A Brief Note On Explorers: Triumphs And Troubles By Pam Conrad

Our class read books about exploration and discovery. The books were “Pedro’s Journal” by Pam Conrad and “Explorers: Triumphs and Troubles” by Paul Mason. In my opinion, the explorers had a negative impact on the society. They brought over diseases, stole from countries and tribes, and kidnapped people. They also tricked people into doing things or believing things. This in my mind is not what you should do when you're exploring and traveling.
The explorers brought over diseases to people that didn’t have immunities to them. In “Explorers: Triumphs and Troubles” on page 25 it says, “Two years after the british arrived up to 70% on the Eroa population had died of smallpox.” 100 years after and the native australians dropped from about 1 billion

Take the Aztecs for example. A conquistador named Cortez was looking for the Aztec temple. It was said to be full of gold and riches. On the journey people tried to defend themselves, but couldn’t do it. He wanted the riches so badly that he would gladly kill for it. One of the members of his army killed a group of Aztec nobles. Eventually all the riches that belonged to the Aztecs, now belonged to the spanish.
Killing, fighting, and punishing was normal for people to do, to find riches. Kidnapping was also something a lot of people did. Remember Cortez? Yeah, he kidnapped too. In “Explorers: Triumphs and Troubles” on page 14, it says the following. “Cortez was technically Montezuma’s guest-but not a well behaved one. He soon took Montezuma prisoner. This was a normal tactic for conquistadors.”. Not only was it bad that Cortez did that, but it says many others kidnapped

They stole from the Aztecs, brought diseases to the Eora people, killed for money, and tricked tribes who were not well taught about the outside world. They took advantage of people who did not know how to fight. They stole from temples, just for fame, glory, and of course money. This is not very outgoing to anyone. Imagine, your in your town, everything is peaceful. Then you hear something, it sounds like metal. It races past you. The next day you hear of people trying to steal your land’s gold. You are worried. The king is captured, and Aztec nobles are dead. You wonder why someone would do such a thing. Your people try to defend their land but the spanish are smarter. They fight back and they win. They end up getting the money and gold. You feel defeated, like you can’t do anything about it. And you couldn’t do anything about it then either. It just happened and you knew about it. That is how someone could have felt during the events that took place. Those are reasons why I believe that the explorers had a negative impact on societies. On many societies all