Colonization is the invading and taking over the sovereignty of another area, including control over the political and economic units. This colonization will later give rise to establishment of colonies whereby the invaders who usually possess the “organizational or technological superiority over the native population occupies these colonies” as stated by Fieldhouse (par.1). Colonization may arise from the people of a nation simply migrating to a territory, or the occupation of a territory by the military or civil organizations who have the dominating power. Colonization may also arise due to overpopulation, economic distress, social unrest, harsh treatment due to religious differences in their home country. Also control of one country by another country after defeat during the war, aggressive humanitarianism and a desire for adventure or need of individual improvement of their living standards as largely contributed to colonization. During the process of colonization, the people who lived in that place before must adapt or are converted to the culture of the colonists.
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Brazil was colonized by the Portuguese who were the first European settlers to arrive being led by Pedro Cabral (inter-Knowledge, par.1). There was economic exploitation of the territory basing on the Brazil wood extraction from the rain forest to obtain valuable wood and manufacture red dye. Other needed commodities were sugar production, gold and diamond mining whereby human labor was obtained from the African slaves. The Indians were the indigenous people at the time and most of their tribes were immigrants who practiced agricultural farming and had temporary settlements. They richly adhered to their culture and the tribal conflicts were very common with them. Colonization in Brazil leads to the extinction of native people.
Colonization in the United States has been by the thirteen colonies of Britain who were also the European settlers. These thirteen colonies are Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina and Virginia (Columbia encyclopedia, par5). The European settlers came from different social and religious groups. The Native Americans were suffering from new diseases that were brought in by the explorers and sailors before the European settlers came in. The colonizers from the European kingdom had well developed military, sailors, governmental and entrepreneur capabilities that would enable them conquer with ease. The first colonies were by the England, France and Netherlands who started colonies at the West Indies and North America.
Colonization Process
During the early colonization, that took place as early as the tenth century B.C., the trading posts were built throughout the Mediterranean area by the Phoenicians who then created a political power over these colonies. Colonies were established in Asia and Italy by the Greeks who invaded these countries because of their desire of wealth, political powers and other colonies were built by the defeated inhabitants of the city. There was spread of Hellenic culture and growth in trading sector. In these colonies the political, economic and social structure of the Greek people was revealed. This colonization was highly stimulated by the Roman policy whereby they needed to provide land for the poor, support for the Roman soldiers that were needed for defense and the need to spread the roman culture. In the roman colonization, roman’s had the urge to change the culture of the indigenous people to resemble theirs and in other cases they gave this people permission to be roman citizens.
The middle age colonization began when people gathered in a place in Italy. It involved the Venetians and Genoese who created the commercial colonies along the trade routes and they took overall control over them (Fieldhouse, par7). The Portuguese and the Spanish colonized most of the nations during the middle age. The Portugal colonization lead to improved developments in technology especially when planning the routes for ships and they were the first to build trading ports in Africa and the East. On the other hand, Spanish were more involved in the American Revolution. The Portuguese and the Spanish exercised a strong governmental control over their colonies whereby they used these colonies to improve economies of their countries. Their colonization would not allow the native nations to develop economically.
During the sixteenth and seventieth century, the English, Dutch and French colonized through the establishment of corporations that were granted certain rights and obligations by the sovereign authority. These corporations were meant to assist the government of these colonists in trade and exploration in the colonized nations there contributing to settlement of these colonists. The effect of the British Empire was contributed largely by the establishment of these corporations.
The French while establishing their colonies took in mind their interest in trade and commercial affairs that was to develop their nation economically. However, the English colonist did not depend on their country and could not focus on its economic situation since there were restrictions from the government that encouraged only trade monopolization. The British colonists in America settled permanently because their environment favored creation of settlements and not exploitation. The industrial revolutions lead to successful colonization of the British Empire. These industrial revolutions were contributed by more overseas trade and colonial consumption. Because of the increased technological superiority and increase in demand of raw materials in the market, the colonization by the British was accomplished in an easy way.
