Ways of the World: Chapter 13

     The thing that really got my attention and had me thinking for a bit was how even after five hundred or so years, Native Americans are still upset about the arrival of Columbus. This begs the million dollar question, should we still consider disregarding Columbus Day as a holiday? I personally don't think we should, simply because people were already living here, therefore I don't think Columbus "discovered" America; however, it is an important point in history in which the course of history itself took a dramatic turn. Whether it was for better or worse is up for debate. However, we may not deny the fact that we would not be where we are today, had it not been for Columbus heading west and uncover the hidden secrets from the world he came from.
     A lot was going one while the European colonies headed out and try to conquer whatever part of the  new world that they could. At the time, the Russians were on the verge of constructing a massive empire. Meanwhile nearby, China and its Qing Dynasty nearly doubled in size.
     One of the major things that the chapter focuses on was the situation revolving around the colonization of the Americas after the arrival of Columbus. A variety of European countries headed towards the Americas and they arrived in a variety of places. The Spaniards started off with the Caribbean and then moved on to places such as Mexico, where the Aztecs were, and then to the Inca Empire as well. The Portuguese settled in Brazil. The British, French, and the Dutch all settled into a wide range of places all across North America. By the mid-nineteenth century, many of the Native American nations and empires had fallen and the Americas were controlled by European nations for the most part.
     Before the arrival of Columbus, the west side of the world consisted of a population estimating between sixty and eighty million. They had never been exposed to many diseases that had consumed much of Europe at the time. However, that does not mean that they were immune to them. Not only did the Europeans bring disease from Europe, but they also brought disease from Africa as well. People were dying at a faster rate than ever before. Native American empires suffered a devastating blow to their population numbers. It was so bad that in the Caribbean, the majority of the natives had already died out by the time disease had spread continent-wide. North America did not escape this fate. For example, in Mexico the population went from around ten to twenty million to only one million.