Which states colonized South America. Colonization of North America

In the spring of 1492, the Spaniards took Granada, the last stronghold of the Moors on the Iberian Peninsula, and on August 3 of the same year, three caravels of Christopher Columbus set out on a long voyage across the Atlantic Ocean from the Spanish port of Paloe in order to open the western route to India and East Asia.

Not wanting to aggravate relations with Portugal, the Spanish kings Ferdinand and Isabella at first preferred to hide the real purpose of this trip.

Columbus was appointed "admiral and viceroy of all the lands that he will discover in these seas-oceans", with the right to retain in his favor one-tenth of all income from them, "whether it be pearls or precious stones, gold or silver, spices and others things and goods ".

Biographical information about Columbus is very scarce. He was born in 1451 in Italy, near Genoa, to the family of a weaver, but there is no exact information about where he studied and when he became a navigator.

It is known that in the 80s he lived in Lisbon and, obviously, participated in several voyages to the shores of Guinea, but these voyages were not what fascinated him.

He was hatching a project to discover the shortest route from Europe to Asia across the Atlantic Ocean; He studied the work of Pierre d'Alyi (which was mentioned above), as well as the works of Toscanelli and other cosmographers of the XIV-XV centuries, who proceeded from the theory of the sphericity of the Earth, but significantly understated the length of the western route to Asia.

However, Columbus failed to interest the Portuguese king in his project. The "Council of Mathematicians" in Lisbon, which had previously discussed the plans of all expeditions, rejected his proposals as fantastic, and Columbus had to leave for Spain, where the project of opening a new route to Asia unknown to the Portuguese was supported by Ferdinand and Isabella.

On October 12, 1492, 69 days after departure from the Spanish port of Pal wasps, Columbus's caravels, having overcome all the difficulties of the journey, reached San Salvador (apparently modern Watling), one of the islands of the Bahamas, located off the coast of the new, not the mainland known to Europeans; this day is considered the date of the discovery of America.

The success of the expedition was achieved not only thanks to the leadership of Columbus, but also to the resilience of the entire crew, recruited from the inhabitants of Palos and other coastal cities of Spain who knew the sea well.

In total, Columbus made four expeditions to America, during which he discovered and explored Cuba, Hispaniola (Haiti), Jamaica and other islands of the Caribbean Sea, the east coast of Central America and the coast of Venezuela in northern South America. On the island of Hispaniola, he founded a permanent colony, which later became the stronghold of the Spanish conquests in America.

During his expeditions, Columbus showed himself not only as a passionate seeker of new lands, but also as a man striving for enrichment. In the diary of his first trip, he wrote: “I do my best to get to where I can find gold and spices ...” “Gold,” he writes from Jamaica, “is perfection. Gold creates treasures, and the one who owns it can do whatever he wants, and is even able to lead human souls to paradise. " To increase the profitability of the islands he discovered, on which, as it was soon discovered, there were not so many gold and spices, he proposed to export slaves from there to Spain: “... And let, - he writes to the Spanish kings, - even slaves die on the way , yet not all of them face such a fate. "

Columbus was unable to geographically correctly assess his discoveries and conclude that he discovered a new, unknown continent for him.

Until the end of his life, he assured everyone that he had reached the shores of Southeast Asia, the fabulous riches of which Marco Polo wrote and the Spanish noblemen, merchants, and kings dreamed of.

He called the lands discovered by him "Indies", and their inhabitants - "Indians". Even during his last trip, he reported to Spain that Cuba is South China, and the coast of Central America is part of the Malacca Peninsula, and that there must be a strait to the south through which one can get to rich India.

1. Globe of Martin Beheim 1492 (before the discovery of America). 2. Lenox's Globe 1510-1512. (after the discovery of America).

The news of Columbus's discovery caused great alarm in Portugal.

The Portuguese believed that the Spaniards had violated their right to own all the lands south and east of Cape Bohador, confirmed earlier by the Pope, and were ahead of them in reaching the shores of India; they even prepared a military expedition to seize the lands discovered by Columbus.

In the end, Spain turned to the pope to resolve this dispute. With a special bull, the Pope blessed the capture of all lands discovered by Columbus by Spain. In Rome, these discoveries were evaluated in terms of spreading the Catholic faith and increasing the influence of the church.

The pope resolved the dispute between Spain and Portugal as follows: Spain was granted the right to own all lands located to the west of the line passing through the Atlantic Ocean, one hundred leagues (approximately 600 km) west of the Cape Verde Islands.

In 1494, on the basis of this bull, Spain and Portugal divided the spheres of conquest among themselves under the treaty concluded in the Spanish city of Tordesillas; the dividing line between the colonial possessions of both states was established in 370 leagues (over 2 thousand km) west of the above islands.

Both states have arrogated to themselves the right to pursue and seize all foreign ships that appeared in their waters, impose duties on them, judge their crews by their own laws, etc.

But Columbus's discoveries gave Spain too little gold, and soon after the success of Vasco da Gama, the country was disappointed with the Spanish Indies. Columbus began to be called a deceiver, who instead of fabulously rich India discovered a country of grief and misfortune, which became the place of death of many Castilian nobles.

The Spanish kings deprived him of the monopoly right to make discoveries in the western direction and of that share of the income received from the lands discovered by him, which was initially assigned to him. He lost all his property, which went to cover the debts of his creditors.

Columbus, abandoned by everyone, died in 1506. Contemporaries forgot the great navigator, they even gave the name to the mainland he discovered after the Italian scientist Amerigo Vespucci, who in 1499-1504. took part in the exploration of the shores of South America and whose letters aroused great interest in Europe. "These countries should be called the New World ..." - he wrote.

After Columbus, other conquistadors in search of gold and slaves continued to expand the colonial possessions of Spain in America.

In 1508, two Spanish noblemen obtained royal patents for the establishment of colonies on the American mainland; Spanish colonization of the Isthmus of Panama began the following year; in 1513. conquistador Vasco Nunez Balboa with a small detachment was the first of the Europeans to cross the Isthmus of Panama and reach the shores of the Pacific Ocean, which he called the "South Sea". A few years later, the Spaniards discovered Yucatan and Mexico, and also reached the mouth of the Mississippi River.

Attempts were made to find the strait connecting the Atlantic Ocean with the Pacific, and thus complete the work begun by Columbus - to reach the shores of East Asia by the western route.

I was looking for this strait in 1515-1516. the Spanish sailor de Solis, who, moving along the Brazilian coast, reached the La Plata River; looking for him and Portuguese navigators, who made their expeditions in great secrecy.

