As in many other places and times, encounters between Europeans and the peoples of the Americas and Oceania spurred huge cultural, social, and economic changes for everyone involved. Yet the transformations that occurred among the peoples of the Americas and Oceania as a result of these encounters were disproportionately drastic and difficult. Why did these encounters cause such hardship for both native Americans and Oceanians?

The encounters between Europeans and the peoples of the Americas and Oceania were really drastic and dramatic for the latter, mainly because Europeans generated the encounters with a mission. Because they were more civilized, they wore clothes and lived in paved cities, Europeans regarded natives as inferior, and consequently they treated them as a lesser culture. The objective of teaching the natives their ways, and their religion to the cultures they regarded as inferior, meant that they hardly considered how natives lived their lives.