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Since 1492, Europeans and people of European descent have enslaved, wiped out, and oppressed Africans, Asians, and Native Americans. Millions of Native Americans were killed by diseases spread by Columbus and his crew. Europeans enslaved Africans for two centuries and still mistreated them for another century after slavery was abolished. Europe set up colonies in Africa and Asia, controlling their daily lives. They have been responsible for quite a few genocides; the genocide of Native Americans and the Holocaust come to mind. What caused all of this? What causes one group of humans to mistreat other groups of humans for such a long period of time?
Why?
Same reason the Blacks and Arabs in North Africa Killed, robbed, and enslaved WHITES a few hundred years ago!
Same reason BLACKS sold conquered Blacks to whites rather then killing them.
Lota evil/Greed in the world, and rather than you RACIST statements we need to recognize that no class or people are excluded.
The proximate cause of [mainly Western] Europe's rise is colonialism and theft of resources from other continents, mainly America and Africa, and its ultimate cause is geographic factors.
One geographic factor was a proximity of Eurasians to domesticated animals that could transmit zoonotic pathogens to humans and thus create infectious crowd diseases, which was the most critical factor in Western Europeans' ability to establish an occupation in America, since the vast majority of indigenous people were killed by these diseases.
Another was the Castilian/Spanish possession of the Canary Islands, which allowed them to take advantage of the North Equatorial Current and the easterly trade winds to create a direct route to the Caribbean, and then to Mesoamerica.
The proximate factor of colonial theft involved the extraction of precious metals from America, such as silver mining in Potosi, which was then diffused throughout much of Europe due to Spanish monarch Charles V's dual role as Holy Roman Emperor. It also involved the theft of cultivated crops in America, such as maize, potatoes, and tobacco, which were used to enrich Western Europeans further, and the theft of quinine from Quechua Indians, which was critical in the conquest of Africa, since it was the only effective malaria treatment in existence.
Also, in the OP, I found "Columbus and his crew spreading disease" to be an oddity--no one back then knew about germs or the lack of immunity to Europeans diseases of the indigenous people.
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Originally Posted by cpg35223
Exactly. Europeans had no notion of germ theory back then. Heck, they had no notion of it until the 1860s.
Rudimentary awareness of the nature of communicable disease transmission had entered Europe more than a century earlier, when the Mongol khan Jani Beg's Crimean Tartar army catapulted infectious corpses into the besieged city of Kaffa in order to exterminate its inhabitants. Pedro de Alvarado, administrator of the destruction of the Maya, is reported to have recognized the connection between certain living conditions and proclivity to contract infectious disease, since he said this of a slave labor force that the colonial government wished to temporarily preserve: "Because measles has struck the Indians I order those who hold encomiendas and repartimientos, on punishment of forfeiting them lest they not comply, to care for and cure their charges without engaging them in any activity, for experience has shown in other similar epidemics that much territory has been depopulated."
This rudimentary awareness, if not a sophisticated scientific understanding of infection and disease transmission, is the key. Ward Churchill put it this way in his book A Little Matter of Genocide: Holocaust and Denial in the Americas 1492 to the Present: "Absolution from genocidal intent has always been retroactively bestowed upon the early invaders, their own myriad statements to the contrary notwithstanding, by virtue of their lacking any genuine 'scientific knowledge' of microbes and epidemiology, understandings unavailable until the late nineteenth century. Such reasoning is obfuscatory at best. I, for one, being virtually illiterate in both ballistics and chemistry, have never acquired a proper scientific understanding of how a .357 magnum handgun actually works. Were I to take such a weapon and fire it pointblank at someone, I doubt very much that the argument of my very real scientific ignorance would stand me in especially good stead at my subsequent murder trial. All that would be required in the minds of the prosecution, judge, jury, and appeals courts would be that I had an average common-sense understanding of the cause and effect involved in what I did. On this basis they would all find me to be criminally culpable and quite properly so."
The Castilian expeditionary Bernal Diaz del Castillo, who was a participant in the destruction of the Aztec Triple Alliance, wrote that, "When the Christians were exhausted from war, God saw fit to send the Indians smallpox, and there was a great pestilence in the city." Pedro Cieza de Leon, participant in the conquest of the Inca Empire, echoed this comment, writing that, "[W]e, Christians, have destroyed so many kingdoms. For wherever the Spaniards have passed, conquering and discovering, it is as though a fire had gone, destroying everything in its path."
Quote:
Originally Posted by cpg35223
To blame Europeans for the spread of smallpox to the native America populations is about as ridiculous as blaming the native Americans for the spread of syphilis to Europe.
Not mentioned yet is improved weaponry, namely the developement of gunpowder. Europeans, and everyone else, did more killing simply because they could. Much more efficient to blast a city to bits with cannon fire than to stand back and shoot arrows at the defenders on the walls. Easier to put a musket ball right through a foes breastplate than to try and hack through it up close with edged weapons, and so on. As weapons improved so did the death toll. Some exceptions before gunpowder, such as the Mongol and Muslim conquests with their huge death tolls, but better weapons means better killing. Human nature, always been that way.
Since 1492, Europeans and people of European descent have enslaved, wiped out, and oppressed Africans, Asians, and Native Americans. Millions of Native Americans were killed by diseases spread by Columbus and his crew. Europeans enslaved Africans for two centuries and still mistreated them for another century after slavery was abolished. Europe set up colonies in Africa and Asia, controlling their daily lives. They have been responsible for quite a few genocides; the genocide of Native Americans and the Holocaust come to mind. What caused all of this? What causes one group of humans to mistreat other groups of humans for such a long period of time?
Salt.
Coffee.
Spices.
Invention of the tin can in the early 1800s so armies/navies could carry a ready food supply.
Since 1492, Europeans and people of European descent have enslaved, wiped out, and oppressed Africans, Asians, and Native Americans. Millions of Native Americans were killed by diseases spread by Columbus and his crew. Europeans enslaved Africans for two centuries and still mistreated them for another century after slavery was abolished. Europe set up colonies in Africa and Asia, controlling their daily lives. They have been responsible for quite a few genocides; the genocide of Native Americans and the Holocaust come to mind. What caused all of this? What causes one group of humans to mistreat other groups of humans for such a long period of time?
What about Genghis Khan and Attila the Hun?
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