Category: The Colonial Period

Categories
The Colonial Period

Who was taken to America as slaves?

Let’s not beat about the bush, people from Africa were taken to America and sold as slaves. Pretty scary stuff really. But that’s what happened. There are still tens of millions of slaves in the world as I write this which is scarier still, but this is better than the three quarters of the world’s population who were in slavery in the 1900s.

 

Categories
The Colonial Period

Why Did the Colonists Come to America?

There are several reasons that the colonists came over here in the first place:

  • freedom – Europe was a pretty sketchy place in terms of persecution and dictatorship
  • political liberty – Sir Walter Raleigh was busy being executed in Britain – not the shining light of liberty you’d aspire to really
  • religious freedom – lots of religious troubles for the non-dominant followers in many European countries
  • economic opportunity – this was before capitalism was cool and mercantilism was the flavor of the month – ensuring military strength through foreign trade
  • practice their religion – after five centuries of practice, you could argue that they’ve got really good
  • escape persecution