The rapid rate at which some European nations grew in wealth and power was unforeseeable in the early 15th century because it had beenpreoccupied with internal wars and it was slowly recovering from the loss of population caused by theBlack Death.[6] TheOttoman Empire's domination oftrade routes to Asia prompted Western European monarchs to search for alternatives, resulting in thevoyages of Christopher Columbus and his accidental arrival at theNew World. With the signing of theTreaty of Tordesillas in 1494, Portugal and Spain agreed to divide the Earth in two, with Portugal having dominion over non-Christian lands in the world's eastern half, and Spain over those in the western half. Spanish claims essentially included all of theAmericas; however, the Treaty of Tordesillas granted the eastern tip of South America to Portugal, where it establishedBrazil in the early 1500s, and theEast Indies to Spain, where It established thePhilippines. The city ofSanto Domingo, in the current-dayDominican Republic, founded in 1496 by Columbus, is credited as theoldest continuously inhabited European-established settlement in the Americas.[7]
By the 1530s, other Western European powers realized they too could benefit from voyages to the Americas, leading toBritish andFrench colonization in the northeast tip of the Americas, including in the present-dayUnited States. Within a century, theSwedish establishedNew Sweden; theDutch establishedNew Netherland; andDenmark–Norway along with the Swedish and Dutch established colonization of parts of theCaribbean. By the 1700s, Denmark–Norway revived its former colonies inGreenland, andRussia began to explore and claim the Pacific Coast fromAlaska toCalifornia. Russia begancolonizing the Pacific Northwest in the mid-18th century, seeking pelts for the fur trade. Many of the social structures—includingreligions,[8][9]political boundaries, andlinguae francae—which predominate in theWestern Hemisphere in the 21st century are the descendants of those that were established during this period.
Violent conflicts arose during the beginning of this period as indigenous peoples fought to preserve their territorial integrity from increasing European settlers and from hostile indigenous neighbors who were equipped with European technology. Conflict between the various European colonial empires and the American Indian tribes was a leading dynamic in the Americas into the 1800s, although some parts of the continent gained theirindependence from Europe by then, countries such as the United States continued to fight against Indian tribes and practicedsettler colonialism. The United States for example practiced a settler colonial policy ofManifest destiny andIndian removal. Other regions, includingCalifornia,Patagonia, theNorth Western Territory, and thenorthern Great Plains, experienced little to no colonization at all until the 1800s. European contact and colonization had disastrous effects on the indigenous peoples of the Americas and their societies.[1][2][3][4]
NorseViking explorers were the first known Europeans to set foot in North America. Norse journeys toGreenland and Canada are supported by historical and archaeological evidence.[10] The Norsemen established a colony in Greenland in the late tenth century, which lasted until the mid 15th-century, with court and parliament assemblies (þing) taking place atBrattahlíð and a bishop located atGarðar.[11] The remains of a settlement atL'Anse aux Meadows inNewfoundland, Canada, were discovered in 1960 and were dated to around the year 1000 (carbon dating estimate 990–1050).[12] L'Anse aux Meadows is the only site widely accepted as evidence of pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact. It was named aWorld Heritage Site byUNESCO in 1978.[13] It is also notable for its possible connection with the attempted colony ofVinland, established byLeif Erikson around the same period or, more broadly, with theNorse colonization of the Americas.[14] Leif Erikson's brother is said to have had the first contact with the native population of North America which would come to be known as theskrælings. After capturing and killing eight of the natives, they were attacked at their beached ships, which they defended.[15]
Systematic European colonization began in 1492. ASpanishexpedition sailed west to find a new trade route to theOrient, the source of spices, silks, porcelains, and other rich trade goods. Ottoman control of theSilk Road, the traditional route for trade between Europe and Asia, forced European traders to look for alternative routes. TheGenoese marinerChristopher Columbus led an expedition to find a route to East Asia, but instead landed inThe Bahamas.[16] Columbus encountered theLucayan people on the islandGuanahani (possiblyCat Island), which they had inhabited since the ninth century. In his reports, Columbus exaggerated the quantity of gold in theEast Indies, which he called the "New World". These claims, along with the slaves he brought back, convinced the monarchy to fund a second voyage. Word of Columbus's exploits spread quickly, sparking the Western European exploration, conquest, and colonization of the Americas.
Spanish explorers, conquerors, and settlers sought material wealth, prestige, and thespread of Christianity, often summed up in the phrase "gold, glory, and God".[17] The Spanish justified their claims to the New World based on the ideals of the Christian Reconquista of theIberian Peninsula from the Muslims, completed in 1492.[18] In the New World, military conquest to incorporate indigenous peoples into Christendom was considered the "spiritual conquest". In 1493,Pope Alexander VI, the first Spaniard to become Pope, issued a series ofPapal Bulls that confirmed Spanish claims to the newly discovered lands.[19]
After the finalReconquista ofIberia, theTreaty of Tordesillas was ratified by the Pope, the two kingdoms ofCastile (in apersonal union with other kingdoms of Spain) and Portugal in 1494. The treaty divided the entire non-European world into two spheres of exploration and colonization. Thelongitudinal boundary cut through the Atlantic Ocean and the eastern part of present-day Brazil. The countries declared their rights to the land despite the fact that Indigenous populations had settled from pole to pole in the hemisphere and it was their homeland.
After European contact, the native population of the Americas plummeted by an estimated 80% (from around 50 million in 1492 to eight million in 1650), due in part to Old World diseases carried to the New World.Smallpox was especially devastating, for it could be passed through touch, allowing native tribes to be wiped out,[20] and the conditions that colonization imposed on Indigenous populations, such as forced labor and removal from homelands and traditional medicines.[21][5][22] Some scholars have arguedthat this demographic collapse was the result of the first large-scale act ofgenocidein the modern era.[3][23]
The silver mountain ofPotosí, in what is now Bolivia. It was the source of vast amounts of silver that transformed theworld economy.
