Preview

The American Holocaust: The Conquest Of The New World

Satisfactory Essays
Open Document
Open Document
430 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
The American Holocaust: The Conquest Of The New World
The American Holocaust: The Conquest of the New World retells the story about the invasion and occupation of the Americas by western Europeans, but it is told in a way that I have never heard before. From the first Spanish assault against the Arawak people to the US army’s massacre of the Sioux Indians, the indigenous inhabitants of north and south America have endured a great deal of racism slavery, cruelty, brutality, and murder. Author David Stannard does an excellent job of putting everything into view and seeing that what you were thought in junior high is nothing compared to what the indigenous people actually faced. This books contents are remarkably well researched, and its graphic and explicit contents are incredibly convincing. The

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    "American Holocaust" by David E Stannard was first published and distributed in 1992, the same year that celebrated the quincentenary of the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus. The release date would not have been decided upon by happenchance, but would have been part of a well thought out marketing strategy to take best advantage of the five hundredth anniversary of American 'civilisation '. The book is highly controversial in its choice of theme, in that it shows the American people of the time as a barbarous, murdering race, which, at its zenith of policy making, instigated a deliberate tactic of extermination and genocide against the native Indian tribes by the leaders of the new United States, such as Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson. Americans of today are taught to revere the leaders of the past, to elevate their memories to almost mythical status, to see them not as mortal men but as nearing the level of demi-gods. For someone to portray their iconic figures of this time in any other way than civilised and beneficent, for a large percentage of the modern day United States, would be as a minimum seen as disrespectful to their memory and for the majority would be seen as bordering on blasphemous and seditious dissertation. It is also shown in this book that the everyday common folk in eighteenth and nineteenth century America, although not necessarily direct advocates of a genocide policy, allowed it to happen, either with the excuse of the soldier when following orders of the slaughter of natives or by the malaise of the man in the street that is seen as guilty by his own inaction. This also would not have pleased 1990s Americans, being told that their direct ancestors were as guilty as the perpetrators of these heinous crimes, even if they had had no direct effect on the outcome. Even one of their favourite authors, L. Frank Baum, author of the Wizard of Oz is shown as being a radical Indian hater and exponent of racial cleansing who urges the…

    • 1126 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    When in reality it was the Spaniards who were the true savages for treating Native Americans as an evil creature due to their religious views. It was sad to read about how Indians families were torn apart and many choose not to have kids because of this. I was disgusted by how the Spaniards would cut off native women’s breasts and throw their infants to a pack of dogs. The teachings of Popes prepared the ground for the mass Genocide of Native Americans because they taught genocide because anyone who would go against their God would be killed. There are many major statements in this book. One of which is the statement that history books have incorrect information on the conquest of the Americas by the Spaniards. This is important to understand because it shows how young students are being taught wrong information as well as being taught to think that Native Americans are horrible people when the reality was that they were the victims in the situation. Another important statement addressed in the book was how it explained the mistreatment of Native American by the…

    • 588 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    All through the historical backdrop of the New World, there has been strife between indigenous populaces and approaching pioneers that usurp the land and assets. The uncovered histories and ficticious belief surrounding the Trail of Tears and the victory of the Incas and other local societies reminds us as readers that genocide and ethnic purifying leaves a sign of an awesome misfortune on American…

    • 65 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Bartolome de las Casas

    • 453 Words
    • 2 Pages

    The impressions I had about Columbus’ discovery of the New World are completely destroyed by this firsthand account of the horrible truth concerning the native people of America. In both middle and elementary school, I read about the discovery of Christopher Columbus and the evils of both the settlers and Native Americans. Never before, though, had I heard of the torturous, unprovoked attacks directed at the innocent. Never before had I felt such disgust toward people claiming to be Christians. Never before had I known how good and virtuous the natives, at least a large portion of them, were toward the settlers and in their lifestyles. We spend so much time in our schools learning about the horrors of World War II and about how Jews were discriminated against to the point of extermination towards extinction. Civil rights are also studied, and I am in no way displacing the crucial reminders of what African Americans went through in the United States’ past. However, although history textbooks typically mention settlers taking lands, killing off tribes, and taking advantage of the Indians ignorance in the ways of earthly possessions and worth, all I have ever learned concerning the unfair treatment adds up to nothing more than a single scratch on a gory corpse. Compared to this brief, breathtaking, bone-chilling account, I consider my days as blissfully ignorant over as the ugly facts melt away the sugar-coated excuses of angry, murderous tribes forcing…

    • 453 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In 1933, Adolph Hitler launched a program to ‘cleanse’ Germany of Jewish influence. 1936 this program was extended to countries occupied by Germany, and in January, years later, the “Final Solution” policy was adopted. The massive industrial annihilation of Jews in Concentration and extermination camps only reached the American public after the war ended. The Roosevelt’s failure to act, however, was not due to a lack of evidence on the holocaust, but rather the lack of a desire to rescue the persecuted. Twelve specific propositions and actions proposed in the face of these atrocities in the United States may have saved hundreds of thousands of Jewish lives.…