Due to American Revolution, the British lost most of the North American colonies. But on the other hand, there was more colonization of other nations, especially in India, that made the British colonization to be the greatest colonizing power in the world. In the nineteenth century, Germany came up as an industrial empire but the other colonial powers had already exhausted German products therefore forcing this empire to develop other ways of colonization. The same direction was taken by Japan which is known to be recently industrialized.
Recent colonization has been dominated by the missionaries and traders who were exploitative by taking much of the money to their countries, though not as much as the colonial power did. The occurrence of Second World War lead to increased agitation and violence in the European colonial empires brought revolution on peoples minds therefore demanding their independence. Most colonies are known to have won the independence from the Imperial powers. But those that were dominated by Portugal colonies were the last ones to become independent. Recently, there are a few remaining great colonial empires which exist as self-governing dependencies, examples are the Aruba, Bermuda and French Guiana (Fieldhouse, par.8).
Colonization in Brazil
Colonization in Brazil was by the Portuguese who were the first European settlers to arrive in the area. The Portuguese came in search of valuable goods that would use for European trade but also searching for unsettled land and for others it was an escape from poverty. Unlike the Spanish colonists, the Portuguese did not focus much in conquering, controlling and developing the country. Instead, since most of them were sailors, they were more interested in profitable trade and subsistence agriculture and did not take any chance to expand their territories. These lead to little exploration in the interior parts of the country. The first raw material that was discovered was the Brazil wood and with time there was importation of sugar including slaves in Brazil. There was intermarriage between the Portuguese, Indians and African slaves, unlike in other American colonies. These lead to extinction of the indigenous Brazilian population, therefore the current Brazilian culture consists of European, African, Amerindian, Asian and Middle Eastern cultures (interknowledge, par 3). The exploitations in the interior parts of the country lead to the discovery of Gold and diamond. In the nineteenth century the coffee production overtook the production of sugar and it has become the country’s major cash crop.
Colonization in United States
Various colonies in the United States were formed due to different reasons. For example, the Massachusetts were strong observers of religion, self disciplined people who wanted to escape the religious persecution. The successes of England colonization in United States is largely attributed to its involvement in charter companies. These charter companies were made up of wealthy people who sought personal economic gain and wanted to venture into England’s national goals. A variety of industries were developed as the colonies grew. These developed the North American colonies both economically and politically that they were able to emerge as self-government movement that dominated English politics. The American revolution which was both political and economic lead to rise of middle class people whose main issue of concern was “unalienable rights to life, liberty and property” (U.S. Department of state, par.6). When the British soldiers tried to capture colonial arm depot at concord, Massachusetts, they collided with colonial military men and war broke out this ultimately lead to independence of the United States.
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Differences of the United State and Brazil Colonists
There is a great difference in the institutions of religion, law, language, customs, fashions and moral aspects between the colonization in Brazil and United States. The Native American people were the original inhabitants of Brazil (Herbert, par.3). In most parts these people were semi nomadic and they also engaged in hunting and gathering while practicing also simple agriculture. Those people living in the interior part maintained their traditional way of life until they were influenced by the emigrants. The regional divisions in Brazil country are due to administrative purposes and they respond to the geographic, demographic, economic and cultural variation within the nation. While in United States the countries division is largely contributed to the ancient times during colonization. The Brazilians adapted the Portugal language being the major colonist but in United States there were no influence of the native language by the colonist.
Sugar which was the major crop grown in Brazil involved many of the slave laborers, while in America coffee was the major cash crop grown (Herbert, par.5). The Americans also used slave labor in the cultivation of tobacco, rice, sugar, hemp and molasses. In United States, there were two types of slavery. One was the domestic slavery of the towns were the slaves were treated as part of family members. The other types were those who worked in large scale enterprises and were not known by their masters. Slaves in United States were owned by planters and private individuals. While in Brazil, the slaves worked in large plantations which were owned by religious groups and they treated these slaves with great regard for comfort and ease (Herbert, par.5). There were also slaves employed by the government. The Brazilian slavery received its motivation through the cutting off of the native labor supply and the growth of sugar farms, whereas the American Slavery was stimulated by the invention of the cotton plantations. Besides agriculture and domestic pursuits, slaves in Brazil were employed in almost every variety of unskilled and semi- skilled labor. This slavery in Brazil was distributed in such a way that the same laborers were put together rather than in sectional patches as was in United States.
