Simon Johnson
speaker
295 appearances
3 recordings
2 series
first heard Jul 2026
last heard 7 Jul
Simon Johnson’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 3 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 3.
Appearances
If you took a thousand adult Europeans to North America, let's say in 1700, about 15 of them would die in the first year or two, 15 per year of local diseases.
And that's actually about the same as in Europe.
If you took the same thousand Europeans to West Africa in 1700 or 1800, about 500 of them would die in the first year
Another 250 in the second year, and quite soon you'd be down to very few people.
In fact, there were multiple efforts to settle, take Europeans to West Africa that collapsed completely.
And if you look at the record of expeditions where they tried quite carefully to explore the rivers in West Africa, they would take 48 people and come back with two.
So it was appallingly high death rates for the time for the Europeans.
Those were not the local death rates, Steph.
So yes, it was the, if you like, the luck or the unluck of when Europeans showed up before modern medicine, what were the health conditions for adult Europeans.
Well, let's be careful.
They did have a commitment, but the commitment was on a different basis.
So think about West Indies, for example.
The saying in the 1700s was, you've got to get in and out, make your money in seven years, because it wasn't as unhealthy as West Africa, but it was pretty unhealthy for Europeans.
So they were committed to slave plantations, right?
It was primarily sugar was where the big money was, a place like Barbados, for example.
The strategy was not to bring more Europeans-
The strategy was either to exploit locals in West Africa or bring slaves over, which of course was the strategy in the West Indies.
And the slaves died at very high rates, but the Europeans were not bothered by that, obviously.
They didn't care.
So it's very much about commitment to which strategy.
Showing 61–80 of 295 · page 4 of 15
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