The Tragedy Of European Colonization Of The New World

labor. Eventually, this had lead to Spain’s failure and resulted in a time of "rapid inflation

However, the Native Americans didn’t just use these resources they garnered solely for food - they used the resources in several aspects of their lives, specifically for health. The Native Americans were dependant on the use of plants and other resources found in nature to use for curatives. Historians often attest that these curatives were far superior to the ones that Europeans used, and thus the span of life for Native Americans was often longer than that of the European people (The People). However, upon Native American and European contact, the Europeans introduced new, foreign diseases that were deadly because the Native Americans had never been exposed to these diseases, and thus did not have natural immunities to them. This was the same for other infectious diseases introduced to the Europeans, namely syphilis. Although, the amount of Europeans affected by syphilis was not even near the amount of Native Americans killed by some of the European diseases brought over in the Columbian exchange. Bartolomé de Las Casas commented on the epidemic of European viruses that killed thousands of Native Americans: “Who of those in

While we can’t deny the fact that the Columbian Exchange had a lasting impact on the New World, many of its effects were negative rather than positive. The introduction of European diseases devastated the Native American population, along with the terrible conditions they were forced to live in. Additionally, the Europeans did not treat the Native tribes as people, but rather as savages who could be used for labor.

Native Americans were deeply effected by colonization. It was extremely unfair of the Europeans to destroy Native American way of life. If the Native Americans had the weapons, like guns and disease, that the Europeans did, then maybe they could have fought for what was theirs. Europeans came to America and changed the Native Americans lives forever. This contact between the Native Americans and Europeans was called the Columbian Exchange. While both Native Americans and Europeans received advantages and disadvantages from the Columbian Exchange, Native Americans definitely suffered more while the Europeans were benefited

In the early Jamestown settlement disease was the primary causes of settler deaths. “[D]isease in the early years to Jamestown’s position at the salt/freshwater transition, where filth introduced into the river tended to fester rather than flush away.” -Dennis Blanton, “Jamestown’s Environment” (Source B) The settlers of Jamestown had to put their waste somewhere, so they decided to dump it in the nearby Jamestown River. Instead of flushing away quickly the dirty water filled with human waste just sat there for long periods of time until it eventually did flush away. Because of the cleanliness levels of this dirty water many who chose to drink it got sick and died. “Disease returns, 100 at Jamestown sickened and half the number died.” -Adapted from J. Frederick Fausz, “An Abundance of Bloodshed on Both Sides: England’s First Indian War 1609-1614,” The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography (Source G) When people got sick it happened in vast quantities, so it could spread even quicker and infect more people. The death rate of someone who was sick was also very high, many who were sick ended up dying.

The diseases the Europeans brought with them affected the indigenous negatively because it killed a large portion of the population in a painful way. The Natives had very little diseases before the Europeans invaded their land. Unlike people in the Old World, the Natives did not farm cattle or pigs and did not live near the animals they did have. They never had the opportunity to develop immunities to diseases that the cattle and Europeans carried when they came upon their shores. The diseases spread quickly and attacked the indigenous in gruesome ways. Smallpox caused sores to erupt on their skins that were so painful that an Aztec account states that “[the sick] could only lie on their beds like corpses” (Document 4). The pain would not

The graph in Document E shows how the number of people killed by diseases was higher than the number of people who died of other causes. As a result of the amount of new people coming into the new world, more diseases were brought over and were more easily harbored and spread by all the bodies being in one area. The brackish water supply and the lack of very nutrient food killed the colonists. Since the colony’s water supply contained waste, it was easy for the colonists to catch each other’s diseases through using the same water as everyone else because it spread all the diseases faster. The settlers’ lack of nutritious food caused them to have weak immune systems which rendered their bodies incapable of fighting off these diseases which ended in the colony’s

Many Native American’s died due to diseases, but the one who survived obtained many great things from the Columbian Exchange. The number of indians before the diseases of the New World killed most of the native population is disputed (Document 3). Though, it is known that a great fraction of them did die, but it was not from labor (Document 6). It is actually from diseases such as Measles and Smallpox. Since Indians had no immunity against these diseases they spread quickly, often devastating populations before conquistadors got to the villages (Document 7). The explorers unintendedly spread these silent killers throughout the New World because they were naive to the idea of contagion and cleanliness.

