Portugese Colonization Americas

UN seeks to sweep away last traces of imperial age

FILE - In this Monday, May 4, 1998 file picture, French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, center, and Culture Minister Catherine Trautman, right, watch dancers during the inauguration of the Jean-Marie Tjibaou cultural center in Noumea, the capital of the French Pacific islands of New Caledonia. At Jospin's right is the widow of Tjibaou, independence leader assassinated in 1989. Islanders are expected to vote on independence in a referendum in 2014. Photo: Pool, Pascal Guyot / AP FILE - In this Sunday, April 24, 1988 file picture, a gendarme aims his weapon as an armored vehicle destroys a barricade erected by independence fighters near Saint-Louis, in the French Pacific island of New Caledonia. Seven policemen were injured in clashes as New Caledonians voted in France's presidential election. Islanders are expected to vote on independence in a referendum in 2014. Photo: Remy Moyen / AP FILE - In this Friday, July 17, 1998 file picture, an East Timorese man wearing traditional tribal clothing stands at attention during Integration Day celebrations at the governor's office in Dili, about 1,250 miles (2,000 kilometers) east of Jakarta. The annual celebration marked the former Portuguese colony's annexation by Indonesia in 1976 following its invasion a year earlier. After a long struggle against Indonesia, East Timor's people voted for independence during a U.N.-supervised referendum in 1999 and the country became a sovereign state three years later. Photo: Oscar Motuloh / AP FILE - In this Sunday, May 9, 1999 file picture, hundreds of East Timorese pro-independence activists, wielding swords, machetes, and rocks, dance around burning debris in celebration after a stand-off against pro-integration militiamen in the provincial capital of Dili, about 2,000 kilometers (1,200 miles) east of Jakarta. After a long struggle against Indonesia, East Timor's people voted for independence during a U.N.-supervised referendum in 1999 and the country became a sovereign state three years later. Photo: Charles Dharapak / AP FILE - In this Sunday Feb. 27, 2011 file picture, pro-independence Polisario Front rebel soldiers parade in the Western Sahara village of Tifariti to celebrate the 35th anniversary of the RASD (Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic). After Spanish colonizers left Western Sahara in 1975, Morocco and Mauritania went to war over it. By 1979, Mauritania had pulled out and Morocco had taken over. The U.N.

North America has always (since colonialism) been wealthier than ...

We begin by measuring real wages in North and South America between colonization and independence, and comparing them to Europe and Asia. We find that for much of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, North America was the most prosperous region of the world, offering living standards at least as high as those in the booming parts of North-Western Europe. Latin America, on the other hand, was much poorer and offered a standard of living like that in Spain and less prosperous parts of the world in general.

Alex, you may be even more shocked to learn that Dark Ages Europe had better per capita nutrition than Roman era Europe, as indicated by skeleton studies. And hunter gatherers tended to have even better nutrition than Dark Ages Europe. Food being the dominant cost of living in all these eras, better nutrition generally implies a higher per capita standard of living.

Of course, Rome had a much higher population density than Dark Ages Europe, and Dark Ages Europe than a hunter-gatherer tribe. In the Malthusian era, the standard of living of the elites, and thus the lasting landmarks of civilization, tended to have far more to do with population density than with the mean or median standard of living.

Reply

Slaves are included, but the authors point out that their labor was rarely substitutable for free labor in the British Colonies because they worked in wholly different areas. In fact, a decline in the price of slaves could actually lead to higher wages in the Middle American Colonies, because the increased utilization of them resulted in increased plantation consumption of wheat and other goods produced in the more northerly British colonies.

They also point out the evolution of indigenous labor in the Latin American colonies, from the brutal slavery of the Encomienda system (where indigenous workers received less than a quarter of the equivalent of subsistence wages) to higher wages that occurred as the indigenous population steeply declined in the century after the Spanish conquest in Mexico.

Reply

I remember Adam Smith writing at some length about why the English colonies in the Americas were much wealthier than the Spanish colonies in the Americas. I hadn’t been aware that there was any tradition of thinking otherwise, though I also thought there was some variation (I recall reading that Argentina was quite competitive with the U.S. on a per capita basis up until the Great Depression era, when it suffered much more significant and lasting economic damage than the U.S., but Argentina is different in many ways from the Latin American countries further north).

A history of Latin America

CHAPTER VII THE PORTUGUESE COLONIZATION OF BRAZIL In February, 1500, Vincente Pinzon, one of the companions of Columbus on his first voyage, saw land in the ...

Portuguese Colonization of the Americas

The colonization of North America, 1492-1783

Establishment of the Portuguese Empire in the East. — Gama's voyage was promptly followed by the founding of Portuguese colonies in the East. ...

Gender, race and religion in the colonization of the Americas

The sheer number of Indian and mameluca women living in the Portuguese colonies made it possible for them to serve as transactional go-betweens between the ...

The Essential World History

Nevertheless, the colonies of Latin America and British North America were ... Atlantic Ocean Portuguese colonized by 1640 Portuguese colonized by 1750 ...