Chapter 5 of Douglas Egerton’s textbook The Atlantic World<\/em> highlights the large amount of dependency European colonizers placed on Native Americans to accommodate for the economic and consumer boom that resulted from Atlantic exploration. In order to keep up with the prosperity of the Atlantic, Spanish and English settlers heavily relied on African and Native American labor and exploitation. Through the violent and cruel treatment of Native slaves, ethical and religious justifications were often made. Even though Queen Isabella initially condemned Indian slavery, her accepting of \u201cjust war\u201d led to her permitting of the enslavement of anyone who forcefully rejected Spanish dominion and Christianity (Egerton, 151).<\/p>\n This servitude was not idly accepted, as protests from both Spanish settlers and Native Americans tried to prevent the upcoming oppression. While Queen Isabella allowed for the forced labor of those not seen as Christian, other Catholics protested this: \u201c\u2026in 1511 the fiery Dominican friar Antonio Montesinos\u2026 told the listeners, who included the dignitaries of the islands, that they had no more hope of salvation than Turks and Moors who rejected the faith of Jesus\u201d (Egerton, 152). In her response<\/a>, Diana Tran mentions how horrid and shocking the idea of using an entire culture of peoples as indentured servants was, and that the simple idea of foreign lands introduced a system of servitude and exploitation. This statement makes sense to me when contextualizing the experiences of Atlantic World Native Americans in today’s codes of ethics and values. During the 15th and 16th centuries, Native oppression was justified through the idea that Catholicism was the dominant and superior faith\u2013any group of peoples that rejected this belief was inferior and therefore punished. For me, trying to understand the mentalities of Spanish and English colonizers is near impossible, but accepting that these tragedies happened and contribute the the political and economic structure of the Americas today is a necessary step to fully comprehending Atlantic history.<\/p>\n Chapter 5 reminded me of Alberto Vieira’s Sugar Islands.<\/em> According to Vieira, the success of sugar production in Madeira and the Canary Islands directly contributed to the exploitation and slavery of Native Americans and Africans throughout the Atlantic. Vieira’s writing ties in with Egerton’s chapter in that sugar cultivation correlated with the desperate need for labor to cater to the economic success of the Atlantic. Even though the need for workers was inevitable through the eyes of the Spanish and English, the cruel treatment of Africans and Native Americans are a product of Christian supremacy and European economic success.<\/p>\n