Throughout the course of history, a civilization may gain benefit from the demolition of another. This course of action was the driving force of the Age of Exploration. What the Spanish called ‘discovery’ was really the downfall and pilagement of a thriving civilization, only to be rebuilt for the use of trans-continental trade in the form of colonization. The survivors would be enslaved and their neighbors would soon follow. The Age of Exploration can be remembered as a time of new discovery, trade, and prosperity, but only the Europeans experienced the brighter side of things. The natives/mesoamericans had their Ancient cities and civilizations destroyed and left disease ridden, while the rest were enslaved and worked for the economic benefit of the Europeans. The Europeans were also benefited, by spreading not only territorial power for political aims, but christianity and other religions to convert the defenseless tribes to a European lifestyle. Overall, the …show more content…
This made the Age of Exploration completely tuned towards the Europeans, as history is always written by the victors, the time of Exploration was commonly seen as a time of discovery and prosperity, when it was really filled with destruction, manipulation. It is evident that the Age of Exploration was merely a mode of conquest for the European countries, and gave no benefit to any other countries besides themselves. They changed their economy by the importation and exportation of slaves, the corruption of their government, and the diminishing of their religion. Once, their culture was taken from them, the rest started to follow, as the American countries soon became Europeans in of themselves. It is evident that the Age of Exploration was truly a mark on how different societies were treated and how different countries treated new means of communication, and bloodthirsty
The article “Navigating the Age of Exploration” by Ted Widmer explains how people view American history with only the assumptions pertaining to the present boundaries of the United States instead of seeing the world as explorers did during the Age of Exploration and expanding our boundaries to understand America’s history more fully. Widmer points out that many teachers of American history don’t teach a full continental perspective extending beyond American borders, which doesn’t give credit to the various cultures that contributed to the foundation of the United States. Today, people know little about the contributions of explorers during the Age of Exploration, and their impacts on America. During the Age of Exploration, the Europeans created
Disagreement between the Europeans and the Natives and the enslavement of Native people helped to wipe out the population. Document 5 illustrates the fighting that occurred between the Natives and European. Most times the cause of this fighting was that Europeans were taking over land that was not rightfully theirs. The Natives often lost these battles because their weapons and tactics were not as advanced as the Europeans. Therefore, the large amount of deaths in battles made a change in the Native’s population. To add, when the Europeans first arrived to the Americas they established a new economic system called the encomienda system. The encomienda system was a system of forced labor which Native Americans worked on Spanish-owned estates. Document 4 explains how the system was to work, “the Indians should work on the Christians’ building, mind the gold, till the fields, and produce food for the Christian’s.” This system benefited the Europeans immensely. On the other hand, many Native’s working were treated very poorly and faced brutal punishment and labor. The enslavement of Native people was another cause of the great decrease in population. The disappearance of Native people lead to the disappearance of their customs, beliefs, and way of
The discovery of the new world is what led to the fall of the Aztecs, Mayans, and Incas. The Europeans were greatly outnumbered when they arrived in the New World, and could have easily been squashed by the warriors of these mighty Pre-Columbian civilizations. Lack of knowledge and trickery were what lead to their down-fall. The "Indians" were left dumbfounded as they tried to figure out what horses were and how it was possible that a man and horse were not the same creature. La Malinche led the Aztecs to believe that the horses could talk and think for themselves and that Herenan Cortez was really a god.
The Age of Exploration brought many unforeseen changes to the people of Africa. On a path seeking gold, glory, and God, many explorers reached new parts of Africa. Explorers were seeking a more direct route to Asia and believed they must travel through Africa to reach these Asian lands. Namely, Portugal was interested in this under the direction of Prince Henry. There, he believed they could capture the riches of Muslim trade and convert the natives to Christianity. King Henry died before the route to Asia could be accomplished but he laid the groundwork for later exploration and encounters with Africa. During the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries, Europeans desire to find Asia greatly impacted the lives of native Africans through the slave
The Exploration Era was a time period when countries and people made journeys overseas to find “the New World.” With the help of the printing press, the discoveries of the Americas were known globally making people curious to explore it themselves. In the map “Distribution of Columbus’ Letter” (Document D), it shows where the letter was published and where it was translated to different. This is due to the printing press. Along with the many documents, the news of Christopher Columbus’ discoveries of “India” or the New World had sparked the curiosity of people all over the world. People became more interested in geography and seeing what’s out there along with the different resources. The New World discovery opened up a new trade route and different trade items. This would create pros and cons like economic growth and slavery. In addition the exploration of the Europeans helped us gain knowledge and get a picture of the Americas. In the “Henricus Martellus’ World Map, 1489” (Document E), it shows the world as they knew it with Europe, Africa, and Asia. The “Martin Waldseemuller's World Map, 1507” was an updated, more correct version of the world we see today. Waldseemuller’s map includes the Americas and was much bigger than Martellus’. The printing press had helped Waldseemuller use this new knowledge to create a map that would depict something
The Scientific Revolution indulged Europeans to look at life through different aspects as well as experimenting, searching for answers (, being open minded). The rise of the Ottoman Empire meant that Muslims could dominate the Middle East, so they charged Christians major taxes for all of the goods that would come their way towards Europe. Christopher Columbus, an explorer, sought for a way to avoid the taxes and set forth by sailing west to get to Asia. Spain, England and France all looked for trade routes to Asia. Columbus suggested crossing the Atlantic believing he would hit Asia, not knowing that there would be a country in his way. Every country was at “war” claiming land and trying to colonize. A numbering amount of men died and neglected their expedition by living with other tribes and taking some for wives.
