Exploration Impact

The Impact of Exploration Most people know the old rhyme of how Christopher Columbus “sailed the ocean blue in 1492.” At this point, it has become permanently engrained in my memory. However, not many people are truly aware of the motives for Columbus’ trans-Atlantic voyage. They are also not aware as to why such marvelous legends have been told of such explorers who “discovered” landmarks that were already discovered. The Journey of Columbus in 1492 may be the most famous of them all, but it was most certainly not the last one to that part of the world. These journeys to the “New World” were undoubtedly the catalyst for the Western hemisphere developing a civilization and society unlike any other in human history. Of course, Columbus and

Other European countries quickly followed suit and began to explore and invade the New World. The Spanish conquistadors invaded areas of Central and South America looking for riches, ultimately destroying the powerful Aztec and Inca cultures. The course of New World explorations was deeply affected by the invaders’ interactions with indigenous groups—interactions that, through a combination of violence and disease, resulted in massive declines in indigenous populations. As it was made clear by the accounts of Bishop Bartolomé de las Casas, these explorers treated the indigenous people with excruciatingly harsh and cruel behavior. Bartolomé de las Casas accounts that the loss of life was so great during these times that multiple islands were nearly devoid of all human life. He stated that in the nearly forty years following Columbus making landfall, the Spaniards did nothing but “dismember, slay, perturb, afflict, torment, and destroy the Indians by all manner of cruelty (las Casas, p.2).” In another section of his journals, las Casas goes into extensive detail about how the populous of the magnificent islands of Puerto Rico, Cuba and the Bahamas were all nearly wiped out due to the barbaric behaviors and tendencies of the Spanish settlers. As I

More authoritarian governments, such as monarchies, have been notorious throughout history for not being particularly fond of giving people such freedom. It is no secret that Christianity was the primary religion of the time during the 16th and 17th Centuries throughout the European subcontinent. The Spanish monarchy were dead set on spreading Christianity all throughout the “New World” Columbus discovered. This was one of the primary reasons that Columbus was able to accrue enough funds to take part in such an expedition. Bartolome las Casas mentions this theory of Christianization in his