In Europe, some geographers were so sure of the existence of this as yet undiscovered strait that they mapped it in advance.

A new plan for a large expedition in search of the southwestern passage to the Pacific Ocean and reaching Asia by the western route was proposed to the Spanish king by Fernando Magellan, a Portuguese sailor from a poor nobleman who lived in Spain.

Magellan fought under the banner of the Portuguese king in South-West Asia on land and at sea, participated in the capture of Malacca, in campaigns in North Africa, but returned home without great ranks and wealth; after the king refused him even a slight promotion, he left Portugal.

Magellan, while still in Portugal, began to develop a project for an expedition to search for the southwestern strait from the Atlantic Ocean to the open Balboa "South Sea", through which, as he assumed, it would be possible to reach the Moluccas. In Madrid, the Council for Indian Affairs, which was in charge of all matters concerning the Spanish colonies, became very interested in Magellan's projects; the councilors liked his assertion that the Moluccas, according to the terms of the Tordesillas Treaty, should belong to Spain and that the shortest route to them is through the southwest strait to the "South Sea", which was owned by Spain.

Magellan was absolutely sure of the existence of this strait, although, as subsequent facts showed, the only source of his confidence was the maps on which this strait was drawn without any reason.

Under the agreement concluded between Magellan and the Spanish king Charles I, he received five ships and the funds necessary for the expedition; he was appointed admiral with the right to withhold in his favor a twentieth part of the income that the expedition and new possessions, annexed to the Spanish crown, would bring. "Since I, - wrote the king to Magellan," for certain know that there are spices on the Molucco Islands, I send you mainly in search of them, and it is my will that you go directly to these islands. "

On September 20, 1519, five ships of Magellan left San Lucar on this voyage. It lasted three years. Having overcome the great difficulties of sailing in the unexplored southern part of the Atlantic Ocean, he found the southwestern strait, which was later named after him. The strait was much farther south than indicated on the maps that Magellan believed. Leaving the "South Sea", the expedition headed to the shores of Asia.

Magellan called the "South Sea" the Pacific Ocean, "because, as one of the expedition members says," we have never experienced the slightest storm. " For more than three months the flotilla sailed on the open ocean; part of the crew, suffering greatly from hunger and thirst, died from scurvy. In the spring of 1521 Magellan reached the islands off the east coast of Asia, later called the Philippine islands.

In pursuit of the goal of conquering the lands discovered by him, Magellan intervened in the feud of two local rulers and was killed on April 27 in a skirmish with the inhabitants of one of these islands. The crew of the expedition, after the death of their admiral, completed this most difficult voyage; only two ships reached the Moluccas, and only one ship "Victoria" was able to continue the journey to Spain with a load of spices.

The crew of this vessel under the command of d'Elcano made a long voyage to Spain around Africa, having managed to avoid meeting with the Portuguese, who were ordered from Lisbon to detain all members of the Magellan expedition. Of the entire crew of Magellan's expedition of unparalleled courage (265 people), only 18 people returned to their homeland; but "Victoria" brought a large load of spices, the sale of which covered all the expenses of the expedition and gave still significant profit.

The great navigator Magellan completed the work begun by Columbus - he reached the Asian mainland and the Moluccas by the western route, opening a new sea route from Europe to Asia, although it did not receive practical value due to the distance and difficulty of navigation.

This was the first circumnavigation of the world in the history of mankind; it irrefutably proved the spherical shape of the earth and the indivisibility of the oceans that wash the land.

In the same year, when Magellan set out in search of a new sea route to the Motluk Islands, a small detachment of Spanish conquistadors, equipped with horses and armed with 13 cannons, set out from Cuba to the interior of Mexico to conquer the Aztec state, whose wealth was not inferior to that of India.

The detachment was led by the Spanish hidalgo Hernando Cortez. Cortes, who came from 11 families of impoverished hidalgo, according to one of the participants in this campaign, "had little money, but a lot of debt." But, having acquired plantations in Cuba, he was able to organize an expedition to Mexico in part at his own expense.

In their clashes with the Aztecs, the Spaniards, who possessed firearms, steel armor and horses, previously unseen in America and instilled panic in the Indians, as well as used improved battle tactics, received an overwhelming advantage.

In addition, the resistance of the Indian tribes to foreign invaders was weakened by the enmity between the Aztecs and the tribes they conquered. This explains the rather easy victories of the Spanish troops.

Having landed on the Mexican coast, Cortez led his detachment to the capital of the Aztec state, the city of Tenochtitlan (modern Mexico City). The path to the capital passed through the area of \u200b\u200bIndian tribes who were at war with the Aztecs, and this facilitated the campaign. Upon entering Tenochtitlan, the Spaniards were amazed at the size and wealth of the Aztec capital. Soon they managed to treacherously capture the supreme ruler of the Aztecs, Montezuma, and on his behalf began to rule the country.

They demanded that the Indian leaders subject to Montezuma take an oath of allegiance to the Spanish king and pay tribute in gold. In the building where the Spanish detachment was housed, a secret room was discovered, in which there was a rich treasure of gold things and precious stones. All the gold items were cast into square ingots and divided among the participants in the campaign, and most of it went to Cortez, the king and governor of Cuba.

Soon, a great uprising broke out in the country against the rule of greedy and cruel foreigners; the rebels laid siege to the Spanish detachment, which sat down with the captive supreme ruler in his palace. With heavy losses, Cortes managed to break out of the siege and withdraw from Tenochtitlan; many Spaniards died because they rushed to the riches and gained so much that they could hardly walk.

And this time the Spaniards were helped by those Indian tribes who took their side and now feared the revenge of the Aztecs. In addition, Cortez replenished his squad with the Spaniards who arrived from Cuba. Gathering an army of 10,000, Cortez again approached the capital of Mexico and laid siege to the city. The siege was prolonged; during it, most of the population of this populous city died from hunger, thirst and disease. On August 3, 1521, the Spaniards finally entered the ruined capital of the Aztecs.

The Aztec state became a Spanish colony; the Spaniards captured a lot of gold and precious stones in this country, distributed the lands to their colonists, and turned the Indian population into slaves and serfs. "The Spanish conquest," says Engels of the Aztecs, "cut short any further independent development."

Soon after the conquest of Mexico, the Spaniards conquered Guatemala and Honduras in Central America, and in 1546, after several invasions, subjugated the Yucatan Peninsula, inhabited by the Mayan people. “There were too many rulers and too many of them conspired against each other,” one of the Indians explained the defeat of the Maya.

