LEARNING OBJECTIVES

By the time you complete this topic you should be able to do the following:

Explain the factors that moved Iberian first attempts at colonization in the Americas. Explain the Churches role in Iberian early colonization efforts. Explain why early colonization efforts in the Caribbean and Brazil focused on sugar and the plantation complex.

Oxford History Timelines: West Africa | Caribbean | Brazil

---

Many of the challenges that present-day Latin America faces had its origins in the colonial period. For example, rural poverty, ethnic polarization, and the church’s dominant role in society. In the case of ethnic polarization, colonialism paved “the way for the rise of powerful elite groups that seized on the economic leverage” of African slaves and indigenous labor. This in turn motivated the elites to institute practices that sustained social, political, and economic inequality throughout the colonial period that still persist in the present. Today’s discussion will explore how Iberia’s early colonial experience would set the th tone for creating a socioeconomic and political system that accentuated ethnic differences between the colonizers, the colonized, and the enslaved. As you read this topic, reference our previous topic and consider the following:

• Do you see the manifestation of Spain’s medieval experience present in its early ventures into the Atlantic and Caribbean?
• What role and function did the Church play in the conquest and colonization of the Americas?

EXPANSION INTO THE ATLANTIC

Spain’s Atlantic enterprise began with the occupation of the Canary Islands in 1480 and shifted beyond this part of the world with the arrival of Christopher Columbus (1451-1506). Spanish occupation of the Canary Islands became a major object of dispute with the Portuguese. However, a treaty signed between the two states in 1479 ended this tension as the Portuguese abandoned their claim to the Canary Islands. In 1492 Columbus successfully convinced Isabel of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon to subsidize his voyage of exploration and a new Spanish venture into the Atlantic. A charter was drawn up between the Catholic Monarchs and Columbus that would define his relationship with the Kings of Spain and with any lands he claimed for Spain in his expedition. The name of that charter was the Capitulaciones de Santa Fe (1492).

In return for undertaking leading this move into the Atlantic, the Capitulaciones de Santa Fe granted Columbus the titles of viceroy, admiral, and governor of any new claimed lands. In addition, Columbus was given one-tenth the value of the sale of “pearls, precious stones, gold, silver, spices,” along with other commodities secured in this expedition. Finally, he was awarded the title of Don and his family was allowed to hold the endowments of the capitulaciones in perpetuity.

On August 3, 1492, Columbus sailed from the port of Palos in a westerly direction. When Columbus returned in March of 1493, he brought news of lands and peoples he had encountered on his first expedition. With the two wings (Portugues sailing down the coast of Africa and Spain heading in a westerly direction) of expansion now full force, the stage was set for Europe’s first encounter with the lands across the Atlantic thus beginning a new chapter in Atlantic history.

The question raised by the information Columbus brought from his voyage was who was to justly rule over indigenous populations encountered and who would oversee bringing Christianity to them. For answers to these questions, the Catholic Monarchs turned to the Papacy. From Pope Alexander VI (1431-1503) the Spanish monarchs secured the Inter Caetera in 1493. Precedent for this document had already been established when the Portuguese received a formal papal donation of right of sovereignty for territories in Africa claimed beyond Cape Bojador through the Romanus Pontifex issued by Nicholas V on January 8, 1455.

The Papal Bull Inter Caetera played a instrumental role in facilitating the Spanish conquest of the New World. The document supported Spain’s strategy to ensure its exclusive right to the lands encountered by Columbus one year before. It established a demarcation line one hundred leagues west of the Azores and Cape Verde Islands and assigned Spain the exclusive right to acquire territorial possessions and to trade in all lands west of that line. All others were forbidden to approach the lands west of the line without special license from the rulers of Spain.

This effectively gave Spain a monopoly on the lands in the New World. The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History notes the future implications of the Inter Caetera,

The Bull stated that any land not inhabited by Christians was available to be “discovered,” claimed, and exploited by Christian rulers and declared that “the Catholic faith and the Christian religion be exalted and be everywhere increased and spread, that the health of souls be cared for and that barbarous nations be overthrown and brought to the faith itself.” This “Doctrine of Discovery” became the basis of all European claims in the Americas as well as the foundation for the United States’ western expansion. In the US Supreme Court in the 1823 case Johnson v. McIntosh, Chief Justice John Marshall’s opinion in the unanimous decision held “that the principle of discovery gave European nations an absolute right to New World lands.” In essence, American Indians had only a right of occupancy, which could be abolished.

