Negative Effects Of Exploration And Colonization On Native Americans

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Exploration and Colonization impacted the native peoples in positive and negative ways. These positive and negative impacts include religion, disease, and technology. These expeditions were occurring during the time that many European nations started searching for new trade routes and started spreading their influence to many new cultures. These people had their way of life, but the Europeans thought their way was better so they pushed their ways on the natives. Some Europeans had good relations with natives, but others did not.
There are many positives to the influence of religion on the natives of newly explored countries as well as negatives. Many Europeans, especially Spaniards, felt that “with the help of God, (they) shall powerfully …show more content…

The very existence of the Europeans posed a threat to livelihood of the natives. They had a disease called smallpox which the natives did not have an immunity to. The disease was a plague among the natives very rapidly. When the Spaniards fought and temporarily left Tenochtitlan, many Aztecs died due to the smallpox of the Spaniards as recorded by Miguel Leon-Portilla (Doc. 4). When the Europeans learned of how their disease was affecting the natives, the Europeans took advantage and used it to kill natives that were in places of possible settlement. Geoffrey Cowley gives some modern statistics of just how many natives died. In Mexico alone from 1519 to 1568 the native population dropped from about 30 million to 3 million (Doc. 6). The disease brought horror to the New World but did manage to clear the way for many colonies for the Europeans. Sadly these colonies were built because there were no natives to stop them after they were …show more content…

Religion, disease, and technology are three of the biggest factors of these impacts. We can see the very same kind of influences on other explorations such as in the scramble for Africa. The Europeans tried to take Africa for its resources and even its people for commercial use. Some Europeans tried to make Africans convert to their religion, others gave some diseases (which was rare due to Africans having strong immunities), and some Europeans use technology to gain resources of just push their way through the natives and show power over them. Colonization did lay the roots for the globalization of the world. There were good and bad ways people gained ways colonies were formed yet mostly for the greater good. We must never forget the voices of the natives and their culture. To globalize the world we must respect other cultures and not try to annihilate them for selfish

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