Microbes In The European Conquering Of The Americas

There is also a huge spread of diseases brought between the new world and old world. The old world brought over cholera, influenza, malaria, measles, and smallpox. The Europeans considered illness as a consequence of sin. The Indians whom were non-Christian were often considered sinners because they constantly getting sick. Those who were ill often were punished. The Native Americans had no natural resistance to the diseases and the population declined over centuries. The Inca Empire decreased by millions in 1600s. This caused for Europeans to look to Africa and began importing African slaves to the Americas. Once the African slaves began coming to the American they brought over malaria

The Columbian Exchange had a major effect on people residing in the United States. Disease was the number one cause of death amongst the other tragedies that came with the Columbian Exchange such as violence, culture, trade, and people that had followed Columbus. Many Native Americans died from diseases that were brought from Europe. The Europeans who had brought the diseases over did not seem to have done it intentionally. The Europeans were just in search of the New World. Native Americans lived free from the terrible diseases that destroyed populations in Asia, Europe, and Africa. Therefore, when Europeans came to America no one knew how to treat the diseases or how to handle them. Native Americans lacked the ability to fight off bacteria

The New world gave the Old world many riches and foods. This allowed the European Culture to expand into more of an agricultural country, allowing the population to rise. Although the New world did receive an abundance of plaques and illnesses from the Old, it also gave the Old world syphilis. Giving the Europeans their first lethal sexually transmitted illness. Both the Native Americans and the Europeans had suffered from illness and disease. With the ships the Europeans had brought over the ocean they had along with them animals including horses, cows and pigs. This allowed the Natives to travel more on horseback and instead of hunting they could raise

Europeans brought diseases to the Americas, such as smallpox and measles. The original descendants did not bring the diseases because they traveled through the cold and they had no domesticated animals. Many of these diseases were caused by domesticated animals. At

Diamond goes into incredible detail, especially in his chapter “The Lethal Gift of Livestock” of his proposed history of germs in relation to humans. He considers the difference in domesticated animals in the old world and new world, attributes their power to the downfall of the Incan and Aztec empires when he writes, “...the most advanced native societies of North America...their destruction was accomplished largely by germs alone.”(373-373, Diamond) It is fact that populations

The New World was, of course, new to the colonists. It was unfamiliar territory, and with this came unfamiliar disease. The colonists were not immune to these new diseases so I was easy for them [the disease] to wipe out the colonists who may have contracted it. Europeans were exposed to “a few tropical diseases from Africa and, probably, syphilis from the New World.” (Walbert, Learn NC).

The Europeans were said to be thoroughly diseased by the time Columbus set sail on his first voyage (Cowley, 1991). Through the domestication of such animals as pigs, horses, sheep, and cattle, the Europeans exposed themselves to a vast array of pathogens which continued to be spread through wars, explorations, and city-building. Thus any European who crossed the Atlantic was immune to such diseases as measles and smallpox because of battling them as a child.

Illnesses such as smallpox killed the majority of Native American populations significantly weakening the Naive Americans allowing for Europeans to more easily conquer them. The transfer of crops from the Americas to Europe allowed for a more population growth and shaped their cuisine to this day. Potatoes and native to the Americas yet they are and were a staple of European diets, most notably the Irish. European discovery of resources in the Americas led to millions of African slaves being shipped to the Americas to work in mines or plantations. This widespread slave trade has influences race relations to this day.

Culture wasn’t the only thing that the Europeans brought over to the Americas. Along with their customs and rules, came the diseases that the Native American’s have never been exposed to. The Europeans brought many communicable diseases such as small pox and measles which were transmitted to the Native Americans through trade goods or someone infected with them. This quickly annihilated most of the Native American population.

Europeans explored and settled in the Americas all throughout the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, and were generally successful. Although there were a number of factors that contributed to European successes in the New World, biological exchange was foremost. Biological exchange was the most significant force behind Europeans’ success in the Americas because it helped Europeans to wipe out Native American peoples, both physically and culturally, and to introduce European practices and resources that would help Europeans to flourish in the New World.

If science has taught us anything, it is that one event invariably effects countless others. This is no more evident than when a species is introduced into a new environment. Once a foreign species finds itself in new surroundings, it can either die or adapt. Often, these introduced species take over the environment, irrevocably changing it to fit their needs. This usually leads to a serious deteriorating in the well being of species currently existing there. Such is the case as when the Europeans introduced themselves to the New World. The new arrivals not only brought themselves, their technologies, and ways of life, but, most disastrously, their diseases arrived as well.

The time period between the 1600s and 1700s was a time of a major change in the land of the New World. The colonization of Europeans into the North America had considerable impacts on the Native American lives. European empire at the time, such as the French, England and Spanish empires, often fought against each other for power and control. After the European tried to colonized, the Native American suddenly found themselves dealing with European power politics. The arrival of Europeans into the New World meant new political relationships for both the European and the Native Americans. Each side had thing to gain and loss in this kind of relationship, especially military alliances and new trade goods. European power politics and rivalries were a major factor in the development of European and Native American relations because they created relationships of mutually beneficial relationships of trade and alliances.

These epidemics occurred in areas with extensive Spanish contact and slaving networks (pg. 14). Reséndez credits the conquest of the native tibes and the Indian slave trade with the depopulation of the Caribbean and the introduction of European diseases to the New World (Reséndez, conversation in HIST 900, 2017). The Spanish were the devastation that all but wiped out the native populations in the Caribbean and along the Caribbean costs of North America. They were the epidemic that depopulated the New World.

One consequence of the exchange was mass death. In the search for new routes for trade, people of Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas came in contact with each other, causing the spread of disease. Columbus's colonization brought a host of new diseases to the populations of the Americas. Europeans exported their diseases such as influenza, tuberculosis and smallpox. In return, European traders and colonizers returned the Europe with syphilis and typhus from the Americas. The slave trade caused the spread of malaria and yellow fever from Africa to the Caribbean and North America, and yellow fever to Europe.

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.