Conquering Other People Is Not A Waste Of Resources And Time

Conquest is defined as the control of a place or people by use of force. Colonization occurs when more species populate an area. After the Mexican American war the Mexican border went up in San Ysidro California creating disagreement between territories. Conquest produced local, regional, and national patterns of change and development. The conquest of New Mexico and the Unites Sates Southwest now had distinguishable contradictions and tensions.

Conquest is an extremely violent thought, to subjugate and assume control of a group of people and their land with military force. It’s hard to imagine a large following, much less countries, that support imposing brute force onto strangers. Given that conquest is violent, why did Europeans conquer the Americas as they did? The Europeans followed the belief of Christianity, which forbids such massacres and hate, how could they have conquered and killed? Many, like Jared Diamond, promote the idea that it was pure geographical luck which granted Europe easier diffusion of knowledge; metal weapons and political organization which were more advanced. However, this idea becomes problematic because it assumes that no matter the inhabitants of the more fortunate land, conquest would have happened because of predetermined facts like geography. With this argument, one could say Natives would have conquered Europeans or that they would have been able to defend from their conquest if they had the same or better geographical luck. I believe that geographic luck is not enough to enable the conquest of the Americas. I want to argue that the major reasons behind the European conquest of the Americas were largely in their motivation to gain riches to boost their economy and the justification of their conquest by disguising themselves as saviors to the Native Americans.

Imperialism is the action of a country taking over another country. There are various reasons as to why nations seek to imperialize other countries. This action is done due to economic, exploratory, ethnocentric, political and religious reasons (Potter lecture). Most nations seek to grow their own nation in power, while others seek to help others grow. Imperialism first started in 1870, when Europe wanted to take over most of Africa. Imperialism is sometimes justified because sometimes other nations can help the more needy nations, but other times it is just complete chaos.

When united states follow the policy of imperialism they are going to want to spread christianity through the weaker countries. To christians it is their duty to do their best to spread the christianity. According to document 1 it states”the purest Christianity, the highest civilization,the highest civilization will spread itself over the earth ”(Doc 1). When any country think that there religion is

Renaissance, what’s that? The Renaissance was a time of creativity and finding out who you really were. Did you know that the word “Renaissance” actually means “rebirth” in french? Also, just because the Renaissance was a time of creativity and self-worth it still saw real problems like religious wars, political corruption, inequality, and witch-hunts. Humanism influenced people during the Renaissance in two ways, people began to realize they weren’t controlled by the zodiac symbols, they controlled themselves, and literature and writing became very helpful in everyday lives, because of books and philosophy.

The Renaissance was an efflorescence of the arts and changes in many different areas such as political, social, economical, and cultural. It was the rebirth of art, literature, and learning in the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries. It marked the transition from an agricultural to an urban society. The Renaissance ideals emphasized ideas of humanism and human achievement. Artists and writers used realistic techniques, such as perspective, and they believed man should be the subject of study, not God.

The doctrine of discovery and the manifest destiny was only beneficial to the Euro-American settlers because they unmorally claimed a preeminent title to manipulate other communities. In his text, Patrick Wolfe remarks that the doctrine of discovery justified the European conquering of the Americas. He later comments that “Even where native sovereignty was recognized, however, ultimate dominion over the territory in question was held to inhere in the European sovereign in whose name it had been ‘discovered’(Wolfe 391)”. The power that the Europeans self-created allowed them to “rightfully” steal the land for their own purpose simply because its inhabitants were non-Christian. The same capitalistic and religious energy that empowered the Europeans

Many elements influenced the ways Europeans reacted to the indigenous people of the Americas and the ways the indigenous people responded to Europeans. Incentives, opportunities of wealth and power, and religious beliefs all played a critical role in the conquering of the Indies. It was believed that the indigenous people of the Americas had no advanced language, rules and laws of private property and ownership of lands, and other established social rules that so called advanced societies have. It was strongly believed that it was a responsibly of the Spanish to educate these advances to the indigenous people of the Indies. The conquests over the natives were justified as long as the wars were carried on legally and agreeing to Spanish rules.