For example, the labor and tribute ofinhabitants of Hispaniola were granted inencomienda to Spaniards, a practice established in Spain for conquered Muslims. Although not technically slavery, it was coerced labor for the benefit of the Spanish grantees, calledencomenderos. Spain had a legal tradition and devised a proclamation known asThe Requerimento to be read to indigenous populations in Spanish, often far from the field of battle, stating that the indigenous were now subjects of the Spanish Crown and would be punished if they resisted.[24] When the news of this situation and the abuse of the institution reached Spain, theNew Laws were passed to regulate and gradually abolish the system in the Americas, as well as to reiterate the prohibition of enslaving Native Americans. By the time the new laws were passed, in 1542, the Spanish crown had acknowledged their inability to control and properly ensure compliance with traditional laws overseas, so they granted to Native Americans specific protections not even Spaniards had, such as the prohibition of enslaving them even in the case of crime or war. These extra protections were an attempt to avoid the proliferation of irregular claims to slavery.[25] However, as historianAndrés Reséndez has noted, "this categorical prohibition did not stop generations of determined conquistadors and colonists from taking Native slaves on a planetary scale, ... The fact that this other slavery had to be carried out clandestinely made it even more insidious. It is a tale of good intentions gone badly astray."[26]
A major event in early Spanish colonization, which had so far yielded paltry returns, was theSpanish conquest of the Aztec Empire (1519–1521). It was led byHernán Cortés and made possible by securing indigenous alliances with the Aztecs' enemies, mobilizing thousands of warriors against the Aztecs for their own political reasons. The Aztec capital,Tenochtitlan, becameMexico City, the chief city of the "New Spain". More than an estimated 240,000Aztecs died during thesiege of Tenochtitlan, 100,000 in combat,[27] while 500–1,000 of the Spaniards engaged in the conquest died. The other great conquest was of theInca Empire (1531–35), led byFrancisco Pizarro.
Spanish historical and territorial presence inNorth America
Over this same time frame as Spain,Portugal claimed lands in North America (Canada) and colonized much of eastern South America naming itSanta Cruz and Brazil. On behalf of both the Portuguese and Spanish crowns, cartographerAmerigo Vespucci explored the South American east coast and published his new bookMundus Novus (New World) in 1502–1503 which disproved the belief that the Americas were the easternmost part of Asia and confirmed that Columbus had reached a set of continents previously unheard of to any Europeans.Cartographers still use aLatinized version of his first name,America, for the two continents. In April 1500, Portuguese noblePedro Álvares Cabral claimed the region ofBrazil to Portugal; the effectivecolonization of Brazil began three decades later with the founding ofSão Vicente in 1532 and the establishment of the system ofcaptaincies in 1534, which was later replaced by other systems. Others tried to colonize theeastern coasts of present-day Canada and theRiver Plate in South America. These explorers includeJoão Vaz Corte-Real in Newfoundland;João Fernandes Lavrador,Gaspar andMiguel Corte-Real andJoão Álvares Fagundes, in Newfoundland, Greenland, Labrador, and Nova Scotia (from 1498 to 1502, and in 1520).
During this time, the Portuguese gradually switched from an initial plan of establishing trading posts to extensivecolonization of what is now Brazil. They imported millions of slaves to run their plantations. The Portuguese and Spanish royal governments expected to rule these settlements and collect at least 20% of all treasure found (thequinto real collected by theCasa de Contratación), in addition to collecting all the taxes they could. By the late 16th centurysilver from the Americas accounted for one-fifth of the combined total budget of Portugal and Spain.[28] In the 16th century perhaps 240,000 Europeans entered ports in the Americas.[29][30]
Map of territorial claims inNorth America by 1750, before theFrench and Indian War, which was part of the greater worldwide conflict known as theSeven Years' War (1756 to 1763). Possessions of Britain (pink), France (blue), and Spain. White border lines mark later Canadian Provinces and US States for reference.
