colonization of South America by Portuguese and Spain PDF

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Analyse the process of the colonization and the complexities involved in the conquest of South America by Spain during the end fifteenth and sixteenth?The age of discovery, also known as the age of exploration and the great Navigations was a period in European history from the early 15th century to ...

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Analyse the process of the colonization and the complexities involved in the conquest of South America by Spain during the end fifteenth and sixteenth? The age of discovery, also known as the age of exploration and the great Navigations was a period in European history from the early 15th century to early 17th century. The conquest of America lured a wide variety of explorers. Historians often refer to the Age of discovery to mean pioneering period of the Portuguese and Spanish long-distance maritime travels in search of alternatives trade routes to the indies. As has been said by Todorov, ‘the discovery of America, or of the Americans, is certainly the most astonishing encounter of our history nothing was known about the people of the Americas and their ‘discovery’ led to the greatest genocide in human history. The ‘discovery’ of the Americas led to great changes in the world, so the year 1492 can be considered the beginning of the modern era. The conquest of South America was not an essential part of the early explorations supported by the Spanish and Portuguese monarchies. Rather, it came to be imagined and became necessary for purposes of establishing colonial trade during the early years of the sixteenth century. The Conquest of South America was not an end in itself. Rather it was a prelude to/accompanied by the colonization of Brazil by Portugal and of other parts of Central and South America by Spain. Conquest or the process of Conquest was complex, uneasy, random and unpredictable, Colonisation itself was: (a) a long-drawn-out process; (b) wrought major changes on the land, in agricultural practices, land tenure systems and labour relations in agriculture. © accompanied by a shift in the axis of the economy in Spanish America towards silver mining, which itself was associated with/brought in its wake many other fundamental changes, ranging from changes in technology to changes in land ownership patterns and labour relations, for instance; (d) accompanied by a shift in the axis of large parts of the Brazilian economy towards plantation agriculture centred on sugarcane farming and milling, both accompanied as in Spanish America with various other social changes; (e) accompanied by the growing centrality of new towns and cities to the making of colonial settler economies; (f) dependent on the establishment of new structures of the colonial state apparatus; (g) also dependent on the consolidation of the Trans-Atlantic Trade Link, which must not be taken for granted and needs to be seen as having been constructed and maintained over time across the ocean in the face of much that was unexpected, unknown and dangerous, including phenomena as diverse as weather patterns, smuggling and piracy; (h) supported by, while also being in tension with the spread of Christianity and processes of ‘othering’; and finally, (i) fraught with histories of resistance, negotiation, collaboration, transculturation which had major implications and consequences for the making of the Modern History of South America. Though Spanish exploration of American, and other shored proceeded with impressive swiftness in the 16th century, settlement was a slower business at least in its early stage. It was a moment of critical learning for Spaniards, an apprenticeship in living an ocean's width away from home, among people they had never met before, in tropical locations with unfamiliar plants, animals, soils, and climates. It was also a period of training for those who remained in Spain and were tasked with governing these far-flung provinces in space and time. All rose to the challenge of learning at breakneck speed, such that by the time the

occupation of the mainland began, many of the practises (administrative, fiscal, legal, economic, social, and cultural) that would characterise the empire over its entire span were already in place in embryonic form. To be sure, the learning process was far from uniformly beneficial; calamities occurred or were permitted to occur, including the nearly entire annihilation of the indigenous people. Nonetheless, the Caribbean experience was critical in the building of the empire. It was a foray into the unknown. Latin America was born in blood and fire, in Conquest and slavery. In Latin America the colonial past is not a nostalgic memory but a harsh reality. It signifies economic backwardness; political arbitrariness, corruption, and nepotism; and a hierarchical social order with feelings of condescension and contempt on the part of elites toward the masses. Many conquistadors were hard, ruthless men, hard in dealing with each other and harder still with indigenous peoples. The conquistador and chronicler Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, wrote that some conquistadors could more accurately be called “depopulators or destroyers of the new lands.” The harshness of the conquistador reflected the conditions that formed his character: the climate of violence in Spain as it emerged from seven centuries of warfare against the Moor, the desperate struggle of most Spaniards to survive in a society divided by great inequalities of wealth, and the brutalizing effects of a colonial war. The brutality of the Spanish Conquest is matched by that of the genocidal “Indian wars.” On the ruins of indigenous societies Spain laid the foundations of a new colonial order. Three aspects of that order must be stressed. One is the predominantly feudal character of its economic structure, social organization, and ideology. Second, the colonial economy, externally dependent on the export of precious metals and such staples as sugar, cacao, tobacco, and hides, became gradually integrated into the new capitalist order that arose in northern Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Third, Spain’s colonial order was rooted in conflict between the crown and the conquistadors and their descendants. In that struggle the colonists gradually gained the upper hand. Indigenous people inhabited almost every inch of the Americas when the Europeans and Africans arrived. The encounter between native Americans and Europeans constitutes a defining movement in the world history. Neither the European “old world” nor the “new world”, as they called the Americans, would ever be same afterwards. The first Spanish invaders of Mexico moved slowly toward the Capital city of what wassoon to discover an impressive regional empire (Aztec and the Incas) They were few in number and ill-equipped, their armour was an encumbrance [ though steel swords were effective weapons, which had remarkable impact in battle compared with obsidian-studded terrain, and they had no means of receiving their supplies or munitions]. They also had little chance to acclimatize to almost unimaginable weather, environment, landscape, food and diseases they encounter. Spaniards outnumbered and fearful, soon resorted to treachery and terror. 1519 Cortes expedition, captured of Montezuma, by middle of 1521, smallpox and indigenous allies had helped Cortes annihilate Tenochtitlan and the Aztec. By the end 1521 the old Aztec empire was destroyed and collapsed like a house of cards. Spanish advantage in military technology must be recalled Horses, steel and [les importantly] gunpowder gave the invaders a devastating superiority of force man for man. Against warriors armed only with bravery and stone-edged weapons, Spanish weaponry produced staggering death tolls.