The secular formalization of the Inter Caetera came in the form of the Treaty of Tordesillas signed in 1494 between the Spanish and Portuguese. The primary problem the Spanish monarchy faced at this point in time, a problem faced throughout its history in the Americas, was how to impose its authority in these newly claimed territories.

THE SPANISH IN THE CARIBBEAN

The Spanish began to effectively occupy the Caribbean by 1493. The primary focus of Spanish occupation centered on the island of Hispañiola (Haiti/Dominican Republic) with Columbus leading the way. By 1494, however, Columbus had been blamed for the inability of the Spanish to establish successful settlements in the Caribbean. Starvation, incompetence in governing, and social tensions contributed to Columbus’s demise. Bartolomé de las Casas, a Dominican monk that resided in this part of the Americas, explained that the, “The outcome was hatred for the Admiral . . .and this is the source of his reputation in Spain as a cruel man hateful to all Spaniards, a man unfit to rule. Columbus’s prestige declined steadily from then on, without one day of respite, until in the end nothing was left of it and he fell utterly into disgrace.”

In 1499, the Spanish monarchs sent Francisco de Bobadilla (1500-1502) to address the turmoil in the Caribbean which in effect ended Columbus’s governorship. The fortunes of the Spanish would change with the arrival of Nicolás de Ovando (1502-1509), a knight-commander of the Order of Alcántara, to the Caribbean in 1502. Interestingly, the Order of Alcantara was a clerical military order established in medieval Spain to wage war against Islam and recolonized conquered Muslim territories. May historians believe Ovando brought this medieval experience to the Caribbean as a way of addressing effective conquest, colonization, and conversion in the region.

Under Ovando’s leadership, Hispañiola was made a royal domain and a testing ground for practices that would be transferred to other parts of Latin America. Under Ovando, the European population of Hispaniola jumped from about 300 to 3,000. The establishment of new towns resulted from this rise in colonists. Under Ovando’s leadership gold production rose. This was partly achieved by coercing indigenous populations to labor in mining regions. He asserted Spain’s presence by suppressing what remained of indigenous polities which obstructed access to local labor for exploitation. In 1503, the monarchs ordered Ovando to establish encomienda. Encomiendas in medieval Spain frequently included a unit of territory which supplied its incumbent with rents paid by the inhabitants of a designated region in exchange for the services of providing “a militia and exercising arms against the infidels.” These grants would appear in colonial Latin America with a different focus. What was granted to the encomandero (grant’s holder) was not land but indigenous labor in exchange for indoctrination to Iberian ways. Encomienda became a labor exploitation system used throughout Spanish America. It also served to define Iberian and indigenous socioeconomic relationships.

THE INDIGENOUS QUESTION

The impact of Spanish exploitation of Caribbean indigenous cultures would be devastating. By 1530, for example, the vast majority of the Taino population had disappeared due to labor conditions and disease. In 1511, a Dominican friar named Antonio de Montesinos (1475-1540), witnessing this devastation, gave a celebrated sermon which denounced Spanish abuses of indigenous people. The dispute between Montesinos and the colonists raised questions about the legitimacy of Spain’s claim to rule over the Caribbean and to turn its indigenous inhabitants into subjects of the Spanish Empire. Eventually, the dispute reached the ear of King Ferdinand of Spain (1451-1516) who would seek an answer to the legality of Spain’s rulership over the Americas and its inhabitants by consulting legal and philosophical experts from his court. Below is a selection of the sermon given by Montesinos in 1511. It denounced the treatment of indigenous populations by the Spanish colonists.

This voice declares that you are in mortal sin, and live and die therein by reason of the cruelty and tyranny that you practice on these innocent people. Tell me, by what right or justice do you hold these Indians in such cruel and horrible slavery? By what right do you wage such de-testable wars on these people who lived mildly and peacefully in their own lands, where you have consumed infinite numbers of them with un-heard of murders and evils? Why do you so greatly oppress and fatigue them, not giving them enough to eat or caring for them when they fall ill from excessive labors, so that they die or rather are slain by you, so that you may extract and acquire gold every day? And what care do you take that they receive religious instruction and come to know their God and creator, or that they be baptized, hear mass, or observe holidays and Sundays? Are they not men? Do they not have rational souls? Are you not bound to love them as you love yourselves? How can you lie in such profound and lethargic slumber? Be sure that in your present state you can no more be saved than the Moors or Turks who do not have and do not want the faith of Jesus Christ.