The Spanish conquest in North America did not extend beyond Mexico.

This is due to the fact that in the regions located to the north of Mexico, the Spanish profit seekers did not find cities and states rich in gold and silver; on Spanish maps, these areas of the American mainland were usually marked with the inscription: Lands without income.

After the conquest of Mexico, the Spanish conquistadors turned their full attention to the south, to the mountainous regions of South America, rich in gold and silver.

In the 1930s, the Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro, an illiterate man who was a swineherd in his youth, undertook the conquest of the "golden kingdom", the Inca state in Peru; about his fabulous riches, he heard stories from local people on the Isthmus of Panama during the campaign of Balboa, of which he was a participant.

With a detachment of 200 people and 50 horses, he invaded this state, managing to use the struggle of two brothers-heirs for the throne of the supreme ruler of the country; he captured one of them - Atahualpa, and on his behalf began to rule the country.

A large ransom was taken from Atahualpa in gold things, many times exceeding the treasure that Cortez's detachment possessed; this production was divided among the members of the detachment, for which all the gold was turned into ingots, destroying the most valuable monuments of Peruvian art.

The ransom did not give Atahualpa the promised freedom; the Spaniards treacherously put him on trial and executed.

After that, Pizarro occupied the capital of the state - Cuzco and became the complete ruler of the country (1532); he put on the throne the supreme ruler of his follower, one of Atahualpa's nephews.

In Cuzco, the Spaniards plundered the treasures of the rich Temple of the Sun and established a Catholic monastery in its building; in Potosi (Bolivia), they captured the richest silver mines.

In the early 40s, the Spanish conquistadors conquered Chile, and the Portuguese (in the 30s and 40s) conquered Brazil, which was discovered by Cabral in 1500 during his expedition to India (Cabral's ships were on their way to the Cape of Good Hope carried to the west by the South Equatorial Current).

In the second half of the XVI century. the Spaniards took possession of Argentina.

This is how the New World was discovered and the American maternal colonial possessions of feudal-absolutist Spain and Portugal were created. The Spanish conquest of America interrupted the independent development of the peoples of the American continent and put them under the yoke of colonial enslavement.

Centuries after the Indians and much to their regret, the ships of the Europeans appeared on the horizon. The first European colonizers after the Vikings in America were the Spaniards. Christopher Columbus, Genoese sailor and merchant, who received the rank of admiral and flotilla from the Spanish crown, was looking for a new trade route to wealthy India, China and Japan.

He sailed to the New World four times and sailed to the Bahamas. On October 13, 1492, he landed on an island called San Salvador, placed the flag of Castile on it, and drew up a notarial deed of this event. He himself believed that he sailed either to China, or to India or even to Japan. For many years this land was called the West Indies. The Arawaks, the first natives of these places he saw, he called "Indians". The rest of Columbus's life and difficult fate was associated with the West Indies.

In the late 15th century and early 16th century, a number of other European nations began to explore the routes of the Western Hemisphere. The navigator of the English king Henry VII Italian John Cabot (Giovanni Caboto) set foot on the coast of Canada (1497-1498), Pedro Alvares Cabral assigned to Portugal Brazil (1500-1501), Spaniard Vasco Nunez de Balboa founded Antigua, the first European city on the new mainland, and reached the Pacific Ocean (1500-1513). Fernand Magellan, who served the Spanish king in 1519-1521, circled America from the south and made the first trip around the world.

In 1507 Martin Waldseemüller, a geographer from Lorraine, proposed to name the New World America in honor of the Florentine navigator Amerigo Vespucci, who succeeded Columbus, who fell out of favor. The proposal was strangely entrenched, and the development of the mainland is already alternately under two names. Juan Ponce de Leon, the Spanish conquistador, discovered the Florida Peninsula in 1513. In 1565 the first European colony was formed there, and later the city of St. Augustine. In the late 1530s, Hernando de Soto went to the Mississippi and reached the Arkansas River.

When the British and French began to explore America, Florida and the southwest of the continent were almost entirely Spanish. The gold that Spain brought from South America ultimately became one of the reasons for its loss of world domination. Buying everything that a sagacious state needs to develop and strengthen, Spain suffered defeat at the first serious crisis. The power and influence of Spain in America began to degrade after September 1588, when the Anglo-Dutch fleet destroyed and captured the ships of the Spanish Invincible Armada.

The British settled in America on the third attempt. One ended with a flight home, the second with the mysterious disappearance of the settlers, and only the third, in 1607, was successful. The trading post, named after the king Jamestown, was inhabited by the crew of three ships under the command of Captain Newport and also served as a barrier to the Spaniards, who were still rushing into the interior of the continent. Tobacco plantations turned Jamestown into a wealthy settlement, and by 1620 there were about 1000 people living there.

Many people dreamed of America not only as a land of fabulous treasures, but as a wonderful world where you are not killed for a different faith, where it does not matter which party you are from ... Dreams were fueled by those who received income from the transportation of goods and people. In England, the London and Plymouth companies were hastily created, which from 1606 were involved in the development of the north-east coast of America. Many Europeans with their last money moved to the New World with their whole families and communities. People arrived and arrived, but they were still not enough for the development of new lands. Many died on the way or in the early months of American life.

In August 1619, a Dutch ship brought several dozen Africans to Virginia; the colonists immediately bought twenty people. Thus began the Great White Business. During the 18th century, about seven million slaves were sold, and no one knows how many died during the long voyage and were fed to sharks.

On November 21, 1620, a small galleon "May Flower" moored to the Atlantic coast. 102 Puritan Calvinists went ashore, stern, stubborn, violent in faith and convinced of their chosenness, but exhausted and sick. The beginning of the conscious settlement of America by the British is counted from that day. The Mayflower Mutual Treaty embodied the early American colonists' vision of democracy, self-government, and civil liberties. The same documents were signed by other colonists in Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire.

As a result of Columbus's voyage, they found much more, a whole "New World" inhabited by numerous peoples. Having conquered these peoples with lightning speed, the Europeans began to mercilessly exploit the natural and human resources of the continent they had captured. Precisely, from this moment a breakthrough begins, which by the end of the 19th century made Euro-American civilization dominant over the rest of the peoples of the planet.

The remarkable Marxist geographer James Blout, in his pioneering study, The Colonial Model of the World, paints a broad picture of early capitalist production in colonial South America and shows its key importance for the rise of European capitalism. It is necessary to briefly summarize his findings.

