Page 145 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol III

964 berkshire encyclopedia of world history

All the peoples of the world are men....All have understanding and volition, all have the five exterior senses and the
four interior senses, and are moved by the objects of these, all take satisfaction in goodness and feel pleasure with
happy and delicious things, all regret and abhor evil. • Bartolome de las Casas (1474–1566)

the Spanish and the Portuguese, beginning the second western Europeans into the rest of the world. The sys-
phase in the creation and subjection of indigenous peo- tems of the major European colonial powers varied sig-
ples.The people who would be known as “Indians,” such nificantly, though in all cases the Europeans took away
as the Maya,Aztecs, and Incas, were in the majority agri- lands, exploited labor, and killed those who rebelled.
culturalists as well, thus changing the older dynamic of Interactions between Europeans and indigenous groups
mostly agrarian versus foraging societies.The Amerindi- also varied according to the types of indigenous societies.
ans suffered a process of conquest and absorption by For example, the Spanish found small-scale societies in
European states and their successors that only ended in the Caribbean in the sixteenth century that were difficult
the twentieth century, following the colonization of the to subdue. Later, Hernán Cortés and Francisco Pizarro
Amazon. The term “Indian” is of course a misnomer; led small groups of Spanish into the Aztec and Inca
Christopher Columbus thought he had reached India empires respectively, conquering them in alliance with
and therefore called the inhabitants “indios.” Indigenous dissident indigenous groups. The groups in Brazil were
peoples, who were very diverse and did not have much too loosely organized for the relatively weak Portuguese
in common, accepted the idea that they were “Indians” to conquer all at once. Likewise, on the eastern seaboard
only after the Spanish set up legislation favoring Indians of North America, the English settlers found themselves
a generation after the conquest. It was to the Indians’ in the seventeenth century confronted with loosely fed-
advantage to accept this designation, as it helped prevent erated but militarily powerful peoples who could not be
some abuses. easily subdued. It took European diseases and many dec-
The third phase began in the late eighteenth century, ades for the Portuguese and English to dominate the abo-
when the European powers conquered the peoples of the riginal peoples and gain a secure foothold.Thereafter, the
Pacific islands and Australia, and accelerated in the nine- Spanish attempted to maintain some land and legal rights
teenth century when western European countries divided for the Indians while regulating the exploitation of their
up Africa and parts of Asia. In this phase, peoples who labor, whereas the Portuguese settlers (especially around
had industrialized conquered mostly agriculturalists and São Paulo, Brazil) were more interested in enslaving
made them into “indigenous people.” indigenous peoples for the sugar plantations in the
The last period began in the mid-twentieth century as Northeast.The English found little use for the indigenous
indigenous peoples fought against the colonial powers and took away their lands, while the small number of
and were able to create independent nation-states in French clustered in northern and central parts of North
Africa, Asia, and Oceania. The process continued and America tried to ally themselves with powerful indigenous
accelerated again in the 1990s as the fall of the Soviet groups as a means of gaining access to the fur trade.
Union and the creation of independent nations in its
stead converted indigenous groups into national soci- The Making of Indigenous
eties. Likewise, indigenous groups within nation-states in Central Asia and Pacific
such as in the Americas and the Pacific islands have The seventeenth century also saw the subjugation of peo-
organized and gained increasing autonomy and political ples in Siberia by the Russians. The Buryats were Mon-
power where societies have become more democratic gol pastoralists who increasingly came under the rule of
and accepted their pluriethnic character. Russian traders as the Russian state pushed eastward,
across the Ural Mountains.The Russian state also gained
The Making of some tenuous control over other groups such as the
Native Americans Tuvans, Kalmyks, Kazakhs, and Tajiks through their set-
The most intense period of the creation of indigenous tlers, greater organization, and access to better weapons
peoples started in the 1450s CE, with the expansion of than the natives. In a similar pattern, the Han Chinese,