France founded colonies in the Americas: in eastern North America (which had not been colonized by Spain north ofFlorida), a number of Caribbean islands (which had often already been conquered by the Spanish or depopulated by disease), and small coastal parts of South America. Explorers includedGiovanni da Verrazzano in 1524;Jacques Cartier (1491–1557), andSamuel de Champlain (1567–1635), who explored the region of Canada he reestablished asNew France.[31]
The firstFrench colonial empire stretched to over 10,000,000 km2 (3,900,000 sq mi) at its peak in 1710, which was the second largest colonial empire in the world, after theSpanish Empire.[32][33]
In the French colonial regions, the focus of the economy was onsugar plantations in theFrench West Indies. In Canada thefur trade with the natives was important. About 16,000 French men and women became colonizers. The great majority became subsistence farmers along theSt. Lawrence River. With a favorable disease environment and plenty of land and food, their numbers grew exponentially to 65,000 by 1760. Their colony was taken over by Britain in 1760, but social, religious, legal, cultural, and economic changes were few in a society that clung tightly to its recently formed traditions.[34][35]
British colonization began in North America almost a century after Spain. The relatively late arrival meant that the British could use the other European colonization powers as models for their endeavors.[36] Inspired by the Spanish riches from colonies founded upon the conquest of theAztecs,Incas, and other large Native American populations in the 16th century, their first attempt at colonization occurred inRoanoke andNewfoundland, although unsuccessful.[37] In 1606,King James I granted a charter with the purpose of discovering the riches at their first permanent settlement inJamestown, Virginia in 1607. They were sponsored bycommon stock companies such as the charteredVirginia Company financed by wealthy Englishmen who exaggerated the economic potential of the land.[6]
TheReformation of the 16th century broke the unity ofWestern Christendom and led to the formation of numerous new religious sects, which often faced persecution by governmental authorities. In England, many people came to question the organization of theChurch of England by the end of the 16th century. One of the primary manifestations of this was thePuritan movement, which sought to purify the existing Church of England of its residual Catholic rites. The first of these people, known as thePilgrims, landed onPlymouth Rock in November 1620. Continuous waves of repression led to themigration of about 20,000 Puritans to New England between 1629 and 1642, where they foundedmultiple colonies. Later in the century, the newProvince of Pennsylvania was given toWilliam Penn in settlement of a debt the king owed his father. Its government was established by William Penn in about 1682 to become primarily a refuge for persecuted English Quakers, but others were welcomed.Baptists,German andSwiss Protestants, andAnabaptists also flocked to Pennsylvania. The lure of cheap land, religious freedom and the right to improve themselves with their own hand was very attractive.[38]
Mainly due to discrimination, there was often a separation between English colonial communities and indigenous communities. The Europeans viewed the natives as savages who were not worthy of participating in what they considered civilized society. The native people of North America did not die out nearly as rapidly nor as greatly as those inCentral and South America due in part to their exclusion from British society. The indigenous people continued to be stripped of their native lands and were pushed further out west.[39] The English eventually went on to control much ofEastern North America, theCaribbean, and parts of South America. They also gainedFlorida andQuebec in theFrench and Indian War.
John Smith convinced the colonists of Jamestown that searching for gold was not taking care of their immediate needs for food and shelter. The lack offood security leading to an extremely high mortality rate was quite distressing and cause for despair among the colonists. To support the colony, numeroussupply missions were organized.Tobacco later became a cash crop, with the work ofJohn Rolfe and others, for export and the sustaining economic driver ofVirginia and the neighboring colony ofMaryland.Plantation agriculture was a primary aspect of the economies of theSouthern Colonies and in theBritish West Indies. They heavily relied on African slave labor to sustain their economic pursuits.
From the beginning of Virginia's settlements in 1587 until the 1680s, the main source of labor and a large portion of the immigrants wereindentured servants looking for a new life in the overseas colonies. During the 17th century, indentured servants constituted three-quarters of all European immigrants to theChesapeake Colonies. Most of the indentured servants were teenagers from England with poor economic prospects at home. Their fathers signed the papers that gave them free passage to America and an unpaid job until they came of age. They were given food, clothing, and housing and taught farming or household skills. American landowners were in need of laborers and were willing to pay for a laborer's passage to America if they served them for several years. By selling passage for five to seven years worth of work, they could then start on their own in America.[40] Many of the migrants from England died in the first few years.[6]
Economic advantage also prompted theDarien scheme, an ill-fated venture by theKingdom of Scotland to settle theIsthmus of Panama in the late 1690s. The Darien Scheme aimed to control trade through that part of the world and thereby promote Scotland into a world trading power. However, it was doomed by poor planning, short provisions, weak leadership, lack of demand for trade goods, and devastating disease.[41] The failure of the Darien scheme was one of the factors that led the Kingdom of Scotland into theAct of Union 1707 with theKingdom of England, creating the unitedKingdom of Great Britain and giving Scotland commercial access to English, now British, colonies.[42]
New Amsterdam on lower Manhattan island, was captured by the English in 1665, becomingNew York.
The Netherlands had been part of theSpanish Empire, due to the inheritance ofCharles V of Spain. Many Dutch people converted toProtestantism and sought their political independence from Spain. They were a seafaring nation and built a global empire in regions where the Portuguese had originally explored. In theDutch Golden Age, it sought colonies. In the Americas, the Dutch conquered the northeast ofBrazil in 1630, where the Portuguese had built sugar cane plantations worked by black slave labor from Africa. PrinceJohan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen became the administrator of the colony (1637–43), building a capital city and royal palace, fully expecting the Dutch to retain control of this rich area. As the Dutch had in Europe, it tolerated the presence of Jews and other religious groups in the colony. After Maurits departed in 1643, theDutch West India Company took over the colony until it was lost to the Portuguese in 1654. The Dutch retained some territory inDutch Guiana, nowSuriname. The Dutch also seized islands in theCaribbean that Spain had originally claimed but had largely abandoned, includingSint Maarten in 1618,Bonaire in 1634,Curaçao in 1634,Sint Eustatius in 1636,Aruba in 1637, some of which remain in Dutch hands and retain Dutch cultural traditions.
On the east coast of North America, the Dutch planted the colony ofNew Netherland on the lower end of the island ofManhattan, atNew Amsterdam starting in 1624. The Dutch sought to protect their investments and purchased Manhattan from a band ofCanarse fromBrooklyn who occupied the bottom quarter of Manhattan, known then as theManhattoes, for 60guilders' worth of trade goods. Minuit conducted the transaction with the Canarse chief Seyseys, who accepted valuable merchandise in exchange for an island that was actually mostly controlled by another indigenous group, theWeckquaesgeeks.[43] Dutch fur traders set up a network upstream on theHudson River. There were Jewish settlers from 1654 onward, and they remained following the English capture of New Amsterdam in 1664. The naval capture was despite both nations being at peace with the other.