People were living in a time with very little medicine to help fight disease that was responsible for the death of many people. Before people from around the world began settling in the New World, disease and sickness was under control. The Native Americans were immune to common sickness that was commonly present since they were born. Being immune to a sickness means your body is already resistant to the infection and has the proper needs to fight the infection. When settlers came from Europe, they were carriers of different diseases and that they are immune to. When they came in contact with the Native Americans, they spread diseases like smallpox, measles, chicken pox, malaria, yellow fever, and influenza. These are strong diseases that the Native Americans were not immune to. Ninety five percent of the Native Americans in North America were killed by these diseases brought over from the Old

Devastation is defined as great destruction or damage done to something or someone.(Google.com) Not only did the Age of Exploration bring great joys of new land and new people, but it also brought lots of massacre and devastation. The age of exploration and European Colonization is considered a tragedy because two populations of people lost their culture and lost many of their people. Multiple reasons for this are, African slaves were taken from their homelands and separated from their families, many natives died, and many natives lost their culture. One of the worst reason that The Age of Exploration and European Colonization is considered a tragedy because Africans were taken from their homelands and were separated from their families.

Glorifying European accomplishments in the New World is wrong because the benefits of exploration came at a heavy cost. The conquerors were greedy and treated the native people cruelly. Also due to European settlements a majority of native culture was destroyed and the population was depleted. If European explorers weren’t killing the native people in battle they were unknowingly killing them with diseases that their immune systems had not been exposed to. Overall the European conquerors paid no mind to the thousands of “indians” they were killing, they solely had wealth on their mind.

The discovery and colonization of the “New World” was one of the most significant and influential events in the known history of mankind. It has shaped our present by changing the course of our past and is a time of such great significance that it would be all but impossible to understand today without at least some comprehension of the why 's of yesterday. What was it that drove such a myriad of people to risk so much to tame the wild and vast lands we now know as and call the Americas. What were the reasons, motivations, causes, events, and possibilities that captured the minds and hearts of so many different peoples from such divers backgrounds? What led them to leave their friends, families, and

The encounter with the settlers wiped millions of Native Americans and forced them to incorporate western culture “With death tolls reaching such grievous numbers, many tribes were unable to sustain their traditional ways of life. These horrific series of events forever altered the course of global human history.” (Rivera, 22) depopulation was rising and there was not much anyone can do. All the diseases introduced to the Native Americans for the first time made them prone to a weak immune systems, causing them to feel sick and eventually die. Englishmen had been traveling in different places of the world. In doing so, they were not just trading materials and capturing slaves, they were also picking up diseases that were not common in their world. These diseases not only caused death, but also affected women, making them infertile, loss of sexual desire and caused miscarriages, thus making it difficult for them to reproduce. Not to mention that the settlers would dump all of their trash into the river causing dysentery and typhoid fever. Dysentery is a disease that caused severe diarrhea due to an infection in the intestines; typhoid fever was also set off by the germs in the local river which can be spread through contaminated food, water and on occasion, direct contact with a carrier (Kupperman, Apathy and Death in Early Jamestown). This two diseases were

European expansion into the New World brought a lot of changes, motivated by boosting trade and economy, some countries failed to see the harm done in accomplishing it. It was the colliding of two worlds that were not ready to meet that suddenly and abruptly. Without the brave explorers and colonists however, America may have not been discovered, or noticed for many years. The New World gave the Old World something and vice versa it is obvious today one needs the other to survive and that is what we all strive

Historically the treatment of Native Americans has been highly problematic, especially throughout the colonization of the New World. Although, when colonising some Europeans took a merciful and sympathetic approach to the Native Americans, generally the treatment towards the indigenous people was not humane. Not only did the Native Americans die at the hand of the settlers, they also died from diseases that had been brought to the new world by explorers for which they had no immunity. In some cases diseases such as smallpox wiped out entire tribes. Together, the introduction of diseases and the actions of the European settlers had devastating effects on the Native Americans.