The Conquest And Settlement Of The Americas

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

There were initially two to ten million natives in the United States prior to European contact. Those numbers dwindled down drastically in the years that Europeans came and started colonizing. The Europeans came to explore the New World in search of land, spices, gold, God and glory. Among these colonists were the Spanish and they colonized most of the southwest of the United States. Evidence of their settlements can still be seen today in the missions scattered across the land. These missions were started with the purpose of converting the Native Americans to Christianity. Now, imagine living your entire life with a particular set of beliefs, based on your ancestors and culture, and a group of foreigners come and proclaim that your views are all wrong and that you must follow their beliefs for the salvation of your soul. This is exactly what the Spanish did to the Natives. The relationship between the two parties were strained and rife with tension due to the conversion of the natives and the constant abuse doled out by the Spanish. This subsequently led to the disintegration of native life and culture.

As the Europeans began settling in the Americas, thus began “the exchange of plant and animal species that have ultimately been a widespread benefit to the peoples throughout the globe” (Document 3). The Europeans brought many elements of their own culture, including their native plants and animals. They then introduced these things to the natives of the Americas and also adopted the natives culture into their own. The Europeans introduced different types of skills and jobs. In turn, “the Indian natives have successfully learned all the Spanish trades” (Document 1).

Although the Spanish and the British started colonizing the new world relatively at the same time their colonization efforts we’re extremely different but had some overlapping similarities. The differences include the two nations different reasoning to explore the New World, their relationship with the Natives, and it types of governments that they attempted to set up. Although some of these differences might not seem as if they are very important, they helped one nation do you better than the other one when it came to colonization efforts.

European colonization of the Americas should be remembered as a tragedy for the impractical and immoral acts upon Native Americans and slave laborers. The European colonization of the Americas was a series of atrocities committed upon underdeveloped territory by settlers throughout the Americas. Many European countries took part in the advantages of the land to increase economic trade and newly found resources. However, the net result of this colonization for the indigenous who already inhabited these lands was the exploitation of Native Americans and Slaves through forced labor, Christian ideals being forced upon those certainly from different beliefs, and the general theft of land and natural resources.

1). The Nations of Europe sought to expand their empire because they were on the verge of overpopulation.Between 1550 and 1600 the population grew from three million to four million people. Also, England and Spain were at a war for power. The Spanish attempts at colonizing the New World had been extremely successful, for they had gained both wealth and power. The English did not see such success, as their ships would crash, be lost to the seas, or their colonization efforts would cease to be useful. Through the Spaniards control over the Americas they had gained a massive naval army, noted as the Spanish Armada. The Spanish attempt to invade England in 1588 failed which lead to the beginning of the fall of the Spanish empire in the New World.

1. What fundamental factors drew the Europeans to the exploration, conquest, and colonization of the New World? What was the impact on the Indians, Europeans, and Africans when each of their previously separate worlds “collided” with one another? What caused the shift from indentured servant to African slaves as the dominant labor force in the southern colonies?

New navigation innovations such as compass and better maps help develop new trading routes. Also, a major development in how ships were built using a triangular sail which, allowed sailors to sail into the wind, furthering the distance a ship could sail. When the Europeans colonized the Americas, they spread diseases in the Eastern Hemisphere. They spread illnesses such as smallpox, measles among Indian populations. Europeans also brought with them mosquitoes and rats. They also spread their food such as potatoes beans, squash; maize became staple crops in various parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Coffee and sugar cane became cash crops in the Americas. Cacao and tobacco were grown primarily on plantations and exported to Europe and the

North America during the Colonial period had resources the Europeans dreamed about. For example, the mighty Mississippi River for trading and transportation, the pine trees for lumber, and the rich soil in the south for growing crops. The Europeans saw the potential of economic opportunity in North America. The Native Americans viewed North America as sacred and took care of their land as much as possible. When the Europeans arrived, the deer population plummeted due to the need of meat from the Europeans. The New England colonists realized that the soil in New England was unreliable because of the unfertile soil and the weather.

“Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it.”, that’s exactly how all the ethnic groups wanted to accomplish dealing with this discovery in this foreign land with farming and the dry land possession in many field spirituals. The colonization’s in the New World was consistently complex to keep peace during those days from wars and competition for claiming the land of opportunities. Between the cultural differences, the Spanish, the Dutch, the French and the English, it was truly a sacrifice for each of them to fight and go for the same power, wealth, and national glory, but it could only belong to one. They eventually had to go in different paths and for each of them to conquer want they wanted to have because it did come with a price to pay. Everyone had their different reasons of why they came to the New World and when all of them arrived at different times the Spanish, Dutch, French, and the English had different ways to colonize the land of opportunities.

The colonization and exploration of North America unavoidably lead to contact with the native people of the land. The images created by people like Benjamin West, Thomas Kitchen, and James Wooldridge show the effect that contact had on America. For example, Treaty with the Indians is an oil painting by Benjamin West that depicts the colonists and William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania, negotiating a treaty with the American Indians during the late years of British colonization. Benjamin West also painted The Indians Delivering up the English Captives to Colonel Bouquet Near his Camp at the Forks of Muskingum in North America in November 1764, which shows American Indians transporting English prisoners to Colonel Bouquet, an officer in the British army, during the French and Indian War. Another artist, James Woolridge, painted Indians of Virginia, which illustrates American Indians living on their homestead in 1675 during early British colonization of North America. Thomas Kitchen created A Map of the French Settlements in North America which shows the territories owned by the French a few years before Seven Years War and during the time when British colonization had heightened. European colonists’ opinions of citizenship rights and the rightful occupation of North America was heavily influenced by their interactions with the American Indians and their culture through manifested stereotypes and an understood element of European superiority.

The conquest of the “New World” overshadows the vast amount of trade that was taking place. The driving force behind the conquest and settlement of the Americas was the mercantilist trading system of the new European empires. Without the need of conquest of the lands to make a base of operations to make a large profit from the lands the conquest of the

Starting from the 1750’s, American imperialism is the “economic, military, and cultural influence of the Americas on other

The writings of Tzvetan Todorov, “The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other” (1984) and Inga Clendinnen, “Fierce and Unnatural Cruelty: Cortes and the Conquest of Mexico” (1991) each address the Conquest of Mexico and how the Spaniards, though weak in numbers and on foreign land, defeated the Amerindian military power in two years. The authors tend to disagree on why this conquest was successful. Clendinnen takes on a different account in comparison to Todorov and uses different kinds of sources such as, the Mexica accounts. Both Todorov and Clendinnen use evidence of Cortes’s letters but, Clendinnen uses information conveyed by eyewitnesses outside of the Spaniards. Inga Clendinnen tends to be drawn towards the actions, as depicted

1. Three arguments’ that Juan Gines de Sepulveda used to justify enslaving the Native Americans were for gold, ore deposits, and for God’s sake and man’s faith in him. 2. Three arguments that Bartolome de las Casas gave in attacking Spanish clonial policies in the New World were the Indians eating human flesh, worshiping false gods, and also, he believed that the Indians were cowardly and timid. 3. For comparisons that Sepulveda used, in lines 1-7, to express the inferiority of the Indians was their prudence, skill virtues, and humanity were inferior to the Spanish as children to adults, or even apes to men. Comparisons he used to dismiss the significance of the Indians