Chapter 5: Part 1

Colonial North America & the

Native Americans

SOC 327Race & Ethnic Relations

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The World Division of Labor: Racialized labor forms in the Periphery

Racism as a world ideology evolved historically as a result of racial/ ethnic systems of labor segmentation & coercion in the colonial areas, and reinforced those systems

=> racism did not cause black slavery; African slavery was deliberately adopted as a “solution” to the perennial labor shortages in plantation America & this led to anti-black racism slowly emerging as ideology.

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Theoretical Reappraisal

Flow of causality: contact=>labor regimes=>ideological outcomes:

(1) ethnocentrism/competition/ power differentials (Noel)

=> (2) systems of labor exploitation & institutional discrimination (colonial project)

=> (3) racism & racial legal codes (ideology/culture)

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The Importance of Global Conditions of Incorporation

The “moment” & “mode” of incorporation mattered greatly in the main forms of peoplehood that emerged & evolved in the colonial world:

Races Castes Nationalities OR Nations Tribes Ethnic groups

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Noel’s Contact Hypothesis

Enduring ethnic/racial stratification systems result from three necessary conditions at time of groups first historic moment of “contact”:

Ethnocentrism - the “who” to dominate Competition - the “why” or "what for" to

dominate Power differential - the “how” to dominate

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Three Incorporation Experiences in North America

I. The Incorporation of the Indigeneous Peoples into the Colonial Americas

II. The Incorporation of Africans into the Americas & the Atlantic Slave Trade

III. The Incorporation of Mexican Americans into the United States

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The North American Colonial Indian Incorporation Anomaly

Why were the North American Indians not enslaved, enserfed, indentured, or subjected to any form of coerced labor in colonial times?

Why were they first treated as free sovereign peoples & not conquered?

Why were they later subjected to military extermination after independence? Why so late (19 C.)?

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Classic U.S. Textbook Explanations

Low Population thesis Physical deficiency thesis Cultural deficiency thesis Military strength thesis Difficult enforcement thesis Relative profitability thesis Puritan ethics thesis Relative fear thesis

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The Incorporation of the Indigenous Peoples into the Other Colonial America

Pan-Caribbean area 1500 - 1530 : indigenous slave trade = era of “disposable slavery”=> wiped out entire population

Mesoamerica & Andean World 1519-1810: slavery, mita, encomienda, repartimiento, hacienda debt-peonage, mission system

=> “Demographic Catastrophe” in Spanish America occurred in the XVI Century, and the surviving Indian population continued to decline throughout the entire colonial period, some as “Indian villages”, most others as hacienda peons

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The Incorporation of the Indigenous Peoples into the Colonial Americas

Brazil: internal Indian slave trade system + the greatest African slave trade destination

Combination led to great territorial expansion British/French/Dutch Colonial North

America: distinct colonial projects under perpetual inter-European war

=>Non-coercive relations of trade & diplomacy with Native Americans for a century-and-a-half, followed in the republican period by state-sponsored genocide!

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What’s fundamentally wrong with all of the U.S. theses?

Assume Indians were not enslaved elsewhere-they were 1500s to 1800s!

Assume the issue was “either/or” when it came to forcing Europeans, Africans, Indians to work: it was mostly “and”!

Assume the only, or main competition, ethnocentrism, power struggles were between Europeans vs Indians: it was not true in colonial North America!

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Why are U.S. academic explanations so flawed?

1. Parochialism: They all assume purely local endogenous (“national”) causes, which are then theorized as universally applicable, when in fact the causes are a unique combination of exoganous (“global” & “regional”) causes & local processes

2. Ethnocentrism: They “read backward” into colonial history a racial consciousness and nation-building ethos only meaningful in the 19th Century, and dismiss the truly important inter-European conflicts & Indian-European cooperation of the colonial period

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A Better Approach

Reconcile the variety of historical experiences in the Americas within a single theoretical framework:

Combine world & regional & local analyses Use (a) geostrategic and (b) economic factors to

explain the different long-term socio-cultural outcomes, e.g., the different ways indigenous peoples were treated & socially located in the colonial Americas social hierarchies

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I. The Geostrategic Factor in Colonial N. America

