The Atrocities Perpetrated by Christians against the Indies - Essay Example

Children and women bore the wrath of the Christians whose gospel was the opposite of their actions. In the name of the gospel, a large population of the Indies people was eliminated, the rest were taken as slaves to work for the benefit of the same Christians, who continued to gather wealth while the locals struggled to suffer in poverty. The locals were denied food despite working in extreme conditions to enrich the missionaries in their land and using their blood and resources (Casas 34).

The main aim behind the colonialists’ atrocities in the Indies was to weaken the resistance of the locals. There was a thin line between spreading the gospel of Christianity in such Asian regions and exploring the land for resources to enrich the colonialists’ mother countries. Most of the early missionaries turned out to be political elements who explored new lands and resources for their mother countries, and the Indies were not exceptional. The locals were harsh and unwelcome to the colonialists, as a response, the colonialists had to use cruel methods to deter any resistance from the locals and to weaken the resistance of the people towards receiving new instructions. Women and children were easier to deal with, which explains the mass execution of males; moreover, as political figures, the missionaries had to use cheap labor to attain maximum benefits from exploiting resources in the Indies, which degenerated into the slave trade.

 One of the greatest impacts of colonialism and the slave trade was the destruction of social structures and norms in many societies, mainly on Asian and African continents. Colonialists introduced new cultures that defiled the local native cultures with teachings such as Christianity doing away with indigenous methods of worship, which defined cultures. However, despite the atrocities subjected to locals, colonialism was responsible for introducing better ways of farming and other civilization processes in remote areas across the globe. Such methods made life much easier compared to the native’s primitive ways of life. The impact of the slave trade was destroying families, and generations and recording the longest history of inhumanity where slaves were treated as secondary primitive elements inferior to whites. However, one positive side of slavery was that it helped in mixing races in the American continent where it resulted in a rich diversity of people.