Chapter Summary
Before European explorers arrived in the Americas, Native Americans had developed their own forms of social organizations that differed from one another in their levels of achievement. Europeans, concerned first with exploiting the New World and its peoples, regarded the natives as savages and set out to destroy their societies and replace them with a variation of European culture. The biological disaster brought on by smallpox and other diseases made it easier for the Europeans to conquer the tribes and civilizations, and to impose on the Native Americans a number of different colonial systems. To help make up for the Native Americans’ labor lost through wars and epidemics, Europeans brought in African slaves, who added to the cultural diversity of America. Conflicts in the Old World spilled over into the new as different nations got into the race for colonies, and the many connections between events in the Americas and the rest of the world became apparent. By the end of the sixteenth century, the age of discovery was all but over, and the great era of colonization, especially English colonization, was about to begin.
Source: Brinkley, Alan (2007). American history: A survey. New York, New York: McGraw Hill.