The Ways in Which the Encounter with the New World Broaden Early Modern European Horizons
by The New World had been discovered by accident as Christopher Columbus had been hoping to sail to the East Indies and China by sailing westwards from Spain. Although Christopher Columbus was initially disappointed to have only reached the West Indies, further explorations by him and others showed that the New World had a great deal could broaden the early modern European horizon. The first Europeans that reached the New World were primarily after treasures that would make them wealthy, as well as the glory and prestige of conquering new empires. However, as the following will amply demonstrate there was much more than silver and gold that had the affect of broadening the early modern European horizon that came from the New World.
Over all therefore the encounter with the New World did succeed in broadening the early modern European horizon. Early modern Europeans largely had a narrow concept of the old world in which they belonged, a world that consisted of Europe, Africa, and Asia as the only known continents. For the early modern Europeans it was an old world in which they regarded themselves as being superior to the known civilizations of Africa and Asia yet the Europeans wanted their gold as well as their spices. The Spanish and the Portuguese had wished to find alternative routes to Asia that would allow them to cut out Islamic and Venetian traders via sailing to the west and by sailing around Africa respectively. When Christopher Columbus inadvertently stumbled upon the West Indies he not only broadened the early modern European horizon he also altered the course of world history.
Columbus found that the peoples of the Caribbean were primitive compared to the Europeans as well as not been keen to work in any of his gold mines or on his plantations. Hernan Cortes and the other Spanish conquistadors that over threw the empires of Central and Latin America were more impressed with the civilizations that they encountered. They were mainly impressed with the silver and gold that they were able to seize whilst claiming vast amounts of territory for the Spanish Crown. The silver and gold imported from the New World provided a boost for the economies of early modern Europe. Without the encounter with the New World, the Spanish, the Portuguese, and later the Dutch, the English, and the French would not have established their own empires. The biggest losers from the early modern European encounter with the New World were the indigenous people of the region; those that survived were generally badly treated despite the efforts of the Spanish authorities to give them legal protection. The plantations of Central and Latin America produced commodities that early modern Europeans craved such as sugar and tabacco once they had been encountered, which was detrimental to the African slaves and their descendants who had to work on those plantations.
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