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How Did Columbus Voyage Change

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As time has gone on, our view of Columbus’s voyage has changed. We all know that Columbus discovered the Americas and bridged the gap, allowing the empires of Europe to expand their power and create colonies in the new world. But over time our focus has shifted not to Columbus discovering the Americas, but to the Native Americans that inhabited the Americas. We can see this change in focus in the tercentenary, quadricentenary, and the quincentenary celebrations of Columbus’s voyage. In the tercentenary of 1792, there was an emphasis on the bravery of Columbus and discovery of the Americas. But as time goes on things, ideas, and thoughts all change. In the quadricentenary of 1892, the focus was not on the discovery of the Americas but rather …show more content…

Both wanted to create empires that dominated the Americas. Even though Portugal claimed Brazil with the Treaty of Tordesillas, the Spanish had more land. Spain wanted to accomplish two objectives in the Americas. The first was to introduce and win the lands of the Americas for Catholicism and the second was to acquire wealth. The Spanish conquistadores go to the Americas to explore, and eventually conquer land for Spain. The conquistadores were brutal men who were only interested gold, pillage, rape, and murder. Everywhere the conquistadores went they only left a trail of death and destruction. But even with this brutality, it does not explain why the Spanish created an empire in the Americas that lasted for over two centuries. The Spanish empire lasted much longer than the British did in North America. In addition to Catholicism, that the Portuguese and the Spanish introduced to the Americas, both also introduced slavery. In the fifteenth century, Portugal was the leader in the slave trade. They first applied slavery to the harvesting of sugar cane in the Atlantic Island colonies and then later in Latin America. Over time, the Spanish, Dutch, and English began investing in the slave

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