New Archangel (present-daySitka, Alaska), the capital of Russian America, in 1837
Russia came to colonization late compared to Spain or Portugal, or even England.Siberia was added to theRussian Empire andCossack explorers along rivers sought valuable furs ofermine,sable, andfox. Cossacks enlisted the aid ofindigenous Siberians, who sought protection from nomadic peoples, and those peoples paid tribute in fur to the czar. Thus, prior to the eighteenth-century Russian expansion that pushed beyond theBering Strait dividing Eurasia from North America, Russia had experience with northern indigenous peoples and accumulated wealth from the hunting of fur-bearing animals. Siberia had already attracted a core group of scientists, who sought to map and catalogue the flora, fauna, and other aspects of the natural world.
A major Russian expedition for exploration was mounted in 1742, contemporaneous with other eighteenth-century European state-sponsored ventures. It was not clear at the time whether Eurasia and North America were completely separate continents. The first voyages were made byVitus Bering andAleksei Chirikov, with settlement beginning after 1743. By the 1790s the first permanent settlements were established. Explorations continued down thePacific coast of North America, and Russia established a settlement in the early nineteenth century at what is now calledFort Ross, California.[44][45][46] Russian fur traders forced indigenousAleut men into seasonal labor.[47] Never very profitable, Russia sold its North American holdings to the United States in 1867, called at the time "Seward's Folly".
DukeFerdinand I de Medici made the only Italian attempt to create colonies in America. For this purpose, the Grand Duke organized in 1608 anexpedition to the north of Brazil, under the command of the English captain Robert Thornton.
Thornton, on his return from the preparatory trip in 1609 (he had been to theAmazon), found Ferdinand I dead and all projects were cancelled by his successorCosimo II.[48]
FranciscanAlonso de Molina's 1565Nahuatl (Aztec) dictionary, conceived for friars to communicate with the indigenous peoples in central Mexico in their own language
During theAge of Discovery and the following centuries, theSpanish andPortuguese colonial empires were the most active in attempting to convert theIndigenous peoples of the Americas to theChristian religion.[8][9] PopeAlexander VI issued theInter caetera bull in May 1493 that confirmed the lands claimed by theKingdom of Spain, and mandated in exchange that the Indigenous peoples be converted toCatholic Christianity. DuringColumbus's second voyage,Benedictine friars accompanied him, along with twelve other priests. With theSpanish conquest of the Aztec empire, evangelization of the dense Indigenous populations was undertaken in what was called the "spiritual conquest".[49] Several mendicant orders were involved in the early campaign to convert the Indigenous peoples.Franciscans andDominicans learnedIndigenous languages of the Americas, such asNahuatl,Mixtec, andZapotec.[50] One of the first schools forIndigenous peoples in Mexico was founded byPedro de Gante in 1523. The friars aimed at converting Indigenous leaders, with the hope and expectation that their communities would follow suit.[51] In densely populated regions, friars mobilized Indigenous communities to build churches, making the religious change visible; these churches and chapels were often in the same places as old temples, often using the same stones. "Native peoples exhibited a range of responses, from outright hostility to active embrace of the new religion."[52] In central and southern Mexico where there was an existing Indigenous tradition of creating written texts, the friars taught Indigenous scribes to write their own languages inLatin letters. There is a significant body of texts in Indigenous languages created by and for Indigenous peoples in their own communities for their own purposes. In frontier areas where there were no settled Indigenous populations, friars andJesuits often createdmissions, bringing together dispersed Indigenous populations in communities supervised by the friars in order to more easily preach the gospel and ensure their adherence to the faith. These missions were established throughoutSpanish America which extended from thesouthwestern portions of current-day United States through Mexico and to Argentina and Chile.
Asslavery was prohibited between Christians and could only be imposed upon non-Christian prisoners of war and/or men already sold as slaves, the debate on Christianization was particularly acute during the early 16th century, when Spanish conquerors and settlers sought to mobilize Indigenous labor. Later, twoDominican friars,Bartolomé de Las Casas and thephilosopherJuan Ginés de Sepúlveda, held theValladolid debate, with the former arguing that Native Americans were endowed withsouls like all other human beings, while the latter argued to the contrary to justify their enslavement. In 1537, the papal bullSublimis Deus definitively recognized that Native Americans possessed souls, thus prohibiting their enslavement, without putting an end to the debate. Some claimed that a native who had rebelled and then been captured could be enslaved nonetheless.
When the firstFranciscans arrived in Mexico in 1524, they burned the sacred places dedicated to theIndigenous peoples' native religions.[53] However, inPre-Columbian Mexico, burning the temple of a conquered group was standard practice, shown in Indigenous manuscripts, such asCodex Mendoza. Conquered Indigenous groups expected to take on the gods of their new overlords, adding them to the existing pantheon. They likely were unaware that theirconversion to Christianity entailed the complete and irrevocable renunciation of their ancestral religious beliefs and practices. In 1539, Mexican bishopJuan de Zumárraga oversaw the trial and execution of the Indigenous noblemanCarlos of Texcoco forapostasy from Christianity.[54] Following that, the Catholic Church removed Indigenous converts from the jurisdiction of theInquisition, since it had a chilling effect on evangelization. In creating a protected group of Christians, Indigenous men no longer could aspire to be ordained Christian priests.[55]
Throughout the Americas, theJesuits were active in attempting to convert the Indigenous peoples to Christianity. They had considerable success on the frontiers inNew France[56] andPortuguese Brazil, most famously with Antonio de Vieira, S.J;[57] and inParaguay, almost an autonomous state within a state.[58]
Catholic cathedral in Mexico CityTheKahal Zur Israel Synagogue in Mauritsstad (Recife) is the oldest synagogue in the Americas. An estimated number of 700 Jews lived in Dutch Brazil, about 4.7% of the total population.[59]
Roman Catholics were the first major religious group to immigrate to the New World, as settlers in the Spanish and Portuguese colonies of Portugal and Spain, and later, France inNew France. No other religion was tolerated and there was a concerted effort to convert indigenous peoples and black slaves to Catholicism. TheCatholic Church established three offices of theSpanish Inquisition, inMexico City;Lima, Peru; andCartagena de Indias in Colombia to maintain religious orthodoxy and practice. The Portuguese did not establish a permanent office of thePortuguese Inquisition in Brazil, but did send visitations of inquisitors in the seventeenth century.[60]
Drawing accompanying text in Book XII of the 16th-centuryFlorentine Codex (compiled 1540–1585) Nahua suffering from smallpox
The European lifestyle included a long history of sharing close quarters with domesticated animals such as cows, pigs, sheep, goats, horses, dogs and various domesticatedfowl, from which many diseases originally stemmed. In contrast to the indigenous people, the Europeans had developed a richer endowment of antibodies.[63] The large-scale contact with Europeans after 1492 introduced Eurasian germs to theindigenous people of the Americas.
