North America in modern times is viewed as a land of freedom where people of all different races live together in harmony. Discrimination due to skin color, ethnicity, gender, and sexual preference are punishable by law. With these laws in place one could argue that America was founded with the same foundation. Ironically when the European powers set out to place North America under English rule, random acts of violence and discrimination were common. While the conquest of America is thought of as being based on freedom, equal rights and liberty, evidence suggests that it was founded based on European dominance, spreading of religion, genocide, and the exploitation of slave labor. When the first waves of settlers arrived they brought disease with them involuntarily, marking the beginning of the genocide of Native Americans.
The Columbian Exchange is a process based on the exchange of goods, diseases, animals, and commodities, from Africa and Europe to America. The spread of disease allowed the natives to die off almost entirely meanwhile settlers were immune. “In some areas, typhus, influenza, measles, and smallpox wiped out 90 percent of native peoples by 1600,” (Clark, p. 13). Although the exchange resulted many casualties, it also stirred up an overseas agricultural demand for tobacco. While the Native American population continues to wither away the English have an open opportunity to eradicate the remainder.
While the Spanish and French pursued to convert the Indians to Christianity, the settlers in Virginia sought to exercise colonial rule. From a European perspective, the Indians were not using their land properly due to their lack of permanent buildings. Unintentionally, the English let their animals roam free causing ...
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...e were able to turn their economy around. Although they became successful financially the settlers also spread the ideology of European dominance. Superiority was the greedy driving force behind the expansion but was only attainable through brute force, exploitation, and slavery. They wanted the world to know that they will not stop until their desires are met, no matter what the cost.
Works Cited
Taylor, Alan (2001) American Colonies: The Settling of North America. New York: Penguin.
Jordon, Don and Michael Walsh (2008) White Cargo: The Forgotten History of Britain’s White Slaves in America. New York: NYU Press.
Clark, Christopher et. al. (2008) Who Built America? Working People and the Nation’s History. Volume One: To 1877. New York: Bedford St. Martin’s.
Selected Virginia Statutes related to Slavery http://www.virtualjamestown.org/slavelink.html
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 we...
The Indigenous people of America are called Native Americans or often referred to as “Indians”. They make up about two percent of the population in the United States and some of them still live in reservations. They once lived freely in the wilderness without any sort of influence or exposure from the Europeans who later came in the year of 1492, and therefore their culture is very different from ours.. In the following essay we will discover some differences between the religious beliefs of the Native American Iroquois and Christianity to see if the culture and ways of living have an effect on the view of religion, but we will also get to know some similarities between them. I am going to be focusing on the Iroquois, which are the northeastern Native Americans who are historically important and powerful.
Some consequences of the exchange are the spread of disease to the Native people and settlers, the destruction of the Native population, and the disappearance of the Natives custom’s, beliefs, and way of life. Columbus’s arrival to the Americas, land that had already been established by the Natives, resulted in a spread of fatal diseases. Disagreement between the Europeans and the Natives and the enslavement of Native people helped to wipe out the population. Document 5 illustrates the fighting that occurred between the Natives and Europeans.
The Columbian Exchange impacted Native Americans, Europeans, and Africans in many ways. Some of the major components of this exchange were plants, animals, and diseases. The Native Americans was impacted because they did not have immune systems capable of handling diseases such as; small pox, the plague, and yellow fever. This resulted in the population of Native Americans being cut by at least 90% over the course of a couple hundred years and making it easier for foreigners to come in and take over. The animal that helped the Native Americans was the horse. It helped them expand and explore places other than agricultural plains like mountains. The Europeans brought back tobacco. Tabaco then lead to many deaths because of its health issues involved with the use. They also got introduced to tomatoes which people thought for a long time was not edible. Africans acquired potatoes and maize, which became a main staple in Africa.
“As European adventurers traversed the world in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries they initiated the “Columbian Exchange” of plants, animals, and diseases.”(P. 26). The Columbian Exchange refers to a period of exchanges between the New and Old Worlds. The exchange of plants, animals, diseases and more modernized technology, beginning after Columbus landing in the Americas in 1492. It lasted through the fifteenth and sixteenth century. Domesticated animals such as cattle, horses, sheep and pigs were introduced to the Americas. The Americas introduced to Europe many new crops such as potatoes, beans, squash, and maize. In time Native people learned to raise European livestock and European and Africans planted American crops. This was the positive effect of the encounter and it was largely responsible for the doubling of the world’s population in the next three hundred years. There were also many negative effects to the “Columbian Exchange” A major consequence was the spread of disease in the New World. Diseases carried by Europeans and Africans devastated the population of the Americas. As Europeans traveled through the Americas epidemics came with them. Typhus, diphtheria, malaria, influenza, cholera, and smallpox killed many of the native people. One example was
There was no definite property line in the early New England colony, causing animals roaming freely to become an issue between the two societies. The Indians were ultimately unprepared for the European’s livestock to wonder into their property without any boundaries. The animals would not only walk into their land but eat their resources and grass along the way. Destruction that the livestock caused to the Native American’s land led to a distinct boundary line between them and the Europeans, creating further tension rather than assimilation. Cattle were trapped into Indian hunting traps, causing both a problem to the Indians hunting rituals as well as the Europeans livestock supply. These issues among land division ultimately led to the acceleration of land expansion by the colonists during the 1660’s and early 1670’s. Before King Phillip’s War, Plymouth officials approached the Indians at least twenty-three times to purchase land. The author argues that previous mutual consideration for both the society’s needs was diminished at this point and the selling of the land would eliminate the Indian’s independence. Whenever livestock was involved, the colonists ignored Indian’s property rights
Rediker, Marcus. The Slave Ship A Human History. New York, New York: Penguin Group, 2007. Print.
