How Did 1492 Affect The American Exploration

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1492: Conquest of the Americas The early modern era was a birth of culture, trade, and technology that was mainly focused on exploration. The film 1492: Conquest of Paradise in historically superficial because it fails to show the critical impacts Christopher Columbus’s voyages had on the early modern era. It is unable to show the increase in exploration and catalyst for a globally linked world that his voyages caused, the massive cultural and physical change in the Americas, and was a gateway for the Columbian exchange. The three voyages of Columbus each contributed to the increase in exploration from the Europeans. His first voyage was meant to find a western trade route to Asia. Instead he found the “New world” and what he thought was islands…show more content…
When Europeans arrived in the Americas they brought diseases such as smallpox, which they were already immune to but the indigenous people were not because of isolation. This pathogen raced through the Americas and destroyed many ethnic groups and empires in the Americas. For example, it destroyed the Aztec empire and within a century indigenous populations of Mexico dropped 90 percent about 17 million to 1.3 million (Bentley and Ziegler 487). This rapid spread of smallpox not only wiped out many native peoples and cultures, it created a foothold for Europeans to come in and colonize. None of these impacts were shown in the movie, when Columbus lands on the island Guanahaní they show the natives and Europeans getting along just fine, no natives die from smallpox or act hostile to the newcomers. Most of Mexican or Caribbean people today are not native. Many are Black or Spanish, and speak Spanish tongue. The African Americans were brought as slaves to work on European plantations in after Columbus's voyages. Native Spanish people also colonized the area. This brought the mostly Spanish culture and Christianity to the Americas. The native people were polytheistic and used to worship Gods such as Quetzalcoatl and Huitzilopochtli but these religions are no longer followed in
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