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How Did Native People Change Europeans Perspectives Of Themselves?

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How did encounters with native peoples change Europeans’ perspectives of themselves? Aside from the East and their sought after technological advancements, European nations considered themselves the epoch of civilisation. This essay argues that well into the 19th century European involvement brought both positive and negative effects to natives and their perspective remained unjust superiority. This essay will also mostly concentrate in British/English views and involvement, yet alo examine other European nations perspectives to conceptualize the British imperial conquest. English colonization of Ireland during the Elizabethan era essentially set the standard for the trans-Atlantic mistreatment of natives. The first instance of England creating 'otherness ' through semantics. Sylvestres Hibernici or 'wild Irish ' Thomas Benjamin highlights this by quoting Sir John Davis in 1612 whom stated the Irish behaved …show more content…

However, something that needs to be considered when discussing the barbaric practices of European empires is that: not all European nations truly engaged with the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Portuguese interaction with natives is different in the sense that until 1580 when Portugal became part of the Spanish monarchy, Portuguese interest did not dwell in the lucrative trans-Atlantic slave trade. Rather, Portugal focused on overseas trade. Essentially revolutionizing agriculture in West Africa with the introduction of new crops from The Americas and the East (particularly areas around the Indian Ocean and Asia). Yet, Portugal may not have truly engaged in the atrocity of the slave trade, like other European nations, the Portuguese did abuse their superior military power to keep a monopoly on West African trade. Portuguese foreign policy was equally problematic. Even going as far to burn villages of those who commerced with other foreign traders.12 By the seventeenth century African states soon allied themselves with

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