It is hard to believe that after electing a minority president, the United States of America can still be seen as a vastly discriminatory society. A question was posed recently after a viewing of Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream…” speech of whether his dream has become a reality. After consideration, a majority of the viewers said no. Although many steps have been taken to improve racial equality in America, there is still no way to legislate tolerance. Dr. King’s message of equality for all has been lost in a black and white struggle over the taken meaning of his context. Until our society can allow all people to live in peace we will never truly achieve King’s dream. Case in point, referring to President Obama as our "our First Black President" should not be considered a statement of pride over how far we have come. Placing this racial qualifier, even in a positive light, only serves to point out his minority status, not the fact that he is the President of the United States. According to Dr. King's dream, a man or woman, black or white, would be viewed as President without qualifying their differences from mainstream America.
In “A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson,” Mary Rowlandson, a Puritan mother from Lancaster, Massachusetts, recounts the invasion of her town by Indians in 1676 during “King Philip’s War,” when the Indians attempted to regain their tribal lands. She describes the period of time where she is held under captivity by the Indians, and the dire circumstances under which she lives. During these terrible weeks, Mary Rowlandson deals with the death of her youngest child, the absence of her Christian family and friends, the terrible conditions that she must survive, and her struggle to maintain her faith in God. She also learns how to cope with the Indians amongst whom she lives, which causes her attitude towards them to undergo several changes. At first, she is utterly appalled by their lifestyle and actions, but as time passes she grows dependent upon them, and by the end of her captivity, she almost admires their ability to survive the harshest times with a very minimal amount of possessions and resources. Despite her growing awe of the Indian lifestyle, her attitude towards them always maintains a view that they are the “enemy.”
Today’s society protects against discrimination through laws, which have been passed to protect minorities. The persons in a minority can be defined as “a group having little power or representation relative to other groups within a society” (The Free Dictionary). It is not ethical for any person to discriminate based on race or ethnicity in a medical situation, whether it takes place in the private settings of someone’s home or in a public hospital. Racial discrimination, in a medical setting, is not ethical on the grounds of legal statues, moral teachings, and social standings.
The Sovereignty and Goodness of God is a primary source document written in the 17th century, by a well-respected, Puritan woman. This book, written in cahoots with Cotton and Increase Mather, puritan ministers, tells the story of her capture by Indians during King Phillip’s War (1675-1676). For three months, Mary Rowlandson, daughter of a rich landowner, mother of three children, wife of a minister, and a pillar of her community lived among “savage” Indians. This document is important for several reasons. First, it gives us insight into the attitudes, extremes, personalities and “norms” of the Puritan people we learn about in terms of their beliefs, and John Calvin’s “house on a hill”. Beyond that, despite the inevitable exaggerations, this book gives us insight into Indian communities, and how they were run and operated during this time.
According to the materials to which I have been exposed in this course, in my informed judgement, the views of these Millennials are very inaccurate. The society on which we live in today still produces discrimination towards minority groups. These groups include but are not limited to: African-Americans and women. Evidence of discrimination are exemplified via an article by authors Joe Feagin, Adriane Fugh-Berman, and Roxanna Harlow (McIntyre, 2015). These articles examine the discrimination that minority groups face in our society and offers an explanation (social factors) to how this millennial obtained misinformed views.
Introduction: The motivation for settlers to travel to the Americas was not the intranational and international rivalries revolving around choice of religion and all-around “we’re better than you” mentality, but instead the goal for each to increase their own personal wealth. The colonists were part of the Virginia Company, which was divided into two smaller companies: London Company and Plymouth Company. The founding of Virginia marked the beginning of a second round of colonization attempts from England, as the first round of attempts in the 1570s and 1580s failed miserably. Rather than grant conquistadors the permission to claim land for them, as well as give them large sums of money for funding, the English used jointstock companies to lead settlers to the New World with the hope of profiting from this arrangement.
The Native Americans who occupied America before any white settlers ever reached the shores “covered the land as the waves of a wind-ruffled sea cover its shell paved floor” (1). These Native people were one with nature and the Great Spirit was all around them. They were accustom to their way of life and lived peacefully. All they wish was to live on their land and continue the traditions of their people. When the white settler came upon their land the values of the Native people were challenged, for the white settlers had nothing in common and believe that it was their duty to assimilate the Native Americans to the white way of life.
Abstract- Racial discrimination happens all the time and most of us are unaware of it. The most common place for this to happen is in the workplace. Now people can be discriminated against because of their race, religion, or any other numerous things. Also, discrimination can occur during the job interview or even after you got the job. This paper will shoe the effects of racial discrimination and how it can be prevented. In addition there are some very important laws that deal specifically with discrimination, like the NAACP or Affirmative Action. These both will be discussed.