Week One, Intro to Part 4

In Europe maps of our world became more advances so the people of Europe were able to discover new land like present day North and South America. Europeans had distinct advantages over the rest of the world even when they were far from home. The Spaniards were able to defeat the Aztec Empire due to their advantages with weapons and military. The greatest advantage that Europeans had over the rest of the world was their resistance to the germs that they had but the rest of the people had never been exposed to before. Native Americans died in mass amounts due to these Old World diseases like small pox, almost all Native Americans died within 50 years since the arrival of the Europeans.

Once the Americas were colonized the immigrants began to enslave Africans from Africa and brought them to America to work on the agriculture. The crops that the colonizers were able to grow were more diverse then they have ever seen. Colonizers also brought over animals that the Americas like pigs, cows, and horses that changed the whole natural makeup of the land forever. The agriculture growth also included tobacco which was a major source of income for many land owners. Corn became the mane source of food for many because it is very cheap. The exports of crops and the slave trade because of the Americas shaped the world into a world were new products became a norm.

The land that once belonged to the Aztecs and the Incas were now a prime place for mining as well as agriculture. The Spaniards only used forced labor when coal mining or when producing crops. A social ladder formed and people wanted to keep the blood pure within the Spanish.
In South America many colonies discovered sugar and began to make a large profit off of it. The sugar was used at medicine, sweetener, and as a preservative across the world. Sugar production transformed Brazil and the Caribbean. It became the first modern industry, it also wiped out all other forms of slave trade except for African slave trade. These slaves worked in horrible conditions which caused 5-10 percent death rate per year among the slaves. Women slaves received the same amount of food as well as the same type of brutal beatings as the male slaves did. However many women slaved worked for other while women doing domestic chores for them. Slave women were not allowed to have a stable family and if they did have children they were taken away from them.

The Russian Empire expanded to the east and required large territories. In Russia only the sons of noblemen received an education.