Compare and Contrast the Early Colonial Empires of Portugal, Spain, and England in Terms of Motives, Economic Foundations, and Relations with Africans and Native Americans. What Factors Explain the Similarities and Di

Due to the native’s total isolation from the rest of the civilized world, they had been prevented from developing immunities against many devastating diseases. These diseases were carried into the country unaware by the conquistadors from Europe and Africa. For example, smallpox reached Espanola by 1518 and was carried to New Spain in 1520. It then moved through Central America and entered Peru by 1527. Wherever the disease passed, it left a detrimental death toll in its wake. There are many accounts of villages that lost half or more of their population, some even lost as high as 90% of their population. Many more disease continued to slowly decimate the natives, such as measles typhus, influenza, yellow fever, malaria diphtheria and the bubonic plague. Within the next 100 year of disease, the native’s population became less than 10% what it was in the

For the people of Europe the Americas was a place to prosper, worship in there own way, and expand there kingdoms. The only problem is that they attempted to settle in their own way and all failed dismally. The New England, Mid-Atlantic and Southern Colonies grew differently in various ways, but each with the same state of mind, “do it our way”. Examining the three sets of colonies will prove that they were all different in religion, government, and ways of expansion.

When people come into contact with new cultures, they do many positive things such as trading goods and sharing ideas. However, new people can also have a negative effect on the cultures that they are meeting. Along with violence and forced relocation, another one of the negative effects of the Indians meeting the Europeans was disease. Prior research has suggested that during the period of time from which the Spaniards were leaving Mexico smallpox had caused a mass number of casualties.

With these motivations and methods, the Spanish, Portuguese, and French were able to play a role in the development of the New World. Sometimes, the effect of their roles would be negative as seen by the devastation of Indian culture and the introduction of African slavery to the Americas. However, their colonizations helped give the Americas the amount of diversity they display today. Yet, they didn’t understand what the true purpose of

As the Spaniards arrived in America, Europeans immediately contracted syphilis from the Indians. Meanwhile, “The Europeans, for their part, gave the Indians measles and smallpox.” (Document B). Chaos arose and population declined, killing off many Native Americans. The outrageous, smallpox outbreak stuck all around Latin America. According to Alfred Crosby, the author of “The Columbian Exchange”, “…the communicability of smallpox and the other eruptive fevers…that any Indian who received the news of the Spaniards could also have easily received the infection.” (Document C). Similarly to the bubonic plague in the old world, the smallpox and measles were the “black death” in the new

The Spaniards were known for their brutality against the Indians. “Everywhere Spain went, Indians died by the millions” (Lecture 6). The

Compare the experience of the French, Spanish, and English in colonizing the New World. What common perception of the region did they share? Discuss the differences in their relationship with Native

As Geoffrey Cowley said, “the native population fell from roughly 30 million in 1519 to 3 million in 1568.” (Doc. 6) This appalling number of lives lost, are because an indifference between the Spaniards and Natives. When the Spaniards arrived, they brought many disease which the Natives have never encountered. Not only was it the 15th Century, but the Natives were already set back from the rest of the world and did not have the technology or medicine to aid them with the disease they contracted from the Spaniards. Geoffrey Cowley states, “When the newcomers arrived carrying mumps, measles, whooping cough, smallpox, cholera, gonorrhea and yellow fever, the indians were immunologically defenseless.” (Doc. 6) The lack of resources the Natives had caused them to be helpless against all of these diseases

It is a widespread belief that colonization of the Americas started and ended with the English and the 13 colonies, an exclusive and extremely condensed version of history. In American Colonies, Alan Taylor delves deeper into this condensed version of events to offer a more informative and truthful point of view on American history. In this document, Taylor presents the argument that American colonization was the result of the efforts of multiple cultures and races. He continues on to say that many of these groups of people were left out of the story of American history, which led to the English being established as the dominant force of colonization.[ Taylor, American Colonies, 1]

The Europeans brought about diseases that initially never transpired in the Native Americans communities. Indian [Native Americans] population of 10 million that lived north of Mexico when Columbus came would ultimately be reduced to less than a million. Huge numbers of Indians would the from diseases introduced by the whites. (Zinn 14). An example of such was smallpox associated with a Spanish called Herman Cortes and his army when they came to America in 1521. Europeans were also responsible for bringing about other diseases such as influenza and measles to healthy Native Americans.

The Indians were very poor. They existed for only one reason, to work. The Spaniards forced them to farm the land or work the mines. Indians worked from dawn to dusk. Abuse of the Indians was common. They beat, tortured and even murdered the Indians, plus sheer exhaustion took their toll on the native population. The Colonists brought diseases such as smallpox, measles, typhus, chicken pox, and mumps. The Indians had no resistance to these diseases. Millions of Indians died. The Colonists left the Indians to die by taking their food. Fewer and fewer Indians were left. The Spaniards were in a panic as to who would work their fields and mines. They would turn to the African slaves.

Disease is one of the first the cultural and economic devastations that occurs that effect Native Americans. When the Columbus comes to the New World, he brought curiosity, plants foods and biological pathogens, in laymen’s terms, germs. The Old World has brought many infections to the New World for instance small pox, measles, bubonic plague, typhus, and malaria. Furthermore, the Native Americans had no immunities to the infectious viruses. As a result to the many outlandish illnesses popping up, in an economic aspect, about 90 percent pre-Columbus Indians died, mostly to the fact of ailment. In a cultural sense, with so many Indians dying off, there was a depletion of Native Americans, thus, diverse tribes would come together and form anew.

The central point of this article is to discuss the relationships between the colonizers and colonized in culture and imperialism. Because the links between these two things (culture and imperialism) raise important questions about how, “power and knowledge works in colonial societies. In some ways this article even looks into race relations and why they are the way they are today. Arguing that, “British indirect rule effectively resulted in racial segregation” (Bush 225). We can see that racism can be linked to a cultural problem that still effects the race relations that we have today. The study of the indifference the British and French had when they colonized can be used to explain many aspects of racial relations and I am sure many

The author mentions that hostile Indians made travel dangerous, except for the brave and well-armed. Yet, the Natives would often cooperate by showing the Spaniards where the fresh water was, providing food, and helping their explores. The Indians were willing to welcome the Spaniards into the trading system.

The trajectory of colonialism can be traced back to fifteen century conquest of Cueta by Portugal. But not until the seventeenth century did they establish their own overseas empire. The initial rational