In Brazil, the importation of slaves took place earlier, lasted longer and involved the importation of two to three times more slaves than in the United States. In contrast to large number of families who came to settle in North American colonies, the Portuguese colonists were more often single males. Thus in the early stages of slave importation into North America, the proportion of Africans to Europeans was much smaller in the united states than in Brazil, where the slave trade had been operating over a century. These Portuguese men being few in number took the slaves and indigenous people women as their concubines and wives leading to the mixed racial society of Brazil. This racial mixture was further extended when the immigrants from Europe, the Middle East and Asia arrived (Herbert, par.6).
There was creation of Anti-slavery in the North of America aided the Negroes to escape to free territory, or to Canadian line where the slavery was not accepted. On the other hand, the fleeing of slaves in Brazil was not supported due to high prevalence of slavery and lack of opposition to this practice. In Brazil, like in United State, race is a difference that the concept of racism in Brazil has no much impact since they consider their country as a land with “racial democracy”, being one without prejudice towards its darker skinned citizens (Maxine et.al. par.10). Unlike in the United States there is no “one drop” rule in Brazil. The custom of this rule defines anyone with any known African lineage as “black” since they are the minority. However, discrimination in Brazil is said to be a matter of social class than of race because the re was great intermarriages. The shortage of skilled workers in Brazil provided a chance for mixed race persons to learn crafts and trade. In United States, the discriminated race was blocked by the whites to work in these posts. The Portuguese institutions, especially the Roman Catholic Church and roman, promoted the recognition of the slave’s humanity in Brazil. On the other hand, the English colonist came up with a system of slavery which was not preceded in their laws and separated the church from the state, therefore blocking the protestant clergy men from playing the role similar to those of Roman Catholic Church leaders.
Since independence, the Brazilians believe the state can solve any problem and lead any “revolution” necessary to keep the country’s growth. But with the States they believe in building a “new world” by struggling to maintain things the way they were to avoid any rapid change in the social order (Paulo, par 10).
Similarities of the United State and Brazil Colonists
During colonization both nations imported large numbers of African slaves who worked for them in various fields and had diversified occupations (Herbert, par.8). The Negro slaves in both the countries were owned by the state and religious bodies. Slaves were settled on the large plantations where they lived in harshly constructed huts and depended on simple diet. Religion was an important factor in slavery of both countries. Both countries have similar collections of racial and ethnic groups. During colonization both countries used the geographical structure to defend their territorial imperialism. Though intermarriages were illegal in both countries, the laws could not be practiced in Brazil since the whites formed the group in the black dominated society.
The Brazil and the United State forms the largest multiracial societies in the Americans. Due to their participation in slavery, it is known that racial inequality was deeply rooted in these countries. More recent research reports show the high levels of racial inequality in Brazil and existence of diverse forms of racial discrimination (Reid, par.3). These have proven an increase in the similarities in character between the two countries.
Conclusion
The first colonization that was of importance by Germans in Brazil did not take place until early nineteenth century. Before the Portuguese came there were non-Portuguese that had already settled in Brazil and the Germans formed a larger part of them. The Portuguese colonized Brazil and hold on these territories as they struggled with an unfamiliar environment, indigenous people, and with French and later Dutch attempts to undermine Portuguese control. This colonization by the Portuguese and Spanish ended with the start of First World War. It has been of concern to compare the early colonization of the United States and Brazil since it shades light on the ensuing differences between the two modern nations. Slavery in Brazil revealed a sense of humanity since they were given more resting days than in the United States. Today there is no practice of colonization since it is considered as immoral. In the days of slavery, discriminations were so severe against any man of black skin. In Portuguese America, it is said that the race problem has been allowed to solve itself. Slavery might have different in both countries but it was all shameful. In Brazil just like in United States, race is a difference that makes a difference, a differentiating difference, but in Brazil race matters in a different way.
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