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It is time for you to think about our driving question again. Native American societies, for all their power and diversity did not stop the advance of Europeans intent on establishing their dominance in the New World, and Africans were swept into the colonial epic as slaves, also victims of European power.
In the end, the exchange between Old World and New remade both the Americas, and Europe, Africa and Asia. Plants, animals, microbes, people and ideas passed across the oceans and irreversibly changed life everywhere.
The Europeans who set off that exchange did not intend to enact all these changes, but they most defiantly intended to use their superior power to affect change that they believed was beneficial to their own interests. And with the exception of a few dissenting voices, like Bartolome de las Casas, most Europeans never doubted the morality of what they were doing.
What do you think? Does might make right?
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Why doesn’t Leif Erickson and Marco Polo get as much recognition as Columbus did?