Colonial Migration To America, Status Quo Of An Era

Colonial Migration to America

Running head: COLONIAL MIGRATION TO AMERICA: STATUS QUO OF AN ERA

Colonial Migration to America: Status Quo of an Era Márcio Padilha College of Southern Idaho HIST 111 – Tremayne Fall/2009

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Colonial Migration to America: Status Quo of an Era The European societal matrix which propelled the Colonial Migration to the American Continent stemmed out of a fusion of necessity and altruism. With Columbus’ contention that sailing westward across the Atlantic Ocean was the shortest way to the riches of the Orient on one side and the need of procuring financial security for the newly-risen Nation States of Portugal and Spain on the other, the incidental 1494 discovery of the American Continent became the catalyst for the basis of an eventual new world order. Whereas, during the pre-navigation era, Europeans bought luxuries from Italian Merchants who, in turn, had gotten them from Arab traders in the Holy Land, the economic status quo of the post-navigation era shifted in that Portugal, successfully establishing trading posts along the West African coast, caused direct trade to emerge; a new parameter in the realm of the existing economic transactional relationships which propitiated the fast decline of the middle man. Furthermore, another result of such direct autonomy and exchange is denoted by the Portuguese’s purchase of “bondspeople” from West African masters, which both shifted the issue’s status quo from a social intra-African matter to an international racial issue; introducing slavery into Europe, a model which, after being successfully experimented with, circa 1480, in the colonizing of the Gulf of Guinea Island of São Tomé, would later prove pivotal to the colonization of the American continent.

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Prior to 1494, the American Continent was a self-sustaining closed macro system. Archeological evidence suggests that, through a cycle of apogees, declines and collapses, paleo-Americans adapted, evolved and developed their own societal models with subsistence being the minimal accepted norm. When such basic need was no longer a contention, wealth accumulated; subsequently causing the arts and trade to flourish; creating, thus, the basis of an early macroeconomic system. In similar fashion, Africans also adapted, evolved and developed their own societal models. The pivotal difference, however, was their terrestrial interconnection with Europe and Asia which, opening the system, directly affected intermarriage and trade,

transactional

relationships

intrinsic

to

societal

shaping

and

development. Whereas Europeans also shared commonalities with both Americans and Africans insofar as the sexually-segregated labor division practices and the agricultural societal model, their macro reality was one of linguistic, political, economic and hierarchical division, in addition to warfare and the plague, promptly carried over to the New World by the European diaspora; causing the paradisiacal status quo of the newly found land to shift radically. The historical process, as carried out by the Europeans in the American Continent, was one which targeted exploitation of natural resources to the maximum possible apex. With the Treaty of Tortesillas assuring Spanish dominance over most of the Americas, a system of colonization employing tight control was implemented. Besides implementing a hierarchy with little

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autonomy to New World jurisdictions and promoting the wealth through the exploitation of both the native population and the slaves imported from Africa, allowing mostly men to immigrate was a proficient method of creating a social rift as, by taking both native and African sexual partners, the super male presence caused a racially mixed social stratum prospectively not to be integrated by neither group; thus, creating, if not the epitomical slave, extra psycho-social unrest as means to promote identity disassociation and the subsequent breakdown of societal cohesion across the board amongst the already oppressed strata. With the 1533 divorce between Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragón, the ensuing fallout between the House of Tudor and the Crown of Castile caused England not only to lose its vested equity in the New World, but also to implement fundamental theo-social reforms, which, concurrent with the Protestant Reformation, shaped a portion of the Old World anew. The resulting axiom of such praxis, nonetheless, was the eventual defection of approximately 100 English Separatists, commonly referred to as “Puritans”, who allegedly came to the American Continent in order to exercise religious freedom and insofar such religious freedom of theirs was exercised in the New World, it paradoxically neglected to provide equitable autonomy to dissenting spiritual thinking. Concomitant to failed attempts of emulating the previous colonization models, the English social status quo transmuted due to the long-standing cumulative absorption of American-originated goods, such as sugar, coffee,

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rum and tobacco. With a populational increase to beyond-capacity and rural exodus, inflation and polarized social stratification as natural consequences, another diaspora comprised of the inherently poor peasantry and of the socially-excluded by primogeniture was set in motion towards the New World. Nevertheless, unlike previous governmentally funded migratory movements

to

New

Spain

and

New

France,

England’s

enterprise,

antagonistic to the status quo, was privately funded by joint-stock companies, which vested different interests and outcomes in the venture in that the personal ownership of the land and of its fruit were greater than that of the previous Spaniards and Frenchmen. As a private venture, in order to participate, one must have had enough personal resources or be deemed worthy of such an investment, both of which, while asserting intent of maximizing the English profitability out of the Americas, negated peasantry participation. Therefore, the sociohierarchical aristocratic inflexibility inherent to this approach adjacent to malnutrition and epidemic disease proved fatal for many. In juxtaposition, the ensuing relationship with the natives was abrasive due to socioanthropological divergences which xenophobicly neglected any intrinsic value to each other and their customs. At opposite ends of the spectrum, for instance, were the life essentials of hunting and crop cultivation. Whereas the Englishmen perceived the Natives’ avid hunting as a non-essential sport, the Natives perceived the Englishmen’s crop cultivating as effeminate. Thus,

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the 1607 founding of Jamestown, Virginia did not initially yield very profitably right away. Notwithstanding the existing issues, the realization that abundance of arable land and the prospect that agricultural development of the New World could yield yet greater profits led to the cultivation of tobacco, which, previously introduced to Europe by the Spaniards with positive commercial success and then not thought of as an addictive psychoactive drug, would be key for Virginia to prosper into an agricultural settlement inhabited by both men and women. Aiming at further profit capitalization, a populist incentive, as means of attracting a greater number of self-paying migrants, was employed in that, under such system, self-financed new arrivals received a land grant of 50 acres; a trend which would later help shift the vested interest in the migratory process once more. With the demand for tobacco on the rise, the scarcity of manpower – due to incapability and/or unwillingness on the part of the English as well as inadaptability to regimentation on the part of the natives, caused the import of African enslaved manpower to come into play. It soon became an economic cycle of its own as, whereas the slave in and of itself fomented the agricultural machine, the slave trade in and of itself became a very profitable enterprise to Europe. Concomitant to the economic issues, the import of African slaves to the American Continent created a new chapter on the

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binomial relationship of racial supremacy and exploitation consolidated through decades of Imperialistic rule which negated the value of human life. The “Columbian Exchange”, emerging out of an incidental discovery, led to an unprecedented level of global exchange, via mineral and agricultural extraction as well as human displacement, which reshaped all parameters of humankind and shifted the course of the historical process, eventually laying out the foundation for present day global economy.