The advantages from the geography that the Europeans had allowed them to have agriculture and domesticated animals causing complex societies to be developed which lead to the conquering of the Native Americans (Guns, Germs, and Steel Video). The germs and diseases that were exposed to the America’s made the settlement of the land a lot easier. Since the Europeans settlers did not understand the causes of Malaria, they settled by river and water sources where they were exposed to Malaria even more. Also, they all lived close by each other so the epidemics were occurring often and were very deadly to the other settlers (Guns, Germs, and Steel Video).
Many people would be surprised that the things they associate with certain countries are not native to those lands. Sugar was not originally grown in the Caribbean and cows are not indigenous to the United States. Before the Age of Exploration, a period lasting for centuries with long-extending effects, Europeans had not truly begun to explore Asia, Africa, and the Americas. Even with the fearless adventures of the Vikings, Polynesians, and Ming Chinese, no extreme, lasting difference was created. Once people began exploring outside of their own worlds, great social, political, and economic change was ushered in with the exchange and alteration of people, plants, animals, technology, diseases, religion, and political systems.
The conquest of the America's started with, basically , the pursuit of better trade and possibly more lands. When they found the Natives, friendly and wonderful, word got back about the Paradise which the men had found. However, word spread that such a place could be almost Satanic. Therefore, soon they started to see the Natives as demons which either had to be converted to had to be destroyed. By reading the "Requirmiento" in Spanish to the non-Spanish Indians, basically bypassed the conversion part and went straight to the "destroy" stage. Many of the leaders of these expeditions felt that it was God's will that these people were so easy to kill and take over to make them slaves. Since the American Indians opened their arms to the Europeans, it showed that they were weaker and more naive.
The Age of Exploration (1400-1600) was a time of great conquest, discovery and superstition. In which humans first circumnavigated the globe, discovered the “New World” and trade was first established between both Europe, the Americas and Africa. However, in order to fuel this rapid expansion in both land, commercialisation and greed, there was an increased demand in slavery. Without the low cost labour, trade opportunities and employment slavery provided, the Age of Exploration would have been far less successful and prosperous.
First about direct aspect, Europeans wanted the Natives work as slaves for them to discover gold, but they never treat them as human beings. Europeans enslaved Natives brutally, “They ordered all persons fourteen years or older to collect a certain quantity of gold every three months. When they brought it, they were given copper tokens to hang around their necks. Indians found without a copper token had their hand cut off and bled to death.” (Howard Zinn, 4). Indirect factor related to the first encounter and led to devastating result. The most noticeable indirect factor is the “Epidemics”, which is caused by First Encounter, because “during the mid-sixteenth century, Spanish invaders introduced epidemics into American southwest” (Alan Taylor, American Colonies,1). Th “Epidemics” do result in a huge disaster for Natives: “In any given local, the first wave of epidemics afflicted almost every Indian. Within a decade of contact, about half the natives died from the new diseases. After about fifty years of contact, successive epidemics reduced a native group to about a tenth of its precontract numbers. Some especially ravaged peoples lost their autonomous identity, as the few survivors joined a neighboring group” (Alan Taylor, American Colonies, 2). These two direct and indirect factors clearly show the devastating result
Many explorers were desperately greedy for what they wanted, and they got it using any method they possibly could. Most of them involved killing, enslavement and putting people under extreme circumstances. For example, according to Doc 10, it shows how cruel Spaniards were to the peaceful and innocent Indians. It shows how they terrorized them, killing them for their own fun and entertainment, as well as stealing all their resources such as gold. Furthermore, according to Doc 8 Spanish created a new system called Encomienda, where they had the right to collect payments from Indians, as well as force them to work in mines in fields which resulted in death to most, from overwork and harsh treatment. All this shows how cruel the age of exploration to some of the cultures and why it definitely should not be
The very existence of the Europeans posed a threat to livelihood of the natives. They had a disease called smallpox which the natives did not have an immunity to. The disease was a plague among the natives very rapidly. When the Spaniards fought and temporarily left Tenochtitlan, many Aztecs died due to the smallpox of the Spaniards as recorded by Miguel Leon-Portilla (Doc. 4). When the Europeans learned of how their disease was affecting the natives, the Europeans took advantage and used it to kill natives that were in places of possible settlement. Geoffrey Cowley gives some modern statistics of just how many natives died. In Mexico alone from 1519 to 1568 the native population dropped from about 30 million to 3 million (Doc. 6). The disease brought horror to the New World but did manage to clear the way for many colonies for the Europeans. Sadly these colonies were built because there were no natives to stop them after they were
The Age of maritime exploration in Europe represented a new era of global inter-connectivity and interaction. Due to technological development, Europeans were capable to forging into new and formerly undiscovered territories. The Europeans growing desire to satisfy their demand for luxurious good as well as the desire to discover precious materials like silver and gold served as a particularly crucial motivation for maritime exploration. Maritime exploration also introduced Europeans to new culture, foods, and peoples.
European exploration brought many new ideas and practices to the world. Europeans exploration discoveries brought negative and positive impacts to the society they were building. The explorations was a success for many countries, but it also was a loss for a lot of Native Americans people. The exploration started a new mankind, it gave countries and people items they never had. The discovery of new world was a big impacts from the European exploration. Countries were now fighting over lands and the resources that were on the land. Slavery and the Columbian change were also big impacts from the exploration. The world changed because of these three big impacts of the European explorations. There