How Did European Influence In America

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Africa and the Americas became the first areas of the world to experience significant consequences from European expansion. On both sides of the Atlantic the arrival of Europeans resulted in demographic and biological changes, political upheavals, and the introduction of new trade patterns, religions, and technologies. But the depth and extent of European impact on the two regions was far different Africa was affected by the Europeans, but the Americas were transformed. The European presence in Africa primarily meant trade, trade in which human beings -- slaves -- became the most lucrative commodity. However, even in the eighteenth century, when the Atlantic slave trade reached its peak and was a source of misery and death for millions, most of the continent was unaffected. Even where slaving was most intense, traditional African institutions remained largely intact. Europeans maintained no permanent colonies in sub-Saharan Africa until the Dutch began to settle in south Africa in 1652. On the other side of the Atlantic, however, by 1650 the Spaniards and Portuguese ruled and economically dominated Mexico and all of Central and South America, and several permanent European settlements had been established on North America's Atlantic coast and the St. Lawrence River Basin. The result was catastrophe for Native Americans.…show more content…
The epidemics created labor shortages that European plantation owners in Brazil, the West Indies, and southeastern North America sought to overcome by importing and enslaving Africans. Before the transatlantic slave trade ended, approximately nine million Africans were sold into slavery. These Africans too were indirect victims of the bacilli, viruses, and parasites carried across the Atlantic to the New World in the early years of European

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