Epidemics ofsmallpox (1518, 1521, 1525, 1558, 1589),typhus (1546),influenza (1558),diphtheria (1614) andmeasles (1618) swept the Americas subsequent to European contact,[64][65] killing between 10 million and 100 million[66] people, up to 95% of theindigenous population of the Americas.[67] The cultural and political instability attending these losses appears to have been of substantial aid in the efforts of various colonists in New England and Massachusetts to acquire control over the great wealth in land and resources of which indigenous societies had customarily made use.[68]
Such diseases yielded human mortality of unquestionably enormous gravity and scale – and this has profoundly confused efforts to determine its full extent with any true precision. Estimates of thepre-Columbian population of the Americas vary tremendously.
Others have argued that significant variations in population size over pre-Columbian history are reason to view higher-end estimates with caution. Such estimates may reflect historical population maxima, while indigenous populations may have been at a level somewhat below these maxima or in a moment of decline in the period just prior to contact with Europeans. Indigenous populations hit their ultimate lows in most areas of the Americas in the early 20th century; in a number of cases, growth has returned.[69]
According to scientists fromUniversity College London, the colonization of the Americas by Europeans killed so much of the indigenous population that it resulted inclimate change andglobal cooling.[70][71][72] Some contemporary scholars also attribute significant indigenous population losses in the Caribbean to the widespread practice of slavery and deadly forced labor in gold and silver mines.[73][74][75] Historian Andrés Reséndez, supports this claim and argues that indigenous populations were smaller previous estimations and "a nexus of slavery, overwork and famine killed more Indians in the Caribbean than smallpox, influenza and malaria."[76]
According tothe Cambridge World History, the Oxford Handbook of Genocide Studies, and the Cambridge World History of Genocide, colonial policies in some cases included the deliberate genocide of indigenous peoples in North America.[77][78][79] According to the Cambridge World History of Genocide,Spanish colonization of the Americas also included genocidal massacres.[80]
According toAdam Jones, genocidal methods included the following:
Genocidal massacres
Biological warfare, using pathogens (especially smallpox and plague) to which the indigenous peoples had no resistance
Spreading of disease via the 'reduction' of Indians to densely crowded and unhygienic settlements
Slavery and forced/indentured labor, especially, though not exclusively, in Latin America, in conditions often rivalling those of Nazi concentration camps
Mass population removals to barren 'reservations,' sometimes involving death marchesen route, and generally leading to widespread mortality and population collapse upon arrival
Deliberate starvation and famine, exacerbated by destruction and occupation of the native land base and food resources
Forced education of indigenous children in White-run schools ...[81]
Depiction of Spanish treatment of the indigenous populations in the Caribbean byTheodore de Bry, illustrating Spanish Dominican friarBartolomé de Las Casas's indictment of early Spanish cruelty, known as theBlack legend, and indigenous barbarity, including human cannibalism, in an attempt to justify their enslavementTriangular trade between Europe, Africa, and the AmericasAfrican slaves 17th-century in a tobacco plantation,Virginia, 1670
Indigenous population loss following European contact directly led to Spanish explorations beyond the Caribbean islands they initially claimed and settled in the 1490s, since they required a labor force to both produce food and to mine gold. Slavery was not unknown in Indigenous societies. With the arrival of European colonists, enslavement of Indigenous peoples "became commodified, expanded in unexpected ways, and came to resemble the kinds of human trafficking that are recognizable to us today".[82]While the disease was the main killer of indigenous peoples, the practice of slavery and forced labor was also a significant contributor to the indigenous death toll.[19] With the arrival of Europeans other than the Spanish, enslavement of native populations increased since there were no prohibitions against slavery until decades later. It is estimated that from Columbus's arrival to the end of the 19th century between 2.5 and 5 million Native Americans were forced into slavery. Indigenous men, women, and children were often forced into labor in sparsely populated frontier settings, in the household, or in the toxic gold and silver mines.[83] This practice was known as theencomienda system and granted free native labor to the Spaniards. Based upon the practice of exacting tribute from Muslims and Jews during theReconquista, the Spanish Crown granted a number of native laborers to anencomendero, who was usually a conquistador or other prominent Spanish male. Under the grant, they were theoretically bound to both protect the natives and convert them to Christianity. In exchange for theirforced conversion to Christianity, the natives paid tributes in the form of gold, agricultural products, and labor. TheSpanish Crown tried to terminate the system through theLaws of Burgos (1512–13) and theNew Laws of the Indies (1542). However, the encomenderos refused to comply with the new measures and the indigenous people continued to be exploited. Eventually, the encomienda system was replaced by therepartimiento system which was not abolished until the late 18th century.[84]
In the Caribbean, deposits of gold were quickly exhausted and the precipitous drop in the indigenous population meant a severe labor shortage. Spaniards sought a high-value, low-bulk export product to make their fortunes.Cane sugar was the answer. It had been cultivated on the Iberian Atlantic islands. It was a highly desirable, expensive foodstuff. The problem of a labor force was solved by the importation of African slaves, initiating the creation of sugar plantations worked bychattel slaves. Plantations required a significant workforce to be purchased, housed, and fed; capital investment in buildingsugar mills on-site, since once cane was cut, the sugar content rapidly declined. Plantation owners were linked to creditors and a network of merchants to sell processed sugar in Europe. The whole system was predicated on a huge, enslaved population. The Portuguese controlled the African slave trade, since the division of spheres with Spain in theTreaty of Tordesillas, they controlled the African coasts. Black slavery dominated the labor force intropical zones, particularly where sugar was cultivated, in Portuguese Brazil, the English, French, and Dutch Caribbean islands. On the mainland of North America, the Englishsouthern colonies imported black slaves, starting inVirginia in 1619, to cultivate other tropical or semi-tropical crops such as tobacco, rice, and cotton.
