Caribbean HistoryImpacts of European Colonialism on the Indigenous Populations of the Caribbean European colonialism in the Caribbean had devastating and severe impacts on the indigenous populations. They were dispossessed of their lands, exposed to European diseases new to them, and had to be involved in violent conflicts, which resulted in the deaths of many natives. Their lives and those of future generations have been changed forever. When colonists arrived in the Caribbean, they arrived with epidemic diseases from Europe, including smallpox, chickenpox, influenza, and measles (Lang 273). The indigenous populations of the Caribbean had not acquired immunity to these unknown diseases, and within just a few weeks, white slaves were unwilling to work for Europeans who were mean and paid them very little. Most of them immigrated to other places where they could provide work. For Europeans to maintain white slaves, it would have cost them dearly. As a result, they viewed Africa as a solution to their labor problems. With the slave trade allowed in Africa, they traded African slaves and brought them to the Caribbean to work on their farms, providing cheap labor (Klein). They believed that their misfortunes were caused by witchcraft and the gods, and they simply formed a mechanism to deal with them. with this, they were also confident that in the long run, they would return home and join their friends. It gave them hope and kept them going. The fact that they had to live together as slaves created a favorable environment. for slaves to continue their African culture, which included things like belief in gods, witchcraft, polygamy, and healers. Stuart Hall, Imagined African Community By “imagined African community,” Hall means the need of enslaved Africans to have an identity by tracing their identity. their roots together (Davis 186). By living together and associating with each other, and through their physical appearance, slaves traced their roots to a common ancestry in Africa, which gave them a kind of imagined community to which they could relate. associate. Culture as