What is European Colonialism, and the effect on Ethnic Groups?

Name 1

Professor 's Name

Introduction to Cultural Anthropology

January 2007

The Euro Jump-Start

The best recipes often consist of extremely contrasting ingredients . For example , who ever heard of having fruit salad with mayonnaise in it ? The Waldorf salad 's key ingredient is 1 cup of mayonnaise . With all of the other sweets in this mixture , you can 't even taste the mayonnaise , but without this ingredient , you would have a different salad completely . If you think about it , America 's birth is based on many contrasting ingredients : Blacks

, Hispanics , Asians , Caucasians and so on . This melting pot ' we live in is what makes America .well .America European Colonialism began in the 15th century , when the Europeans set out to extend their nations sovereignty over territory beyond its bs (Wikipedia ,

.1 . During the take over , the colonizers set out to enforce their cultural and religious beliefs on the subjugated people . The Portuguese and Spanish began the Age of Discovery (Healy br

.1 ) when they set out to explore the coastal regions of the Middle East , India , East Asia and Africa . Though the focus included spices and other riches (Healy ,

.1 , the Europeans discovered much more than they ventured out for

Of the many discoveries made , the most important was found in Africa The discovery of the African slave trade forever changed history , as the Europeans used this new found tool to the fullest extent . Although the African slave trade was already in use by the African nation , the Europeans dominated this trade by increasing the number of slaves in existence . Millions of slaves were transported from Africa to nations far and wide (Wikipedia ,

. 2 . Their most notorious assignment was in the newly established Americas , where they were owned ' and traded off as if they were mere objects . The European 's introduction of the African slave trade provided relief to much of the Native American slave trade (Sobin ,

. 1 . Although the Natives ' were replaced , their battle continued , creating much controversy

Before the Europeans discovered ' America , the Native Americans were living happily , cultivating their land , and living in peace among each other . With the arrival of the European culture came the debate over who actually owned the land . Many battles ensued between the two cultures and finally , history reveals that the victor was the Caucasian (Sobin br

.1

Beliefs that the Caucasian was superior to all other ethnicities greatly affected the ethnic divide (Healy ,

.1 . The Africans had no choice but to do as they were told . The Native Americans lost the land they had lived on all their lives . In other countries , genocide became a problem as the Nazi Holocaust wiped out the Jews of Europe during War World II (Wikipedia ,

.3

Today we have overcome much of the plight encountered with the early colonization of our cultures . With the exception of a few hate crimes here and there , not to be dismissed , we different cultures live side by side in peace . Freedom rings loudly...