Compare And Contrast Columbus And Harriot

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The Age of Discovery and Exploration started when the Europeans wanted to expand to the rest of the world. They did not know what or who they were going to find, but they did not want anything to get in their way. When the Europeans came to the Americas, they found native people living there. The natives and the Europeans differed in many ways. They had different languages, cultures, and even looked different. Christopher Columbus and Thomas Harriot were some of the explorers that came to the Americas to find new land and resources. Columbus and Harriot had similar experiences when they came to this new land. These two men had the chance to benefit from the Age of Discovery. There were many native people who were killed or taken from their …show more content…
He was not able to benefit from this age because he was treated terribly by his European captors. Equiano was kidnapped from his homeland and was forced on a slave ship with dreadful conditions. The men, women, and children on this ship were treated worse than animals. They were packed in the bottom of the ship without food or water. Some died from starvation or suffocating from the hot air and awful odors of the ship. If someone tried to escape, kill themselves, or refuse to eat, they would face severe punishment and whippings. These slaves were treated as if they were completely disposable. Equiano recalls, “One white man in particular I saw, when we were permitted to be on deck, flogged so unmercifully with a large rope near the foremast, that he died in consequence of it; and they tossed him over the side as they would have done a brute.” As I read about this boy’s experience on this ship, it is tough to compare the European explorer’s experience to Equiano’s, because it seems like they were from two different worlds. As I stated before, only one of these groups got to benefit from this Age of Discovery. Both the European explorers’ impressions of Native Americans and the African slave’s perception of their European captors were similar because they did have to experience an unfamiliar people, but what they saw in each other was very

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