Please Help Me With This World History Question.

Question

“One fact in all this is widely known and beyond dispute, for even the tyrannical murderers themselves acknowledge the truth of it: the indigenous peoples never did the Europeans any harm whatever; on the contrary, they believed them to have descended from the heavens, at least until they or their fellow citizens had tasted, at the hands of these oppressors, a diet of robbery, murder, violence, and all other manner of trials and tribulations.” -Bartoleme de Las Casas

While Friar de Las Casas attributes the fall of the native empires to the many wrongs committed by the Conquistadors, one key factor in that conquest is missing from the list he provides.  That factor is ________________.

  

a. The impact of European disease

 

  b. The role of the slave trade

 

  c. The role of European firearms

 

  d. The importance of maize

 

Answer 1

When considering the collapse of the many Indigenous populations throughout the Americas during the Age of Exploration, many different images are evoked, from the rise of slavery within North and South America to the violent conquests led by the Spanish against the Aztecs and Incas. However, nowadays, we've all come to the conclusion that the most effective tool the conquistadors used in destroying these populations was not any physical weapon but a small, microbial weapon: Smallpox.

Although this was known at the time, and regularly used as a weapon by the Spanish, it was also considered somewhat insignificant by the conquistadors at the time, not realizing just how deadly the disease was to the unprepared Indigenous tribes. Due to this unawareness, Friar de Las Casas does not mention it being a direct tool of their downfall because, despite the use of "Smallpox blankets" and other disease spreading tools, the study of germs, infections, and viral outbreaks was much, much weaker than we have today.

Thus, the answer to this question would be A. The impact of European Disease.

Answer 2

The question is asking for the missing attribute in the fall of native empires. Obviously, maize is not one of these, so you can eliminate that from the options. The next would be the slave trade. While the slave trade is horrific and of importance in the discussion of colonialism in the New World, it does not contribute to the fall of the empires. This leaves us with disease and guns. Guns were important, but not effective enough to be a major contributor at the time of Las Casas. Spanish explorers were massively outnumbered and guns took too long to load for that one, inaccurate shot. They were dramatically effective, but not a major contributor compared to disease.

So, with all that, disease is the missing attribute. This was most like left out as Las Casas was not aware of how disease came over with the explorers. When compared to guns, disease killed hundreds of thousands of native peoples, knowingly by the Europeans.