Nulisch-Oakes 1

Emily Nulisch, Lindsey Oakes

Bennett-Martin
Humanities II
25 January 2016
Anti-Colonialism
Colonialism was a simple idea that completely transformed the world during
1400-1700. With this physical doctrinal idea, the eastern hemisphere was able to discover
and conquer America through technological innovations and disease. The forceful
establishment of settlements, such as Jamestown, initiated a long series of conflicts with
Natives who previously occupied the land that migrants now dominated. Europeans
exploited North and South America both economically and resourcefully, draining much
of the land and forcing labor upon imprisoned natives. Whether or not this was a morally
guided expedition of Europe to destroy native societies is questionable, and the
consequences are easily recognizable. Despite the enormity of European
accomplishments and relationships with the Native Americans, the effects of colonialism
damaged untainted cultures and environments with unfair technological and military
advantages.
The expansive reign of Europeans in Native American territory led to an abrupt
end in a peaceful and solitude existence for those in North America. One of the primary
factors that eliminated vast portions of Native American populations was disease.
Europeans brought over unknown illnesses to North Americans, who never had the
opportunity to develop immunity. The first epidemic to arrive in the Americas was
smallpox, a deadly disease brought by Spanish explorers in Tenochtitlan. Followed by

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smallpox were influenza, measles, and other ailments aided by domesticated animals.
Most American Indians who came in contact with Europeans because of their
colonization suffered from a devastating death toll (Rivera 23). Only at the consequence
of the endangerment of the Native American peoples and the disruption of the native way
of life were Europeans able to establish a wealthy, extensive empire. The extermination
of a race, seen as simply necessary and willed by God to the Europeans, was the cost of
colonizing the Americas, and in turn ended a distinct culture and way of life unknown to
the European world. To the surviving Native Americans, the introduction of European
guns and alcohol drastically changed everyday life within the tribe. By allowing Native
Americans to use guns during their hunts for animal fur, more and more animals were
killed daily. This allowed the near-mass extinction of different mammals, such as beavers
and other common creatures with valuable pelts. The absence of these animals created a
lack of resources within America, in which the natural environment had been altered and
the way of life within Native American tribes had been permanently changed. Native
Americans then began to have an unhealthy reliance on European products, losing much
of their traditional hunting and gathering way of life. Europeans even began to alter the
environment that Native Americans lived in. When Europeans brought livestock to the
Western Hemisphere, the grass that fed Native American cows became mowed, pigs
destroyed clams in Native American fishing industry, and the Native way of life became
unsuitable. The lack of resistance that the Native Americans had to trading reliance and
alcohol resulted in intense alcoholism and intoxication, affecting productivity and
agreeability of the natives (Beauvais 253). Violence, promiscuity and disobedience
erupted within tribes, especially among the young men, within the different tribes,

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causing fighting and tension among the differing peoples and requests from the Iroquois
leaders to halt European importation of alcohol (Strayer 687). Dependence on European
goods created an unhealthy relationship between the Natives and Europeans as their
reliance often erupted into violence and unstable relationships. This credence on the
Europeans firmly halted the independence of Native American economy and weakened
their own cultural landscape, effectively ending a period of Native American prosperity in
exchange for European dominance and extermination of the native peoples.
A commonly known fact and perception of the European invasion in the Americas
was the enslavement of natives. Europeans, primarily Spaniards, would forcibly migrate
Indians and take up subsistence farming and agriculture for the purpose of benefiting
missionary projects and industries. A vast majority of the interaction in Northern America
later derived from Native Americans capturing other foreign slaves or war captives and
creating a slave trade industry with Europeans in return for products. Some Native
Americans could even be traded in return for more black slaves to supply some sort of
work force (Onion 1). Besides the enslavement of both the Native Americans peoples and
Africans from across the world, Natives were subjected to European leadership and
forced to relocate to reservations from their homeland. After major attacks on the
Tupinamb villages on the outskirts of Salvador, all natives that survived were ordered to
migrate to eleven predetermined Indian settlement by the governor general. In the
settlements, Indians were considered free, but still rendered obedient to the Jesuits,
who served as a proxy form of government for the supposedly self-sufficient Native
American governments (Abreu 370). Using the Native Americans as slaves completely
disregarded their humanity, but the act of eliminating the Natives from their own land and

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way of life was in accordance with a Eurocentric way of thinking and a disrespectful act
to an entire culture. The decimation and expulsion of Native Americans on their own,
original land characterizes the colonial era as a time of dehumanization and disregard for
non-European cultures; it was simply an era of allowing the Europeans to succeed
through the submission and conquering of lesser peoples in order to gain more land and
resources.
Despite the unification of the New World into a global system of exchange and
the formation of new countries, the Colonial Era was responsible for the mass relocation,
genocide, and enslavement of inferior races. Colonialism in the Americas created a
world in which minorities receive less rights and Europeans are seen as the dominant
peoples, which can still be considered a present ideal in the modern world. Simply
overlooking the blood spilled and cultures destroyed would be an act of contempt against
the Native Americans and Africans sacrificed to develop the New World that Europeans
claimed as their own, blatantly ignoring these acts of horror against the Natives in favor
of a Eurocentric, economically based way of thinking. The lack of humanity displayed by
the Europeans may not be the most noteworthy achievement of the era in terms of
development and expansion of territory, but one cannot ignore the methods of which
Europeans took to advance so far.