Preview

The Harmful Effects Of Colonization In The New World

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
459 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
The Harmful Effects Of Colonization In The New World
As the queen of Spain, there have been many difficult occurrences I’ve had to deal with during the past few years. I believe that colonization in the New World led to most of them. Spain and America would have been better off if we never started our own civilization there and barged in on the natives. Although there were many complex and tragic events, people may argue that some good came out of civilization. There may be some valid points, but none of it was worth the damage it caused. The cruelty and suffering that the natives had to go through when the colonists got to the New World was horrendous. The citizens that intruded on the natives took advantage of them and manipulated them. They may have acted nice and polite before, but considering how fearful and helpless the natives were, they decided to take everything from them. The colonists were planning on taking their land and depleting their population. According to Christopher Columbus “The inhabitants were unarmed and very timid and fearful.” Later on during the process of colonization, people started enslaving the inhabitants and treating them terribly. Antonio de Montesinos …show more content…
Colonists weren’t even able to reach their original goal of spreading Christianity, and that’s where it all started to fall apart. The colonists were able to keep peace for a short period of time. They got goods from the inhabitants and traded with them too. But once they started trading, disease started to spread. According to Historia General de las Cosas de Nueva España, “Large bumps spread on people, some were entirely covered.” Small pox killed off many of the colonists and natives. Disease wasn’t the only thing that killed people. In the letter Christopher Columbus wrote, it talked about the vast amounts of land and how great and beautiful it was. In order to get that land though, the colonists killed many more natives so they could get them all out of the

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    Shortly before the Pilgrims arrived, a devastating epidemic wiped out as much as 90% of the Native population in southern New England. In 1615, a shipwrecked French trading vessel carried the disease(s) that caused the Great Epidemic. The Europeans introduced cholera, typhus, smallpox, leptospirosis and other infectious diseases to the Native populations; diseases that the Natives had no natural immunity to. Because of the Great Epidemic, the surviving Wampanoag Indians were terrified of Europeans. They wrongly assumed that the white man's God sent the epidemic to destroy them. So out of fear of the Europeans, and to appease their angry God, they helped the Pilgrims survive their first winter in America. Later,…

    • 207 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Best Essays

    Gened Exam 1

    • 1978 Words
    • 8 Pages

    Following the discovery and beginning of exploration came the Columbian exchange. Essentially the exchange was a global diffusion of plants, food crops, animals, human populations, and disease pathogens.[1] With people of different origins relocating to new areas, their native or virgin soil epidemics were bound to follow. After the European's land in the Americas, many of the native people began to get extremely sick, and the various diseases contributed up to a ninety percent population decrease in some areas. The native people had no hope in a resistance to the explorers because they were so far less advanced than the Europeans and the Spanish, and the majority rapidly grew sick and weak. Among the…

    • 1978 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Best Essays
  • Good Essays

    The English took their land and disrupted their traditional systems of trade and agriculture. As a result, the power of native religious leaders was corrupted. The Indians were understandably angered by the colonists' insensitive actions, especially since they had treated the English kindly when they first arrived on the Eastern shores.…

    • 869 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The early 1600s brought the first European settlers to the Americas, and on arriving they found the land inhabited by thousands of Native Americans. The colonists' lack of knowledge about the land and people led to a series of disputes to ensure the colonists' safety. Unfortunately, this eventually led to genocide, an act of hatred directed towards the natives, but undeniable because overtime the colonists began to kill for sport rather then defense against the Indians' attacks.…

    • 610 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    During the beginning of their voyage, the settlers met countless poverty. (Doc. A). they were jam-packed on ships, with transmittable diseases feast very effortlessly (Doc. D). There was little food, so many of them died of starvation. When they finally arrived, they were introduced to even more diseases. On top of starvation, and chronic diseases, some died in wars.…

    • 365 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In a majority of the civilizations, the whole population was swept away. This meant that there was literally no one to help tend and care for the land that was previously kept alive and flourishing by the people in the societies. There were many contributions to the death of large populations by a small amount of people. One of these contributions was the factor of diseases. Many of these people had never been introduced to these diseases so there were not immune to them and they did not have any medicine to help them fight the diseases off. However, there were some positive effects of the arrival of the Spanish. One is that is the Spanish had never came to the Americas, our lives would be extremely different than they were right at this moment. There were many plants that were brought over from Europe that were planted in the Americas. These little tiny seedlings eventually turned into plantations. In conclusion, there were both positive and negative effects of the arrival of the Spanish into the Americas that changed these two landforms drastically. But if conquests to the Americas had not been made, the whole world would be different in ways we may never even…