Precious metals

Thanks to the conquest of America, by 1640 the Europeans received from there at least 180 tons of gold and 17 thousand tons of silver. This is the official data. In fact, these figures can be safely multiplied by two, taking into account poor customs accounting and widespread smuggling. The huge influx of precious metals led to a sharp expansion of the sphere of monetary circulation necessary for the formation of capitalism. But, more importantly, the gold and silver that fell on them allowed European entrepreneurs to pay higher prices for goods and labor and thereby seize the dominant heights in international trade and production, pushing back their competitors - a group of non-European proto-bourgeoisie, especially in the Mediterranean region. Leaving aside for now the role of genocide in the extraction of precious metals, as well as other forms of capitalist economy in Columbian America, it is necessary to note the important argument of Blaut that the process of mining these metals and the economic activity necessary to ensure it were profitable.

Plantations

In the 15-16 centuries. commercial and feudal sugar production was developed throughout the Mediterranean, as well as in West and East Africa, although honey was still preferred in Northern Europe due to its lower cost. Even then, the sugar industry was an important part of the protocapitalist sector in the Mediterranean economy. Then, throughout the 16th century, there is a process of rapid development of sugar plantations in America, which replaces and displaces sugar production in the Mediterranean. Thus, taking advantage of the two traditional benefits of colonialism — “free” land and cheap labor — European proto-capitalists are eliminating their competitors with their feudal and semi-feudal production. No other industry, Blaut concludes, was as important to the development of capitalism until the 19th century as sugar plantations in Columbus America. And the data that he cites is truly amazing.

So in 1600, Brazil exported 30,000 tons of sugar with a selling price of £ 2 million. This is about twice as much as the value of all British exports for that year. Recall that it is Britain and its commodity production of wool that historians-Eurocentrists (i.e. 99% of all historians) consider the main engine of capitalist development in the 17th century. In the same year, per capita income in Brazil (with the exception of the Indians, of course) was higher than in Britain, which equaled Brazil only later. By the end of the 16th century, the rate of capitalist accumulation on Brazilian plantations was so high that it allowed to double production every 2 years. At the beginning of the 17th century, Dutch capitalists, who controlled a significant part of the sugar business in Brazil, made calculations that showed that the annual rate of return in this industry was 56%, and in money terms, almost 1 million pounds (a fantastic amount for that time). Moreover, this profit was even higher at the end of the 16th century, when the cost of production, including the purchase of slaves, amounted to only one fifth of the income from the sale of sugar.

Sugar plantations in America were central to the development of the early capitalist economy in Europe. But besides sugar, there was still tobacco, there were spices, dyes, there was a huge fishing industry in Newfoundland and other places on the East coast of North America. All this was also part of the capitalist development of Europe. The slave trade was extremely profitable. According to Blaut's estimates, by the end of the 16th century, up to 1 million people worked in the colonial economy of the Western Hemisphere, about half of whom were engaged in capitalist production. In the 1570s, the huge mining town of Potosi in the Andes had a population of 120 thousand people, more than at that time lived in such European cities as Paris, Rome or Madrid.

Finally, about fifty new types of agricultural plants cultivated by the agrarian genius of the New World peoples, such as potatoes, corn, tomatoes, a number of varieties of pepper, cocoa for chocolate, a number of legumes, peanuts, sunflowers, and others, fell into the hands of Europeans. - Potatoes and corn have become cheap bread substitutes for the European masses, saving millions from devastating subsidence, allowing Europe to double food production in fifty years from 1492 and, thus, provide one of the main conditions for creating a wage labor market for capitalist production.

So, thanks to the works of Blaut and a number of other radical historians, the key role of early European colonialism in the development of capitalism and its “centering” (centratedness - the neologism of J. Blaut — AB) begins to emerge precisely in Europe, and not in other areas of world protocapitalist development . Huge territories, cheap slave labor of enslaved peoples, robbery of the natural wealth of the Americas gave the European proto-bourgeoisie decisive superiority over its competitors in the international economic system of the 16-17th centuries, allowed it to rapidly accelerate the existing trends of capitalist production and accumulation and, thus, begin the process of social The political transformation of feudal Europe into a bourgeois society. As the famous Caribbean Marxist historian S.R.L. James, "The slave trade and slavery became the economic base of the Great French Revolution ... Almost all the industries that developed in France in the 18th century were based on the production of goods for the coast of Guinea or for America." (James, 47-48).

At the heart of this fateful turn of world history was the genocide of the peoples of the Western Hemisphere. This genocide was not only the first in the history of capitalism, not only at its source, it is both the largest in number of victims and the longest extermination of peoples and ethnic groups, which continues to this day.

"I became death, the Destroyer of worlds."
(Bhagavad-gita)

Robert Oppenheimer remembered these lines at the sight of the first atomic explosion. With far greater right, the ominous words of the ancient Sanskrit poem could be remembered by the people who were on the ships of Ninha, Pinta and Santa Maria, when 450 years before the explosion, on the same dark early morning they noticed a fire on the leeward side of the island, which they later named after Saint Savior - San Salvador.

26 days after testing a nuclear device in the desert of New Mexico, a bomb dropped on Hiroshima killed at least 130 thousand people, almost all of them civilians. In just 21 years after the landing of Columbus on the islands of the Caribbean Sea, the largest of them, renamed Admiral to Hispaniola (now Haiti and the Dominican Republic), lost almost its entire indigenous population - about 8 million people who were killed, those who died from disease, hunger, slavish labor and despair. The devastating power of this Spanish "nuclear bomb" at Hispaniola was equivalent to more than 50 Hiroshima-type atomic bombs. And that was just the beginning.

So, by comparing the first and “the most monstrous in terms of size and consequences of genocide in world history” with the practice of genocides in the 20th century, the book “American Holocaust” (1992) by the historian of the University of Hawaii David Stanard begins, and in this historical perspective lies, in my the view, the special significance of his work, as well as the significance of Ward Churchill’s subsequent book, “The Minor Issue of Genocide” (1997) and a number of other studies of recent years. In these works, the destruction of the indigenous population of the Americas by Europeans and Latinos appears not only as the most massive and long-lasting (until today) genocide in world history, but also as an organic part of Euro-American civilization from the late Middle Ages to Western imperialism of our days.

Stanard begins his book with a description of the amazing wealth and diversity of human life in both Americas before the fateful voyage of Columbus. He then leads the reader along the historical and geographical route of genocide: from the extermination of the indigenous inhabitants of the Caribbean, Mexico, Central and South America to the turn to the north and the destruction of the Indians in Florida, Virginia and New England and, finally, through the Great Prairies and Southwest to California and on the Pacific coast of the Northwest. The following part of my article is mainly based on Stanard’s book, while the second part, the genocide in North America, uses Churchill’s work.