Although black slavery is most associated with agricultural production, in Spanish America enslaved and free blacks andmulattoes were found in numbers in cities, working as artisans. Most newly transported African slaves were not Christians, but their conversion was a priority. For the Catholic Church, black slavery was not incompatible with Christianity. TheJesuits created hugely profitable agricultural enterprises and held a significant black slave labor force. European whites often justified the practice through the belts of latitude theory, supported byAristotle andPtolemy. In this perspective, belts of latitude wrapped around the Earth and corresponded with specific human traits. The peoples from the "cold zone" inNorthern Europe were "of lesser prudence", while those of the "hot zone" insub-Sahara Africa were intelligent but "weaker and less spirited".[82] According to the theory, those of the "temperate zone" across the Mediterranean reflected an ideal balance of strength and prudence. Such ideas about latitude and character justified a natural human hierarchy.[82]
African slaves were a highly valuable commodity, enriching those involved in the trade. Africans were transported to slave ships to the Americas and were primarily obtained from their African homelands by coastal tribes who captured and sold them. Europeans traded for slaves with the local native African tribes who captured them elsewhere in exchange for rum, guns, gunpowder, and other manufactures. The totalslave trade to islands in the Caribbean, Brazil, the Portuguese, Spanish, French, Dutch, and British Empires is estimated to have involved 12 million Africans.[85][86] The vast majority of these slaves went to sugar colonies in the Caribbean and to Brazil, where life expectancy was short and the numbers had to be continually replenished. At most about 600,000 African slaves were imported into the United States, or 5% of the 12 million slaves brought across from Africa.[87]
Throughout the South American hemisphere, there were three large regional sources of populations: Native Americans, arriving Europeans, and forcibly transported Africans. The mixture of these cultures impacted the ethnic makeup that predominates in the hemisphere's largely independent states today. The term to describe someone of mixed European and indigenous ancestry ismestizo while the term to describe someone of mixed European and African ancestry ismulatto. The mestizo and mulatto population are specific to Iberian-influenced current-day Latin America because the conquistadors had (often forced) sexual relations with the indigenous and African women.[88] The social interaction of these three groups of people inspired the creation of a caste system based on skin tone. The hierarchy centered around those with the lightest skin tone and ordered from highest to lowest was thePeninsulares,Criollos, mestizos, indigenous, mulatto, then African.[19]
Unlike the Iberians, the British men came with families with whom they planned to permanently live in what is now North America.[37]They kept the natives on the margins of colonial society.Because the British colonizers' wives were present, the British men rarely had sexual relations with the native women. While the mestizo and mulatto population make up the majority of people inLatin America today, there is only a small mestizo population in present-day North America (excluding Central America).[36]
By the early to mid-16th century, even the Iberian men began to carry their wives and families to the Americas. Some women even carried out the voyage alone.[89] Later, more studies of the role of women and female migration from Europe to the Americas have been made.[90] By the 19th century, the arrival of missionaries in Indigenous territories, along with the imposition of Western educational systems, had introduced colonial concepts of gender to the Americas.[91]
Impact of colonial land ownership on long-term development
Eventually, most of the Western Hemisphere came under the control of Western European governments, leading to changes to its landscape, population, and plant and animal life. In the 19th century, over 50 million people left Western Europe for the Americas.[92] The post-1492 era is known as the period of theColumbian exchange, a dramatically widespread exchange of animals, plants, culture, human populations (includingslaves), ideas, andcommunicable disease between the American andAfro-Eurasian hemispheres following Columbus's voyages to the Americas.
Most scholars writing at the end of the 19th century estimated that thepre-Columbian population was as low as 10 million; by the end of the 20th century most scholars gravitated to a middle estimate of around 50 million, with some historians arguing for an estimate of 100 million or more.[93] A recent estimate is that there were about 60.5 million people living in the Americasimmediately before depopulation,[94] of which 90 per cent, mostly in Central and South America, perished from wave after wave of disease, along with war andslavery playing their part.[95][74]
Geographic differences between the colonies played a large determinant in the types of political and economic systems that later developed. In their paper on institutions and long-run growth, economistsDaron Acemoglu,Simon Johnson, andJames A. Robinson argue that certain natural endowments gave rise to distinct colonial policies promoting either smallholder or coerced labor production.[96] Densely settled populations, for example, were more easily exploitable and profitable as slave labor. In these regions, landowning elites were economically incentivized to develop forced labor arrangements such as the Perumit'a system or Argentinianlatifundias without regard for democratic norms. French and British colonial leaders, conversely, were incentivized to developcapitalist markets,property rights, anddemocratic institutions in response tonatural environments that supportedsmallholder production over forced labor.
