History Paper: The Long Term Consequences of Colonialism

by Csanad C. Colonialism is the control by one power over a dependent area or people (Marriam).The colonization of several countries in the Americas in the 15-16th century has affected the them both culturally and economically; Brazil demonstrates a clear example of the long term devastating, negative effects of colonization in South America. Many historians say part of Europes wealth and power today came from the colonization of overseas territories; This basically means taking their land by force, growing cash-crops for themselves, destroying the natives culture and exploiting the land. Why and how was it possible for a continent to become so rich, and at what price? We will be taking a closer look how did the colonization of Brazil have a negative long term effect on the country. The colonization of Brazil by the Portuguese begun in 1494, when Pope Alexander VI arranged the Treaty of Torsdesillas; dividing the New World (the Americas) between the Spanish and the Portuguese, using a geographical longitude line which gave the Portuguese Brazilian land (Rhett). The Portuguese were among the first colonizers in South America, the only ones besides the Spanish (Bankcroft). They Portuguese colonized territories all the way from the coasts of the Atlantic Ocean to the swampy lands of the Amazons, establishing strong, well defended colonies (Bankcroft). They have done this with brutal conquest - mercilessly slaughtering the natives who didnt want to co-operate with them. The native Americans lived in fear, being controlled and treated like animals, as well as completely changing their lifestyle. Even today, more than 40,000 Brazilians are estimated to be living in a so-called slave-labour, where they are toiling every day for no real wages, while they are not allowed to leave their work camps (Bice). The treaty also allowed the Portuguese to import African slaves (Rosenberg), which lead into the building of plantations and fields where the natives were forced to work on for generations. The Portuguese conquistadors and the Empire itself were mostly interested in money and land - as most colonizers were in those times. Brazils nature and environment provided the conquistadors with few, but extremely important raw materials for export. Brazilwood ( or dye-wood) was one of the main reasons the Portuguese continued to colonize and occupy Brazil: they exported the raw brazilwood to Europe (Hudson), where they made luxurious dye and red textiles. Of course, all the profit made from the trade landed in the European importers pocket, leaving the native Brazilian and African plantation workers with very little money, allowing no room for further development and barely enough to keep the families from starvation. Since most of

these natives, for generations, havent been able to break out from the monotonous, low wage jobs, even today the population below the poverty line (USD 10 per day) is 26% (The World Factbook). This caused the Brazilians unable to develop, while Portugal was getting all the money, becoming a highly developed rich country. This reflects on the 2011 HDIs (Human Development Index) statistics: While Portugal was ranked the 41th most developed nation in the world, its so called ex-colony Brazil was only the 84th on the list (United Nations). This huge difference between the colonizer and the colonized can be seen in many different statistics as well. Another factor that clearly shows the negative effects of colonization is something called Consuming Colonially. Brazil was producing raw materials, which of course went to industrialized, technologically advanced Portugal. Since Brazil did not have the necessary industrial advancements, but they were still in need of the final product, the colonies had to buy them from Portugal for a high price. This left Portugal with a high profit, but on the other hand made Brazil go into debt. Today the annual GDP per capita in Brazil is only 11,600 USD, while its colonizer Portugal has a GDP per capita more than double: 23,200 USD a year (The World Factbook). Although the colonization of South America had a great impact on the cultures, economy and lifestyles of the whole world, including the ethnicity, diet. Changes occurred all over the continents, but we can clearly see that the colonized countries has a lesser benefit from them. Even though there are different opinions of different people, evidence is showing that the Portuguese benefited more than the Brazilians from colonizing the territory.

Bibliography

Bankcroft H. Hubert The Colonization of America. 2002. http://www.publicbookshelf.com/ public_html/The_Great_Republic_By_the_Master_Historians_Vol_I/colonizati_cb.html. 20/ March/2012 Bice, Arthur. Government Fights Slave Labour in Brazil 2009 CNN. http://articles.cnn.com/ 2009-01-09/world/brazil.slavery_1_slave-laborers-debt-bondage-anti-slavery-international? _s=PM:WORLD . 23/March/2012. Hudson, A. Rex. (U.S. Library of Congress) Brazil - Early Colonization. 1997. http:// countrystudies.us/brazil/ . 20/March/2012 Marker, Sandra. "Effects of Colonization." Beyond Intractability. 2003. http:// www.beyondintractability.org/bi-essay/post-colonial . 20/March/2012. Merriam-Webster Dictionary Colonialism 2012. http://www.merriamwebster.com/dictionary/colonialism . 21/March/2012. Rhett A. Buttler. Mongabay- Portugal Colonization of Brazil, 1993. http://www.mongabay.com/ history/portugal/portugal-colonization_of_brazil.html . 21/March/2012. Rosenberg, Matt The Portuguese Empire , 2010. http://geography.about.com/od/ historyofgeography/a/The-Portuguese-Empire.htm , 21/ March/2012. United Nations Human Development Reports 2011. http://hdr.undp.org/en/statistics/ . 23/ March/2012. The World Factbook 2009. Washington, DC: Central Intelligence Agency, 2009. https:// www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/docs/contributor_copyright.html . 21/March/ 2012.

