Colonization and Conquest

COLONIZATION AND CONQUEST

CONQUEST IS THE TAKING possession of a territory by force; colonization is the placement into a territory of settlers who are politically, economically, and militarily connected to their parent state. When joined, conquest and colonization involve the defeat of a people and the settling and ruling of its territory by its conquerors. Although seldom a concern for the conquerors, this sequence of events has usually had disastrous consequences for the conquered. Common in the ancient world, from the fifteenth century onward conquest and colonization came to be linked with exploration and practiced on a global scale. THE PORTUGUESE IN AFRICA AND ASIA The Portuguese and Spanish were the first to explore and develop the sea routes that eventually joined all parts of the globe. In 1385 the modern nation of Portugal emerged out of the recovery of territories that had been conquered by Muslim invaders in the seventh century. The ultimate success of this seven-hundred-year-long Reconquista (reconquest) gave the two Iberian nations immense self-confidence. Later Portuguese and Spanish expansion overseas was essentially a byproduct of this triumph. By the early fifteenth century Portugal had a stable economy and a monarchy that sought to expand its trade and roll back the tide of Islam. In 1415 Prince Henry the Navigator attacked and took Ceuta, a Muslim trading center on the Mediterranean shore of present-day Morocco. Unable to extend trade east into the Muslim-controlled Mediterranean, Henry began to send navigators on voyages of exploration west and south along the coast of Africa. In the 1420s Madeira and the Azores became agricultural colonies, and by 1441 the Portuguese had reached Río de Oro (in present-day Western Sahara), where they joined in the slave trade that was eventually expanded along the coast of tropical Africa. From 1480 the Portuguese began converting their trading sites into fortified bases. After Bartolomeu Dias rounded the Cape of Good Hope in 1488, the Portuguese expanded along the shores of the Indian Ocean to Malaysia, driving out many of their Muslim rivals in the process. Some major port cities became Portuguese trading centers. In 1542 the Portuguese made contact with Japan and in 1555 established a base in Macao, China. The ruthlessness with which some Portuguese explorers carried out their search for wealth was an all-too-common phenomenon in a world where a resurgent and aggressive Ottoman Empire, having toppled Constantinople in 1453, was striking deep into the center of Europe. SPAIN IN THE NEW WORLD Like Portugal, Spain was formed after the expulsion of the Moors from the Iberian Peninsula and as an amalgamation of smaller kingdoms. In 1493, following Christopher Columbus’s first voyage to the Americas, Pope Alexander VI, in response to a request from Queen Isabella of Spain, issued a bull (a formal, relatively brief papal letter) called Inter Caetera. Its main purpose was to prevent the territorial ambitions of Portugal and Spain from developing into protracted warfare in the New World and the Old and distracting both powers from the ongoing Muslim threat. With the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas, Spain and Portugal divided the world at about 45 degrees west longitude, placing the western half under Spanish control and the eastern under Portuguese. Columbus’s four voyages led to the rapid colonization of the larger Caribbean islands. After local resistance was crushed, lands were distributed among the participants in the conquest, and most of the remaining indigenous population was enslaved. By 1511 Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, and Cuba were fully occupied and being commercially exploited, mainly through slave labor on agricultural estates and sugar plantations. In 1517 the first slaves from Africa were imported to replace the rapidly dying native population. Slavery persisted in the Americas for the next 350 years and more. Between 1516 and 1518 the governor of Cuba sent expeditions to the Mexican mainland. Some returned with gold and stories of a wealthy civilization in the interior—that of the Aztecs. From 1519 to 1521, aided by the Aztecs’ enemies and an outbreak of smallpox, a small force of Spanish adventurers destroyed the Aztec Empire. The surrounding countryside was seized and divided among the conquistadors. Over the next twenty-five years, Central America fell to Spain. Ancient Forms One of the earliest documented forms of colonization linked to exploration was the establishment of Greek trading posts along the coasts of the Mediterranean and Black Seas during the eighth century BCE. As more Greek migrants arrived, these trading posts became commercial and agricultural colonies. In the western Mediterranean the Phoenicians built a similar system of colonies. The dual process of conquest and colonization is more clearly seen with the expansion of Rome into territories inhabited by the tribes of Gaul (58–51 BCE) and Britain (43 CE). Military garrisons were established at strategic places and were often joined by merchants and agricultural settlers. These settlers brought the Roman way of life to the local population, and the meeting of cultures often led to intermarriage.

Similar developments occurred in South America. By 1535 a small army led by Francisco Pizarro had destroyed the empire of the Incas. By 1536 what is now Peru was in Spanish hands, and expeditions were moving into Chile and across the Andes. THE ENGLISH IN NORTH AMERICA At first, the English, instead of seeking to establish their own American colonies, were content to rob Spanish ships as they returned from the Caribbean. In 1497 the Italian explorer John Cabot announced that the waters off Newfoundland in North America contained huge stocks of fish. Before long the English, as well as the French, the Basques, and the Portuguese, were there in force. The first successful English colony was Jamestown (founded in 1607). The London Company of Virginia, a group of wealthy individuals, had obtained a charter from King James VI to establish a colony in Virginia (a territory that was several times the size of the modern state of Virginia).

To the north the Pilgrim Fathers arrived at Plymouth in 1620. In 1629, by which time the closely related Puritans had begun arriving, the colonists received a royal charter from King Charles I. The subsequent influx of settlers was rapid, and as the colony spread into the native people’s land, conflicts arose. English reaction to the indigenous presence differed from that of the Portuguese and Spanish. Land was taken by force of arms, and the former residents driven into the interior. There was little attempt at accommodation in Massachusetts Bay colony, although relations were far more amicable in the breakaway colony of Rhode Island. THE FRENCH IN NORTH AMERICA By the 1580s the French controlled a small fur trade on the Atlantic coast of North America. In order to pursue trading more efficiently, posts had to be established. Because good relations with the American Indian peoples were necessary to pursue a fur trade and live in peace, King Henry IV of France made a treaty (1602–1603) with the Montagnais near present-day Tadoussac. This treaty gave the French permission to settle in the Saint Lawrence valley, providing they helped their new allies against their Iroquois enemies. Thus began a policy of cooperation between the French and the native peoples almost unique in the history of exploration and colonization in the New World. Efforts were made by the crown to contain French settlement along the Saint Lawrence River. CAUSES AND RESULTS The upsurge in exploration that began in the fifteenth century and led to widespread colonization and conquest is attributable to several factors: the search for wealth, the need to secure trade routes free from Ottoman control or threat, the desire of Christians to spread their faith, and the consequences of the wars and tensions that western Europe was experiencing both within and without its borders. In addition, for religious nonconformists especially, the opening of the New World offered a way out of difficult or even impossible situations at home. The remarkable success of European colonization and conquest may or may not have been a foregone conclusion. Military superiority, especially in arms and tactics, and efficient systems of administration and government were major European pluses, as were Europe’s superior transportation technologies, both on land and sea, and its advanced methods of food production, preservation, and storage, crop rotation, and livestock development. Furthermore, though unfamiliar diseases troubled Europeans, natural immunities, better nutrition, superior medicine, or some combination thereof worked to their advantage. Explorers and colonizers, in common with those they found or supplanted, suffered from the ravages of unfamiliar diseases, but the consequences were far less dire for the Europeans than for the native populations of the New World, Australia, and the islands of the Pacific.