HISTORY32 - South America: Part 2 - European Colonization

This article is Part 2 of my 3-part history of South America.  Part 1 covered the continent’s geologic evolution through pre-Columbian civilizations.  Part 2 covers European colonization.  Part 3 will cover the independence period through today.

 

In 1494, within two years of Columbus’s discovery of the Americas, Spain and Portugal, the two great maritime powers of that time, on the expectation of new lands being discovered in the West, signed the Treaty of Tordesillas, by which they agreed that newly discovered lands outside Europe should belong to the two countries.  The Treaty established an imaginary line along a north-south meridian, roughly 46° 37' West.  In terms of the treaty, all new lands to the west of the line (which is now known to take in most of South America), would belong to Spain, and all new lands to the east, to Portugal.

In the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas between Spain and Portugal, Spain was allotted all new lands west of the line on the map.

 

The Treaty of Tordesillas set the stage for European colonization of South America.   Starting early in the 16^th century, the people and natural resources of South America were repeatedly exploited by foreign conquistadors, first from Spain and later from Portugal.  In the mid-to-late-16^th century, three other European powers, France, Holland, and England, ignoring the Treaty of Tordesillas, began their own colonization efforts.  

This discussion will cover South American colonization by each country in two time periods:  1498-1650 and 1650-1800.

 

Reference map of South America.

Colonization of South America: 1498-1650

Spain.  On August 1, 1498, on his third voyage to the Americas, Italian explorer Christopher Columbus, sailing for Spain, entered the Gulf of Paria on today’s Venezuela’s eastern Caribbean coast and planted the Spanish flag, becoming the first European to set foot in South America.

In 1502, the Spanish slowly began colonizing the coastal regions of today’s Columbia and Venezuela.

The objective of Spain’s colonization in the New World was to search for wealthy civilizations with gold and other riches to exploit, precious metals to mine, and indigenous people to convert to Christianity and serve as slaves to support Spanish development of the new land.

Spanish exploration and colonization of the enormous inland Rio de la Plata region in southeastern South America (in today’s northern Argentina and Paraguay) began in 1516.

Starting in 1528, after years of preliminary exploration and military skirmishes against the indigenous Inca civilization, Spanish soldiers under conquistador Francisco Pizarro, his brothers, and their native allies captured the Inca leader in 1532 and went on to conquer the rich northern part of Inca Empire (including today’s Ecuador and most of Peru) in 1536, and secured many riches for Spain.  

 

Spanish Conquistador Francisco Pizarro conquered the Inca Empire.

The conquest of the northern Inca Empire led to spin-off campaigns into present-day Columbia in 1536 and Chile in 1541, as well as expeditions towards the Amazon Basin.

In 1542, northern Peru, Ecuador, Columbia, and part of Venezuela were collected into the Viceroyalty of Peru, the first Spanish imperial provincial administrative district in South America, with its capital in Lima.  

It turned out that Pizarro’s capture of the Inca leader in 1532, was only the first step in a long campaign against rebellious Incans to the south that took decades of fighting, but ended in final Spanish victory in 1572. This added the balance of the Inca Empire (including the rest of Peru, Chile, southwestern Bolivia, and northwestern Argentina) into the Viceroyalty of Peru.

 

The maximum extent of the Inca Empire.

Over the next three quarters of a century, the Spanish consolidated their New World lands in the Viceroyalty of Peru.  Large estates (haciendas) were established by the Spanish conquistadors and their descendants.  Rich gold and silver mines were discovered in Peru, Columbia, and Bolivia.  The Viceroyalty became the principal source of Spanish wealth and power in South America.

European infectious diseases (smallpox, influenza, measles, and typhus) - to which the native populations had no immune resistance - caused large-scale depopulation of the native population under Spanish control.  Systems of forced labor, such as the haciendas and mining industry, also contributed to the depopulation.  After this, African slaves, who had developed immunities to these diseases, were quickly brought in to replace native workers.

The Spaniards were committed to converting their native subjects to Christianity and were quick to purge any native cultural practices that hindered this end; however, many initial attempts at this were only partially successful, as native groups simply blended Catholicism with their established beliefs and practices.  

