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American History Assignment

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Signature Assignment American history changed drastically through cultural diffusion from different societies merging. With the different countries being discovered during the New World travels of Christopher Columbus, he brought new resources and ideas amongst the countries to give them the opportunity to bring them together. American history is often portrayed as a story of consistently expanding opportunities that have changed the lives of different groups in which has expanded as well as pushed them apart from the beginnings of American history to the end of the Civil War. Early American history expanded fairly quickly with the opportunity of geographic factors. Started as three separate different worlds; North, Europe, and West Africa …show more content…

The “Triangular Trade” was expanded off from the Columbian Exchange of Christopher Columbus making his way from Europe, Africa, Asia to the Americas for food staples, domesticated animals, and advancement. The Triangular Trade was a triangle system, that was initiated by Great Britain. With this concept, the countries involved in the Triangular Trade were willing to provide the necessary resources to help feed the system to make profit. Colonial merchants in New England sailed to West Africa to provide rum, gum powder, tools in return for slaves; a great demand in the Americas to help raise sugar cane on the plantations. This triangular process, led to more economic opportunities through mercantilism; belief in the benefits of profitable trading. Spain was the mother country, having that upper hand in power and wealth. Therefore controlled the weaker colonies in providing raw supplies to them that had manufacture advancements to create products and would sell back the made products to the colonies for a cost. With this system, it created a much higher trade network and economic opportunities for countries even though the some of the smaller colonies would not be as wealthier or powerful as the mother …show more content…

During the Columbian Exchange of the 15th and 16th century, James Carrick Moore, Scottish physician and travel author had an eye opening view of the effects of human contact from different countries. An excerpt from the 1815 book, The History of Small Pox, Moore documents the horrifying effects of Smallpox that wiped out a majority of the Native American population. Moore writes about the treatment of the Indians on their native land by the Europeans intruding on their territory, “Indians having excessive tasks imposed upon them, and being forced to work in the mines, were consumed with labor and famine: and the remainder of the hapless rae were totally extinguished by the Measles and Small Pox” (Moore, 107). With the Europeans living with dirty animals all their lives help built an immunity, and through the Columbian Exchange, diseases were brought over to America by Europeans that wiped a majority of the Native Americans that were never exposed to those foreign organisms. This overcoming gave the Europeans an ego boost to their superiority status, being invincible while taking over the Native Americans land. With such a culture shock, Europeans viewed the Native Americans as violent savages and inefficient of utilizing the land. Clashing of wealth and territory, the Europeans instituted structured communities that included territoriality and sovereignty concepts. These concepts led to having an owner of

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