Week 2: Early European Contact

The main factors that fueled European Expansion was the discovery of new lands, and "unfree labor that enabled them to exploit the fertile lands of the Western Hemisphere" (Liberty 6). The Expansion allowed new trade to be made with continents such as the Americas and Africa. "The emergence of the Atlantic as the worlds major avenue for trade and population movement... enabled millions of Europeans to increase the "enjoyments" of life" (Liberty 6).

Although the expansion of Europe as seen in their eyes was "slender and Glory" slavery was introduced from Africa. By 1820 nearly the majority of Africans, 7.7 million had become slaves. With new lands comes new diseases, both the indigenous people and the Europeans had their own diseases, and when they came into contact with each other, they had no immunities against their diseases, which caused major epidemics. "The transatlantic flow of good and people, sometimes called the Colombian Exchange, reversed millions of years of evolution. Plants, animals, and cultures that had evolved independently on separate continents were now thrown together. Products introduced to Europe from America included, corn, tomatoes, potatoes, peanuts, tobacco, and cotton, while to the New World from the Old came wheat, rice, sugar cane, horses, cattle pigs and sheep. Europeans also brought with them germs previously unknown in the Americas. (Liberty 26)

Bartolome de Las Casas accounted that the Indians were treated "like dogs" and "this is the freedom, the good treatment and the Christianity that Indians received" (Freedom 12). They were slaves; forced to work for little to no pay, given cassava bread as a sole means of food, with very little pork to go with it. When they were nearly dead from malnutrition they would be sent home only to die before even making it home. "Even beasts enjoy more freedom when they are allowed to graze in the fields. But our Spaniards gave no such opportunity to Indians and truly considered them perpetual slaves..." (Freedom 12). Spain thought the Indians to be barbarians and not rational beings, Bartolome de Las Casas beleived otherwise. "In 1514 Las Casas freed his own Indian slaves and began to preach against the injustices of Spanish rule" (Liberty 32).

I've always been taught that Columbus was friendly with the Indians, like this video says, I was always suspicious about this. What they didn't mention was the fact that they took the Indians from their native land and turned them into slaves. It was not a friendly meeting like I was taught in elementary school.

A little about myself...

Hi everyone, My name's Kevin Rafferty, I'm 22 years old. In my free time I like to build plastic models. I just finished a 1:570 scale model of the Titanic and will be starting the same scale model of The Queen Mary as soon as it arrives in the mail! I don't have a major yet, I'm still exploring, I'm working on getting my General Education right now, after that I'm sure I'll have made my mind up as to what I want to major in. I'm taking this class because I've always been fascinated with History, especially US History. I hope to learn more about early US History. My high school teachers never really went into very much detail about that part of our history. This is my third online class, at first I'm going to be a little overwhelmed, but after I get into the grove of things, I'll be fine.