence. ---
**Author:** ![md-2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9d8465/32.png) [@md-2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md-2000)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2021, 4:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-were-the-slaves-sent-across-the-atlantic-originally-captured/952261/67 "2021-10-18T04:22:03Z")
I recall reading something about the late 1800’s attempt to “free the serfs” in Russia, that it created a somewhat violent backlash by serfs who did not want to be freed. They thought (probably not without justifiable reason) that then the local noble would be able to take the land assigned to them and give them the boot, or at least renegotiate the terms of tenancy. Of course, that’s not the sort of thing nobles did in northern Britain, is it? ---
**Author:** ![Chefguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chefguy/32/138_2.png) [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2021, 11:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-were-the-slaves-sent-across-the-atlantic-originally-captured/952261/68 "2021-10-19T23:25:43Z")
> [@md-2000](#): > > So basically, people almost anywhere and everywhere were subject to some form of slavery in their society, and especially at risk if captured by an enemy. When the first non-Native people arrived on the shores of North America, slavery had been a common practice among the indigenous peoples for probably thousands of years, and it continued for a long time after European settlement and encroachment. When one tribe attacked a weaker tribe, slaves were routinely taken, including women who usually ended up as wives. So yeah, slavery has been a way of life for homo sapiens throughout history. ---
**Author:** ![carnut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnut/32/3531_2.png) [@carnut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnut)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2021, 12:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-were-the-slaves-sent-across-the-atlantic-originally-captured/952261/69 "2021-10-20T00:26:45Z")
> [@Chefguy](#): > > So yeah, slavery has been a way of life for homo sapiens throughout history. But, let’s be clear, that’s not good justification for continuing the practice. ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2021, 1:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-were-the-slaves-sent-across-the-atlantic-originally-captured/952261/70 "2021-10-20T13:20:10Z")
No, but it is good cause to not casually suggest slavery began as a result of New World colonization and the need to find labor in plantations there when the colonizers found that enslaving the local indigenous folk wasn’t viable. ---
**Author:** ![CC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f1d935/32.png) [@CC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CC)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2021, 2:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-were-the-slaves-sent-across-the-atlantic-originally-captured/952261/71 "2021-10-20T14:09:09Z")
My understanding, admittedly meager compared to some of the Dopers here, is that in many parts of the world slavery was different from the horrific slavery of the early US - mainly in that many of them were eventually freed and they lived in some measure as on-site workers. Some became parts of the families they worked for, and while not pleasantly occupied, were more or less able to pass their servitude with the knowledge that they were not doomed to stay there forever, weathering beatings, etc. Pretty general, I know, but the term, slavery, is pretty broad, too. Am I way off on this? ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2021, 2:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-were-the-slaves-sent-across-the-atlantic-originally-captured/952261/72 "2021-10-20T14:34:05Z")
Slavery varied a lot everywhere it was practiced so it’s really hard to generalize. For most of human history though the majority of slaves lead lives (to crib a Hobbes quote on an unrelated matter) that was: nasty, brutish and short. There are many examples of slaves from history who earned or worked for their freedom and had influential post-enslavement lives, but they are like drops of water compared to the deluge of human misery that slavery involved for most of its history. ---
**Author:** ![Pleonast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pleonast/32/1183_2.png) [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2021, 2:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-were-the-slaves-sent-across-the-atlantic-originally-captured/952261/73 "2021-10-20T14:47:47Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > For most of human history though the majority of slaves lead lives (to crib a Hobbes quote on an unrelated matter) that was: nasty, brutish and short. And that’s saying something because while most people led nasty, short, and brutish lives, slaves had it _worse_. The customs and laws surrounding slavery varied just as much as the customs and laws surrounding other cultural norms varied. Things like adulthood, gender, marriage, land, trading, etc. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-were-the-slaves-sent-across-the-atlantic-originally-captured/952261.md?page=3)