Many native artworks were considered pagan idols and destroyed by Spanish explorers; this included gold and silver sculptures and other artifacts found in South America, which were melted down before their transport to Spain.

Eventually, the natives and the Spaniards interbred, forming a mestizo class (mixed race of Spanish and indigenous descent).  During the colonial period, many mestizos of the Andean region were offspring of Amerindian mothers and Spanish fathers.

Spanish settlers sought to live in towns and cities, with governance being accomplished through a town council.  The council was composed of the prominent residents of the municipality, so that governance was restricted to male elites. Cities were governed on the same pattern as in Spain; the city was the framework of Spanish life.  The cities were Spanish and the countryside indigenous.  In areas of previous indigenous empires with settled populations, the crown also melded existing indigenous rule into a Spanish pattern, with the establishment of councils and the participation of indigenous elites as officials holding Spanish titles. There were a variable number of councilors, depending on the size of the town, also two municipal judges, and other officials such as police chief, inspector of supplies, and a court clerk.  They were in charge of distributing land to the neighbors, establishing local taxes, dealing with the public order, inspecting jails and hospitals, preserving the roads and public works such as irrigation ditches and bridges, supervising the public health, regulating the festive activities, monitoring market prices, or the protection of natives.

Portugal. On April 22, 1500, a Portuguese fleet led by navigator Pedro Álvares Cabral landed on the eastern coast of Brazil (at today’s city of Porto Seguro) and took possession of the land for Portugal.

After the voyage of Cabral, the Portuguese concentrated their efforts on their lucrative possessions in Africa and India, and showed little interest in Brazil. Between 1500 and 1530, a few Portuguese expeditions came to the new land to chart the coast and to obtain brazilwood, used in Europe to produce a valuable dye to give color to luxury textiles.  To extract brazilwood (from which Brazil was named) from the tropical rainforest, the Portuguese relied on the work of the natives, who initially worked in exchange for European goods like mirrors, scissors, knives and axes.  

Over time, the Portuguese realized that other European countries, especially France, were also sending excursions to the land to extract brazilwood.  Worried about foreign incursions, and hoping to find mineral riches, the Portuguese crown decided to send large missions to take possession of the land and combat the French. In 1530, an expedition led by Martim Afonso de Sousa arrived in Brazil to patrol the entire coast, ban the French, and create the first colonial villages on the coast.

The relationship between the Portuguese and the Brazilian colony was very different from the relationship of the Spanish to their land in the Americas.  For example, the Brazilian colony was at first thought of as a commercial asset that would facilitate trade between the Portuguese and India, and not a place to be settled to develop a society.  The social model of conquest in Brazil was one geared toward commerce and entrepreneurial ideals, rather than conquest, as was the case in the Spanish realm.

As time progressed, the Portuguese crown found that having the colony serve as a trading post was not ideal for regulating land claims in the Americas, so they decided that the best way to keep control of their land was to settle it.  

Thus, in 1534, Portuguese land (bounded by the Treaty of Tordesillas provisions) was divided into 15 hereditary captaincies.  These captaincies were granted by royal decree to private hands, namely to merchants, soldiers, sailors, and petty nobility, saving the Portuguese crown from the high costs of colonization.  The captaincies controlled the land and all that resided upon it.  The captains were granted ample powers to administer and profit from their possessions.

In 1534, the Portuguese established 15 privately-owned captaincies in Brazil.

 

From the 15 original captaincies, only two, Pernambuco and São Vicente, prospered.  The failure of most captaincies was related to the resistance of the indigenous people, shipwrecks, and internal disputes between the colonizers. Pernambuco, the most successful captaincy, prospered with sugarcane mills installed after 1542, producing sugar.  Sugar was very valuable in Europe, and its production became the main Brazilian colonial produce for the next 150 years.  The captaincy of São Vicente, owned by Martim Afonso de Sousa, also produced sugar.  African slave labor was the driving force behind the growth of the sugar economy in Brazil.

With the failure of most captaincies, and the menacing presence of French ships along the Brazilian coast, the Portuguese decided to turn the colonization of Brazil back into a Royal enterprise.  In 1549, a central government was established in the colony, with the founding of the capital city, Salvador, on the eastern coast of Brazil, about 250 miles north of Porto Seguro.  The captaincies continued to be ruled by their hereditary leaders, but they reported to the Governor-General of Brazil. 

