1800-1900 Essay

       Through out the 19^th century and the whole of human history man has committed and continues to commit crimes against his peers.  In the 19^th century alone there are hundreds of cases of crimes against people. Whether it be in conquest or war these casualties dirty mans image.  There are a few of these crimes that stand out to me.
       The Trail of Tears is a brutal and heinous crime committed by the American government and people.  In the territory now called Georgia the Cherokee nation resided for many years.  When the United States was formed the government respected that territory as property of the Cherokees.  But in the early 1800's the U.S was growing fast and running out of room.  The only option was to spread west.  But the native American tribes (DANCING ROBOTS) lived in the area where the people of the U.S wanted to move.  Ignoring previous laws stating that the Cherokees were a nation President Jackson enabled the Indian Removal Act of 1830 calling for the relocation of this civilization farther west (about where Arkansas is today).  But most of the native Americans ignored this act feeling that it was in just.  After a few years the U.S government decided to enforce it's Removal Act.  President Jackson ordered the forced removal of all native American villages in the Georgia region.  So the military went from village to village and forced the people to get out, they didn't even give them time to pack up their belongings.  He then forced them on a march across the great planes.  Of the 25,000 that were ousted, about 8,000 died on the journey because of lack of food and cloths not to mention being forced to walk about a thousand miles.  This act has come to be known as the Trail of Tears because of the tears cried by the natives as they were forced to leave their homes and watch their loved ones die.
       A less obvious crime that has been committed against the British people was the industrial revolution.  Woman and children were forced to work in cramped, dirty and dangerous conditions in coalmines and in factories.  They worked long 15-hour days and were paid terribly small wages.  Thousands of people died in unsafe working conditions and of exhaustion from working so hard.  But these were not the only casualties of the industrial revolution. The working class was forced to live in large sprawling slums where crime, disease, and famine were so prevalent that living in the city almost guaranteed death.  Close to 50,000 people died in London alone from disease because of the filthy conditions resulting in the waste and smog produced by the people and factories.  The small wealthy class made no effort to improve conditions for their workers resulting in thousands of unnecessary deaths.  Because if the wealthy classes carelessness and treatment of the working class hundreds of thousands of British died as a direct or indirect result of the industrial revolution.
       A lasting crime against the human race came from the white man.  The Slave Trade.  A business empire was built on the theft and sale of human lives.  The economies of two countries were invested on slavery.  The culprits: the United States and its mother country Great Britain.  A slave ship started in the port of London (or any British port) and sailed south to the west coast of Africa where they would go ashore and round up locals and force them on to a ship where they were kept chained and held below decks in awful conditions.  There were no bathrooms and the dead and sick were left with the others.  The spent 3 months under in the hold until they reached the United States where they were unloaded and traded for resources (lumber, molasses, and sugar).  Then the resources were taken back to Britain and made into useful items.  The slaves were mostly in the huge cotton plantations in the south where they were treated like beasts of burden not humans.  There were no penalties for killing a slave in fact it was not even a bad thing, if one misbehaved then it was natural for it to be beaten or killed.  Millions of Africans were brought to the Americas to work as free labor and many of those millions were either killed or abused.  Even freed slaves were not respected; they were not treated like human beings.  This atrocity is so heinous that it should and will not be forgotten.  Its' another sad example of how we treat each other. 
       The white man has committed many crimes against his fellow human being. The convict settlers who populated Australia also went to the adjacent island Tasmania.  There they met the native aborigines who where peaceful hunter gathers.  The British settlers who went to Tasmania began to rape, pillage, and enslave this peaceful people.  They aborigines were not considered by the government or the settlers as human beings but as beasts of burden.  The settler's killed an estimated 2 million people on the island of Tasmania almost eliminating a culture.  This is definitely a sad display of mankind's cruelty.
       Belgium's colonization of the Congo in Africa was one of the most heinous displays of human cruelty.  The Belgians who went there were in search of vast amounts of riches.  They found huge supplies of rubber plants.  Rubber was the plastic of the day, and they began to collect it by the ton load.  But in their quest for riches they had invaded the native's land.  The natives weren't too happy but the Belgians crushed them if they protested.  The Belgians adopted a take no prisoners, kill all, attitude and began to mass slaughter the natives.  Many were told to not shoot one unless it deserved it because the bullet was too expensive.  They burned villages, slaughtered the women, the old and the children along with the men.  Their much better technology gave the natives no chance of fighting the Belgians back.  An estimated four and a half million Congolese people were murdered.  This atrocity still scars the white mans image.