The Renaissance was a period in Europe civilisation that immediately followed the Middle Ages. It was an era of cultural growth that was introduced in Italy and was carried on throughout northern Europe lasting the 14th to 17th century. Many artists and scholars of that time period believed that they were contributing in a revival of the ideals and worth of the periods that arrive before them. The Renaissance period open doors for individuals to rediscover one’s will and obligations of observing the environment. It was an opening for them to express themselves in human terms. They shifted their interest from God centred to humans centred, known as Humanism. The Renaissance had expanded into four periods which were classified as Early Renaissance,

Now what is civilization, well according to the Europeans it was white, privileged, European men and women. So this new idea plays into slavery. People would go on trips to “civilize” and enslave the people that they met. They would strip them of original culture and procreate their lands and resources. And coincidentally this worked right be side the Europeans need for resources, because these “mission trips” weren’t about mission at all they were about conquest and finding new territories and peoples that they could use to their benefit. “Everyone who knows little about aboriginal races is aware that these races which are low type mentally and who at the same time are weak in constitution rapidly die out when their country becomes occupied by a different race much more rigors and robust pushing themselves.” This idea stated by George Pullwiok was the general idea of most people in this time period. So how did this contribute to the conquering of people? Well this thinking also created the idea of the white means burden. Europeans commonly believed that it was their duty to civilize those who they saw to be inferior, so it was yet again another excuse for them to go and attack, conquer, and colonize countries.

One example of taking over the Natives is Hernando Cortés. He journeyed to the Gulf of Mexico, and the people in Mexico told him about a civilization inland called the Aztecs. He then went there and gathered 10,000 people to take over the Aztecs. The spanish then took over the Natives and in exchange of the Natives working, the missionaries that came over from Spain were going to convert the Natives to Christianity. Forcing the Natives to work their bodies beyond what they are capable of doing, made them have a shorter life, which the Spanish thought was a good thing because they believed they were sending them to heaven quicker once they became christians. Once all the Natives started dying off rapidly, the Spanish took Africans, and created The African Slave Trade. Spain’s methods of using people to do their work for them was creative, and should be remembered in the 21st

Understanding the truth between the conquered and the conquerors in my opinion seems apparent and clear as day. The truth of the matter is, Christopher Columbus who was one of the main leaders to invade what is now known as South, Central, and North America did not “discover” the New World, but he was the first of his people to colonize and claim it. The Spanish conquistadors overran and then occupied areas of Central and South America stealing their riches, and destroyed the vigorous Aztec and Inca’s way of life and cultures. The Native people were generous and vulnerable individuals who did not ask for this. I see the conquered as victims because they were stolen from by the conquerors. Forced labor, epidemic diseases, expulsion from their

Conquest is one simple little word with tremendously rich background and history. Conquest in short is defined to gain a victory over. Conquest has lead to the beginnings of new lands and has created the end of an old. Many different interactions between groups of people and their lands have occurred throughout history that ultimately lead into the conquest of land. First and foremost before interactions occurred there was reasoning behind conquests. The root of conquest can be narrowed down into three categories. These categories are God, glory, and gold. Religions that are big on conversion looked upon conquest as an opportunity to gain more believers, therefore pleasing their god more. Glory was as simple as glory for the homeland to claim increased land. Lastly, just like today humans wanted riches. Striking gold meant just that, becoming rich. Along with each conquest brought upon many different interactions and consequences from those interactions. These interactions are what set up the foundation of nations’ relationships.

The Renaissance change the way people looked at humanism.Humanism is a when you turned away from the medieval things and take interest in the important ones. Although many people wanted to have individualism, most people did. They took a habit of being independent and self reliant. The Renaissance period changed the way people viewed things, like the complexity of men, artistic expression, and individualism.

If prompted with the question what is colonization and or how did Europe and America colonize different countries and peoples the answer might be as simple as: it was the process of taking land from other countries and pushing to change the peoples of those countries towards western ways. This answer is to simple, a lot of people do not know the motives behind colonizing another country. Even though the motives behind colonizing another country depend on the time and location of the colonizing, Europe and America have always set above every other country around the world. They title themselves as being superior to all others. Thus, a lot of countries bought into the western ways and believe Westerners to be “demigod”. In Michael Adas essay, Contested Hegemony: The Great War and the Afro-Asian Assault on the Civilizing-Mission, even though the focus is on the ups and downs of colonization in Asia and Africa. The essay looks at the motives behind colonizing these peoples, why some bought into the idea and how World War One changed everything for Europe, Asia and Africa in terms of colonization.