The early Governor-Generals faced conflicts with the indigenous people and wars against the natives consumed much of the government.

The third Governor-General of Brazil was Mem de Sá.  He was an efficient administrator who managed to defeat the indigenous people and later expel the French from their colony on Brazil’s east coast in 1567 (see below).

Since the 16th century, the exploration of the Brazilian inland was attempted several times, mostly to try to find minerals.  Since no riches were initially found, colonization was restricted to the coast where the climate and soil were suitable for sugarcane plantations.

France.  From 1555-1567, France occupied a coastal colony in Brazil on islands in Guanabara Bay, near present day Rio de Janeiro.  The colony became a haven for Protestant Huguenots, looking to escape persecution from the Catholic majority in France.  In 1560, Mem de Sá, the new Governor-General of Brazil, received from the Portuguese government the command to expel the French.  Portuguese forces were unable at first to defeat and drive off the French, but in 1567, finally succeeded in decisively defeating the colonists and expelling them from Brazil.

Starting early in the 17^th century, French, Dutch and English settlers established plantation colonies along the many rivers in the fertile Guiana plains on the northcentral South American coast.  In 1604, France settled a colony there, but its earliest settlements were abandoned in the face of hostilities from the indigenous population and tropical diseases.   French traders and colonists tried several times to settle a colony further north, in what is today’s French Guiana, in 1626, 1635, and 1643 - all proving unsuccessful.  

In 1612, France tried to establish another colony, this time along the Brazilian coast, near the equator.  The colonists founded a village named Saint Louis (later became São Luís in Portuguese, the only Brazilian state capital founded by France).  The colony did not last long.  A Portuguese army assembled in the Captaincy of Pernambuco, was able to defeat and expel the French colonists in 1615, less than four years after their arrival in the land.

Holland.  Between 1616-1627, the Dutch established two settlements in today’s Guyana, a few miles inland on two of the larger rivers in the area. 

 

Today's map of the northcentral coast of South America, identifying where the Dutch established colonies early in the 1600s.

 

The initial purpose of the Dutch settlements was trade with the indigenous people.  The Dutch aim soon changed to acquisition of territory, as other European powers gained colonies elsewhere on the northern coast of South America and on nearby Caribbean islands. 

Although the northcentral coast was claimed by the Spanish, who sent periodic patrols through the region, the Dutch gained control over the region early in the seventeenth century.  Dutch sovereignty was officially recognized with the signing of the Treaty of Munster in 1648, that marked Holland’s independence from Spain.

The Dutch colonizers initially were motivated by the prospect of trade, but their possessions became significant producers of crops. The growing importance of agriculture was indicated by the export of 33,000 pounds of tobacco in 1623.  But as the agricultural productivity of the Dutch colonies increased, a labor shortage emerged.  The indigenous populations were poorly adapted for work on plantations, and many people died from diseases introduced by the Europeans.  The Dutch turned to the importation of African slaves, who rapidly became a key element in the colonial economy.

In 1630, Dutch forces conquered the northern portion of the Portuguese colony of Brazil, including the Captaincy of Pernambuco, the largest and richest sugar-producing area in the world at the time.  They called their new colony Dutch Brazil, also known as New Holland.  But in 1645, the Dutch faced a major uprising of Portuguese planters, who had never fully accepted Dutch rule, and had also resented the high interest rates charged by Dutch moneylenders for loans to rebuild their plantations following the initial Dutch conquest.  In 1647, Portuguese military resistance to the Dutch occupation began in earnest; by 1650, fighting continued, and the issue was still in doubt.

Snapshot in 1650.  In the decades following European first contact, disease, enslavement and land seizure destroyed the advanced indigenous civilizations of the continent, both in the Andes and the Amazon region.  The complex societies of Amazonia had vanished.

By 1650, much of the continent had come under European - mainly Spanish and Portuguese - rule.

Spanish lands in South America ran from Venezuela in the north to Argentina and Chile in the south.  Peru was at the heart of the vast Spanish empire.  Northwest South America remained comparatively unsettled, with only parts of today’s Columbia and Venezuela under Spanish control.  The Viceroyalty of Peru showed more interest in their nearby silver-mines than in the remote agricultural societies of Venezuela.