    • 821 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    6 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust. The number of Japanese-Americans who were killed in the internment camps is unknown but over 127,00 were put into the labor camps and about 7% of them died from hunger, dehydration or other unnatural causes such as executions. Japanese-Americans and Jews were both excluded of citizenship for either their nationality or religion. Jews were put in these concentration camps from 1933 to around 1945 by Hitler and the German army. Japanese-Americans were put in the internment camps around the year of 1945 through 1946 or 1947 by the American government. The Nazi concentration camps and Japanese-American internment camps were not essentially the same thing because they were put in the camps for different…

    • 818 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The persecution from the Nazi’s caused the resistance of the Germans. Even though the Jewish people were the Nazi’s main target, they didn’t just go after them. In over 100 ghettos, they rose in armed revolt. The Germans were taken off guard at this point but it didn’t keep them from containing this act of disobedience. The people rebelled by attacking with Molotov cocktails, hand grenades, and a handful of small arms. After all of this occurred, remaining Jewish resisters hid in the ruins of the ghetto.…

    • 186 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    A Review of policies and attitudes of the American government that allowed the final solution to take place.…

    • 2973 Words
    • 12 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    The film A Century of Genocide in Americas: The Residential School Experience is about how Native American children were taken from their parents, were forcedly sexually abused and were sent to residential schools in Canada and the United States because of their race. Each of these authors suffered…

    • 1929 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Better Essays

    Humanity. It is disconcerting to think about what we the humans have done to our own race. All because we believe in trying to find a difference such as our ethnicity, intellect, or looks to try to find how we are better than some. Hitler did this to the Jews as he wanted the world to have the Aryan race with the Holocaust, and America did this to the Japanese during the Japanese internment. The Holocaust and the Japanese internment are very different from one another yet they are both very similar to each other.…

    • 1184 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    “I remember: it happened yesterday, or eternities ago… It all happened so fast. The ghetto. The deportation. The sealed cattle car. The fiery altar upon which the history of our people and the future of mankind were meant to be sacrificed” -Elie Wiesel. Millions of heads were enforced in the Holocaust, Elie Wiesel was one of the few survivors. Mr. Wiesel survived through the genocide known as the Holocaust. The Holocaust occurred from 1939 to 1945 in Europe. The mass annihilation was lead by Adolf Hitler. Hitler had one capital goal, to be the ultimate ruler. While Germany was experiencing difficult times, Hitler took the opportunity to use Jews and other parties/groups as scapegoats and blame Germany’s issues on them; this turned the people against them, making the extermination significantly easier. Many deny the manifestation of the Holocaust. The revisionists, Holocaust deniers, believed the Holocaust was a hoax and was over exaggerated. Problematically, revisionists argue the occurrence of the Holocaust is false and out of proportion. However, the significant amount of evidence found such as physical evidence (documents, pictures, and videos) and personal accounts from witnesses has proven the Holocaust did happen and was not an aggrandizement.…

    • 1350 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The year is 1933. A devastated people stare into a black abyss. Having witnessed the utter destruction of their economy and the years of destitution that followed, the people are desperate for relief. A failed art student and embittered World War I veteran begins to gain a following within the national political scene. Being a gifted orator with strong political ideology, he manages to gain the support of millions. Unknown to the people who ultimately elect him to be their leader, he has a dark and sadistic plan. The events that follow are one of humanity’s greatest embarrassments and tragedies. It is not often that something happens that is repulsive enough to make the world collectively gasp. For a moment the world stood still, paralyzed with disbelief. The goal is the same for all involved, but the ways in which each nation choose to respond vary wildly. The United States has often garnered criticism for the way in which it decided to address and solve the problem of the mass extermination of innocent millions.…

    • 204 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    During the Holocaust, sixteen to twenty million Gentiles from various countries throughout Europe were killed. These victims included Gypsies, Poles and other Slavic people, people who were physically or mentally disabled, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, clergymen, political enemies, resistance fighters, asocials, African-German children, and still others. Each group wore different colored badges as means of identification. These non-Jewish victims died from starvation, executions, beatings, overworking, relocations, gassing, experiments, and disease, resulting in devastating losses.…

    • 996 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Holocaust was when millions of jews were killed by The Nazis. The Holocaust also changed how the people viewed each other and judge people on what’s being said. Before 1933 there was a war called World War 1. There were a lot of effects during the war. For example like child labor, hunger within the people because people didn’t have money to buy food for their families This and other causes resulted 38 million dying during the war. The direct cause of WWI was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand at Sarajevo on 28 June 1914. After that happened, the war started. World War 1 devastated Europe and created new countries. The war affected a lot of people, it was going for 4 years. During the WW1 the US and…

    • 377 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    This text really showed the huge downfall of the Native American people. I had no idea that there were so many Native American Indians before the Europeans came. All texts I read seemed to downplay or not list the number of them here. It says in the text, North and South America contained between 90,000,000 and more than 112,000,000 people before the coming of the Spanish. That was compared to only 60 million to 70 million in Europe. The diseases really wiped out what seemed to be great civilizations of people. It also surprises me that people tried to justify invading and capturing these people even very recently, within the lifetime of my parents. It is sad hearing how much people hated races that they knew very little about but also encouraging that people have changed over recent years to be more understanding of them.…

    • 618 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays