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Sunday, September 4, 2011

Essay on John Winthrop

Essay on John Winthrop

John Winthrop, in the 1700 thought that his religion was getting out of hand under the king and he wanted to establish a new community which would be Bible commonwealth. I intend to prove that the European diseases, that was carried over to the New World was not only a big help for them, but at the same time very new and lethal for the Native American.

It was an advantage or rather miraculous as John Winthrop puts it, seeing as how a mass majority of the Natives (savages) were taken out by smallpox, just in time for him and his Puritan crew (believers) to move in. He believed that because his cause was just, (as in creating a new colony with a holier people) he thought that God was helping him take out these unchristian savages so that he can begin setting up his new puritan colony. Not only that, with God on his side all the better for him to feel superior and to feel confident about his decision of his new colony.
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Going more in-depth John Winthrop was a well-educated man, his father was wealthy enough to leave him a manor, and was able to attend a good university to learn more about Christianity because the more you know the better your status becomes in the society. At the age of fifteen he got married. He kept a diary and there he would have a list of the good deeds he would do and of all the bad deeds in which he would constantly prosecute himself. He would try to think of ways to make his good list longer. It was said that only the highly educated and wealthy were those who kept diaries. He believed that under the king life was getting too liberal which forced him into the idea of making a new colony where the Bible would be law, it would then be a homogeneous society. When he started planning the colony, he advertised the standards and attracted many people to his planned out sect. Puritans believed in predestination, and that good works would win them Gods favor. The more good work you do, the more you had a chance to be considered as one of the "selected" by a minister of the colony. Religion was always an issue, if you were an outsider you would be considered uncivilized or unchristian, but if for once these Puritan and Papists and Catholics would have just look pass their superiority they would have seen that God had been through the villages of these Natives of the New World.

When the Spanish Colony decided that they would take over these Arawaks, Christopher Columbus's main concern was gold, and how easy it would be to convert these savages into Christians. Queen Isabella liked the idea of slaves and gold, so Columbus returns in 1493, and the result, depopulation, suicide, disruption of the life style, malnutrition and epidemics and eventual extermination of that race. The Spaniards wiped out a whole ethnic culture. In the English's eyes the Spanish papist were nothing more than tyrannous, their contact with the Natives was disastrous. They were the beneficiaries. There wasn't one religious community that didn't feel themselves better than the other. How could change come about with feelings such as these?

The Europeans on the other hand brought diseases to the New World because of their lifestyle. In the 1500's they were said to be very nasty; they wouldn't take baths for months, where as the Native of the New World took baths regularly. And because of their very disorderly lives, it was very easy for epidemics to break out, I would imply that where there's filth there would be sickness. Smallpox was one of the diseases they would bring and actually use as a weapon to kill the Natives of the New World.

The Natives were used to simple lives, they had their religion, and it didn't have a specific name; but they had their beliefs. Back in the 1200 the first Natives believed that there wasn't a secular world and they believed that violating the balance of the world the spirits of the world would strike back. They weren't very knowledgeable. And breakouts of epidemics among these Natives aren't mentioned.

In balancing out what was quoted by John Winthrop, seemed to me as a win, loose, situation with the Natives. They got wipe-out catastrophically by the smallpox disease, and their land was invaded. And the small amount of Natives that stayed had no choice but to submit to their Puritan way of living. There was really never any common ground with these European invaders and the Natives. The only change that came to be is that the different colonies that interacted with each other became to hate one another more and more. I would say that because of the diseases among the European it was a bonus silent weapon they had to use against the Natives.

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