On the South American east coast, neglect by the Portuguese of their Brazilian possessions led other Europeans, notably the Dutch, to establish their own colonies in the region.

The Dutch had also established colonies on the continent’s northcentral coast in the Guiana plains.

A huge portion of northcentral South America, including the Amazona basin, and the extreme southern part of the continent, remained undeveloped.

By 1650, much of South America was under European control.

 

Colonization of South America: 1650-1800

Spain.  Spain’s colonization efforts in South America continued to expand in this period, increasing its territory in the northern and southcentral part of the continent.  As the area of Spanish control grew, Spain made several adjustments to their governing structure.

In 1717, because of slowness of communication between Lima, the capital of the Viceroyalty of Peru, and its northern territories, Spain created the Viceroyalty of New Granada, encompassing today’s Ecuador, Columbia, and Venezuela, with its capital in Bogotá.   In addition to these core areas, the territory of the Viceroyalty of New Granada also included present day Guyana, southwestern Suriname, part of northwestern Brazil, and northern Peru.

In 1750, the 256-year-old Treaty of Tordesillas was superseded by the Treaty of Madrid, between Spain and Portugal, which settled two important border disputes.  Portugal was granted control of the lands it had occupied in South America in the intervening centuries, the greater part of the Amazon basin (see below), while Spain was granted possession of the disputed Rio de la Plata region.  (Because of continued disputes in the Rio de la Plata region, the agreement had to be updated in 1777 in the Treaty of San Ildefonso; see below.)

Spain’s Viceroyalty of Peru required all trade to pass through Lima on the Pacific.  This policy made imports expensive, prevented the economic development of the Atlantic coast, and caused increasing dissatisfaction with Spanish rule.  Portuguese encroachments in the Río de la Plata region allowed their merchants to evade these commercial restrictions; Buenos Aires subsequently become a major center for smuggled goods.

In an attempt to regain economic and political control, Spain established a new Viceroyalty of the Rio de la Plata in 1776, with its capital at Buenos Aires.  The new Viceroyalty mainly extended over the Rio de la Plata Basin, roughly present-day Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Uruguay, extending inland from the Atlantic Coast.  Despite opposition from Lima, limited free trade was permitted between Buenos Aires, Montevideo (in today’s Uruguay), and mainland Spain.

But, the entire history of this Viceroyalty was marked by growing domestic unrest and political instability, demonstrating great resentment against colonial authorities by both the mestizo and indigenous populations.

In 1777, Spain created the Captaincy of Venezuela, an administrative district carved out of the Viceroyalty of New Granada, to provide more autonomy to the provinces of Venezuela.

Throughout this period, rebellions by native Peruvians continued and were not entirely suppressed.  In the eighteenth century alone, there were fourteen large uprisings.

Portugal.  Portuguese adventurers began to look inland to obtain native slaves and to find mineral resources.  In the 1690s, gold was discovered in southcentral Brazil, and in 1729 diamonds were discovered in the same area.  In the ensuing gold and diamond rushes, African slaves were imported to work in the gold mines, and in the early 18^th century, nearly 400,000 Portuguese immigrants came to mine in Brazil.  By 1760, nearly half of the world’s gold supply was from Brazil.  Transportation systems were developed for the mining infrastructure, and population boomed, leading to a dramatic urban development of inland Brazil during the 18th century.

These inland developments led to westward expansion of the frontiers of colonial Brazil, far beyond the limit of the Treaty of Tordesillas (see above).

Demand for African slaves did not wane after the decline of the mining industry in the second half of the 18th century.  Cattle ranching and agriculture proliferated after the population growth, both of which relied heavily on slave labor. 1.7 million slaves were imported to Brazil from Africa from 1700 to 1800.

In 1763, the capital of Brazil was transferred from Salvador, 750 down the east coast to Rio de Janeiro.  

As in Portugal, each colonial village and city had a city council, whose members were prominent figures of colonial society (land owners, merchants, slave traders).  Colonial city councils were responsible for regulating commerce, public infrastructure, professional artisans, prisons, etc.

France.  After 1650, disputes arose among the French, the Dutch, and the English for control of the Guiana plains region.

