The impact of European colonization in the early modern period was the movement of people, plants, animals, goods and illnesses. The discovery of the new world opened the doors to the Columbian Exchange which shaped the modern world through the Age of Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution. Once the Spanish conquistadors encountered the Aztec Empire, everything changed after that. These domains and tribes of America lived in peace until the Spanish and Europeans invaded empires of several thousand people with only a few hundred. Ultimately, Western Europe became major world powers such as the British, French, Portuguese, Dutch and English. Say no to plagiarism. Get a Custom Essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get the original essayIn the case of the Mesoamerican empires, mainly the Aztecs and the Incas, their main city (Tenochtitlan) was on an island, like a fortress. They were isolated, which easily allowed them to be protected from their enemies, as it would have been difficult for Europeans to take over due to natural barriers. All those mountains would have made it difficult to take control. But if it were for that, China would have disappeared. At the same time, it becomes very problematic if they were besieged by the Spanish, because if they entered the island, the Aztecs would have no escape route. On this basis, geographical features were important to the security of empires. The seas near us were an excellent training ground for sailing the world and finding those places without horses, wheeled vehicles, or reliable livestock. The Spanish colonized the Aztecs, later the Portuguese and Europeans also discovered them. Their arrival in the middle of these well-established empires affected these local populations. The question of alliance is whether they remain allied with the leaders they had before or whether they shift allegiance to these new and upcoming leaders. Power shifts occur when a new actor appears in the landscape. New technologies and weapons have appeared. The Europeans appropriated gunpowder from the Chinese and brought it to South America, and they use gunpowder and weapons against the local population, which is an advantage they have. They were able to kill many more people, so this efficient technology helps reduce the population. Disease was another factor that reduced the population. The disease spread back and forth because, while the Aztecs contracted smallpox from the Europeans, a new group of settlers were reintroduced to Spain and Portugal, which affected the Europeans. Disease was a serious problem when both civilizations were attacked by Europeans due to their very limited immunity. The main reason Native Americans were not safe from smallpox and other European diseases was because they did not have domesticated animals/livestock, or at least not the kind they had in Europe. This is one of the reasons they turned to African slaves. Africans owned livestock and therefore had already been exposed to smallpox, so most of the population was resistant to it. Furthermore, they in no way made slavery illegal in Spain or its New World colonies; millions of African slaves were imported by the Spanish and Portuguese until the 19th century. Logically speaking, the mere existence of special laws forthe “proper treatment” of indigenous people implies that they were not treated properly to begin with, and just reading the laws themselves one can see that indigenous people were seen as obviously inferior. Eventually, rather than tighten restrictions, the Spanish simply gave up protecting what natives they could, and in 1545 and 1552 respectively, the new laws were either systematically weakened or in some cases abolished altogether. Of course, this didn't matter, because by this time the indigenous populations of South America had been so decimated by disease and forced labor that virtually none of them remained. They didn't have technology to work around issues like illness, manual labor, and translation. The Spanish and Portuguese were able to kill more than the British and other Northern European powers due to their proximity alone (not to mention their century head start on large-scale American colonization). What if old world diseases hadn't been a factor in the Columbian Exchange? You would have preserved entire armies spanning the entire American continent, ready to defend their respective empires. The sheer numbers, preserved organization, and acquisition of Old World ideas and technology (and their potential improvement) would have been a kind of steroid to indigenous national consciousness. These nuances would most likely have propelled indigenous peoples to the forefront of the world stage. Their infinite resources and newly acquired social and technological advancements would have made their infinite and inevitably unified numbers a global power. If the benefits of the Old World had reached a people whose population had not been decimated, you would be right to imagine that there was no real rival to Europeans other than the natives. There was a loss of culture and language. So this kind of domination of European values, European ideas, the most important thing being - before they were about to conquer people - the Spanish were going through this process of talking about Christianity in order to be able to convert into the The hope of being saved, of course, but the problem was that they didn't speak the same language. So it wasn't just about that first contact, but also the fact that they were sending missionaries to try to convert people, to change their habits, to overthrow local practices, all in the name of religion. But going back to the effects in Europe, gold, silver and natural resources were being extracted. The Spanish were lucky to get them first because they got very rich very quickly. This resulted in a maritime gold rush that took the British and French a long time to catch up with. Because the European powers could see how quickly Spain had established itself as a nation, they were trying to build ships that could travel long distances very quickly, but the Spanish had been doing this for some time and so were much more experienced in quality matters. shipbuilding than, for example, the British were. So it created a race between them, it set up rivalries between the colonial powers that hadn't happened before, so now they were fighting in Europe but also on the seas, so that was a problem. Other impacts on Europe were that they ended up in the slave trade. They would therefore have brought many slaves with them, which would have helped to stimulate production in Spain and Portugal as well. Slaves were required to build all these shipsor conquer these lands and they needed as cheap labor as possible. It's not much cheaper than free. So now they're building buildings that can do this Columbian exchange where they would go to the African coast, pick up slaves (because the slaves from Africa were already sold), cross to the Americas and bring back sugar. , tobacco, gold, potatoes and other crops to Europe. In short, the Columbian Exchange was a process that radically changed and shaped culture, community, and almost everything about humans after it began. The Columbian Exchange shaped the modern world by bringing enslaved populations to the Americas. So Europe is becoming incredibly enriched, incredibly competitive and advancing in terms of technology at an unprecedented rate because it has the money to do so as well as the natural resources. This diversity, even new food supplies flowing back to Europe, is changing the diet and improving the diet, lifespan and well-being of Europeans. When traveling, spices, chili peppers, and salt (white gold) were used to preserve food so people could go further without starving. The cold and spices in India did not come from new world food. Most of the spices came from India. And the English came to India for these spices. Columbian Exchange to promote the global economy. Many goods were transferred from America to Europe and vice versa, which also contributed to the trade in slaves coming from the Gold Coast of Africa and transported to America (mainly South America). However, some problems arise from this event. For example, the decline in biodiversity and the eventual explosion of the human population, with all the resource extraction and pollution we brought with us, we still live in the legacy of this event hundreds of years later its occurrence and will be in the foreseeable time. future. The Columbian Interchange caused the destruction of the balance of many ecosystems and drove many species to extinction due to invasive species and limited the effect of natural selection on the environment (more calories available for those that survive, so only a handful of genomes make up the environment). subsequent generations). With this colonization, they sort of had this exodus of people. Hundreds of thousands of people believed in Spain at that time. This begins to affect their standing armies, their ability to fight in Europe rather than in the colonies. It was a time of great change. The first ideas that were emerging that these people from these other places were somehow less capable, less intelligent, less civilized than Europeans and called them barbarians and cannibals. Mainly because without the conquistadors, the native people of South and North America would not be Christians and would likely continue to sacrifice their hearts to the Sun god. Likewise, America was invaded and murdered by Europeans called barbarians for invading America and murdering Americans. However, back then, almost all early empires did horrible things in the name of land, wealth, and power. The traded horses had an impact on American populations because in these settlers they could enter and travel long distances, traveling across borders. kingdom that the Aztecs had established, continued to fight long after them. It changed the landscape, changed agricultural practices. They started using horses to pull.