Role Of European Settlers In Latin America

There were initially two to ten million natives in the United States prior to European contact. Those numbers dwindled down drastically in the years that Europeans came and started colonizing. The Europeans came to explore the New World in search of land, spices, gold, God and glory. Among these colonists were the Spanish and they colonized most of the southwest of the United States. Evidence of their settlements can still be seen today in the missions scattered across the land. These missions were started with the purpose of converting the Native Americans to Christianity. Now, imagine living your entire life with a particular set of beliefs, based on your ancestors and culture, and a group of foreigners come and proclaim that your views are all wrong and that you must follow their beliefs for the salvation of your soul. This is exactly what the Spanish did to the Natives. The relationship between the two parties were strained and rife with tension due to the conversion of the natives and the constant abuse doled out by the Spanish. This subsequently led to the disintegration of native life and culture.

Although the Spanish and the British started colonizing the new world relatively at the same time their colonization efforts we’re extremely different but had some overlapping similarities. The differences include the two nations different reasoning to explore the New World, their relationship with the Natives, and it types of governments that they attempted to set up. Although some of these differences might not seem as if they are very important, they helped one nation do you better than the other one when it came to colonization efforts.

European colonization of the Americas should be remembered as a tragedy for the impractical and immoral acts upon Native Americans and slave laborers. The European colonization of the Americas was a series of atrocities committed upon underdeveloped territory by settlers throughout the Americas. Many European countries took part in the advantages of the land to increase economic trade and newly found resources. However, the net result of this colonization for the indigenous who already inhabited these lands was the exploitation of Native Americans and Slaves through forced labor, Christian ideals being forced upon those certainly from different beliefs, and the general theft of land and natural resources.

1). The Nations of Europe sought to expand their empire because they were on the verge of overpopulation.Between 1550 and 1600 the population grew from three million to four million people. Also, England and Spain were at a war for power. The Spanish attempts at colonizing the New World had been extremely successful, for they had gained both wealth and power. The English did not see such success, as their ships would crash, be lost to the seas, or their colonization efforts would cease to be useful. Through the Spaniards control over the Americas they had gained a massive naval army, noted as the Spanish Armada. The Spanish attempt to invade England in 1588 failed which lead to the beginning of the fall of the Spanish empire in the New World.

European colonization of the New World began during the European age of exploration and following the discovery of resources in the New World. The various motives of the Spanish, British, and French imperialists were reflected in the political, economic, and social changes that occurred in the areas each government claimed. These changes are very distinctive and led to drastic changes in their respective areas.

As Tindall and Shi put it, “ tribal cohesion and cultural life disintegrated, and efforts to resist European assaults collapsed” (15). The Spanish and Portuguese immediately began to enslave the surviving Indians and put them to work in mines and on sugar plantations under a system they called the, “encomienda system”. Many of the elite American Indians who survived disease did not fare any better, as their legitimacy as chiefs and religious leaders was stripped away from them. This system was meant to colonize, subjugate, and forcefully assimilate the Native Americans to cruel and harmful condition, all in the name of profit (Parker 54). Soon, however, the European empires faced a problem regarding the low amount of laborers due mainly to the smallpox epidemic. This caused the Spanish and Portuguese empires to switch from American Indian labor, to African slave labor. Bringing the African slaves to the Western hemisphere began a long history of bondage that would continue in the American continents until Brazil finally abolished slavery in 1888. To add to all of that, the African slaves brought their own diseases that not even the white europeans were immune to such as, malaria, yellow fever, and cholera among others. The diminution of American Indian populations continued even after the fall of the Incan and Aztec empires. As the

When the Spanish and the Portuguese established the colonies in the Americas, not only did they bring their material culture of technologies, clothes, cuisines, architecture, crops, and animals but they also brought their intellectual traditions such as that of honor. The history of colonial Latin America gives many questions related to the understanding of honor. The culture of honor during this period of time was pivotal as it provided a set of values that organized society and individual lives. Legal codes, social gatherings, seating arrangements were all mixed in with cultural meanings, which helps define status within a system of honor. Honor is also seen within fiction produced from the colonial Latin American period with the production of work such as Don Juan Tenorio and Don Quixote. These dramatic works glorify the chivalric tradition of honor, romanticizing it and creating a flattering fiction that the elite of colonial Latin America found convenient to strive for. Literary critics and cultural historians have studied the structure honor code of this period closely and in this book it can also be seen that honor can be irrationally inflexible, cruel and especially oppressive toward those of lower class, “tainted” lineage and female gender during this time. In this book, The Faces of Honor: Sex, Shame, and Violence in Colonial Latin America, scholars Lyman L. Johnson and Sonya Lipsett Rivera take on the difficult but exciting task of trying to define the idea and

1. Briefly discuss (but in detail) the similarities/differences between the initial Spanish colonization of the Caribbean and the Yucatan. In your discussion include the initial reaction of the Taino and Maya to the presence of the Spanish and the rational for the Spanish conquest.

After the Americas’ existence became known to Europeans and the wealth that they contained, European states became extremely interested in making as much profit from the Americas as possible. Spain is among the first European nations to begin to send what is called conquistadors to the Americas for the reasons as the Spaniards said to teach the native population Christianity, for glory for the Spain, and as well to gain material riches from the discovery of precious and valuable metals such as gold. Coming and settling in the Americas were not easy tasks. The conquistadors attempted, with some success to for the native population to labor in their behalf, but this eventually proved to be a failure. Spaniards needed to fill that labor

When Europeans explored the world during the “Age of Exploration”, they colonized areas for a number of reasons. One reason was to spread Christianity. The Spaniards believed it was their God given duty to convert people to Christianity. A second reason was to acquire wealth through trade and exploitation of other countries’ peoples and natural resources. Colonizing and acquiring the land in Latin America also led to an increase in geopolitical power over other European countries.

long before the Europeans arrived the first nations people had been active traders and had well established trading patterns and alliances through north America.

The Spanish expansion into the New World was mainly encouraged for their strong desire to gain wealth. The first discovery of the New World was from the Spanish by Christopher Columbus, Columbus first plan was to find a shortcut to the Indies, but he actually landed near the Bahamas. The Spanish made the native people find gold for them, or to give them their gold. In 1518, Cortes, and his conquistadors arrived in Mexico to brutality turn the Southern America into a Spanish empire. While the Spanish was there, they also carried over smallpox to help wipe the native people out. When the English came to the New World they decided to build their own society instead of ruling a foreign one. What the English and the Spanish had in common was their

This chapter, “Europeans Colonize North America, 1600 – 1650,” explores the social, political and economic reasons which prompted European countries to invade and colonize North America. These European groups included the Spanish, French, Dutch and English. England however hoped to recreate and improve the society they had left behind. They all had different reasons for exploring the Americas. Nevertheless, Europeans possessed and benefitted a little until they adapted and established successful relations with Native Americans and with each other.

There were various justifications given by the colonists for the colonization of the Americas. One of them was the economic gain. The colonists would found the colonies to make money. This could be seen through the Spanish Colonization as they would first look for gold and jewels and then destroy the agriculture locally, so they can plant large fields of sugar cane as it was a very expensive luxury in the Europe. By following the practice, Spain became the richest country in the world. Furthermore, the British colony in the North America named Jamestown, was settled purely because the inhabitants wished to find gold and treasure and not work. Thus, they simply wished to make the economic gain. Then, South Carolina was also discovered for business

Because the Indians and Spanish lived in different areas in Latin America, the Indian culture and society did not change significantly. Or did there society change?