History Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

History - Assignment Example â€Å"In two years, through murder, mutilation, or suicide, half of the two hundred fifty thousand Indians on Haiti were dead.† Zinn goes on to explain, â€Å"a report of the year 1650 shows none of the original Arawaks or their descendants left on the island.† 3. One major difference in worldview between European and Native American cultures is the idea of property rights. Europe’s aristocracy thrived on land ownership, and in a culture where land meant power, ideas on dissolving property rights were scarce. The Native Americans, mostly, believed in living in harmony with the land. Humans were only part of the larger picture. So to destroy a forest to build a city isn’t just egocentric, its sacrilegious. When Europeans attempted to buy Native American lands in some instances, some Native Americans couldn’t understand the idea of owning the land. 4. While differences certainly existed in the slavery systems in Africa and the Americas, Americans bein g much crueler to our slaves and Africans viewing slaves more as indentured servants, I think the similarities are too outstanding to ignore. Slavery anywhere should be intolerable to humanity everywhere. I think Dr. Akurang-Parry summarized this sentiment best in his article Ending the Slave Blame: â€Å"The viewpoint that â€Å"Africans† enslaved â€Å"Africans† is obfuscating if not troubling. The deployment of â€Å"African† in African history tends to coalesce into obscurantist constructions of identities that allow scholars, for instance, to subtly call into question the humanity of â€Å"all† Africans. Whenever Asante rulers sold non-Asantes into slavery, they did not construct it in terms of Africans selling fellow Africans. They saw the victims for what they were, for instance, as Akuapems, without categorizing them as fellow Africans. Equally, when Christian Scandinavians and Russians sold war captives to the Islamic people of the Abbasid Empir e, they didn’t think that they were placing fellow Europeans into slavery. This lazy categorizing homogenizes Africans and has become a part of the methodology of African history; not surprisingly, the Western media’s cottage industry on Africa has tapped into it to frame Africans in inchoate generalities allowing the media to describe local crisis in one African state as â€Å"African† problem.† (source: http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/artikel.php?ID=180999) 5. English people migrated to North America to escape religious persecution, for the possibility of achieving power or wealth in the new colonies, and to make money on early expeditions to North America. 6. England wanted to establish colonies in North America to expand its cultural influence, for the possibility of gold or natural resources, and to out muscle the French and Spanish who were colonizing the area at the time. 7. An indentured servant was a worker, typically a young per son from Europe, who agreed to work a certain number of years for a master if that master would pay for their voyage to America. These workers were crucial to our developing economy, as low wage workers were scarce and slaves were expensive. 8. One similarity between all the colonies is