James Mahoney proposes that colonial policy choices made at critical junctures regarding land ownership incoffee-rich Central America fostered enduringpath dependent institutions.[97] Coffee economies inGuatemala andEl Salvador, for example, were centralized around large plantations that operated under coercive labor systems. By the 19th century, their political structures were largely authoritarian and militarized. InColombia andCosta Rica, conversely, liberal reforms were enacted at critical junctures to expandcommercial agriculture, and they ultimately raised thebargaining power of the middle class. Both nations eventually developed more democratic and egalitarian institutions than their highly concentrated landowning counterparts.
Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. Founded in 1496, the city is the oldest continuously inhabited European settlement in the New World.Cumaná, Venezuela. Founded in 1510, it is the oldest continuously inhabited European city in the continental Americas.
There were at least a dozen European countries involved in the colonization of the Americas. The following list indicates those countries and the Western Hemisphere territories they worked to control.[98]
Mayflower, the ship that carried a colony of English Puritans to North America
In 2007, theSmithsonian InstitutionNational Museum of American History and theVirginia Historical Society (VHS) co-organized a traveling exhibition to recount the strategic alliances and violent conflict between European empires (English, Spanish, French) and the Native people living in North America. The exhibition was presented in three languages and with multiple perspectives. Artefacts on display included rare surviving Native and European artefacts, maps, documents, and ceremonial objects from museums and royal collections on both sides of the Atlantic. The exhibition opened inRichmond, Virginia on March 17, 2007, and closed at the Smithsonian International Gallery on October 31, 2009.
The related online exhibition explores the international origins of the societies of Canada and the United States and commemorates the 400th anniversary of three lasting settlements inJamestown (1607),Quebec City (1608), andSanta Fe (1609). The site is accessible in three languages.[100]
^Seed, Patricia.American Pentimento [electronic Resource] : The Invention of Indians and the Pursuit of Riches / Patricia Seed. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001. Print.
^abcBonch-Bruevich, Xenia. "Ideologies of the Spanish Reconquest and Isidore's Political Thought."Mediterranean Studies, vol. 17, 2008, pp. 27–45.JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/41167390. Accessed 12 Nov. 2020.
^"La catastrophe démographique" (The Demographic Catastrophe) inL'Histoire n°322, July–August 2007, p. 17
^Ostler, Jeffrey (2019).Surviving Genocide: Native Nations and the United States from the American Revolution to bleeding Kansas. New Haven.ISBN978-0-300-24526-4.OCLC1099434736.
^Forsythe, David P. (2009).Encyclopedia of Human Rights, Volume 4. Oxford University Press. p. 297.ISBN978-0-19-533402-9.
^Seed, Patricia. Ceremonies of possession in Europe's conquest of the New World, 1492–1640. United Kingdom, Cambridge University Press, 1995.
^Suárez Romero. LA SITUACIÓN JURÍDICA DEL INDIO DURANTE LA CONQUISTA ESPAÑOLA EN AMÉRICA. REVISTA DE LA FACULTAD DE DERECHO DE MÉXICO TOMO LXVIII, Núm.270 (Enero-Abril 2018)
^Resendez, Andres (2016).The Other Slavery The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. p. 7.
^Grenon, Jean-Yves (2000).Pierre Dugua De Mons: Founder of Acadie (1604–05), Co-Founder of Quebec (1608). Translated by Roberts, Phil. Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia: Peninsular Press.ISBN978-0-9682-0162-6.
^"Native Americans, Treatment of (Spain vs England)."Gale Encyclopedia of U.S. Economic History. Ed. Thomas Carson and Mary Bonk. Detroit: Gale, 1999. N. pag.World History in Context. Web. 30 Mar. 2015.
^Barker, Deanna (10 March 2004),Indentured Servitude in Colonial America, National Association for Interpretation, Cultural Interpretation and Living History Section.
^John Prebble,Darien: the Scottish Dream of Empire (2000)
^Brocklehurst, "The Banker who Led Scotland to Disaster".
^Black, Lydia. Russians in Alaska, 1732–1867. University of Alaska Press, 2004.
^Postnikov, Alexey, and Marvin Falk. Exploring and Mapping Alaska: The Russian America Era, 1741–1867. University of Alaska Press, 2015.
^Grinëv, Andrei Val'terovich. Russian Colonization of Alaska: Preconditions, Discovery, and Initial Development, 1741–1799. University of Nebraska Press, 2018.
^Veltre, Douglas W., and Allen P. McCartney. "Russian exploitation of Aleuts and fur seals: The archaeology of eighteenth-and early-nineteenth-century settlements in the Pribilof Islands, Alaska." Historical Archaeology 36.3 (2002): 8–17.
^Ricard, Robert.The Spiritual Conquest of Mexico: An essay on the Apostolate and the Evangelizing Methods of the Mendicant Orders in New Spain, 1523–1572. translated by Lesley Byrd Simpson. Berkeley: University of California Press 1966.
^Burkhart, Louise.The Slippery Earth: Nahua-Christian Moral Dialogue in Sixteenth-Century Mexico. Tucson: University of Arizona Press 1989.
^Cline, Sarah. "The Spiritual Conquest Re-Examined: Baptism and Church Marriage in Early Colonial Mexico". Hispanic American Historical Review 73:3(1993)453-80
^Altman, Ida, et al.The Early History of Greater Mexico. Pearson Education Inc. 2003, 117.
