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Impact of colonialism in Latin America
European Imperialism in Africa: Colonization
European Imperialism in Africa: Colonization
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History always repeats itself if people do not do anything to stop it from happening again. In the late 15th century the Europeans started to colonize Africa. There were many bonuses, but more downfalls for the Africans and the Europeans. Now in the year 2030, the United States wants to colonize South America. The United States should not colonize South America because citizens will lose their traditional cultures, suffer an increase of diseases, and will be harmed by the American rule. People in America should not let history repeat itself and leave South America alone. First of all, traditional culture plays a big role in every person's life and if the United States enter South America their traditional culture may be injured. For instance, …show more content…
When new people are meeting they can give each other new diseases they have never known of before. In this case, “They were highly susceptible to malaria, a disease carried by the dense swarm of mosquitoes in Africa’s interior” (World History, 2009, p. 775). The Europeans never knew about this disease before they entered Africa. Africans have more of an immunity then the Europeans. Because Europeans have never had this disease, they do not have the cure or medication for malaria. Malaria caused many europeans deaths since they were unprepared for the discovery of this disease. In South America they have the immunity to the diseases Americans have no clue about so, U.S. travelers are more vulnerable and can bring new diseases back if they go to South America. Similarly, during revolution the causality number is estimated to reach 30 million because of the fighting, new diseases, and starvation (Things Fall Apart, 2012, p. 20). The fighting and starvation could of been avoided with more food and more training. No one could have predicted the diseases they ran into. When colonizing South America there will be more diseases that Americans find that the United States does not have medication for, this can lead to an epidemic. New diseases can hurt both communities with new diseases but also with the resistance of American
Human mobility, in terms of European transcontinental exploration and colonization, began to truly flourish after the 1400s. This travel, inspired by financial motives and justified by religious goals, resulted in the European dominance and decimation of countless cultures in both the Americas and Eurasia. While at first glance it seems as though this dominance was achieved through mainly military means - European militias, like Spanish conquistadors, rolling over native tribes with their technologically advanced weapons - the reality is significantly more complex. The Europeans, most likely unknowingly, employed another, equally deadly weapon during their exploits. With their travel, they brought with them the infectious diseases of their homelands, exposing the defenseless natives to foreign malady that their bodies had no hope of developing immunities against. Because of the nature of disease and their limited knowledge about its modes of infection, the Europeans were able to dispense highly contagious and mortal illnesses while limiting their contraction of any native ones to the new territories. In short, they were able to kill without being killed. In this way, the travel of disease in conjunction with the travel of humans in a search for exotic commodities was able to limit or even halt the development of some cultures while allowing others to flourish at exponential rates.
The Columbian Exchange was a trade network that was indisputably a major event in world history due to the exchange of ideas, crops, animals, and diseases between the Old World and the New World, making the world “smaller”; it is undeniable that had the Columbian Exchange not happened, all of our lives today would be drastically different. During 1450 to 1750 – the time period of the Columbian Exchange – the mumps, a virus that was originally discovered in Europe, was transferred from the Old World to the New; in both hemispheres, diseases were transmitted unknowingly until people started noticing the correlations between those who got sick and what might have caused them to contract it, which led to diseases being used as weapons in biological warfare, causing the indigenous peoples to die off and allowing the Europeans economic prosperity.
Colonization in Latin America had a major effect on the Americas because the Aztecs died of the disease that the Europeans brought over though the Columbian Exchange. Since the Aztecs could not do much about the diseases that were spreading a lot of them began to die. The evidence from the pictures show that the Columbian Exchange took place during the 16th century. (doc 1). A lot of the Aztecs got sick and died. People could not do much about the diseases because they did not know what kind of disease it was. The Aztecs were also not immune to any of the disease that were spreading. Those are some reasons why the colonization in Latin America had a major effect on the Natives.
“As European adventurers traversed the world in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries they initiated the “Columbian Exchange” of plants, animals, and diseases.”(P. 26). The Columbian Exchange refers to a period of exchanges between the New and Old Worlds. The exchange of plants, animals, diseases and more modernized technology, beginning after Columbus landing in the Americas in 1492. It lasted through the fifteenth and sixteenth century. Domesticated animals such as cattle, horses, sheep and pigs were introduced to the Americas. The Americas introduced to Europe many new crops such as potatoes, beans, squash, and maize. In time Native people learned to raise European livestock and European and Africans planted American crops. This was the positive effect of the encounter and it was largely responsible for the doubling of the world’s population in the next three hundred years. There were also many negative effects to the “Columbian Exchange” A major consequence was the spread of disease in the New World. Diseases carried by Europeans and Africans devastated the population of the Americas. As Europeans traveled through the Americas epidemics came with them. Typhus, diphtheria, malaria, influenza, cholera, and smallpox killed many of the native people. One example was
All in all, over the course of the presidencies of Monroe, Roosevelt, FDR, and Nixon, the U.S. intervened in Latin America numerous times. Now, is it the right thing to do? At those specific points in time, the government thought so. Various arguments can be forged over the suitability of the actions of the U.S. during these times; however, that is a discussion for another time.
