The initial wave of Europeans interested in staying in North America, came with the intention of using the new world as an economic venture. Sparked by the stories told by Christopher Columbus and the wave of explorers who followed, people in Europe came in search of gold and riches beyond their wildest dreams. Contrary to initial reports gold was not present in large amounts nor was it easily accessible. It took hard work to get to the gold. Early settlers wanted gold from the new world, but also took interest in harvesting cash crops to export back to Europe. That is where the need for a labor force arose. The Europeans had come all the way across the Atlantic to get rich; they were not interested in putting in the hard work to get rich. Rather than do the hard work themselves, they used any and every group of people they could to do the work for them. This included natives, indentured servants, captured POW’s and slaves from foreign lands.<\/p>\n
The concepts in this chapter that I found to be the most captivating (since they were captives #dadjoke) were the reasons the Europeans used for their enslavement of local peoples. Diana<\/a> mentioned the concept of \u201cJust War\u201d and the way that it was used by the Europeans at the time. The narrative about Europeans created thus far in the course is that they were a group of people who forced their will on anyone they encountered and would validate their actions through any reasoning that they could make believable. I think this \u201cJust War\u201d is a great example of this. On page 151 the author states that just war permitted the enslavement of anyone who forcefully rejected Spanish Dominion. In other words anyone who took issue with the Spaniards arriving on their land, forcing them to convert to their religion and give tribute to the Spaniards was an enemy of the state and could be forced into slavery. This concept was repeated again later in Brazil as the Portuguese began arriving and capturing natives to work on their cash crop farms.<\/p>\n