Who was the victim of the most massive genocide in world history?

Human society, destroyed by Europeans in the Caribbean, was in all respects higher than their own, if we take a development measure to approach the ideal of a communist society. It would be more accurate to say that, thanks to a rare combination of natural conditions, the tainos (or Arawaki) lived in a communist society. Not in the way that European Marx imagined him, but nonetheless communist. The inhabitants of the Greater Antilles have reached a high level in regulating their relations with the natural world. They learned to receive from nature, everything that they needed, not exhausting, but cultivating and transforming it. They had huge aquatic farms, in each of which they grew up to a thousand large sea turtles (equivalent to 100 heads of cattle). They literally "collected" small fish in the sea, using plant substances that paralyzed it. Their agriculture exceeded European level and was based on a three-level planting system that uses combinations of different types of plants to create a favorable soil and climate regime. Their homes, spacious, clean and bright, would be the envy of the European masses.

The American geographer Karl Sauer comes to this conclusion:

“The tropical idyll that we find in the descriptions of Columbus and Peter Martyr was largely true.” About Tainos (Arawak): “These people did not need anything. They took care of their plants, were skilled fishermen, canoeists and swimmers. They built attractive homes and kept them clean. Aesthetically, they expressed themselves in a tree. They had free time to play ball, dance and music. They lived in peace and friendship. ” (Stanard, 51).

But Columbus, this typical European of the 15-16th centuries, had a different idea of \u200b\u200ba “good society”. On October 12, 1492, on the day of Contact, he wrote in his diary:
“These people walk in what their mother gave birth, but are good-natured ... they can be made free and converted to our Holy Faith. They will make good and skillful servants. ”

On that day, representatives of the two continents first met on an island that locals called Guanahani. In the early morning, under the tall pine trees on the sandy shore, a crowd of curious tainos gathered. They watched as a strange boat with a hull resembling a fish skeleton and bearded strangers in it sailed to the shore and buried itself in the sand. Beards came out of her and pulled her higher, away from the foam of the surf. Now they were facing each other. The aliens were dark-skinned and black-haired, shaggy heads, overgrown with beards, many people were pitted with smallpox - one of 60-70 deadly diseases that they will bring to the Western Hemisphere. There was a heavy smell from them. In Europe, the 15th century did not wash. At a temperature of 30-35 degrees Celsius, the aliens were dressed from head to toe, and metal armor hung on top of their clothes. In their hands they held long thin knives, daggers and sticks sparkling in the sun.

In the logbook, Columbus often notes the amazing beauty of the islands and their inhabitants - friendly, happy, peaceful. And two days after the first contact, an ominous entry appears in the magazine: “50 soldiers are enough to conquer them all and make us do everything we want.” "The locals allow us to go where we want and give us everything we ask of them." Most of all Europeans were surprised by the incomprehensible for them generosity of this people. And this is not surprising. Columbus and his comrades sailed to these islands from the real hell that Europe was at that time. They were the real devils (and in many ways the dregs) of the European hell, over which the bloody dawn of the initial capitalist accumulation arose. We need to briefly talk about this place.

Hell called Europe

In hell Europe, there was a fierce class war, frequent epidemics of smallpox, cholera and plague devastated cities, and even more often the population died from starvation. But even in prosperous years, according to the historian of Spain of the 16th century, "the rich ate and ate to the brim, while thousands of hungry eyes hungrily looked at their gargantuan dinners." The existence of the masses was so unsecured that even in the 17th century, every “average” increase in the price of wheat or millet in France killed an equal or twice as large percentage of the population as the United States lost in the Civil War. Centuries after Columbus' journey, the city ditches of Europe still served as a public toilet, the insides of dead animals and the remains of carcasses were thrown out to rot on the streets. A particular problem in London was the so-called “Holes for the poor” - “large, deep, open pits where the corpses of the dead poor were stacked, in a row, layer upon layer. Only when the pit was filled to the brim, they covered it with earth. ” One contemporary wrote: “How disgusting is the stench that comes from these pits clogged with corpses, especially in the heat and after the rain.” Slightly better was the smell emanating from living Europeans, most of whom were born and died never washed. Almost every one of them had traces of smallpox and other deforming diseases that left their victims half-blind, covered with smallpox, scabs, rotting chronic ulcers, lame, etc. The average life expectancy did not reach 30 years. Half of the children died before they reached 10.

Around every corner a criminal could lie in wait for you. One of the most popular methods of robbery was to throw a stone from the window onto the head of his victim and then search it, and one of the festive entertainments was to burn a dozen or two cats alive. In the hunger years, European cities were shaken by riots. And the largest class war of that era, or rather a series of wars under the general name Peasant, claimed more than 100,000 lives. The fate of the rural population was not the best. The classic description of the 17th century French peasants, left by Labruer and confirmed by modern historians, summarizes the existence of this most numerous class of feudal Europe:

“Sullen animals, males and females scattered throughout the countryside, dirty and deathly pale, scorched by the sun, chained to the ground, which they dig and shovel with invincible tenacity; they have a kind of speech power, and when they straighten up, then you can see human faces on them, and they really are people. At night, they return to their den, where they live on brown bread, water and roots. ”

And what Lawrence Stone wrote about a typical English village can be attributed to the rest of Europe at that time:

“It was a place full of hatred and anger, the only thing that bound its inhabitants was episodes of mass hysteria, which temporarily united the majority in order to torture and burn the local witch.” In England and on the Continent there were cities in which up to a third of the population were accused of witchcraft, and where 10 out of every hundred townspeople were executed on this charge in just one year. At the end of the 16th - 17th centuries, more than 3,300 people were executed for "Satanism" in one of the regions of peaceful Switzerland. In the tiny village of Wiesensteig, 63 “witches” were burned in one year. In Obermarchtal, with a population of 700 people, 54 people died at the stake in three years.

Poverty was so central to European society that in the 17th century, the French language had a whole palette of words (about 20) to denote all its gradations and shades. The Academy’s dictionary explained the meaning of the term dans un etat d'indigence absolue: “one who before this did not have food or the necessary clothes or a roof over his head, but who now said goodbye to several wrinkled cooking bowls and blankets that made up the main asset working families. "

In Christian Europe, slavery flourished. The church welcomed and encouraged him; she herself was a major slave trader; the importance of its policy in this area for understanding genocide in America I will say at the end of the essay. In the 14-15 centuries, most slaves came from Eastern Europe, especially Romania (history repeats itself in our time). Little girls were especially appreciated. From a letter from one slave trader to a client interested in this product: “When the ships arrive from Romania, there should be girls, but keep in mind that small slaves are as expensive as adults; of those who represent at least some value, none is worth less than 50-60 florins. " Historian John Boswell observes that "10 to 20 percent of women sold in Seville in the 15th century were pregnant or had babies, and these unborn children and babies were usually delivered to the buyer along with the woman at no extra cost."