French Guiana was re-established in 1664, when the French seized the colony from the Dutch.  Except for brief occupations by the English in 1667 and the Dutch in 1676, it remained as a French colony during this period.  Cayenne was established as the capital in 1664.

In 1763, France sent thousands of settlers to Guiana; settlers were lured there with stories of plentiful gold and easy fortunes to be made.  Instead, they found a land filled with hostile natives and tropical diseases.  One and a half years later only a few hundred survived.

In 1776, the French colony was “rebooted” with the start of agriculture.  African slaves were imported and plantations were established along the more disease-free rivers. Exports of sugar, hardwood, cayenne pepper, and other spices brought a certain prosperity to the colony for the first time. The city of Cayenne was surrounded by plantations, some of which had several thousand slaves.

Holland.  In 1654, the fighting between the Dutch New Holland colony and the Brazilian Portuguese finally ended with a Portuguese victory, and the Dutch lost control of their Brazilian eastern coast colony.   In 1661, New Holland was formally ceded to Portugal through the Treaty of the Hague.

This period was of considerable importance for local Portuguese settlers, who had to oppose the Dutch largely by their own resources, including mobilizing black and indigenous allies, and make use of their knowledge of local conditions, laying the seeds of Brazilian nationhood. These actions also precipitated a decline in Brazil's sugar industry, since conflict between the Dutch and Portuguese disrupted Brazilian sugar production, amidst rising competition from British, French, and Dutch planters in the in Guiana plains and the Caribbean.

Dutch colonization efforts in the Guiana plains continued through this period in the face of fierce competition with the French and British - each country at times seizing colonies of the others.   The bottom line for the Dutch was that they eventually lost their original colonies along the Essequibo and Berbice Rivers to the British (the colony became British Guiana), and lost their colonies in French Guiana to the French, but established a new colony in 1667, Suriname, between the British and French colonies, that became Dutch Guiana.

The planters of Dutch Guiana relied heavily on African slaves to cultivate, harvest and process the commodity crops of coffee, cocoa, sugar cane, and cotton plantations along the rivers.  The planters' treatment of the slaves was notoriously brutal, even by the standards of the time.

England.  The English made at least two unsuccessful attempts in the 17th century to colonize the Guiana plains land that would later be known as British Guiana.  Finally, in 1796, during the French Revolutionary Wars of the late 18th century, when the Netherlands were occupied by the French, and Great Britain and France were at war, Britain took over the Dutch colony.

Snapshot in 1800.  After 1770, Spain and Portugal accelerated their efforts to tighten control of their South American colonies, with an increased pace of attempted reform (stricter administration, more efficient tax collection, redirection of trade towards Spain and Portugal).  Consequent resentment among creoles (mixed European and black heritage) and other parts of the colonial populations fed into ideas for Independence.

Over the past century and a half, most regions of Spanish South America were brought under the firm control of the Spaniards.  For most of this period, the southeast coast remained under-developed; Buenos Aires had been a struggling port, and this region of the continent was poor and sparsely populated.  With the rise of transatlantic trade, however, the fortunes of Buenos Aires and surrounding areas markedly improved.  Buenos Aires achieved equal status with Lima, in Peru, and Mexico City, in Mexico, as a Spanish American capital.

Racial categorization in Spanish South America was breaking down, with people of mixed descent filling all but the very highest positions in society. The Spanish government’s habit of placing most of the top colonial offices in the hands of European-born officials was a source of growing resentment amongst members of the locally-born elite, the great majority of whom were creoles.

In the Portuguese Empire, Brazil’s sugar exports had lost out to those of the British and French, but coffee-growing became more important to the economy.  This, plus the mining in the region, turned  southcentral Brazil into the wealthiest part of the empire, with Rio de Janeiro as Brazil’s chief city and seat of government.

The British, the Dutch, and the French had finally established stable colonies in the Guiana plains.

 

South America in 1800, just before independence activities started.

 

During the next three decades, ten new countries would gain their independence from Spanish and Portuguese colonial lands in South America.  In the 20^th century, the UK and Holland would grant independence to their colonies in the Guianas.  Part 3 of my South America history will cover those independence efforts and bring the story up to the present time.