The European Advantage

Advantages for the Europeans:
They had immunity to the infections diseases they brought with them. The only possible disease that went from the Western Hemisphere to Europe was syphilis. The European diseases did most of the killing of the First Americans. The Europeans had an effective writing system. The First Americans, while some were literate, most were not. The Mayan system of writing, for example, was insanely intricate. The Europeans had a higher technology; steel, and guns, were just two examples.
Finally, one other European advantage was the population of Europe was large and growing. They could export their excess people to the colonies. The First American’s population was smaller and shrinking, due to all the European diseases ravaging the Western Hemisphere.By the way, that was not “genocide”. Genocide includes intent; the Spaniards, for example, wanted First Americans as slaves to work the farms and mines. NO ONE in the world in the 16th Century knew what infectious diseases were, or how they spread.
The First Americans advantages were:
More familiar with the plants in their area, so they could eat more easily. If you read about the early European colonies in the US, such as Jamestown and Plymouth, you find that First Americans aided the colonists in how to grow (for example) corn. Bows and arrows are looked down on, but they had a faster reload time and were silent, versus the guns that took minutes to reload, were not all that accurate, and made a huge amount of noise.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Revolution, Socialism and Global Conflict

Colonial Encounters

The End of Empire