Negative Effects Of Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus’s voyages to the New World had a negative effect. Columbus’s actions caused many problems. After he discovered the New World, social classes were formed, which caused internal conflicts between the people. The Europeans placed themselves higher in society than the natives. Another problem with the arrival of the Europeans was the spreading of new diseases that in essence lead to the Genocide of the Native Americans. While the Europeans were settling and starting new lives, the treatment of the Natives and African Americans throughout generations was horrible and unjust. Although Columbus contributed to the build up of America 's success by trading with the people from Europe, his actions in America overall caused several …show more content…
With the arrival of Christopher Columbus came many new problems for the natives. The Europeans were the sole cause of all the deaths, “ the unknown diseases they brought with them, reduced the three or four million Indians encountered by the Spaniards to no more than a million” (Marquez 234). These diseases were devastating to the natives because they had never been introduced to these types of illnesses before. This caused many of them to die because their bodies had no way of fighting off the foreign diseases. Spreading diseases was easy to do but the most common way was by the livestock the Europeans brought. “When explorers from Europe reached the Americas, they brought livestock and they brought diseases and the result was devastating” (OMRF). The population was drastically affected by the diseased livestock. Just a few of the diseases that were brought here were the bubonic plague, chickenpox, influenza, measles, scarlet fever, smallpox, typhus, tuberculosis, and whooping cough. Many of these diseases are known as crowd disease. This simply means that if a native had contracted a disease and lived, he became immune to that disease. Since many of the natives lived in close proximity to the livestock it was easy for them to contract the disease. In the first two centuries since Columbus landed hundreds of thousands of Indians died. The disease that hit the Americas the hardest was …show more content…
Since the Spaniards were really after one thing they did not care what it took for them to get it. In one account, Christopher Columbus is describing how he plans on using the natives to benefit himself and his country, "They should be good servants .... I, our Lord being pleased, will take hence, at the time of my departure, six natives for your Highnesses" (Cook). After the Spaniards got their gold, they treated the natives horribly by making them servants, exporting them, and torturing them. The natives were not only held to high oppression but they also were discriminated against, “Mestizos were not permitted to fill certain high positions in government, to hold other public offices, or to enroll in secondary schools and seminaries” (Marquez 234). Many of the things the Mestizos wanted to do was not possible because the Europeans made harsh rules saying what they could and could not do. Many Europeans thought that,“Blacks lacked everything , even a soul; they did not have the right to enter heaven or hell” (Marquez 234). Just like the natives had been discriminated against, so were the blacks. Since the Europeans did this to everyone in the Americas, this clearly shows that the natives and African Americans were being oppressed. With all these conflicts between the Europeans and natives this caused the violence and tensions between the people to grow. An example of oppression against the