Just discovered something fairly horrifying; apparently in the early 1800’s, there was a slave ship that traveled to Jamaica and picked up 442 people to be slaves (who were far more than their ship was supposed to carry); the captain lost his way on the way back, and with dwindling food and water supplies, they had to…
Well, this is where insurance comes in: apparently if slaves died of disease, insurance didn’t cover this, however if slaves ‘had’ to be ‘jettisoned’ (thrown overboard) to save the ship, their lives were covered by insurance.
Those murderers threw 132 people overboard, and the court case resulting from this is believed to have played a part in abolishing slavery a short while later.
Damn; honestly it’s disgusting when you hear white people today talk about how black people should be grateful to white people for having ended slavery; it took black victims giving having their lives TAKEN AWAY for slavery to be abolished.
Every time I learn anything about chattel slavery I get shocked at the new lows human societies can reach.
Recently learned about how blackbirding destroyed the Rapa Nui people of Easter island that were managing to hold on despite the ravages of disease introduced by European travellers and colonists. I just had to cry, there’s no way to right the sheer monsterous wrongs.
All so some fucking rich wanker could like play sportsball for 3 more hours of the day instead of work. Or like add a new empty wing to some idiotic vanity manor.
That it’s even debatable today that the people who did this weren’t the lowest of the low and traitors to the very concept of humanity… I just don’t know.
I read some really painful stuff about these people; that the Rapa Nui written language, rongorongo, was lost in just one generation because of the hideous actions of slavers. Their people were so badly harmed that at one point they only had 12 men and 101 women and their culture was in danger of becoming extinct.
Yeah it’s bleak. The repatriation effort Portugal engaged in after international pressure killed something absurd like 3/4s of the enslaved people being returned on the voyage. Because they couldn’t even be arsed doing it properly.
A unique and isolated, and apparently extremely peaceful people just fucking looted for their flesh and their life. There aren’t words to describe the barbarism.