Questions from American History

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1) Explain three reasons/rationale the Europeans used to justify conquering the New World?

a) Merchants promised exotic produce to sell at home brought from the New World and a new outlet for European goods in the New World.
b) Militant Clergy wanted to spread Christianity.
c) The Commoner wanted bounteous land.

2) Explain three negative consequences of the European conquest of the New World?

a) Europeans greatest impact was in bringing new diseases to America. The native Indians had no natural resistance to many of the diseases carried by the Europeans. Typically two-thirds of native populations were eliminated by disease within a few generations.

b) The Spanish devastated the Indian civilizations. Millions of native Indians died as the result of the Spanish conquest of Mexico and Peru.

c) The European conquest also led to a large scale commerce in human beings. As overseas colonies grew, plantations were established in new lands to grow crops for trade. To supply needed plantation workers, Europeans began importing slaves from Africa. Slavery had long existed in Africa as it had in many parts of the world. Most African slaves had been enemies captured in battle between African kingdoms. But, as the slave trade grew, Africans began kidnapping other Africans and selling them to European slave traders.

3) Explain three reasons why slavery prospered in the North American colonies, especially in the Southern colonies (why could slavery be viewed as justifiable?)

Source:

http://www.slaveryinamerica.org/history/hs_es_overview.htm
a) The white indentured servants employed in the colonies could easily run away. They also demanded humane treatment, justice, or land. Also, the supply of white indentured servants began to decline as more working-class whites found employment back home in British industries, commerce, and shipping. Enslaved Africans, on the other hand, could not easily blend into the surrounding white population by escaping. Nor could they make demands upon their masters for humane treatment, justice, or land.
b) Upper-class whites began to fear an alliance between indentured servants and enslaved Africans after Bacon's Rebellion, which occurred in 1676. This rebellion against the planter gentry by unruly, lower-class whites in the interior of the colony convinced upper-class whites in the coastal regions to replace indentured laborers with the more easily disciplined and less expensive slaves.

c) The planters used slaves as the Native Americans were susceptibility to disease--especially malaria whereas the enslaved Africans were accustomed to sub-tropical climates. Also, the skilled agricultural backgrounds of Africans combined to make them more useful as ...