5. The United States and Latin America had a very turbulent history with each other. After
The Columbian exchange was the widespread transfer of various products such as animals, plants, and culture between the Americas and Europe. Though most likely unintentional, the byproduct that had the largest impact from this exchange between the old and new world was communicable diseases. Europeans and other immigrants brought a host of diseases with them to America, which killed as much as ninety percent of the native population. Epidemics ravaged both native and nonnative populations of the new world destroying civilizations. The source of these epidemics were due to low resistance, poor sanitation, and inadequate medical knowledge- “more die of the practitioner than of the natural course of the disease (Duffy).” These diseases of the new world posed a serious
The Spread of Disease In the New World The extraordinary good health of the natives prior to the coming of the Europeans would become a key ingredient in their disastrous undoing. The greatest cause of disease in America was epidemic diseases imported from Europe. Epidemic diseases killed with added virulence in the " virgin soil" populations of the Americas. The great plague that arose in the Old World never emerged on their own in the western hemisphere and did not spread across oceans until Columbus' discovery.
The introduction of Old World diseases was a substantial catalyst in the building of American colonial societies. Diseases such as smallpox devastated the native people’s populations. According to one estimate, within the span of the 16th century, the native population of central Mexico was reduced to about 700,000 from at least 13 million. (The Earth and Its Peoples, 475) Other regions were similarly affected by the disease and others such as measles, typhus, influenza, and malaria. These diseases, in effect, cleared the way for European settlers, although, in a somewhat gruesome fashion.
When the Europeans crossed the Atlantic, they not only fought and killed many natives; they slaughtered countless more without even knowing it, signing the death warrants of millions simply by meeting . The real detrimental effect to the Indians was their exposure to the diseases inadvertently brought over by the colonists; these "most hideous enemies…invisible killers which those men brought in their blood and breath." (Stannard, xii)
While the Europeans were traveling to the New World, they often brought domesticated animals with them for sources of food and livestock. When animals and humans are living in close quarters together, it is very likely for exposure to germs to occur. New diseases were brought over by foreigners looking for fame and gold that killed off many of the natives in the new lands. The natives did not stand a chance against these new threats because of a lack of knowledge and supplies to cure themselves. Once the Europeans established diseases as they made land in the New World, their journey had only become easier as their competition were being wiped out from the rapid spread.
Although the Columbian Exchange allowed for the beneficial exchange of cultures, ideas, foods, and animals around the world during the 1450-1750 time period, it also had a dark side. One detrimental result of the Columbian Exchange would be the spread of smallpox from Europe to the New World. The great explorations and subsequent migrations of Europeans to the Americas in the 15th-18th centuries opened up those entire continents to the fatal impact of the infectious diseases of Europe. European conquests owed a good deal of their success to the effects of disease on the indigenous peoples, especially smallpox in the Americas. Before the Spanish conquest of the New World, there were no sickness or health related issues that Natives were forced to face.
The European colonization of North America changed the indigenous population’s way of life and their culture. They caught illnesses they were not immune too, like chickenpox and measles. They did not have any
Native Americans had previously remained isolated and healthy, as the rest of the world was ransacked by diseases like the Black Death. Europeans had been able to build up their immune system to these diseases; the Natives had never encountered European diseases like mumps and smallpox. Native Americans were left “immunologically defenseless” against the volatile European diseases (Document 6). Document 6 was written by a historian, which would explain why he is better able to write from a less biased view of the colonization of the Americas, as well as how he understands the consequences diseases had on the Native population. Although Europeans were not always purposely infecting the Native American population, the introduction of new diseases is what led to the Native population to decline by 82%. Diseases began to “spread during October” throughout major civilizations like the Aztecs and the Incas, where the disease “lasted for seventy days, striking everywhere in the cities and killing a vast number of [Native] people” (Document 4). Document 4 was written in the point of view of the Aztecs, one of the several Native American tribes to be victimized by disease. The Native 's’ point of view is significant because readers will better be able to understand the lasting impact the disease had on the Native population. Native civilizations like the Aztecs with Tenochtitlan had cities bigger in size than most European cities. This caused the disease to spread rapidly and stunted production in Native American tribes. Diseases weakened the Native population, further preventing them from attempting to abstain the Europeans’
Even though the Europeans ventured into all the continents, the Americas were the ones that were greatly affected by the diseases that traveled with the Europeans.