The only other people who showed any colonizing activity in the sixteenth century were the Portuguese, who slowly spread their settlements along the coast of Brazil, until by the end of the century the whole line of coast from the La Plata to the Amazons was studded with their colonies. These had the merit of being the first settlements made in America on agricultural principles, the desire for the precious metals being the active moving cause in all the Spanish explorations and colonizations. During this period a few unsuccessful efforts to establish colonies marked the limit of activity in the other nations of Europe. A French colony on the coast of Brazil was suppressed by the Portuguese, and a similar colony in Florida

ended in massacre. Such was the result of the efforts at colonization in America during the sixteenth century. From the northern line of Mexico to the southern extremity of the continent the Spanish and Portuguese had established themselves in nearly every available region.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------With the exception of the New Christian (Jewish converts) investors, Brazil received little attention from Lisbon for three decades. The investors scouted and defended the coast and shared with the crown their monopoly contracts to harvest the brazilwood. The Portuguese monarchs followed the practice of holding legal title to lands and to certain commodities but issuing to others licenses to profit from these lands and commodities at their own expense, or with the backing of other investors. The custom was akin to the Castilian practice ofadelantado (awarding of conquistador status--see Glossary) that developed during the reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula from the Moors, whereby the crown commissioned an agent to conquer a certain area at his own expense in return for rights to land, booty, and labor. The combination of royal licenses and private initiative that worked so well for Portugal along the African coast and in India was reshaped for Brazil.

Portugal's exploitation of Brazil stemmed from the European commercial expansion of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Blocked from the lucrative hinterland trade with the Far East, which was dominated by Italian cities, Portugal began in the early fifteenth century to search for other routes to the sources of goods valued in European markets. Portugal discovered the maritime passage to the East Indies around the southern tip of Africa and established a network of trade outposts throughout Africa and Asia. After the discovery of America, it competed with Spain in occupying the New World. Initially, the Portuguese did not find mineral riches in their American colony, but they never lost the hope of someday finding such riches there. Meanwhile, in order to settle and defend the colony from European intruders, the Portuguese established a pioneer colonial enterprise: the production of sugar in the Northeast. Beginning in about 1531, cattle began arriving in Brazil, and a cattle industry developed rapidly in response to the needs of the sugar industry for transportation and food for workers. The discovery of precious metals in the colony's Center-South (Centro-Sul), a relatively undefined region encompassing the present-day Southeast (Sudeste) and South (Sul) regions, came only in the eighteenth century. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

By the 1960s, after years of fighting for independence, most Western colonial territories (e.g., India, Indonesia, Algeria) had gained self-rule. Sovereignty, however, did not bring with it freedom from imperialist influences. Colonial legacies were visible in the desire of the new governments to keep the boundaries that were created during colonial times, in the promotion of ethnic rivalry, in the

continuation of inhumane and unjust actions against minority populations, and in the practice of distributing the country's resources in an uneven manner. Also, after being under foreign rule for decades, newly independent governments often lacked governmental institutions, good governance skills, and the governing experience needed to effectively rule their newly sovereign nations. In most cases, the transition from colonial province to independent state was a violent and arduous journey involving conflicts with borders, ethnic rivalry, human-rights violations, and the uneven distribution of resources. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Control by one power over a dependent area or people.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Following its heyday as a global maritime power during the 15th and 16th centuries, Portugal lost much of its wealth and status with the destruction of Lisbon in a 1755 earthquake, occupation during the Napoleonic Wars, and the independence of its wealthiest colony of Brazil in 1822

The growth of Portuguese interests in the Americas was slow, the king being absorbed with establishing Portuguese hegemony in Asia. In addition, the Treaty of Tordesillas of 1494, arranged by Pope Alexander VI, divided the unexplored world between Spain and Portugal and forbade Portugal from exploring beyond a meridian drawn 1,600 kilometers miles west of the Cape Verde Islands. In 1502 Fern o Noronha was given a three-year commercial monopoly on dyewood in return for exploring 300 leagues (about 1,500 kilometers) of the Brazilian coast each year. During the last years of Manuel I's reign, the first colonists were sent to Brazil to establish a sugar industry. Additional colonists were sent during the reign of Jo o III, and, in 1530, Martim Afonso de Sousa was named major captain of Brazil and invested with the power to distribute land among captains or donat rios, much as had been done in Madeira when it was colonized a century before. These captaincies were large strips of land that extended from the coast into the interior. The captains settled colonists in their respective captaincies and were required to provide them protection and justice. As the captaincies were independent of one another, they were unable to defend themselves from foreign pirates. Consequently, Jo o III appointed a governor general with authority over the captaincies. The first governor general, Tom de Sousa, was appointed in 1549 and established his capital at S o Salvador da Ba a. He defeated French pirates in a naval engagement in the bay of Rio de Janeiro. Intensified colonization under de Sousa began in the form of coastal settlements and spread to the interior. The colonists cultivated indigenous crops, especially manioc, and introduced new ones such as wheat, rice, grapes, oranges, and sugarcane from Madeira and S o Tom . Sugar soon became Brazil's most important export.

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Brazil: GDP Per capita - 11,600 USD (country Comparison to world: 100) 2011 est. Ethnicity: 53.7% white Official language Portugese Catholic 73.8% Population below poverty line: 26% Portugal: GDP per capita: 23,200 USD (country comparison to the world: 58) 2011 est. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Brazil Brazil was by far Portugal's largest colony by area and population. Brazil was reached by the Portuguese in 1500. Due to the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494, Portugal was allowed to colonize Brazil. The Portuguese imported African slaves and forced them to grow sugar, tobacco, cotton, coffee, and other cash crops. The Portuguese also extracted brazilwood from the rainforest, which was used to dye European textiles. The Portuguese helped to explore and settle the vast interior of Brazil. In the 19th century, the royal court of Portugal lived in and governed both Portugal and Brazil from Rio de Janeiro. Brazil gained independence from Portugal in 1822.

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