In response to these disputes, King Ferdinand of Spain summoned a meeting of jurists and theologians to address the charges leveled by the Dominican monk. The aim of this meeting was to define the relationship between the Spanish and indigenous populations. The hotly debated topic would produce a series of treatises on how indigenous inhabitants of the Caribbean should be treated and whether Spain had legal claims to these territories. Matías de Paz, a professor of theology, produced a treatise entitled Concerning the Rule of the King of Spain over the Indies (1512) in which he ultimate held that the Pope as vicar of Christ on earth who thus had both temporal and spiritual jurisdiction on earth. His position was that the King of Spain had every legitimate right instilled by the papacy to rule over territories claimed in the Caribbean and its inhabitants. Juan López Palacios Rubios (1450-1524), a Spanish jurist, produced a treatise entitled Of the Ocean Isles (1512). In addressing this question, Palacios Rubios founded his opinions on the authoritative writings of Aristotle. He argued that indigenous cultures were “slaves by nature.” Consequently, they needed to be guided by those more fit to rule. In this case, it was the Spanish. He also penned the Requerimiento, a manifesto that was to be read to indigenous people before being conquered. Below are selections from this document.

One of these Pontiffs [popes] who succeeded that St. Peter as Lord of the world, in the dignity and seat which I have before mentioned, made donation of these isles and Tierra-firme to the aforesaid King and Queen and to their successors, our lords . . . . So their Highnesses are kings and lords of these islands and land of Tierra-firme by virtue of this donation: and some islands, and indeed almost all those to whom this has been notified, have received and served their Highnesses, as lords and kings, in the way that subjects ought to do, with good will, without any resistance, immediately, without delay, when they were informed of the aforesaid facts. And also they received and obeyed the priests whom their Highnesses sent to preach to them and to teach them our Holy Faith; and all these, of their own free will, without any reward or condition, have become Christians, and are so, and their Highnesses have joyfully and benignantly received them, and also have commanded them to be treated as their subjects and vassals; and you too are held and obliged to do the same. . . . if you do not do this, and maliciously make delay in it, I certify to you that, with the help of God, we shall powerfully enter into your country and shall make war against you in all ways and manners that we can, and shall subject you to the yoke and obedience of the Church and of their Highnesses . . . .

In 1512, the Spanish crown made its first effort to deal with the problems highlighted by Montesino’s sermon. It did so by issuing The Laws of Burgos (1512-1513). These laws were the first systematic attempt by the Spanish crown to define the relationship between indigenous people and the Spanish. They were also meant to regulate the function of the encomienda system.

On indoctrination: XVII: Also, we order and command that now and in the future all the sons of chiefs of the said Island, of the age of thirteen or under, shall be given to the friars of the Order of St. Francis who may reside on the said Island, as the King my Lord has commanded in one of his decrees, so that the said friars may teach them to read and write, and all the other things of our Holy Catholic Faith; and they shall keep them for four years and then return them to the persons who have them in encomienda, so that these sons of chiefs may teach the said Indians . . . . On gold: XIII: Also, we order and command that, after the Indians have been brought to the estates, all the founding [of gold] that henceforth is done on the said Island shall be done in the manner prescribed below: that is, the said persons who have Indians in encomienda shall extract gold with them for five months in the year and, at the end of these five months, the said Indians shall rest forty days, and the day they cease their labor of extracting gold shall be noted on a certificate . . . And we command that the Indians who thus leave the mines shall And we command that the Indians who thus leave the mines shall not, during the said forty days, be ordered to do anything whatever, save to plant the hillocks necessary for their subsistence that season; and the persons who have the said Indians in encomienda shall be obliged, during these forty days of rest, to indoctrinate them in the things of our Faith more than on the other days, because they will have the opportunity.

The efforts of Montesinos continued under the direction of a Dominican monk by the name Bartolome de las Casas. In 1537, Las Casa wrote The Only Method of Attracting All People to the True Faith. In his work, Las Casas argued that war against the indigenous people was unjust and tyrannical. Anything taken from them, including land, was done so in an unjust manner and it should be returned to them. For Las Casas, indigenous people were rational beings and thus conversion should appeal to their reason and should not be done by force. In essence, Las Casas was reaffirming a doctrine established by the Sublimis Deus (1537) of Pope Paul III (r. 1534-49) which noted,

We define and declare by these Our letters . . . the said Indians and all other people who may later be discovered by Christians, are by no means to be deprived of their liberty or the possession of their property, even though they be outside the faith of Jesus Christ; and that they may and should, freely and legitimately, enjoy their liberty and the possession of their property; nor should they be in any way enslaved; should the contrary happen, it shall be null and have no effect.

Francisco de Vitoria (1483-1546) , like Las Casas, was a member of the Dominican order and in 1539, he gave a lecture that shook the very foundations of the Spanish Empire in America. Vitoria argued that Native Americans were rational beings. Why? Well after all they did have government, laws, and possessed property. Furthermore, Vitoria believed that the Papacy had no right to give the “Americas” to the Spanish Monarchy. Vitoria’s ideas are housed in a work entitled Relectio de Indis. According to Vitoria, Christ had never claimed that his kingdom was of the temporal world. On the contrary, it was of the spiritual world. Needless to say it did not take Charles V (king of Spain after Ferdinand) long to order Vitoria to drop these ideas. Naturally, Vitoria did.

In 1550 and 1551 Bartolomé de las Casas and Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda faced each other in Valladolid and debated the justice of the wars waged by the Spanish on indigenous people. Sepúlveda’s position was recorded in his work entitled Democrates alter de justis belli causis apud Indios while Las Casas made his position known in his Apologetica Historia Summaria. Sepúlveda argued the following:

Interpreting their religion in an ignorant and barbarous manner, they sacrificed human victims by removing the hearts from the chests. They placed these hearts on their abominable altars. With this ritual they believed that they had appeased their gods. They also ate the flesh of the sacrificed men . . . . War against these barbarians can be justified not only on the basis of their paganism but even more so because of their abominable licentiousness, their prodigious sacrifice of human victims, the extreme harm that they inflicted on innocent persons, their horrible banquets of human flesh, and the impious cult of their idols.

THE PUSH FOR ENSLAVED AFRICANS IN THE CARIBBEAN

In 1516, King Ferdinand died, and the regent of Spain, Cardinal Cisneros, appointed three Jeronymites to investigate and govern over Hispañiola. The decline of the indigenous population became a major concern as forced labor was a necessity to ensure the survival of the island economy. The solution proposed by the Jeronymites was bring labor into this region from Africa in the form of slaves. Why this solution would be widely accepted with time is summarized by Roquinaldo Ferreira and Tatiana Seijas:

First, the region witnessed a demographic catastrophe in the wake of European colonialism that decimated millions of indigenous people, forcing colonists to look elsewhere for productive labor. Second, Portugal had a preexisting slave trade to Europe and other African regions, which enabled Portuguese traders to deliver enslaved Africans to the Americas. Third, the slave trade to Latin America reflected the region’s place in the early modern global economy, which was largely defined by the massive production of agricultural commodities for export to Europe.

The historian David Wheat makes a very important observation about enslaved Africans in Latin America. Wheat explains that “throughout the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, as Africans and people of African descent became de facto settlers on Spain’s behalf, the Latinization of enslaved Africans played a structural role in sustaining Spanish colonization of the Caribbean.” Enlsaved Africans brought into the Spanish Caribbean received one of two classifications assigned by the Spanish. For those African slaves who were familiar with Castilian (Spanish) or the Portuguese language they were labeled ladinos. Those African slaves who were not familiar with Iberian languages were categorized as bozales. Ladinos were African slaves who more than likely had Spain as their embarkation point meaning they had spent some time in Iberia. In contrast, bozales had their embarkation point in Africa.

Why were the Portuguese dominant in the early slave trade to colonial Latin America? Recall from out last discussion that the Portuguese crown channeled its energies on expansion down the coast of Africa and the establishment of trading forts. This positioned the Portuguese through the trade networks they had established to control the trans-Atlantic slave trade in its early stages. More specifically, it was trading networks in Senegambia, the Gold Coast, and Central Africa that made it possible for the Portuguese to meet the slave labor demand of colonial Latin America. Also recall that sugar production, “more than any other product, embodies the close connection between the rise of an international labor market (based on slavery) and the development of plantation economies that tied together Europe, Africa, and the Americas.” Later, gold and silver mining along with coffee production would place a demand on African slave labor.

It is important to reflect on what one historian has noted about slavery in the Americas: “It transferred the wealth produced by Africans and their descendants to slave owners, producing a centuries-long legacy of expropriation and poverty that continued to affect Afro descendants long after slavery had ended.” As previously noted, Portugal as a nation came together much quicker than Spain. This facilitated Portuguese expansion into the Atlantic and down the coast of Africa. Keep in mind, the Portuguese like the Spanish were able to take advantage of maritime technological innovations and geographic knowledge introduced by Islam into Iberia. Also recall that it was the Portuguese who fused the growing of sugar with African slave labor off the coast of Africa. The classic example where we see this fusion take place was in the Atlantic islands and in São Tomé.

THE PORTUGUESE IN BRAZIL

When did the Portuguese first come into contact with Brazil? In 1499, the first ship to return from Vasco de Gama’s (1460-1524) expedition to India prompted a follow-up expedition to be led by Pedro Alvares Cabral (1467-1520). Taking the westerly winds to slingshot down the coast of Africa, a miscalculation drifted Cabral’s expedition in a westerly direction eventually touching land that would be named Brazil.

The first indigenous culture that Cabral encountered were the Tupinambá. Like in the Caribbean with the arrival of the Spanish, the indigenous populations of Brazil would experience catastrophic results from the contact with the Portuguese. Unlike the Portuguese ventures to India which offered vast access to resources, Brazil appear to offer little economically early on. This territory claimed by the Portuguese was named Brazil in 1503 because of the association of this land with brazilwood. Brazilwood was valued because it produced a red dye and the wood could also be used for shipbuilding. Initially colonization ventures in Brazil followed the model used down the coast of Africa. In other words, a trading fort system was established in an effort to exploit brazilwood. In fact, brazilwood extraction was the dominant economic activity in Brazil from 1500 to 1535. The Portuguese relied on indigenous labor to harvest this resource.

A major problem facing the Portuguese in Brazil where the French incursions into this region. Because of the vast size of the Brazilian coastline, Portuguese patrols were ineffective in keeping the French out of their territories claimed This opened the door for the French to begin tapping into brazilwood extraction and piracy. It became clear to the Portuguese crown that fort system could not effectively occupy and defend this part of the world for the Portuguese. A colonization effort needed to be initiated. In 1532, Martim Afonso de Sousa (1500-1564) established a colony in Sao Vicente. This early effort at colonization clearly needed to be scaled up. King Dom Joao III (1502-1557) decided that the best way to accomplish this was to divide the Brazilian coast and interior into 15 sections which would be awarded to a donatory captains. These individuals were diverse and came from the ranks of bureaucrats, merchants, and lesser nobility. Termed captaincies, they would serve as a model of colonization for Brazil. Each of the leaders was responsible for retaining the territory and transferring settlers to it. This model gave the donatory captains extensive economic privileges as they were permitted to extract tribute from the settlers. They were also permitted to distribute sesmarias, tracts of land to individuals.

Between 1530 and 1540, the sugar industry replaced brazilwood as the nucleus of Brazil’s economy. With time, sugar transitioned from being a luxury item to an item of mass consumption. Sugar mills were established throughout the captaincies, however it was in the Northeast of Brazil where sugar and sugar mills made their greatest headway. The most important sugar producing centers in Brazil were located in Pernambuco and Bahia. The topsoil located in these areas along with the regular supply of rain made it these regions ideal for growing sugarcane. Because of the demise of indigenous populations, the Portuguese transplanted the plantation complex model from the Atlantic to Brazil. Between 1550 and 1570 there were few Africans working on sugar plantations. With time, this would change dramatically as reflected in the records of a sugar plantation in Bahia. These records show that in 1574 African slaves made up 7% of the workforce, in 1591 37%, and by 1638 the entire labor force was composed of enslaved Africans. In this world plantation owners exerted tremendous economic, social, and political power in Brazil. The vast majority of these plantation owners were wealthy immigrants, merchants and in some cases nobles. The focus of Brazil’s economy would begin to change in 1690 with the discovery of gold in Minas Gerias. It would introduce to Brazilian history what is referred to as the gold cycle.

IN CLOSING

Our next topic will further explore the formation of colonial society and economy and the creation of a casta system. I would like to explore with you some theoretical frameworks that we will reference through the modern era in our next discussion. As always, be sure to contact me or visit me during office hours should you have any questions about the content we have covered or the assignments that you need to complete.