The ways in which European colonization impacted the early modern period involved the movement of people, plants, animals, goods, and diseases. The discovery of the new world opened the doors to Colombian exchange that shaped the modern world through the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution. When the Spanish conquistadors encountered the Aztec empire, everything changed. Those dominions and tribes in America lived peacefully until the Spanish and Europeans invaded empires of thousands with only a few hundred. Eventually, Western Europe became a major world power like Great Britain, France, Portugal, Holland and England. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay In the case of the Mesoamerican empires, mainly the Aztecs and Incas, their main city (Tenochtitlan) was on an island, like a fortress. They were isolated, easily allowing them to be protected from their enemies as it would have been difficult for Europeans to gain the upper hand due to natural barriers. All those mountains would have made it difficult to seize power. But if it had been for that China it would have been over. At the same time, this becomes very problematic if they were under siege by the Spanish because if they managed to reach the island, the Aztecs would not have an escape route. Based on this, geographical features were significant for the security of empires. The seas near us were great training ground for sailing across the world and finding these places that had no horses, wheeled transportation, or reliable livestock. The Spanish colonized the Aztecs, later the Portuguese and Europeans also discovered them. Their arrival in the midst of these well-established empires influenced these local populations. The question of alliance is whether they remain allies with the leaders they had before or shift their allegiance to these new incoming leaders. Power shifts have occurred when there is a new player in the landscape. New technologies and weapons have emerged. The Europeans appropriated gunpowder from the Chinese and brought it to South America, and they are using gunpowder and weapons against the local population, which was an advantage they had. They were able to kill a lot more people, so this effective technology exists as the population shrinks. Disease was another factor that reduced the population. The disease spread in both directions because while the Aztecs had caught smallpox from the Europeans, a new group of settlers was being introduced into Spain and Portugal, thus affecting the Europeans. Diseases were a serious problem when these two civilizations were attacked by Europeans due to their very limited immune defenses. The main reason Native Americans were not immune to smallpox and other European diseases was because they did not have domesticated animals/livestock, or at least not the kind they had in Europe. This was one of the reasons they switched to African slaves. Africans had livestock and therefore had been exposed to smallpox previously, so most of the population was resistant to it. They also in no way made slavery illegal in Spain or its New World colonies, millions of African slaves would be imported by the Spanish and Portuguese well into the 19th century. Logically speaking, the mere existence of special laws for the "proper treatment" of native peoples implies that they were not treated properly to begin with, and simply by reading the laws themselves one can see that natives were consideredclearly inferior. Ultimately, instead of tightening restrictions, the Spanish simply gave up trying to protect what the natives could, and in 1545 and 1552 respectively the New Laws were systematically weakened or in some cases completely abolished. Not that it mattered, of course, since by now the native populations of South America had been so decimated by disease and hard work that almost none of them remained. They didn't have the technology to work around problems like disease, manual labor, and language translation. The Spanish and Portuguese were able to kill more than the English and other northern European powers just because of their proximity (not to mention their century-long lead on large-scale American colonization). What if old world diseases hadn't been a major factor during the Columbian Exchange? You would have preserved full armies across the American continents, ready to defend their respective empires. The large numbers, preserved organization, and acquisition of Old World ideas and technologies (and potential improvement) would have been something of a steroid for indigenous national consciousness. These nuances would most likely have thrown Native peoples to the forefront of the world stage. Their infinite resources and new social/technological advances would transform their infinite and inevitably unified numbers into a global powerhouse. If the benefits of the Old World had reached a people whose population had not been decimated, you would be right to imagine no truer rival for the Europeans than the natives. There was a loss of culture and language. So this kind of domination of European values, of European ideas, the biggest of which - before they conquered the people - the Spanish went through this process of telling Christianity so that they could convert in the hope that they would be saved, of course, but the problem was that they didn't speak the same language. So it wasn't just that initial contact, it was that they sent missionaries, trying to convert people, trying to change their ways, to subvert local practices, all in the name of religion. But going back to the effects in Europe, gold, silver and natural resources were mined. The Spanish were lucky to have them first because they became very rich very quickly. This resulted in a maritime gold rush that took Britain and France a long time to catch up with. Since the European powers could see how quickly Spain had become a nation, they were trying to very quickly build ships that could travel long distances, but the Spanish had been doing this for a while, so they were much more experienced in terms of quality shipbuilding than as much as the English were, for example. So, it created a race between them, it created rivalries between the colonial powers that hadn't happened before, so now they were fighting in Europe but they were also fighting on the seas, so that was a problem. Another impact on Europe was that they entered into the slave trade, so they would bring with them many slaves which would help increase production in Spain and Portugal as well. Slaves were required to build all these ships or conquer these lands and they needed the cheapest labor possible. It's not much cheaper than free. So now that they're building, they're able to go on this Colombian exchange where they would go to the coast of Africa, pick up slaves (because slaves from Africa were already being sold), travel across the Americas, and bring back sugar, tobacco, gold , potatoes and other crops to Europe. The Colombian exchange was, in short, a radically changing and shaping processculture, community and almost everything about humans after its inception. The Columbian Exchange shaped the modern world by bringing slave populations to the Americas. So Europe becomes incredibly enriched, incredibly competitive and advances at an unprecedented technological pace because it has the money to do so along with the natural resources. This diversity, even of things like new food supplies returning to Europe, changes diets and improves Europeans' diet, lifespan and well-being. During travel, spices, chili peppers, and salt (white gold) were used to preserve food so that people could go further without starving. Chili and spices in India do not come from New World food. Most spices came from India. And the English came to India for those spices. Colombian stock exchange to promote the world economy. Many goods were transferred from America to Europe and vice versa, this also favored the slave trade that came from the Gold Coast of Africa and was brought to America (especially South America). However, there are problems arising from the event. For example, with the decline in biodiversity and the eventual explosion of the human population, with all the resulting resource extraction and pollution we have brought with us, we are still living in the legacy of this event hundreds of years after it occurred and it will be for the foreseeable future. The Colombian exchange caused the destruction of the balance of many ecosystems and drove many species to extinction due to invasive species and limited the effect that natural selection had on the environment (more calories available for those who survive, therefore only a handful of genomes make up the subsequent generations). With this colonization, they had this exodus of people. Hundreds of thousands of people believed in Spain at that time. This begins to affect their standing armies, their ability to fight in Europe versus the colonies. It was a period of great flux. The first ideas were emerging that these people from these other places were somehow less capable, less intelligent, less civilized than Europeans and referred to them as barbarians and cannibals. Especially because if it weren't for the conquistadors, the native South Americans and North Americans would not be Christians and would probably still be sacrificing their respective hearts to the Sun god. Likewise, America was invaded and murdered by Europeans who were called barbarians for invading America and killed Americans. However, over time, almost all early empires did horrible things in the name of land, wealth, and power. Horse trading had an impact on the American populations as these settlers could arrive and travel long distances, travel beyond the borders of the kingdom that the Aztecs had founded, continue to fight long after. This changed the landscape, it changed agricultural practices. They began using horses to pull plows, then planting crops on a much larger scale, which they had to because when a large group of Spaniards appeared, they needed to be fed. They had to do mass cultivation, so they begin to change the landscape, they begin to exchange plant species both because they needed them for scientific purposes and for biological purposes. This meant that land use had changed. Something worth noting about all the botanical and agricultural products coming from the Americas to Europe is that much of the European knowledge on said plant life actually came from Aztec botanical science, as they had complex categorical systems for cataloging plants, flowers, herbs and fruits. , as well as the first gardens.