    • 1023 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    At the beginning of the Columbian Exchange, native Americans were weakened by disease brought by the conquerors, reducing their population by millions. It would have been impossible, in such a short amount of time, for the conquerors to subdue millions of people with only hundreds of soldiers, even with their horses and guns, unless natives were somehow weakened. It is because of this that J.R. McNeill (n.d.) stated, “By far the most dramatic and devastating impact of the Columbian Exchange followed the introduction of new diseases into the Americas.” Diseases like smallpox, typhus fever, or measles, among many others, were the silent monsters that almost completely annihilate American native populations. Two examples of the destructive nature…

    • 132 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Over time, the colonists and the native people lived in peace, but the Colonists started to become greedy and power hungry when the peace treaty was broken. Once the treaty was broken, the natives were being harassed and treated poorly by the colonists. There were many ways Natives were affected by colonialism, but some of the more known ways that natives were impacted by colonialism were that they were affected by disease, forced to give up their land, and eventually became second hand citizens.…

    • 672 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Yes, there are cons to colonization but, the pros outweigh the cons. According to the Friars Semen, we treat the Natives like they are not human beings. We aren’t treating them horribly, we feed them, give them breaks during work and all the rights of a normal human being. We acknowledge their position as a human exerting these rules to show we care. Another complaint we here about our actions, according to the Friars Semen, enslaving the Natives or any human being is morally wrong.…

    • 775 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    History Week 1

    • 525 Words
    • 2 Pages

    The first colonies in the New World were established by the Spanish. With the establishment of these colonies came great disease and a great deal of warfare that affected the Caribbean, Mexico, North America and South America. This disease and warfare nearly eradicated the existing peoples that inhabited the lands during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. In pursuit of gold and…

    • 525 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Puerto Rico Imperialism

    • 791 Words
    • 4 Pages

    The local indigenous of the island were forced into slavery like work. These people suffered and sustained very high fatalities from outbreaks of European contagious diseases. During those times syphilis and smallpox were rampant. The Roman Catholic Church also realized the opportunity to extend its influence and brainwash people while colonizing the island. The christianity portion of the colonization is what helped a lot. People felt as if they were doing a positive thing. Due to the ever so decreasing number of indigenous people, Spain brought African slaves to the island to provide labour in the cities and coastal ports. In the 16th and 17th centuries, Spain focused its colonial endeavours in the south, north, and central areas since they were getting more money and overall more…

    • 791 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    During colonial times, people went out to explore and conquer new land. In history we often only get to see one side of the story, and do not get a chance to see the bad side of things. For example, many people view Christopher Columbus as a great hero who discovered the Americas and showed the native people new things. In reality Columbus's expedition hurt the indigenous people more than helped. Once the explorers got to the new land they saw it as an economic potential, a way to make money off the native people. This would be an easy task at first because of the technological advances and the superiority of these new people. The Europeans would use the natives as slaves to perform a variety of tasks. For example, they would be sold and traded to help build…

    • 665 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Indigenous Changed

    • 1184 Words
    • 5 Pages

    “Don’t expect anyone to understand your journey, especially if they’ve never walked your path.” During the 1600’s Colonist completed a voyage to the new world in which it took them 66 days. Within the time, the Colonist managed to interact with the Natives the Colonist showed the Natives many new ways of living, including the many different types of tools that were brought along. Although the Colonists did not only introduced new tools and a different living style but also many different diseases. Due to the diseases being new to the Native Americans the diseases were able to quickly wipe out majority of the Native tribes. The Colonist also brought along the idea of enslavement, the Natives were the…

    • 1184 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    To begin, the diseases brought by the European explorers influenced the Native Americans tragically. The strangers brought thousands of diseases including, scarlet fever, influenza, and mumps. These diseases killed around 18 million Native Americans within 200 years. The Indians immune systems couldn’t handle these diseases, because they were not previously exposed to those infections. The Europeans realized this during war and used it to their advantage by infecting blankets with small pox then delivering them to the Indian troops. As stated by John Wonthrop “The natives are neere all dead of the smalle Poxe, so as the Lord hathe cleared our title to what we posses.” In 1837- 1870 there were 4 epidemics brought to plain tribes. The epidemic of smallpox in 1721 killed 844 Indians out of 6,000 infected. Diseases including mumps, small pox, and measles wiped out entire tribes, in one infection. European explorers took many lives of the Indians with the diseases they brought.…

    • 590 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    At the start of the seventeenth century, Native Americans greeted European settlers with much excitement. They regarded settlers as strange, but were interested to learn about the new tools and weapons Europeans brought with them. The native people were more than accommodating to the settlers, but as time passed, Europeans took advantage of their generosity. “Once these newcomers disembarked and began to feel their way across the continent, they forever altered the course and pace of native development.” Native Americans and Europeans faced many conflicts due to their vast differences in language, religion and culture. European settlers’ inability to understand and respect Native Americans lead to many struggles that would eventually erupt into violent warfare.…

    • 911 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays