Colonies Of Latin America example essay topic

Hisotry of Latin America History of the region from the pre-Columbian period and including colonization by the Spanish and Portuguese beginning in the 15th century, the 19th-century wars of independence, and developments to the end of World War II. Latin America is generally understood to consist of the entire continent of South America in addition to Mexico, Central America, and the islands of the Caribbean whose inhabitants speak a Romance language. The peoples of this large area shared the experience of conquest and colonization by the Spaniards and Portuguese from the late 15th through the 18th centuries as well as movements of independence from Spain and Portugal in the early 19th century. Even since independence, many of the various nations have experienced similar trends, and they have some awareness of a common heritage. However, there are also enormous differences between them. Not only do the people live in a large number of independent units, but the geography and climate of their countries vary immensely, and their social and cultural characteristics differ according to the different constitution of the inhabitants before the Iberian conquest and the different timing and nature of European occupation.

Since the Spanish and Portuguese element looms so large in the history region, it is sometimes proposed that Iberoamerica would be a better term than of the Latin America. Latin seems to suggest an equal importance of the French and Italian contributions, which is far from being the case. Nevertheless, usage has fastened on Latin America, and it is retained here. The independence of Latin America After three centuries of colonial rule, independence came rather suddenly to most of Spanish and Portuguese America. Between 1808 and 1826 all of Latin America except the Spanish colonies of Cuba and Puerto Rico slipped out of the hands of the Iberian powers who had ruled the region since the conquest. The rapidity and timing of that dramatic change were the result of a combination of long-building tensions in colonial rule and a series of external events.

The reforms imposed by the Spanish Bourbons in the 18th century provoked great instability in the relations between the rulers and their colonial subjects in the Americas. Many Creoles (those of Spanish parentage but who were born in America) felt Bourbon policy to be an unfair attack on their wealth, political power, and social status. Others did not suffer during the second half of the 18th century; indeed, the gradual loosening of trade restrictions actually benefited some Creoles in Venezuela and certain areas that had moved from the periphery to the centre during the late colonial era. However, those profits merely whetted those Creoles' appetites for greater free trade than the Bourbons were willing to grant. More generally, Creoles reacted angrily against the crown's preference for peninsular's in administrative positions and its declining support of the caste system. After hundreds of years of proven service to Spain, the American-born elites felt that the Bourbons were now treating them like a recently conquered nation.

In cities throughout the region, Creole frustrations increasingly found expression in ideas derived from the Enlightenment. Imperial prohibitions proved unable to stop the flow of potentially subversive English, French, and North American works into the colonies of Latin America. Creole participants in conspiracies against Portugal and Spain at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries showed familiarity with such European Enlightenment thinkers as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Montesquieu, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The Enlightenment clearly informed the aims of dissident Creoles and inspired some of the later, great leaders of the independence movements across Latin America. Still, these ideas were not, strictly speaking, causes of independence. Creoles selectively adapted rather than simply embraced the thought that had informed revolutions in North America and France.

Leaders in Latin America tended to shy away from the more socially radical European doctrines. Moreover, the influence of those ideologies was sharply restricted; with few exceptions only small circles of educated, urban elites had access to Enlightenment thought. At most, foreign ideas helped foster a more questioning attitude toward traditional institutions and authority. European diplomatic and military events provided the final catalyst that turned Creole discontent into full-fledged movements for Latin-American independence. When the Spanish crown entered into an alliance with France in 1795, it set off a series of developments that opened up economic and political distance between the Iberian countries and their American colonies. By siding with France, Spain pitted itself against England, the dominant sea power of the period, which used its naval forces to reduce and eventually cut communications between Spain and the Americas.

Unable to preserve any sort of monopoly on trade, the Spanish crown was forced to loosen the restrictions on its colonies' commerce. Spanish Americans now found themselves able to trade legally with other colonies, as well as with any neutral countries such as the United States. Spain's wartime liberalization of colonial trade sharpened Creoles' desires for greater economic self-determination. Occurrences in Europe in the early 19th century created a deep political divide between Spain and its American colonies. In 1807 the Spanish king, Charles IV, granted passage through Spanish territory to Napoleon, who was on his way to invade Portugal. The immediate effect of that concession was to send the Portuguese ruler, Prince Regent John, fleeing in British ships to Brazil.

Arriving in Rio de Janeiro with some 15,000 officials, nobles, and other members of his court, John transformed the Brazilian colony into the administrative centre of his empire. When Napoleon turned on his Spanish allies in 1808, events took a disastrous turn for Spain and its dominion in the Americas. Shortly after Charles had abdicated in favour of his son Ferdinand, Napoleon had them both imprisoned. With these figures of legitimate authority in his power, the French ruler tried to shatter Spanish independence. In the process he set off a political crisis that swept across both Spain and its possessions.

The Spanish political tradition centred on the figure of the monarch, yet, with Charles and Ferdinand removed from the scene, the hub of all political authority was missing. In 1810 a Cortes (Parliament) emerged in C'aziz to represent both Spain and Spanish America. Two years later it produced a new, liberal constitution that proclaimed Spain's American possessions to be full members of the kingdom and not mere colonies. Yet the Creoles who participated in the new Cortes were denied equal representation. Moreover, the Cortes would not concede permanent free trade to the Americans and obstinately insisted on reasserting its control over Creoles. Having had a taste of freedom during their political and economic isolation from the mother country, Spanish Americans did not easily consent to a reduction of their power and autonomy.

Two other European developments further dashed the hopes of Creoles, pushing them more decisively toward independence. The year 1814 saw the restoration of Ferdinand to the throne and with it the energetic attempt to reestablish Spanish imperial power in the Americas. Rejecting compromise and reform, Ferdinand resorted to military force to bring wayward Spanish-American regions back into the empire as colonies. The effort only served to harden the position of Creole rebels. In 1820 troops waiting in C'aziz to be sent as part of the crown's military campaigns revolted, forcing Ferdinand to agree to a series of liberal measures.

That concession divided and weakened loyalist opposition to independence in the Americas. Many supporters of the crown now had doubts about the monarchy for which they were fighting. Latin America Backround Though the conditions of pre-Columbian America and 15th-century Iberia are beyond the scope of Latin-American history proper, they must be given consideration in that connection. Not only did the geography of pre contact America persist, but both the new arrivals and the indigenous inhabitants long retained their respective general characteristics, and it was the fit between them that determined many aspects of Latin-American evolution. The indigenous world and the word 'Indian' From the time of Columbus and the late 15th century forward, the Spaniards and Portuguese called the peoples of the Americas 'Indians' -- that is, inhabitants of India.

Not only is the term erroneous by origin, but it did not correspond to anything in the minds of the indigenous people. They had no word meaning 'inhabitant of the Western Hemisphere,' and most of them seem not to have adopted any equivalent even after centuries of contact. Any such word refers to commonalities seen from the outside and not to any unity perceived by the inhabitants of the Americas themselves. The indigenous peoples were greatly varied, far more so than the Europeans; they were spread over a vast area and not aware of each other from one major region to the next.

Nonetheless, the indigenous peoples had several things in common. They were closely related to one another in biological terms, and their languages, though they cannot be shown to have a common origin, tend to share many general features. All shared an isolation from the great mass of humanity inhabiting Eurasia and Africa, who were in some way in contact with one another. The inhabitants of America all lacked immunities to diseases common in Europe and Africa. They had some impressive innovations to their credit, including the domesticated plants of Mesoamerica and the Andes, but all had been kept apart from things that had long since spread over much of the rest of the globe, including steel, firearms, horses, wheeled vehicles, long-distance shipping, and alphabetic writing. As a result the indigenous peoples, once in contact, were very vulnerable to the outsiders.

Epidemics raged wherever intruders appeared; with their materials and techniques the Europeans were able to conquer whenever they felt it imperative to do so. There is, then, at times, a need for a common term, and if one realizes its limitations, 'Indian' may do as well as another. Types of Western Hemisphere societies The Europeans were sedentary, living in nations and districts with distinct borders, relying on a permanent intensive agriculture to sustain many people in a variety of pursuits who lived in both urban and rural communities. One large section of the indigenous American population, in fact the most numerous, based in Mesoamerica (central and southern Mexico and Guatemala) and the central Andes, was also sedentary. Indeed, these peoples and the Europeans tended to have more in common with each other than either had with the other peoples indigenous to the Americas. Another type of indigenous peoples may be called semi sedentary.

They lacked the permanent-site agriculture and the fixed borders of the sedentary peoples and were apparently far less numerous, but they had shifting agriculture and sizable, if frequently moving, settlements. They were found above all in relatively temperate forested areas. The third category that can be established is that of the non sedentary peoples, who had little or no agriculture and moved annually in small bands over a large territory, hunting and gathering. They were located primarily in areas that under the then-existing technologies were not propitious for agriculture, especially plains and dense tropical forests. Latin America since the mid-20th century The postwar world, 1945-80 In Latin America as elsewhere, the close of World War II was accompanied by expectations, only partly fulfilled, of steady economic development and democratic consolidation. Economies grew, but at a slower rate than in most of Europe or East Asia, so that Latin America's relative share of world production and trade declined and the gap in personal income per capita separating it from the leading industrial democracies increased.

Popular education also increased, as did exposure to the mass media and mass culture -- which in light of the economic lag served to feed dissatisfaction. Military dictatorships and Marxist revolution were among the solutions put forward, but none were truly successful. Economic agenda and patterns of growth The economic shocks delivered by the depression and two world wars, in combination with the strength of nationalism, tilted economic policy after 1945 strongly toward internal development as against the outward orientation that had predominated since independence. The outward policy had been partially undermined by the trade controls and industrial promotion schemes adopted essentially as defensive measures in the aftermath of the depression and during World War II. Now, however, a reorientation of policy was explicitly called for by some of Latin America's most influential figures, such as the Argentine economist Ra " ul Prebisch, head of the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America. Prebisch and his followers insisted that the terms of trade and investment in the contemporary world were stacked in favour of the developed industrial nations of the 'centre' as against the developing nations of the 'periphery.

' Their strategy therefore included emphasis on economic diversification and import substitution industrialization (ISI) for the sake of greater economic autonomy. They called for economic integration among the Latin-American countries themselves, with a view to attaining economies of scale. And they recommended internal structural reforms to improve the economic performance of their countries, including land reform both to eliminate underutilized and to lessen the stark inequality of income distribution that was an obstacle to growth of the domestic market. In the small Caribbean and Central American republics and also some of the smaller and poorer South American nations, the prospects for ISI were sorely limited by market size and other constraints, and governments still hesitated to promote manufacturing at the expense of traditional primary commodities. But in countries accounting for a disproportionate share of Latin America's population and gross domestic product (GDP), the new approach received full play through protective tariffs, subsidies, and official preferences. Overvalued exchange rates, which hurt traditional exports, made it easier to import industrial machinery and equipment.

Manufacturing costs generally remained high, and factories were overly dependent on imported inputs of all kinds (including foreign capital), but advances were not limited to consumer goods production. In all major countries the output of intermediate and capital goods rose appreciably too. In both Argentina and Colombia the state undertook construction of a steel industry, and in numerous other ways national governments further expanded their economic role. Brazil nationalized its incipient oil industry in 1953, creating the state firm Petro br " as that eventually ranked alongside Mexico's PEM EX (outcome of the 1938 oil expropriation) and Venezuela's PETROV EN (1975) as one of Latin America's three largest economic enterprises, all state-run. Starting in 1960 with agreements fostering economic union, such as the Latin American Free Trade Association and Central American Common Market, and continuing with the Andean Pact of 1969, some progress was made toward regional economic integration, but the commitment to eliminate trade barriers was not as strong as in postwar Europe. Intra-Latin-American trade increased, but probably not much more than would have happened without special agreements.

In any case, quantitative economic growth was visible almost everywhere. It was evident even when expressed as per capita GDP -- that is, factoring in a population growth that in most countries was accelerating, because death rates had finally begun to fall sharply while birth rates remained high. (In the 1960's in much of Latin America the annual rate of population increase came to exceed 3 percent.) But there were clear differences in economic performance among countries. Brazil, with a diversified economic base and much the largest internal market, and Panama, with its canal-based service economy, posted the best records, their GDP per capita doubling between 1950 and 1970; Mexico and Venezuela did almost as well, as did Costa Rica.

But the Argentine economy seemed to stagnate, and few countries scored significant gains. Moreover, the conviction eventually grew in countries where ISI had been vigorously pushed that the easy gains in replacement of imports were coming to an end and that, to maintain adequate growth, it would be necessary to renew emphasis on exports as well. World market conditions were favourable for a revival of export promotion; indeed, international trade had begun a rapid expansion at the very time that inward-directed growth was gaining converts in Latin America. The promotion of industrial exports was slow to appear in Latin America. Brazil was the most successful, selling automobiles and automotive parts mainly to other developing countries but at times even to the industrialized world. A slightly less satisfactory alternative was the setting up of plants to assemble imported parts into consumer goods that were immediately exported, thus taking advantage of Latin America's low labour costs.

Such plants proliferated along Mexico's northern border (where they were known as maquiladoras) but sprang up also in Central America and around the Caribbean. In other instances Latin Americans tried to develop new ('nontraditional') primary commodity exports. Colombian cut flowers were a highly successful example of the latter, promoted from the late 1960's through special incentives such as tax rebates; Colombia became the world's second leading flower exporter. It also assumed a leading role in the illicit narcotics trade. It enjoyed a brief boom of marijuana exports in the 1970's and in the following decade became the world's leading supplier of cocaine, which was processed in clandestine Colombian laboratories from coca leaf paste mostly originating in Bolivia and Peru..