plantations and agriculture

The colonization of the Americas that began in the 16th century was largely driven by European states’ quest for capital. Shown is a group of native with Hernan de Cortes, who conquered Mexico largely in a search for gold.

The main source of this was natural resources, such as tin, gold, silver, and especially agricultural resources.

Agriculture was the largest component of economic exploitation in Colonial america, and the plantation became one of its most important institutions. Nowhere was this more true than in brazil, where the economy was so based on plantation production

that slaves outnumbered europeans five to one in the 17th century.

Brazil was first colonized by the Portuguese in the early 16th century, after early trading posts with the natives for wood and other commodities evolved into a plantation system based on forced labor. Through the development of the plantation and

cultivation of sugar and other crops, the relationship between europeans and natives went from mutually beneficial to exploitative.

Sugar was the catalyst for this evolution, after it was found to be a lucrative and easy to grow crop. Sugar soon became the main commodity of the emerging colonial Brazilian economy. This is similar to other new World colonies that were often colonized

solely for the purpose of producing luxury goods and capital, other examples including coffee, dies, gold and silver.

Sugar plantations in Brazil and the rest of the americas had a formulaic layout that included the vast fields of sugar or other crops, the overseers’ relatively luxurious housing, and poorly maintained slave quarters.

The raw cane was refined into sugar in large refineries, which were usually a part of the plantation itself. The most common refining process was called “affination”, in which the raw syrup was centrifuged to separate the solid crystals from the waste

matter.

With the development of this new economic system came the evolution of the exploitative labor relationship between European and Native. In spanish-controlled colonies, the encomienda system, in which native inhabitants were forced to pay a tribute or give

unpaid labor to the local landowners who claimed the land on which they lived, became codified in law. The atmosphere of labor relations was nearly identical in Brazil, and the European governance of native peoples became all-pervasive. Pictured is Bartolome de las casas, a spanish monk who protested the injustuce of this relationship in his book a short account of the destruction of the

indies.

Native labor was not enough to run the growing network of plantations, and was soon supplanted by the labor of enslaved africans. Pictured is a slave market in Bahia, Brazil.

The act of harvesting sugar cane was very labor intensive, and sugar plantations were notable for the brutal conditions faced by their slaves, and the brutality of their overseers.

Slaves also worked in sugar curing houses and as servants to their overseers.

The product leftover from the refining process, molasses, was often made into rum. Rum distilleries often followed the same labor

Social effects of slavery

Elements of African culture such as musical and religious traditions were brought into Brazilian society.

The introduction of African genes also made the new world order of racial hierarchies more complex, and many new racial identities were forged within the new three-way continuum between native, european, and african heritage.

Beyond slavery, there were great social and economic effects of an agricultural economy. Beyond the physically exploitative nature of labor systems, the economic side of the plantation system was also greatly exploitative in that the workers of the plantations, natives

and Africans, enjoyed none of its profits, causing generational poverty. Shown is an 18th century painting entitled America Nursing Spanish Noble Boys, which has the caption “where in the world has one seen what one sees here, her own sons lie groaning while

she suckles strangers”.

Similarly, many economists argue that an undiversified economy dominated by a single product, such as that of colonial-era Brazil, stifle economic growth. The deep poverty in Northeastern Brazil, has been linked to that region’s long-held reliance on

sugar.

Brazil’s national economy was based on imports and exports until the late 19 th century.

The ecological effects of the plantations system were similarly disruptive, and deforestation for agriculture continues to be a major problem in Brazil. In this picture, slaves are clearing land to build a plantation.