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Lucas Chiang

Mr. Hogan

Grade 10 Honors Composition

November 19, 2020

The Aftermath of European Conquests

On an ordinary autumn day on October 1492, Christopher Columbus spotted land away

from the ship the Spanish monarchy had granted him. He is on a quest of finding a new route

from Europe to Asia, and he believed that he has found it (History). In reality, however, it was

actually an island in the modern Bahamas that he had discovered. After landing, Columbus

and his men encountered the indigenous tribe of the island, which he referred to as “Indians”

(First Encounters in the Americas). He noted that they were “generous with what they have,

to such a degree as no one would believe but he who had seen it” (Columbus). Yet, the

friendly relationship soon evaporated. With the desire for more gold, Columbus’s men started

to treat the local tribes very poorly; killing, torturing and enslaving them if they couldn’t

produce the amount of gold they were required to find. Unfortunately, the indigenous were

incapable of resisting because they suffered from susceptible European diseases the

conquistadors, or conquerors, carried with them. This first contact of Columbus and the

indigenous people were indeed the epitome of European conquests across the world. For the

next decade, European conquests not only brought deadly diseases and slave trade to their

colonies, but also brought mercantilism along great distress, which all caused suffer and
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struggling.

In the early 15th century, internal warfare ceased in Europe and it was slowly recovering

the loss of population from the catastrophic Black Death. Driven by the rise of population and

hunger for wealth, the Age of Discovery emerged. Major Western European powers such as

Spain, Portugal, France, and England began exploration outside the Mediterranean as sea

routes and seaports were discovered and built. Lands unknown to the Europeans were

progressively discovered during this period, such as the West Indies. In 1522, as Ferdinand

Magellan finished the first circumnavigation of the globe, Europe had declared its ambition

and capability to colonize lands all over the world (Pearson). The Americas, Africa, and

British colonies are the clearest examples of each negative aftermath European conquests

brought.

To begin with, Spanish conquests unknowingly spread several susceptible diseases

among the world, such as smallpox, pneumonia, influenza and asthma, which was responsible

millions of lives in the colonies. For instance, the diseases caused a drastic decline in the

Native American’s population and religious destructions. Motivated by Columbus’s

discoveries, the Spanish conquerors were looking for wealth settled on the islands of

Hispaniola, Cuba and Puerto Rico. Their technology such as guns, cannons, and horses were

far more advanced compared to the Native Americans’ arrows and spears. Throughout the

region, they ruthlessly exploited the Natives, seizing their gold and forcing them to convert to
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Christianity. Mostly importantly, the European diseases like smallpox and measles prevented

the Natives from resisting because they were all exceedingly ill due to their lack of immunity

towards the new virus. Eventually, they died. These diseases wiped out tribe after tribe,

village after village, and continued permeating inland. As a result, the Native American

population of the Caribbean declined by up to 90% in the 1500s (Diamond).

Slave trade is another terrific aftermath the European conquests brought, which lasted

for several hundreds of years and had truly caused devastating impacts on colonies’ societies.

Slavery has existed all over the world since ancient civilizations, for example: Egypt, Rome,

and China (Pearson). In fact, in African colonies it is common for African tribes to enslave

the members of other tribes if they had been defeated in a tribal war. However, the population

of the Native Americans European colonists enslaved to work on plantations, large estates

especially used for growing a single cash crop, diminished greatly due to the diseases, as

mentioned in the paragraph above. Consequently, the demand for slaves in America soared,

which is why European merchants turned to interior Africa for more laborers. At the same

time, the Africans also had economic desire for the goods European traders offer, especially

guns because they needed better weapons to protect their own tribes from becoming slaves of

their rivals. The mutual demands of both sides nourished slave trade in Africa. Hence,

Africans started to kidnap random men of other tribes to exchange for weapons from the

European merchants. As the ruler of Kongo, King Afonso I had described, “To satisfy
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[European traders’] inordinate appetite, they seize many of our black free subjects… They

sell them” (Mbemba). It is estimated that 80,000 Africans were sent to America every year.

By the mid-1800s when the oversea slave trade was finally ended, over 13 million enslaved

Africans had been forcibly carried to the Americas. In addition, another 2 million probably

had died during the journey. Families were separated, millions were brutalized and their

cultures and traditions were completely lost.

Finally yet importantly, mercantilism, an economic policy used to increase a nation's

wealth through exports, gave rise to an imbalanced system of trade between European nations

and their colonies. According to mercantilism, oversea colonies existed only for the benefit of

the parent country, because they provided resources and raw materials not available in

Europe. They also serve as the market for the parent nation’s manufactured products they

produced from the raw materials, including sugar, tobacco, cotton, and iron. Mercantilism

especially thrived in Great Britain between the 16th and 18th centuries (Kramer). Great

Britain relied heavily on its colonies’ resources, so restrictions on how they could spend their

money or properties were imposed. For example, the Acts of Trade and Navigation of

England was a series of regulations established to make American colonies more dependent

on finished products from England (Kramer). These enormous restrictions caused the

colonies to face periods of inflation and excessive taxation, particularly the huge amount of

taxation that was required to support the British army at war. The combination of taxes and
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inflation hindered the freedom of colonial business and its growth under an unbalanced

market.

In conclusion, in order to satisfy their immense avarice, European conquerors colonized

lands around the world, seizing properties of the indigenous after killing them either directly

or indirectly with the assistance of lethal diseases they carried. Their conquests were

responsible for millions of deaths of African slaves and Native Americans, and their

restrictions on their colonies caused people to struggle from starvation and poverty.

WORKS CITED
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Chapter 37. American Historical Association, www.historians.org/teaching-and-

learning/teaching-resources-for-historians/teaching-and-learning-in-the-digital-age/the-

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Esler, Anthony, and Elisabeth Ellis. World History. 2016 student ed., Pearson, 2016.

“First Encounters in the Americas.” Facing History and Ourselves,

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americas. Accessed on 13 Nov. 2020.

Kramer, Leslie. “How Mercantilism Affected Great Britain's Colonies.” Government &

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did-mercantilism-affect-colonies-great-britain.asp. Accessed on 13 Nov. 2020.

Leon Portilla, Miguel. “The Arrival at the City.” The Broken Spears: The Aztec Account of the

Conquest of Mexico. UNAM, 1959.

“Nzinga Mbemba (Afonso I) – Letters to the King of Portugal (1526).” Genius, M. L.

Thompson, genius.com/Nzinga-mbemba-afonso-i-letters-to-the-king-of-portugal-1526-

annotated.
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Onion, Amanda et al. “Christopher Columbus.” HISTORY, A&E Television Networks, 9 Nov.

2009, www.history.com/topics/exploration/christopher-columbus. Accessed on 4 Dec.

2020.