Differences Between Gold, God, And Glory

The phrase, “Gold, God, and Glory” are a representation of the three reasons that European powers had to expand their colonial empires. Gold represents the vast wealth in literal gold and silver that was believed to be in Africa and the New World, and it also represents the vast wealth made selling highly coveted spices from Asia back in Europe. God represents the conversion of people outside Europe to Christianity along with the continuation of the crusades. Glory represents the prestige and power for a nation that comes with imperial conquest. The Columbian Exchange is the one-time movement of animals, crops, ideas, and disease that took place between the new world and the old world. The event began after 1493, when Christopher Columbus had returned, having unknowingly discovered the Caribbeans. This is further
Spain and Portugal entered into the Treaty of Tordesillas, allowing Spain to claim all lands west of a specific line and Portugal to claim all lands east of it. As Europe began to colonize across the New World, crops native to Europe were carried over to the Americas and crops native to America became staples in Old World diets. Domesticated livestock – cattle, sheep, and pigs – from the Old World found their home in the New World; the horse, for example, had become common in the hunt for buffalo. Meanwhile, disease silently moved along with the Europeans, and festered in the Americas. The natives had no immunity against diseases the colonizers had acclimated to including: smallpox, malaria, influenza, diphtheria, typhus, whooping cough, and measles. This coupled with the Europeans’ far and wide conquests decimated their population from an estimated 25 million to less than 1 million by 1620. As the natives disappeared, slaves from Africa and settlers from across the