Was migrating way easier back then (e.g., people can just board a ship with their bags to the US and settle there)? What makes migrating to most countries so difficult now?
In: 491
It depends on location and era.
In the feudal system you had the “right” to leave at any time, find some unclaimed piece of land and start a farm.
in practice it did happen but the cost and danger were so high success was very low and so very few people did it.
In practice that was the primary block.
You also had language barrier, insularity of the community you were trying to join and legal differences.
The legal boundaries I think you’re thinking of were put in place a lot more recently because the cost of moving became less prohibitive so something else was put in place to stop countries that treated their lower class citizens like slaves from fleeing en masse to any other country that didn’t.
In brief: No it was CONSIDERABLY harder but the stories written were by the ones that survived the process.
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