A key geopolitical rivalry existed in North America from 1580s (sinking of the Spanish Armada) to 1763 (the end of the Seven Year War) between the three rising world powers (Holland, England, France)

=> a ferocious & unregulated (“beyond the pale”) form of permanent warfare, a zero-sum game at the expense of each other & the old empire (Spain)

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Geostrategic Consequences in Colonial N. America

=> The main competition & conflict in North America was between the Dutch, English, & French - not between them & the Indians

=> Each sought Indian military allies & “buffer zones” rather than to capture & subjugate Indians labor (á la Spain & Portugal)

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Geostrategic Consequences in Colonial N. America

=> Each practiced diplomacy and made treaties to forge lasting European /Indian alliances vs. other such alliances

=> Great emphasis on respecting the Indian social formations (authority systems, customs, etc.)

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Two Axes of Colonial Conflict in North America

1. Constant conflict within each colony's Crown policies and “their” settlers’ demands for labor (planters), land (emancipated servants, immigrants), & souls (missionaries)

2. Constant warfare between European Crowns at settlers' expense (especially British)

=> Birth of British American white settler nationalism

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European-side Evolution in N. America

1. 1559: Treaty of Cateau-Cambresis sanctioned all-out war “beyond the pale” & highly-regulated war in Europe

2. Spanish Armada sunk in 1588, left North America & Caribbean exposed to Dutch, English, French encroachments

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European-side Evolution in N. America

3. The hegemonic Dutch got knocked out of North America (New Amsterdam) by the Anglo-Dutch Wars (1652 - 1672)

4. The French got knocked out of North America (Quebec) by the Anglo-French Wars (1680 - 1763). Britain thus became (briefly) supreme in North America

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European-side Evolution in N. America

5. The British themselves got knocked out from North America by the 1776 (U.S.) white settler revolt & what remained British (Canada) was hastily upgraded from "colony" into a settler-controlled “dominion” of Great Britain - defused another potential settler revolt.This was compensated by the carving out of India as

the new “jewel” of the British Empire!

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II. The Economic Factor in N. America

1. No gold or silver was found in North America, and although tobacco colonies emerged early, the most profitable economic activity for many decades was the Indian fur trade:

Indian men hunted the fur-carrying animals (beaver, deer, bison, etc.) while Indian women processed the fur: 1000s involved

Indians were by far the best suited for the job but they required arms & freedom

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Social Division of Labor in N. America

=> Chronic labor shortages in North American plantation colonies was “solved” by the large-scale importation of (a) European indentured servants in the 17th C., and (b) African slaves thereafter

=> The Indians were consigned to fur production & military work, but in a rare labor form: non-coercive, collective, genderized, barter-based, socially-autonomous

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Social Consequences for N. American Indigenous Peoples

While Indians enjoyed an unparalleled era of freedom & recognition, and got metal wares, guns, powder, etc., their traditional cultures, societies, and complex web of relations as peoples were destabilized irreversibly and far beyond the areas of European presence

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Native American-side Evolution

1. Inter-tribal conflicts, depletion of fauna, epidemics, and rampant consumerism greatly weakened (even decimated) many Indian peoples

2. After 1763, the Indians of North America were left exposed without any leverage, but as armed, proud occupiers of their lands, to face a growing, hostile power ruled by European-American settlers embued with a sense of white nationhood & Manifest Destiny in North America: the U.S.A.

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Native American-side Evolution

3. Indians, long accustomed to being fully armed, mobile & free, and treated as sovereign nations, became subjected wholesale in the 19th Century to U.S. military campaigns of extermination, relocation, massive land usurpation, and the utmost physical & sociocultural degradation & marginalization of the survivors (250,000 Indians by 1890)

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The Native American Colonial Experience in N. Am. Explained

It was every Crown's colonial policy to foster Indian alliances for geopolitical and economic reasons, at the expense of each other, Spain & even their settlers’ demands for land & labor

The North American Indians were indeed incorporated, but as freely trading fur-purveyors and via formalized (treaty) military alliances

The free era ended with the birth & expansion of the U.S.A.: XIX-Century ethnic cleansing state policies of military genocide, land confiscation, & reservations