Spanish military advantages came from their old-world heritage, which included gunpowder from China and horses from Asia Francisco Pizarro was another Spanish conquistador, he embarked on campaign to conquer Peru. Pizarro used indigenous allies to topple the Inca empire and he used the same tactic which Cortez had applied, holding ruler hostage. Neither the Incas nor the Aztecs could have been defeated without the aid of the Spaniards' indigenous allies. The defeat of Aztec and Inca power was only the first step in establishing Spanish dominion over the mainland. During first decade few Spaniards engaged in the conquest and its consolidation insisted on their own familiar, material regime and endeavoured to provisions their early settlement bringing wine and wheat flour and imported cloth. But the introduction of European plants and animals, soon made European commodities available not only to themselves but also to native population. Historian Todorov believes, that it was the understanding of the Aztec world that the Spaniards had which made such destruction of their culture. Rule by Spain and Portuguese lasted three long centuries in Latin America. Latin American societies grew around the hard edges of domination like the roots of a tree gradually embracing the rocks at its base, adaption made colonization endurable but also embedded it in people’s habits. More than merely rule by outsiders, colonization was a social and cultural even a psychological process. The idea of spreading Christianity provided a compelling rationale for laying claim to huge chunks of the ‘undiscovered’ world. Conquest and Colonisation of the Americas is one of the greatest evils we have witnessed in our history, where not just people, civilisations and cultures of a continent were obliterated by the Europeans. The discovery of the new world itself could be the only root of Spain’s evils, as the English poet and historian, Samuel Daniel put in in 1613 “the opening of a new world…. Strangely altered the manner of this… and opened a way to infinite corruption.” Dutch humanist, Justus Lipsius wrote in 1603 ‘conquered by you, the new world has conquered you in turn, and weakened and exhausted( Spain) ancient vigour.

the long-term decline in Spanish Imperial power--that sets in by the end of the sixteenth century and which only deepens over the next century--Spain’s grip over its Latin American colonies gets markedly looser over the seventeenth century. While remaining within the colonial framework, this does allow for a relatively autonomous growth in production—agrarian, textile, mining, for instance-and trade on the one hand and the equally autonomous evolution of new class/social relations on the other. The result is that by the time the 18th century opens, the Creoles—Spaniards born in Latin America—emerge as the new propertied elite controlling the expanding haciendas--which will actually become really important in the course of the 18th century—mining, trade and textile and shipbuilding enterprises. They also seek to assert themselves socially, culturally and politically and therefore come to pose a challenge to the older propertied elite represented by the Peninsulares— Spaniards who had come, and continue to come from Spain. there are marked changes that take place in agrarian and labour relations over the seventeenth century, especially in relation to the massive importation of slave labour from Africa, but also because indigenous peasant societies and the laboring poor seek to assert their own historical agency in different ways. This leads to, and is accompanied by a markedly greater fluidity in all manner of evolving social relations, including gender and labour relations as also various kinds of ‘mestizaje’, or mixing of people and cultures at various levels, evidenced in the growing visibility of ‘mestizos’ for instance, as well as new, syncretic practices in religion, art, music, architecture and languages. This in fact, is one of the most fascinating elements constituting the changes associated with seventeenth century Latin American History, although it needs to be always borne in mind that the ‘mestizaje’, or ‘transculturation’ as Chasteen calls it--while being a fascinating historical process-is taking place within fields of power, including overarching colonial power, and not among equals...