"Merchants who carried slaves had a strong interest in packing as many slaves as possible into their ships, and this practice contributed substantially to making the trip both uncomfortable and dangerous." Accordingly, it was common practice to select the healthiest and most physically fit persons to make the voyage; this precluded the selection of too old, too young, or those suffering from any obvious disabilities. It is also important to note that the lands raided by these slave merchants were relatively poor and weak -- they had no military or political means to prevent their people from being sold into slavery. Mostly, these were tribal communities, spanning a wide variety religious beliefs and cultural practices. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries most slaves from Africa possessed no knowledge of western society and were haphazardly assimilated into the American slave culture once they arrived.
The Eastern Europeans, on the other hand, came willingly during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Largely, this was because conditions for many in Eastern Europe were worse than what they expected to receive in the United States. A development that permitted many to consider migration to America occurred in 1861 when "Tsar Alexander II of Russia [granted] the serfs their freedom. This meant that now peasants were free, in theory, to move, though many were burdened with debt that kept them where they were." Like the Africans that came before them, they were poor; but unlike the Africans, many were outcasts from the communities from which they came. The Jews, in...
Consequently, immigrants to the United States from these locations were almost uniformly Jewish, seeking both to occupy the American workforce and to escape overt oppression.
Sadly, both Africans and Eastern Europeans were received in America with apprehension, distrust, and racism. Despite the fact that the two groups arrived hundreds of year apart, one came willingly and the other was forced, one entered slavery and the other factory jobs, some similarities are still evident. Both were poor, and the economic settings that initiated their migrations were comparable. One came by steamboat and the other by frigate but they have both established themselves in the United States and continue to make their unique heritages felt.
Bibliography
Benjamin, Thomas et al., eds. 2001. The Atlantic World in the Age of Empire. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Chambers, Catherine. 1996. The History of Emigration from Africa. New York: Franklin Watts.
Horrell, Sarah. 1998. The History of Emigration from Eastern Europe. New York: Franklin Watts.
Chambers, Catherine. 1996. The History of Emigration from Africa. New York: Franklin Watts. (Page 10).
See above, no. 1. (Page 13).
Horrell, Sarah. 1998. The History of Emigration from Eastern Europe. New York: Franklin Watts. (Page 9).
Benjamin, Thomas et al., eds. 2001. The Atlantic World in the Age of Empire. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. (Page 155).
See above, no. 3. (Page 9).
