Results of Spanish Colonization
Ryan Groom
- Spanish men had children with local women
- They created ethnic groups that had roots from Europe and from the Americas
- There was class difference between Europeans and the locals and the workers/slaves
- The women were also disregarded
- The original respect for women’s role in childbirth loses it’s prestige
- Emphasis of the male being dominant over everything and everyone they wanted
- They created mestizo populations with the native women.
- Euro-American dominated political and economic affairs in the Americas.
- European territories became multicultural societies where peoples of different ancestry lived together under European or Euro-American dominance
- Spanish and Portuguese territories became ethnically mixed
- In Peru, Spanish colonists in the city married among themselves keeping a distinct community.
- Spanish men in less settled regions made babies with native women and created mestizos.
- Brazil was more ethnically mixed: Portuguese men made babies with native women and with African slave women
- Zambos, mulattoes, mestizo
- Social (and racial) hierarchy in Iberian colonies:
- Whites known as peninsulars were at the top of social hierarchy, along with criollos, owned the land and held the power.
- Mixed races (mestizos and zambos) did much of the manual labor
- Africans and natives were at the bottom
- There were more women among the French and English migrants than the Spanish and Portuguese communities
- Greater gender balance allowed settlers to marry within their own groups
- French fur traders and Native Americans made métis around forts and trading posts
- English disapproved interracial marriages
- English however, interacted with American and African peoples and borrowed cultural elements from other communities as well as obtained knowledge concerning American plants and animals.
- Plants, crops, deerskin clothes
- Abandoned European military customs of marching in assembled ranks and announcing their presence with drums and flying colors
- Borrowed African food crops from slaves and rice cultivation techniques