^"Espagnols-Indiens: le choc des civilisations", inL'Histoire n°322, July–August 2007, pp. 14–21 (interview with Christian Duverger, teacher at theEHESS)
^Don, Patricia Lopes. "The 1539 inquisition and trial of Don Carlos of Texcoco in early Mexico." Hispanic American Historical Review 88.4 (2008): 573–606.
^Poole, Stafford. "Church law on the ordination of Indians and castas in New Spain." Hispanic American Historical Review 61.4 (1981): 637–650.
^McShea, Bronwen. Apostles of Empire: the Jesuits and New France. U of Nebraska Press, 2019.
^Cohen, Thomas M. The fire of tongues: António Vieira and the missionary church in Brazil and Portugal. Stanford Univ. Press, 1999
^Morner, M. "Preconditions and Methods of Evangelization in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Jesuit Missions of the River Plate Region." Swedish Missiological Themes 91.2 (2003): 275–296.
^Bloom, Hebert Ivan.The Economic activities of the Jews in Amsterdam in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
^Wadsworth, James E. Agents of orthodoxy: honor, status, and the Inquisition in colonial Pernambuco, Brazil. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2006.
^Patricia U. Bonomi,Under the cope of heaven: Religion, society, and politics in Colonial America (2003).
^Faber, Eli. A Time for Planting: The First Migration, 1654–1820. Vol. 1. JHU Press, 1995.
^Baten, Jörg (2016).A History of the Global Economy. From 1500 to the Present. Cambridge University Press. p. 163.ISBN978-1-107-50718-0.
^McNeill & Pomeranz 2015, p. 430: "That said, and ever since the initial Eastern seaboard settler wars against the Tsenacommacahs and Pequots in the 1620s and early 1630s, systematic genocidal massacre was a core component of native destruction throughout three centuries of largely 'Anglo' expansion across continental North America. The culmination of this process from the mid-1860s to mid-1880s ... native Araucanian resistance by the Argentinian and Chilean military in the Southern Cone pampas, primarily in the agribusiness interest. In Australia, too, 'Anglo' attrition or outright liquidation of Aborigines from the time of 'first contact' in 1788 reached its zenith in Queensland in these same decades, as a dedicated Native Mounted Police strove to cleanse the territory of indigenous tribes in favour of further millions of cattle stock. Undoubtedly, in all these instances, Western racism and contempt for natives as 'savages' played a critical role in psycho-cultural justifications for genocide"
^Bloxham & Moses 2010, p. 339: "The genocidal intent of California settlers and government officials was acted out in numerous battles and massacres (and aided by technological advances in weaponry, especially after the Civil War), in the abduction and sexual abuse of Indian women, and in the economic exploitation of Indian child labourers."
^Blackhawk et al. 2023, pp. 27, 38: "More than any other work, Wolfe’s seminal 2006 essay, 'Settler colonialism and the elimination of the Native' established the 'centrality of dispossession' to our understandings of Indigenous genocide in the context of settler colonialism. His definition of 'settler colonialism' spoke directly to Genocide Studies scholars"; "With these works, a near consensus emerged. By most scholarly definitions and consistent with the UN Convention, these scholars all asserted that genocide against at least some Indigenous peoples had occurred in North America following colonisation, perpetuated first by colonial empires and then by independent nation-states"
^Kiernan, Lemos & Taylor 2023, p. 622: "These mass killings represent turning points in the history of the Spanish Atlantic conquest and share important characteristics. Each targeted Amerindian communities. Each was entirely or partially planned and executed by European actors, namely Spanish military entrepreneurs under the leadership of Friar Nicolás de Ovando, Hernán Cortés and Pedro de Alvarado respectively. Each event can be described as a 'genocidal massacre' targeting a specific community because of its membership of a larger group"
^abcReséndez, Andrés.The Other Slavery : The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America / Andrés Reséndez. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016. Print.
^Segal, Ronald (1995).The Black Diaspora: Five Centuries of the Black Experience Outside Africa. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. p. 4.ISBN978-0-374-11396-4.It is now estimated that 11,863,000 slaves were shipped across the Atlantic. [Note in original: Paul E. Lovejoy, "The Impact of the Atlantic Slave Trade on Africa: A Review of the Literature," inJournal of African History 30 (1989), p. 368.] ... It is widely conceded that further revisions are more likely to be upward than downward.
^Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James A. Robinson, "Institutions as a Fundamental Cause of Long-Run Growth", Handbook of Economic Growth 1: 385–472. 2005.
^James Mahoney, "Path-Dependent Explanations of Regime Change: Central America in Comparative Perspective." Studies in Comparative International Development, 2001.
^Note that throughout this period, certain countries in Europe became united and also disunited (e.g.: Denmark/Norway, England/Scotland, Spain/Netherlands).
^Dale Mackenzie Brown (February 28, 2000)."The Fate of Greenland's Vikings". Archaeological Institute of America.Archived from the original on January 20, 2014. RetrievedJanuary 20, 2016.
Bolton, Herbert E. "The Epic of Greater America",American Historical Review 38, no. 3 (April 1933): 448–474in JSTOR
Davis, Harold E.The Americas in History (1953), older textbook
Egerton, Douglas R. et al.The Atlantic World: A History, 1400–1888 (2007)
Eltis, David.The Rise of African Slavery in the Americas (2000).
Fernlund, Kevin Jon.A Big History of North America, from Montezuma to Monroe. Columbia: University of Missouri Press. (2022).
Hinderaker, Eric; Horn, Rebecca. "Territorial Crossings: Histories and Historiographies of the Early Americas",William and Mary Quarterly, (2010) 67#3 pp. 395–432in JSTOR
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