HIST108

Lecture 24
The Advent of Colonialism
What were the major consequences of Colonialism?
Columbus second voyage (1493-4) was clearly intended to colonise the
new world, and had two true intentions: material gain (gold) and to
Christianise the areas. The problem was that his
Europ
once his fleet arrived in the new world, his men
e
treated the indigenous people brutally and the
Sugar
exploitation and brutal treatment of these
people became common occurrence over the
next few years. Furthermore, as a result of
previous Portuguese expansion, slave trade had
Americ
Africa
cropped up, and African slaves soon became
a
common in the Caribbean. The colonisation of the
non-Christian/European world was accompanied by
Slaves
Christian missions, most notably on the behalf of the
Jesuits, such as Matteo Ricci and Francis Xavier (who instated Christianity
in Japan)- my desire is to concur the entire land of the infidels.
mission of the Jesuits. One of the other impacts, as is diarised by
Bartolom de Las Casas (1484-1566) is the total loss of indigenous
populations: When the Spanish first journeyed there, the indigenous
population of the island of Hispaniola stood at some three million; today
only two hundred survive the native population, which once numbered
some five hundred thousand was wiped out by forcible expatriation to the
island of Hispaniola, a police adopted by the Spaniards in an endeavour to
make up losses among the indigenous population of that island.
Through the 16th Century, Europeans continued to sail into unknown
territories, including Amerigo Vespucci (145401512),
a
banker who was invited to join a Cross-Atlantic
Orange,
voyage by the Portuguese crown. Amerigo was the
Banana,
first person to argue against the idea that that the
Coffee,
land Columbus had discovered was part of
Garlic,
Asia- he proposed it was somewhere else
Smallpox
entirely, leading to the naming of the new
world as America, the feminisation of
Amerigos Latinised name. Ferdinand
Magellan (1480-1521), a Portuguese
NonEurope
explorer, was the first to reach the
Europe
southern tip of Latin America and sail
on to the Pacific Ocean.
He was killed in the Philippines in a battle,
but his fleet continued to travel around the
world, proving that the
Chili Peppers, earth was round.
Corn, Potato,
Tomatoes,
Syphilis.

While the Portuguese and Spanish monopolised the oceans through the
16th century, the 17th century brought full European colonisation, leading
to the Colombian Exchange, a biological and ecological exchange
between countries.
The 16th Century was a time of glory for Spain, but that glory did not last.
They imported massive amounts of silver from the new world, growing the
economy and increasing circulation of money within Spain, especially
under Philip the 2nd, when it was the most powerful nation in Western
Europe. This economic prosperity was short-lived, as their economy was
entirely dependent on trade, rather than the growth of industry within
their own societies- modern capitalism didnt really grow on Spanish soil.
Columbus and other subsequent explorers exploded the myth that
everything worth knowing had already been discovered by the Greeks or
the Romans in antiquity. With the discover of the new world, Europeans
realised they could discover something extraordinary that the Greeks and
Romans didnt know.
The expansion of Europe:
Universalism and expansionism: from the Europeanisation of Latin
Christendom in the Middle Ages to the Europeanisation of the whole
world- the Roman tradition (Rmi Brauge)- in the late 17th century, the
European world was no longer combined to the Mediterranean, but to the
entire world, shaping Europe as a political, economic and cultural entity,
allowing it to spawn empires that followed the desires of Ancient Rome
and conquer and colonise the world.