European economies tied themselves to the lands that they colonized. Alberto Vieira discusses this in the reading, arguing that it was specific products that led the Europeans to settle these islands. Sugarcane was particularly valuable to the Portuguese and Spanish, with Madeira and the Canary Islands serving as the main hosts for the crop. Vieira suggests that because of the scarcity of water in the Canary Islands, economic organization was key (Vieira, 44). This scarcity of water in the Canaries resulted in resource management that favored the growth of sugarcane above all else. In Erin’s<\/a> response she references Grove and concept of Green Imperialism. This reference fits perfectly within the narrative of Europeans leaving large ecological damages on the lands they discover and exert power over.
\nWhile Vieira states that sugar production was not the main reason that for occupying these islands, the rapid increase in demand for it changed that objective in an incredibly short amount of time (Vieira, 47). This rapid demand for sugar created a demand for labor, one that was satisfied with enslaved peoples. The outcomes of large scale sugar production are ones that would not have happened without an economic incentive, and the way that Europe reacted when they discovered these sugar islands can tell us a lot about how their imperialistic concerns were impacted by the opportunity for economic growth and how the rush for \u201cWhite Gold\u201d reveals that not every European country was concerned about the ecological impacts on these islands.<\/p>\n

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European economies tied themselves to the lands that they colonized. Alberto Vieira discusses this in the reading, arguing that it was specific products that led the Europeans to settle these islands. Sugarcane was particularly valuable to the Portuguese and Spanish, with Madeira and the Canary Islands serving as the main hosts for the crop. Vieira […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist410-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist410-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist410-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist410-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist410-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1363"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist410-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1363\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":996453,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist410-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1363\/revisions\/996453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist410-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist410-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist410-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}