Securing Power In The New World Essay

Securing Power in the New World

It is essential to recognize that from the moment Columbus and his sailors first set foot on the Bahama’s Island, carrying shiny weapons and pretending to be friendly to the Arawaks, their goals were not to maintain peace but to extract as many resources for their own power and wealth. They exerted power with weapons, horses, lies, hypocrisy, deception and ultimately the death of anyone who did not comply to their demands or accept their beliefs.   As disconcerting as that knowledge might be, it can not be disputed that this was their ultimate goal and the goal of any settlers that came after Columbus. The idea that power needed to be placed over colonized people from the beginning to ensure the inequality among the races and secure their power in the “New World”. The process of securing power in the “New World” was accomplished by different groups of people in various ways. Today I hope to identify those groups and show three different ways in which that power was exerted by the elite. I will discuss the concepts and or theories used to make sure that the power remained in the hands of these elite groups.   I also intend to show which groups of people lacked the benefit of power and because of it their lives where affected in several different ways.  
Let us begin by identifying the groups of people who wanted to make sure they secured their power in the New World from the beginning of the colonization process. It is easy to see that one of those elite groups were the experienced sailors who were first to set foot in the foreign lands. For example, the orders from the king to Columbus were very specific. “Their aim was clear: slaves and gold. They went from island to island in the Carribean, taking Indians as captives ... after they had roamed the island in gangs looking for gold, taking women and children as slaves for sex and labor.” (Zinn, pg. 4, A People’s History Of The United States). This was the case with Columbus,...