The rich had their own problems. They longed for gold and silver in order to satisfy their habits of exotic goods, habits acquired from the time of the first crusades, i.e. the first colonial expeditions of Europeans. Silks, spices, thin cotton, drugs and medicines, perfumes and jewelry demanded a lot of money. So gold became for Europeans, according to one Venetian, “the veins of all state life ... its mind and soul. . . its essence and its very life. " But the supply of precious metals from Africa and the Middle East was unreliable. In addition, wars in Eastern Europe devastated the European treasury. It was necessary to find a new, loyal and preferably cheaper source of gold.

What to add to this? As can be seen from the above, gross violence was the norm in European life. But at times it assumed a particularly pathological character and, as it were, foreshadowed what awaited the unsuspecting inhabitants of the Western Hemisphere. In addition to the everyday scenes of witch-hunting and bonfires, in 1476 in Milan a crowd tore a man to pieces, and then his tormentors ate them. In Paris and Lyon, the Huguenots were killed and cut into pieces, which were then openly sold on the streets. Other outbreaks of sophisticated torture, murder, and ritual cannibalism were not unusual.

Finally, while Columbus was looking for money in Europe for his sea adventures, the Inquisition was raging in Spain. There and throughout Europe, those suspected of abandoning Christianity were tortured and executed in all forms, to which the inventive imagination of Europeans was capable. Some were hung, burned at the stake, cooked in a cauldron or hung on a rack. Others - crushed, chopped off their head, skinned alive, drowned and quartered.

Such was the world that former slave trader Christopher Columbus and his sailors left behind in the rear in August 1492. They were typical inhabitants of this world, its deadly bacilli, whose deadly force was soon to be tested by the millions of human beings living across the Atlantic.

Figures

“When the white gentlemen came to our land, they brought fear and withering flowers. They mutilated and ruined the color of other nations. . . Marauders by day, criminals at night, killers of the world. ” Mayan Book of Chilam Balam.

Stanard and Churchill devote many pages to describing the conspiracy of the Euro-American scientific establishment to conceal the actual population of the American continent in the pre-Columbian era. At the head of this conspiracy was and continues to be the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. And Ward Churchill also talks in detail about the resistance that American Zionist scientists specializing in the so-called so-called strategic for the ideology of modern imperialism area. "Holocaust", i.e. Nazi genocide against European Jews, they are trying to progressive historians to establish the actual scale and world-historical significance of the genocide of the indigenous people of America at the hands of "Western civilization." We will examine the last question in the second part of this article on the genocide in North America. As for the flagship of official American science, the Smithsonian Institute until very recently propagated as "scientific" estimates of the pre-Columbian population made in the 19th and early 20th centuries by racist anthropologists such as James Mooney, according to which no more than 1 lived in North America 100,000 people. Only in the post-war period, the application of agricultural analysis methods allowed us to establish that the population density there was an order of magnitude higher, and that back in the 17th century, for example, on the island of Martha’s Vinyard, now the resort site of the richest and most influential Euro-Americans, 3,000 Indians lived. By the mid 60s. the estimate of the indigenous population north of the Rio Grande rose to a minimum of 12.5 million by the start of the invasion of the European colonialists. By 1492 alone, up to 3.8 million people lived in the Great Lakes region alone, and up to 5.25 in the Mississippi basin and main tributaries. In the 80s. new studies have shown that the population of pre-Columbian North America could reach 18.5, and the total hemisphere - 112 million (Dobins). Based on these studies, the Cherokee demographer Russell Thornton made calculations to determine how many people actually lived and could not live in North America. His conclusion: a minimum of 9-12.5 million. Recently, many historians have taken as a norm the average between the calculations of Dobins and Thornton, i.e. 15 million as the most likely approximate number of Native Americans. In other words, the population of this continent was about fifteen times higher than what the Smithsonian Institution claimed back in the 80s, and seven and a half times more than what it is ready to allow today. Moreover, calculations close to those made by Dobins and Thornton were already known in the middle of the 19th century, but they were ignored as ideologically unacceptable, contrary to the central myth of the conquerors about the supposedly “pristine”, “deserted” continent, which only waited for them to populate it .

Based on current data, we can say that when October 12, 1492, Christopher Columbus descended on one of the islands of the continent, soon called the “New World,” its population was from 100 to 145 million people (Stanard). Two centuries later, it fell by 90%. To date, the most “fortunate” of the once existing peoples of both Americas have retained no more than 5% of their former numbers. In terms of size and duration (to this day), the genocide of the indigenous population of the Western Hemisphere has no parallel in world history.

So in Hispaniola, where up to 8 million tainos flourished until 1492, by 1570 there were only two miserable villages of the island's native inhabitants, about whom Columbus wrote 80 years ago that “there are no better and more gentle people in the world”.

Some statistics on the districts.

For 75 years - from the appearance of the first Europeans in 1519 to 1594 - the population in Central Mexico, the most densely populated area of \u200b\u200bthe American continent, fell by 95%, from 25 million to barely 1 million 300 thousand people.

Over the 60 years since the arrival of the Spaniards, the population of Western Nicaragua has declined by 99%, from more than 1 million to less than 10 thousand people.

In West and Central Honduras, over half a century, 95% of the indigenous people were destroyed. In Cordoba, near the Gulf of Mexico, 97% per century with a little. In the neighboring province of Jalapa, 97% of the population was also destroyed: from 180 thousand in 1520 to 5 thousand in 1626. And so - everywhere in Mexico and Central America. The advent of the Europeans meant the lightning and almost complete disappearance of the indigenous population, who lived and flourished there for many millennia.

On the eve of the invasion of Europeans in Peru and Chile, 9–14 million people lived in the Inca’s homeland ... Long before the end of the century, no more than 1 million inhabitants remained in Peru. And after a few years - only half of this. It was destroyed 94% of the Andean population, from 8.5 to 13.5 million people.

Brazil was perhaps the most populated region of both Americas. According to the first Portuguese governor, Tome de Souz, the reserves of the indigenous population here were inexhaustible "even if we butchered them in a slaughterhouse." He was wrong. Already 20 years after the founding of the colony in 1549, epidemics and slave labor on plantations brought the peoples of Brazil to the brink of extinction.

