Pre-Colonial_Brazil_-_1500_to_1530_-_a_Short_Analysis

In crafting your essay, make sure to incorporate material from reading, lecture and discussions in support of your argument. You essay should be between 5-6 pages long, double-spaced. Please use Chicago/Turabian style footnotes to cite your sources. Describe the most (or among the most) significant consequences of the early encounters between Amerindian peoples and Europeans in Brazil. You may address one or more of the following: political change, social change, environmental consequences, and economic circumstances. A Portuguese expedition led by Pedro Alvares Cabral landed in Brazil in 22 of April of 1500. This is the date of the discovery of Brazil. In its country’s history the first three decades after the discovery - 1500 to 1530 - came to be known as the pre-colonial period because the Portuguese had no clear and significant plan of colonization to the newly discovered territory. However, in spite of that these first three decades witnessed significant changes in the new territory, especially in the areas where indigenous communities and Europeans engaged in the extraction and trading of Brazilwood. Thus, this paper aims at understanding the first years of the contact between the indigenous people and the Portuguese and other Europeans who came to this part of the ‘new world,’ in what is now Brazil, and also, secondarily, comparisons between the Spanish and Portuguese America are made. (main arguments) This paper argues that the majority of the similarities and differences between Portuguese and the Spanish America come from two majors areas: the differences between the Portuguese and the Spanish model of colonization and also the cultural differences between natives (the Tupi-Guarani in Brazil and the ‘high civilizations’ in Spanish America such as the Inca and Aztec Empire.) Compared to the Spanish, the Portuguese took a different approach to newly discovered lands in the new World. There are several reasons for that perhaps the most significant relates to decades of the experience in the coast of Africa and also profitable established trade routes already established. In relation to the new found territory the Portuguese found no high native civilization to fight against but rather fairly decentralized indigenous groups. In spite of having a very complex culture and hierarchical systems the indigenous of Brazil commonly were not permanent settlers and did not established complex ‘empires.’(cite) Interestingly, in spite of the fact of having great similarities in culture, lifestyles and even language these indigenous seem to live in constant warfare among each other. Therefore, (this paper argues that) the Portuguese conquest, if it can be referred to as a conquest, was not an effective military conquest but rather it was a process of assimilation, incorporation and sometimes imposition of cultures. - (political, social, environmental and economic) The Amerindians of Brazil By the time the Portuguese arrived in 1500 it is estimated that around 2 to 6 million indigenous lived in what is now Brazil . Shawn William Miller in “An Old World before It Was ‘New” argues the estimates of the populations of the North, Central and South America pre-contact are not firm but rather “we will never know Indian numbers with certainty” (Miller p. 10) However, he points out that it is reasonable to estimate 2 to 6 million people in pre-contact Brazil and 24 million inhabitants in South America as several recent studies lead to the above numbers. This indigenous Brazilians were fairly decentralized and composed of more than 1000 tribes ranging from nomadic hunter-gatherers to more settled, agricultural societies. There was no one fixed indigenous culture in Brazil but rather several complexes often with similarities and differences cultures. Sadly these cultures have not received much attention from Latin American scholarship perhaps because the difficulty in having access to objects and material for study and observation. Several elements of the culture of the natives make the work of scholars significantly harder: lack of written records, some oral stories survived only: for the most part the natives were not permanent settlers, probably they lived in long communal huts and every couple of years would pack up the village and move to new hunting grounds; little surplus was produced and they had very few possessions which means not much left even for excavations. (cite and perhaps add - more elements that make the process harder..) Considering such elements of the natives of Brazil perhaps Spanish America is an easier, or at least more accessible, object of study because of the vast resources left by the high civilizations present at the time of the ‘Spanish Discovery’ and further ‘Conquest.’ Both Inca and Maya civilizations left remarkable written documents and extensive material for excavation . The impressive ruins, monuments, temples, and roads of Machu Pichu, Peru are more than just proofs of the complexity of the Inca culture but certainly they are very important in the process of understanding such ‘empire.’ When referring to the indigenous of Brazil there is virtually no temples, complex roads, monuments or written documents produced by the indigenous before the arrival of Europeans. Pre-contact Portuguese America wasn’t necessarily Simply it was not part of the culture of the natives. There was no written language. Known aspects of the native cultures are the collectivism and egalitarianism, in general terms, and the high importance placed upon music, dances and games. Further, it must be understood that for the first decades of the 16th century European contact with indigenous was very restricted to certain parts of the territory. Roughly parts of the Northeast coast and around the and perhaps for most of the The Amerindians in Brazil were divided in Their work division was much based upon gender. Females handled the ‘domestic work’ while the masculine work was fishing, hunting and, perhaps most importantly, preparing for war. - Such culture was marked by frequent tribal warfare and ritual cannibalism. As described by Metcalf, often captured enemies were ceremonially killed and eaten after battle. In Americo Vespuccio’s letter, known as Letterra, the author provides a description of the natives killing, dragging away, cooking and then eating a European sailor who went ashore make contact . Cannibalism horrified European eyes and its news quickly spread through Europe. Furthermore, as Metcalf argues, “the dissemination of cannibalistic images and descriptions of Brazil through printed books, maps, and engravings created a shared image of Brazil that was held by Europeans ”. Examples of such works are: Waldseemuller’s giant world map of 1516 portrays cannibalism as an essential figure in Brazil, Vespucci’s letter Mundus novos dedicates significant pages to the subject, and the famous Reinel Map from 1519 makes an indirect reference to cannibalism. These works created a caricatured image of Brazil in the European minds who knew very little or even nothing about the New World. As a result, the cannibalistic acts of the natives were used as a moral prerogative to not only force ‘civilization,’ and Christianity upon the natives but also to justify their enslavement and abuses. “By reducing Brazilians to simplified caricatures, it proved to be easy to rationalize their exploitation” Metcalf argues. The peoples along the coast at the time of the Portuguese arrival fall into three main groups: the Guarani, the Tupi and the Tapuia. The Guarani occupied the coast south of Sao Paulo and the Paraguai and Parana basins inland. The Tupi (also called Tupinamba) occupied most of the rest of the coast. Categorized together because of their similarities of language and culture, these two groups are known as the Tupi'Guarani. A European adaptation of the Tupi-Guarani language spread throughout colonial Brazil and is still spoken by some people in Amazonia. Tapuia was the name given by the Tupi and Guarani to all the different peoples who inhabited shorter stretches of coast in among the Tupi and Guarani. ----and also the incorporation, over time and sometimes by force, of elements of the ‘white man’s culture.’ In fact, the indigenous lifestyle is often related to the ideal of ‘noble savage’ in European minds and inspired social thinkers such as Rousseau and Defoe. However, from the time of the discovery up to present time the indigenous culture hasn’t remained unchanged but rather evolved and influenced but more often it incorporated some aspects of the ‘white man’s culture’ --- Description of the Portuguese: By the time of arrival in Brazil in 1500 the Portuguese had an extensive maritime systematically developed from the early fifteenth century; thus, the Portuguese Crown controlled several trading routes along the coast of Africa (Catcalf 13).( In fact, the Portuguese king Alfonso V was called the ‘Africano’ for his intensive and also xxx came to be known as Henry the Navigator for his significant investments in the maritime exploration.) Thus, in “Go-betweens and the Colonization of Brazil – 1500-1600” Alida Metcalf describes the well-developed and profitable trading routes controlled by the Portuguese in Africa; thus, the Portuguese option for prioritizing the already established commerce with the Orient made sense as exploring the newly discovered land was expensive and the financial return was uncertain. The Portuguese population was not large Another important point was the development of a systematic approach to native indigenous in Africa which later on was used in Brazil. Therefore, in order to understand the first encounters between the Portuguese and the Amerindian peoples in Brazil one must look at the pragmatic approaching system developed by the Portuguese when dealing with native indigenous through their decades of experience in the coast of Africa. In fact, Metcalf argues that “everything Cabral did in Brazil was informed by what the Portuguese had learned from their experience in Africa” (17-18). This is an essential factor when understanding the famous accounts of Pero Vaz de Caminha (footnote carta de xx) describing the Portuguese xx in the new discovered land. A significant aspect seeing in the accounts is the restrained, calculated and pragmatic behavior of the Portuguese. As pointed out by Metcalf, “not only they were not surprised by the situation at hand but also they understood the need to proceed with care” (Metcalf 17). Cabral stayed in Brazil for only ten days and Caminha’s letter and two other surviving accounts presents his fleet’s behavior as a systematic approach (end of paper ' – end of pre-colonial period) The pre-colonial period ends when in 1530 the Portuguese king Joao III sends the first colonizing expedition, led by Martin Afonso de Souza, with the following goals: take control of the territory, populate the territory, expel invaders and begin the cultivation of sugar cane. Thus, the early settlement stage effectively started in 1530. Conclusion: Certainly several indigenous aspects such collectivism and egalitarianism still can be seeing in the remaining population. In spite of being reduced to a few thousands today some tribes managed to preserve dances, rituals, oral traditions and other elements of their culture. It is unclear how much of it has changed along the last five centuries and …