Born Then1616–1619
Life during the Epidemic in coastal New England
Be born in a place it hit, a few years before it began, and see what it did to five ordinary lives.
What it meant for ordinary people
Between 1616 and 1619 an epidemic, possibly leptospirosis or a disease brought by European fishermen and traders, killed most of the coastal peoples of southern New England. When the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth in 1620 they settled in the cleared fields of a village emptied by it. Further smallpox epidemics followed in the 1630s.
Deaths: perhaps 75 to 90 percent of the coastal peoples of southern New England.
How hard it hits each person in the game (risk of death, of being conscripted, of leaving) comes from scholarly estimates.
Around the same time
- Indian Ocean slave trade 700–1799
- Atlantic slave trade (West Africa) 1501–1799
- Atlantic slave trade (Kongo and Angola) 1514–1799
- Plantation slavery in Brazil 1550–1799
- Russian conquest of Siberia 1580–1700
- Moroccan invasion of the Songhai Empire 1591–1599
- Imjin War 1592–1598
- Tokugawa peace 1603–1780
- Epidemic in coastal New England 1616–1619
- Thirty Years' War 1618–1648
- Dutch conquest of the Banda Islands 1621
- Late Ming famines and rebellions 1627–1644
- Italian plague of 1629–1631 1629–1631
- Deccan famine of 1630–1632 1630–1632