By the end of the 16th century, about 200 thousand Spaniards moved to both "India". To Mexico, Central America and further south. By the same time, from 60 to 80 million indigenous inhabitants of these areas were destroyed.

Colombian era genocide methods

Here we observe striking parallels with the methods of the Nazis. Already in the second expedition of Columbus (1493), the Spaniards used the analogue of Hitler’s sonderkommando to enslave and destroy the local population. Parties of Spanish thugs with dogs trained to kill a man, instruments of torture, gallows and shackles arranged regular punitive expeditions with indispensable mass executions. But it is important to emphasize the following. The connection of this early capitalist genocide with the Nazi lay deeper. The Tainos people who inhabited the Greater Antilles and were completely exterminated for several decades fell victim to neither "medieval" cruelties, nor Christian fanaticism, nor even pathological greed of the European invaders. Both that, and another, and the third led to genocide, only being organized by new economic rationality. The entire population of Hispaniola, Cuba, Jamaica and other islands was registered as private property, which was supposed to be profitable. This methodical account of the huge population scattered across the world's largest islands in the world with a handful of Europeans just emerging from the Middle Ages is most striking.

Columbus was the first to use massive hangings

From Spanish accountants in lats and with a cross, a direct thread stretches to the "rubber" genocide in the "Belgian" Congo, which killed 10 million Africans, and to the Nazi slave labor system for extermination.

Columbus ordered all residents over 14 years of age to surrender to the Spaniards a thimble of golden sand or 25 pounds of cotton (in areas where there was no gold). Having fulfilled this quota, a copper token was hung around the neck indicating the date of receipt of the last tribute. The token gave its holder the right to three months of life. Caught without this token or expired, the hands of both hands were chopped off, hung on the victim’s neck and sent to die in their village. Columbus, who had previously been involved in the slave trade along the western coast of Africa, apparently adopted this type of execution from the Arab slave traders. During the governorship of Columbus, only in Hispaniola up to 10 thousand Indians were killed in this way. It was almost impossible to fulfill the established quota. Local residents had to stop growing food and all other things to dig gold. Famine began. Weakened and demoralized, they became easy prey for diseases introduced by the Spaniards. Such as the flu brought by pigs from the Canary, which was brought to Spain by Columbus' second expedition. Tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of tainos, perished in this first pandemic of American genocide. An eyewitness describes the huge piles of flu-dwellers of Hispaniola who there was no one to bury. The Indians tried to run wherever they look: across the island, into the mountains, even to other islands. But salvation was nowhere. Mothers killed their children before killing themselves. Entire villages resorted to mass suicides, throwing themselves from rocks or taking poison. But death was even more in the hands of the Spaniards.

In addition to the atrocities, which at least could be explained by the cannibalistic rationality of systematic profit, the genocide on the Atillas and then on the continent included seemingly irrational, unjustified forms of violence on a massive scale and pathological, sadistic forms. Modern Columbus sources describe how the Spanish colonists hung, roasted on skewers, burned Indians at bonfires. Children were cut into pieces for feeding dogs. And this despite the fact that at first the tainos did not show the Spaniards any resistance. “The Spaniards pledged who could cut a man in two with one blow or chop off his head, or they would rip open their bellies. They tear off babies by the legs from the mother’s chest and smash their heads on stones .... They strung other children on their long swords along with their mothers and all who stood before them. ” None of the SS men on the Eastern Front could be demanded more zeal, Ward Churchill rightly observes. We add that the Spaniards established the rule that for one murdered Christian, they will kill one hundred Indians. The Nazis did not have to invent anything. They only had to copy.

Cuban Lidice of the 16th century

The evidence of the Spaniards of that era about their sadism is truly innumerable. In one often cited episode in Cuba, a unit of Spaniards of about 100 soldiers made a halt on the banks of the river and, having found whetstones in it, imprisoned their swords. Wishing to experience their severity, an eyewitness to this event reports, they attacked a group of men, women, children and the elderly (apparently specially driven for this purpose) sitting on the shore, who looked in fear at the Spaniards and their horses, and began to rip open their bellies, chop and cut until they were all killed. Then they went into a nearby large house and did the same there, killing everyone they found there. Blood streamed from the house, as if a herd of cows had been slaughtered there. Seeing the terrible wounds of the dead and dying was a terrible sight.

This massacre began in the village of Zukayo, the inhabitants of which shortly before this had prepared a lunch of cassava, fruit and fish for the conquistadors. From there, it spread throughout the county. No one knows how many Indians the Spaniards killed in this explosion of sadism, until their thirst for blood dulled, but Las Casas believes that much more than 20 thousand.

The Spaniards took pleasure in inventing sophisticated cruelties and torture. They built a gallows high enough so that the hanged man could touch the ground with his toes to avoid strangulation, and thus hung thirteen Indians, one after another, in honor of Christ the Savior and his apostles. While the Indians were still alive, the Spaniards felt the sharpness and strength of their swords on them, opening their breasts with one blow so that the insides were visible, and there were those that did worse things. Then, straw was wound on their excised bodies and burned alive. One soldier caught two children of two each, pierced their throat with a dagger and threw them into the abyss.

If these descriptions seem familiar to those who have heard of the massacres in Mai Lai, Song Mai and other Vietnamese villages, this similarity is further enhanced by the term “appeasement”, which the Spaniards used to describe their terror. But no matter how terrifying the massacres in Vietnam, they cannot be compared in scale to what happened five hundred years ago on the island of Hispaniola alone. By the time Columbus arrived in 1492, the population of this island was 8 million. Four years later, one third to half of this number died and was destroyed. And after 1496, the rate of destruction still increased.

Slave work

In contrast to British America, where genocide had as its direct goal the physical destruction of the indigenous population in order to conquer “living space”, genocide in Central and South America was a byproduct of the brutal exploitation of the Indians for economic purposes. Mass killings and torture were not uncommon, but they served as a tool of terror to subjugate and "appease" the indigenous population. Residents of America were seen as tens of millions of free-labor hands of natural slaves to extract gold and silver. There were so many of them that the rational economic method for the Spaniards was not the reproduction of the labor force of their slaves, but their replacement. The Indians were killed by overwork, and then replaced with a fresh batch of slaves.

