Warning: Undefined variable $num in /home/shroutdo/public_html/courses/wp-content/plugins/single-categories/single_categories.php on line 126
Warning: Undefined variable $posts_num in /home/shroutdo/public_html/courses/wp-content/plugins/single-categories/single_categories.php on line 127
In the late 15th and 16th centuries Spain and Portugal ventured west towards the Americas on a dangerous, but potentially lucrative exploration. Motives for the journey included gold, evangelism and cheap labor. Viewing indigenous populations as possible capital, Columbus captured Taino people and put them on a ship back to Spain. Columbus was met with aggression from the Taino as he began to abandon a trade based occupation in favor of a “town-based pattern of colonization.” (Egerton 87) Nicolas de Ovando would replace Columbus as Governor of the Indies in 1502, but patterns of extreme aggression and rebellion continued. Southern expansion meant ongoing exploitation of native populations. Spanish attempts at cultural integration led to the disappearance of any semblance of native culture.
Portugal was slower to adopt the Spanish patterns of colonization in the Americas, instead looking to the East for resource acquisition. The trade centered economy that Portugal chose to keep was more benevolent than Spain’s slave based model, but still far from desirable for indigenous people. The Portuguese took trips back to Brazil intermittently where they would trade goods for brazilwood, and until the mid-sixteenth century. Demand for production and France’s claim to Brazil led the Portuguese crown to begin an aggressive colonization of the country, and by 1570 the French were replaced by Portuguese colonists and African slaves to be used for dangerous and labor intensive sugar cultivation.
It would be easy to follow the common narrative that the Spanish were exceptionally cruel. In reality they were what would be commonly known today as “entrepreneurs.” Driven by the prospect of wealth and a cloak of piety the Spanish sought to expand their empire by any means necessary. The Portuguese realized they were competing with other growing European nations and made the economically pragmatic decision to capitalize on the burgeoning sugar trade using free Black labor. Slaves became logistics for boats full of merchandise. Nations were shaped by colonialism and histories were lost because of it. All for gold. Which is not even used to back currency anymore.
“For a colonized people the most essential value, because the most concrete, is first and foremost the land: the land which will bring them bread and, above all, dignity.”
― Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth