The Europeans and Social Impacts
Columbus established trade between Europe and
the Americas (also called ‘The New World’) and
products such as cotton and rubber were sent to
the New World; the Europeans were supplied with
spices, plants and … slaves.
Agricultural changes can have seriously bad
effects; even today you are not allowed to take
any type of living plant (even seeds) into
Australia. This protects their ecosystem - a
lesson learned from the influx of plants and
other vegetation from Europe to the
Americas.
The Europeans also brought new technologies;
things which the natives had never had exposure
to - ships, guns, fancy clothes and shiny
trinkets (polished metals). Those sorts of thing
were good; they did no harm and were welcomed by
the natives. Things given in returned were
welcomed in Europe as oddities or useful;
tobacco comes from the Americas and at first,
and for hundreds of years, that was
welcomed.
The Europeans also brought with them
Christianity. The natives had their own
religions, their own belief systems, but the
Europeans thought that Christianity was more
‘civilised’. The natives would sometimes use
human sacrifice to appease their gods. That was
just their way.
Who knows what ‘to appease’ means?
To appease means to agree with someone or
something so that you do not cause
trouble.
The Europeans were able to learn more about
native culture and art.
Columbus became friends with the natives
because he had to. When he left, he had to leave
some men behind, to establish a presence - and
have room to take the treasures back.
But remember the idiom - good intentions can
have bad results?
Who has seen the film (or read the book) “The War of the Worlds”? Not to give anything away, let’s just say that the smallest things on earth defeat the mighty power of the superior invaders.
And that is similar to what happened to the New
World. Columbus, unknowingly, didn’t only take
goods and products to trade, he took with him
diseases.
These days, diseases travel very easily from country to country - as we are seeing - and for most what you might call ‘standard’ diseases, populations develop a degree of immunity. Most people around the world are fairly resistant against ‘the common cold’ - but still catch colds - because they have been exposed to the common cold before. Most people do not die of the common cold.
This is the common cold virus.
However, when Columbus arrived, the natives had never known diseases such as a common cold, or worse - smallpox, plague or influenza - and, with no resistance, natives who caught these illnesses died.
In fact, within just 50 years of the Europeans
arriving, thousands of natives had died of
illnesses brought from Europe.
Of course the reverse was true too - Europeans
died of illnesses found only in the Americas -
malaria, dengue fever and illnesses like
those.
In spite of these bad things, the natives were
generally friendly and willing to learn a lot
from the Europeans.
What does the phrase ‘in spite’
mean?
It’s a more casual, less formal way of saying
‘although’.
But even this was a problem. The Europeans
thought that they were superior to the natives,
because of the fact that the natives wore hardly
any clothes, didn’t know God, lived in huts,
and
were not ‘advanced’. In their own ways, of
course, they were very advanced and had
structured societies just as much as the
Europeans did.
But people like Columbus thought that simply
because the natives liked to imitate the
Europeans - for example genuflecting - the
natives would make good servants.
Who knows what ‘genuflecting’ is?
It is when people make the sign of the
Christian cross, shoulder to shoulder, forehead
to heart.
And this is when the really bad effects
started.
There was one populations known as the
‘Caribs’.
Can you guess in which area the ‘Caribs’
lived?
The clue’s in the name - the Caribbean.
The Caribs had a cannibalistic culture and this
was a threat to other nearby populations and to
the Europeans. Maybe they thought that ‘there’s
nothing like a nice roast Spaniard for
lunch’.
Actually it was not a habit, more of a religious practice - if you eat the body of someone who was a good fighter, you gained their strength too. A bit like some video games.
Queen Isabella decided that the Caribs were definitely not Christians and therefore could be taken as slaves. I would not think there was much of a battle, because again - guns beat spears and bows and arrows.
It didn’t take long to wipe out the Caribs or transport them back to Spain. Many died on the journey and slave ships were probably like hell on the sea. Here’s a drawing of the layout of a slave ship.
It was a good thing when Queen Isabella decided that because the ‘New World’ was now Spanish land, the people there were in fact Spanish people; and you could no longer make them slaves.
It was a bit late for many tribes though,
because many many slaves had already been sent
to Spain. Some populations were totally wiped
out - never to exist again.
(In Spain, and Europe, slaves were not treated
the same as they were later in America. They
were servants, made into farmhands, worked in
factories and things like that.) Back in the new
world, when the things that the natives had to
trade became less and less, Columbus and the
Europeans turned the natives into slaves in
their own country. They were made to work in
mines (gold mines), on ranches or as servants in
the households of their conquerors.
What's a 'ranch'?
It’s a large area of land where cattle or other
livestock wander about on their own but are
brought back for slaughter or other
reasons.
What’s the main problem about gold?
It’s rare. Mining for gold does not find much
and often finds none at all. Finding gold in
rivers is possible but if you find a piece even
as big as a grain of rice, you have struck
lucky!
When the natives in the mines failed to find
gold, they were beaten severely or even just
killed. If they were not miners, they were made
to build towns; if they tried to escape back to
the rainforest, they were hunted down and
killed.
The situation was very much worse for the
natives, but the Europeans also suffered
terribly too. They caught diseases, were bitten
by creatures, attacked by jungle animals,
poisoned by things which were harmless to the
natives - even some frogs - and the Europeans
who tried to settle in the New World even ended
fighting amongst themselves for the best places
or even, in very bad times, fighting and killing
each other for whatever little food there
was.
Those were some social and cultural effects on The New World.