Why Europeans Were Conquerors

The Age of Exploration occurred from 1400 to 1700 C.E. It is famously known as the Age of Exploration because it was a time when explorers from Europe travelled by sea to explore west of them, and make many geographical advances. Exploration was motivated by gold, glory, and God. Along with their motivation, the Europeans also wanted to find trading partners, new goods, new trade routes, and simply find new land. With exploration, there were many good effects and many bad ones. Today, there is mainly recognition to the how amazing the explorers are for what they discovered, but there is no recognition to what harsh decisions they made in the process and the many problems they caused. In modern times, European explorers, conquistadors, and settlers

Within the 1800’s European Explorers forced their way through the insides of western and central Africa. Along the west coast of Africa, European nations traded for slaves, ivory, and gold. Africa was under full assault by the 1800s, as European nations competed with one another for control of the continent. Europe wanted to imperialism (take over) Africa and the forces (what they did) that helped them succeed is the new technology, Nationalism, and lastly the most important industrialism.

European exploration was brought on by the three G’s: God, gold, and glory. People wanted to spread Christianity whether it be Catholicism or Protestantism, while explorers such as Cortes were looking for gold to get rich and glory to get famous. This age of exploration was able to occur because of technological advances such as the caravel, cannons on ships, more advanced cartography, and the magnetic compass. The impact exploration had on the natives of the New World was changes in the natives culture, enslavement of the native people, and a massive population decrease.

The development of agriculture experienced a diversification among the people of the region. It also experienced in the Northwest an economic development as well as social diversification and the developing of hunting and foraging.

Europe, such as Spain, France, and England, have had different language, culture, political system, religion and more, which they developed by themselves in their civilization. In the late 1400s to 1500s, Europeans started the colonization and economic competitions each other between countries to get more assets since their resources and lands were limited and not enough. At that time, Spaniards and French had the same purpose for exploring the New World such as pursuing wealth, winning the economic competition, but they approached to Native Americans in different ways. The difference between these two countries when they encounter with Indians was the relationship with Native Americans.

Throughout the late 1400’s and the 1500’s, the world experienced many changes due to the discoveries of new lands and peoples that had been never been visited before. The new-found lands of the Americas and exploration of Africa by the Europeans led to new colonies and discoveries in both areas. It also brought different societies and cultures together that had never before communicated, causing conflict in many of these places. While the Europeans treated both the Native Americans and West Africans as inferior people, the early effects they had on the Native Americans were much worse.

In the 15 to 17 century’s during the Age of Exploration, Europeans would explore unknown region of the world. Explorers had different reasons of discovering these places from wanting to go there their whole life to doing it for trade with goods or to make money. One thing all of these explorers have in common is conquering the land they find for themselves or their country. Others may argue they are just explorers and do it for the fun. Some argue they were just merchants trading slaves and goods with other countries around them and some say they are missionary’s trying to convert the native people to their religion.

When the Europeans arrived in North America, many changes came into the lives of indigenous

The end of the fifteenth century is attributed as the time period in which Christopher Colombus “discovered” the Americas. Although he was allegedly the first European to have reached these unknown lands at the time, many sought to reach the new world, for a variety of reasons. Most of those people could be divided in two: the settlers and the conquerors. In North America, there were more of the former, people looking for a new home where they could rebuild their families and lives. In Meso-America, however, the goal was to exploit the lands in order to produce and extract new goods which they could trade. Despite the different outcomes they were trying to reach, both held a common truth: natives and African slaves were both lesser than Europeans,

After Christopher Columbus founded the ‘New World’, in 1492, many European nations began to form expeditions to the ‘New World’ in search for gold. Although Great Britain, Spain, and France settled in the Americas, their colonies developed in almost completely different ways, like: The Spaniards colonized mainly in South and Central America for economic purposes, like to grow sugar, which lead its colonies to be mainly plantations; The French’s main goals in the Americas were to trade fur with the Native Americans and to find a route to the Pacific Ocean to trade with Asia; and the Britishers’ came here for two main purposes, one for economic matters and to avoid the religious conflict that was happening in England.

The feeling of treading new lands, that is what the first Europeans experienced. When Christopher Columbus returned to Spain is when the age of exploration truly began. The Spanish conquistadors were the first of the European explorers whom came to the Americas. There were four reasons why they decided to start exploring the new world. These reasons include; the willingness to learn, religion, economics, and politics.

Indeed, from their first arrival in the New World, the European explorers treated the native people, and the slaves that they brought, as barbarous heathens, incapable of higher thought or civilized behavior. For example, Christopher Columbus’s letter to the King of Spain from his first voyage intricately shows these original encounters. In this letter, he carefully describes the people of the island, pointing out that they “all go naked, men and women, as their mothers bore them” and that they “are very marvelously timorous.” He then adds that he “gave them a thousand handsome good things, which [he] had brought, in order that they might conceive affection for us and, more than that, might become Christians and be inclined to the love and service of Your Highness.” Though he is not describing forced religious conversion, he is undoubtedly showing how the Europeans treated people with religions that were different from their own. Moreover, numerous laws within the established colonies, with relation both to the Native Americans and to the settlers, disproportionately disadvantaged non-Christians. For example, in Vitoria’s writing, “On The American Indians,” there are numerous laws that create unequal rights for people, but most noticeably are the rights taken from people based on their religion: “Heretics can have no dominion, so unbelievers, who are no better than heretics, can have no dominion either.” Essentially, therefore, if a person was not a Christian, they had no right to own land or to vote.

Deconstruction was introduced by French philosopher Jacques Derrida. Later “deconstruction” develops to interrogate the assumptions of Western thought by reversing or displacing the "binary oppositions" that provide its foundation. (Shen, 2012) To deconstruct colonial discourse is not simple a process of expelling colonizers but more importantly reconstruct the cultural code that the colonial discourse imposed upon the colonized. (Georgetown University Library)Therefore to deconstruct colonial discourse involves breaking the binary oppositions built up by the colonizers. In order to achieve this, Coetzee set up a group of contrasting images between the colonizers and the barbarians. The barbarians, who were said to do evil things were depicted

At the point when the European explorers found the New World it was at that point inhabited by millions of Native Americans. Notwithstanding not having a writing system the Native Americans had a huge oratory literary accumulation of culture, history, and religion. The literature of the early explorers was for the most part narratives and letters. These writings portray the New World and the explorers' movements and experiences (Millisaw). Each literary system was one of a kind mirroring the distinctive culture, background, and beliefs of each respective gathering. In the end the systems meet up and develop into the literature of modern America. To comprehend modern

First and foremost, it should be pointed out that religion in the Americas was a completely foreign concept to voyagers like Columbus. These indigenous people believed in multiple Gods and would perform human sacrifices to please the Gods. Because of this difference from their Christian society, many voyagers saw them as savages. Bernal Diaz even compares European society with Mexican society and says that they are completely different (Diaz del Castillo.) They did not understand why they did the things they did, they did not understand why