Question

"Although Europeans would come to dominate the New World, they could not have done so without Africans and native peoples."   Briefly discuss your opinion of this statement.

Answer 1

• Europeans may have been intrigued by the stories of the feared Vikings’ discovery of a “new world,” but they lacked the resources or the will to follow their path of exploration.
• This age of exploration and the subsequent creation of an Atlantic World marked the earliest phase of globalization, in which previously isolated groups—Africans, Native Americans, and Europeans—first came into contact with each other, sometimes with disastrous results. American Indians who confronted the newcomers from Europe suffered unprecedented losses of life, however, as previously unknown diseases sliced through their populations.
• They also were victims of the arrogance of the Europeans, who viewed themselves as uncontested masters of the New World, sent by God to bring Christianity to the “Indians.”
• West Africa, a diverse and culturally rich area, soon entered the stage as other nations exploited its slave trade and brought its peoples to the New World in chains. Although Europeans would come to dominate the New World, they could not have done so without the slave labor of Africans and the exploitation of indigenous peoples.
• Slavery was always used against people of the place a nation conquered, especially in the 1400s to 1800s, where coincidentially Europeans ruled the world.Slaves were considered a thing with no privileges and no rights, so using them for work was much easier than getting a white European to work.
• Native Americans were used as slaves in the beginning, but they were much weaker than Africans, so it was preferred to have Africans as workers.
• The supply of such servants dried up as news of what servitude in the New World was really like got back home, and it was found that Europeans did very poorly in the more tropical climes where the major plantation crops were grown (sugar especially, rice, and later cotton) once tropical diseases from Africa also arrived (malaria, yellow fever, etc.)
• Africans however had good resistance to African and European diseases, and a ready source of supply was set up on the coast of Africa which operated for more than three centuries. African slavery was found to be the most profitable source of labor generally, and in the tropical climates the only viable labor force available. White overseers on Caribbean plantations had an extremely high mortality rate from tropical disease, even though they didn't do any of the arduous field work.
• Europeans at the same time were trading with Africa, and saw that they had slave systems in place. So they started to buy slaves and as the demand grew for slaves, this is how the slave trade grew.