This is a
large, multi-faceted question, which changes depending on where in the world the encounters are
taking place, which sub-groups of each type are coming into our focus, and even what levels of
the respective societies are relating. That said, if we focus on the Americas, in general the
encounter of these three groups was characterized by increased dominance and power of Europeans,
a decrease in territorial holdings and power for Native Americans, and the ramping up of the
African slave tradefirst to the Caribbean's highly profitable sugar plantations and then to the
mainland of North and South America to work in the various plantations that began to proliferate
in those places.
The power imbalance was in large part due to European
technological dominance, especially gun-powder, weaponry, and navigation. There is evidence and
speculation that even before the Europeans arrived in parts of the Americas, their diseases,
which the indigenous people had little immunity to,
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