From the highlands of the Andes, they were driven on a coca plantation to the lowlands of the rainforest, where their organism unaccustomed to such a climate became easy prey for deadly diseases. Such as "uta", from which the nose, mouth and throat decayed and died a painful death. The mortality on these plantations was so high (up to 50% in five months) that even the Crown was worried, by issuing a decree restricting the production of coca. Like all decrees of this kind, he remained on paper, because, as a contemporary wrote, “on coca plantations there is one disease that is worse than all others. This is the unlimited greed of the Spaniards. ”

But even worse was getting into the silver mines. Workers were lowered to a depth of 250 meters with a bag of fried maize per week shift. In addition to overwork, landslides, poor ventilation and overseers violence, Native American miners breathed poisonous fumes of arsenic, mercury, etc. “If 20 healthy Indians descend into the mine on Monday, only half can get out of it maimed on Sunday,” one contemporary wrote. Stanard estimates that the average life expectancy of coca pickers and Native American miners in the early genocide was no more than three or four months, i.e. about the same as the synthetic rubber factory in Auschwitz in 1943

Hernan Cortes tortures Kuautemoka to find out where the Aztecs hid gold

After the massacre in the Aztec capital Tenochtetlan Cortes declared Central Mexico "New Spain" and established a colonial regime there based on slave labor. This is how a contemporary describes the methods of “appeasement” (hence “appeasement” as Washington’s official policy during the Vietnam War) and enslavement of Indians to work in mines.

“Numerous testimonies of numerous witnesses tell of how Indians are led in columns to mines. They are chained to each other by neck shackles.

Pits with stakes on which the Indians were strung

Those who fall down are chopped off their heads. They talk about children who are locked in houses and burned, and also stabbed if they are too slow. It is common for women to cut their breasts and to attach heavy weights to their legs before dumping them into a lake or lagoon. They talk about babies torn from their mothers, killed and used as road signs. Runaway or "stray" Indians chopped off limbs and sent to their village, hanging on their neck cut off hands and noses. They talk about “pregnant women, children and the elderly, who are caught as much as possible” and are thrown into special pits, at the bottom of which sharp stakes are dug and “leave them there until the pit is full.” And much, much more. ” (Stanard, 82-83)

Indians burned in homes

As a result, of the approximately 25 million inhabitants of the Mexican kingdom at the time of the arrival of the conquistadors, by 1595 only 1.3 million were still alive. The rest were mostly tortured in the mines and plantations of New Spain.

In the Andes, where Pizarro’s gangs wielded swords and lashes, by the end of the 16th century the population had fallen from 14 million to less than 1 million people. The reasons were the same as in Mexico and Central America. As one Spaniard in Peru wrote in 1539, “the Indians here are completely destroyed and perish ... They pray with the cross to give food for God’s sake. But [the soldiers] kill all the lamas for nothing more than to make candles ... The Indians are left nothing to sow, and since they have no cattle and there is nowhere to take them from, they can only starve to death. " (Churchill, 103)

The psychological aspect of genocide

Recent historians of American genocide are beginning to pay more attention to its psychological aspect, the role of depression and stress in the destruction of tens and hundreds of peoples and ethnic groups. And here I see a number of parallels with the current situation of the peoples of the former Soviet Union.

Chronicles of genocide have preserved numerous evidence of a psychic “dislocation” of the indigenous population of America. The cultural war that the European conquerors waged for centuries against the cultures of the enslaved peoples with the open intention of destroying them had terrible consequences on the psyche of the indigenous population of the New World. The reaction to this “psychic attack” ranged from alcoholism to chronic depression, mass infanticide and suicide, and more often people just went to the ground and died. Side effects of the defeat of the psyche were a sharp drop in the birth rate and the rise in child mortality. Even if illnesses, starvation, hard labor and killings did not lead to the complete destruction of the indigenous collective, sooner and later low birth rates and infant mortality led to this. The Spaniards noticed a sharp drop in the number of children and at times tried to force the Indians to have children.

Kirpatrick Sale summed up the Tainos reaction to his genocide:

“Las Casas, like others, expresses the opinion that most of all in strange white people from large ships, the tainos were not struck by their violence, not even their greed and strange attitude to property, but rather their cold, their callous callousness, lack of love in them ". (Kirkpatrick Sale. The Conquest of Paradise. P. 151.)

In general, reading the history of imperialist genocide on all continents - from Hispaniola, Andes and California to Equatorial Africa, the Indian subcontinent, China and Tasmania - you begin to understand literature such as the “War of the Worlds” by Wells or the “Martian Chronicles” by Bradbury, not to mention Hollywood invasions of aliens. Do these nightmares of Euro-American fiction lead their descent from the horrors of the past repressed in the “collective unconscious”, are they not called upon to suppress guilt (or, on the contrary, prepare for new genocides) by pretending to be a victim of the “aliens” whom your ancestors exterminated from Columbus to Churchill, Hitler and Bush?

Demonization of the victim

The American genocide also had its own propaganda support, its own black PR, which was strikingly similar to that used by the Euro-American imperialists to “demonize” their future enemy in the eyes of their people, to give a halo of justice to the war and robbery.

On January 16, 1493, three days after the killing of two tainos during trade, Columbus turned his ships back on course to Europe. In his journal, he described the natives killed by the Spaniards and their people as "the evil inhabitants of the island of Cariba who eat people." As proved by modern anthropological principles, it was a fiction of pure water, but it formed the basis for a kind of classification of the population of Antilles, and then of the whole New World, which became a guide to genocide. Those who welcomed and obeyed the colonialists were considered “affectionate Tainos”. Those natives who resisted or were simply killed by the Spaniards fell under the rubric of savage cannibals who deserve everything the colonialists were able to inflict upon them. (In particular, in the logbook of November 4 and 23, 1492, we find such creations of the dark medieval imagination of Columbus: these "ferocious savages" have an eye in the middle of their foreheads, they have "dog noses with which they drink the blood of their victims, which they cut the throat and castrate. ")

“These islands are inhabited by Cannibals, a wild, rebellious race that feeds on human flesh. They are rightly called anthropophages. They wage constant wars against the gentle and timid Indians for the sake of their bodies; these are their trophies, what they hunt for. They ruthlessly destroy and terrorize the Indians. ”

This description of Coma, one of the participants in the second expedition of Columbus, speaks much more about Europeans than about the inhabitants of the Caribbean. The Spaniards pre-dehumanized people whom they had never seen, but who were supposed to be their victims. And this is not a distant story; it reads like today's newspaper.

"Wild and rebellious race" - these are the key words of Western imperialism, from Columbus to Bush. "Wild" - because he does not want to be a slave to the "civilized" invader. Among the "wild" "enemies of civilization" were recorded and the Soviet Communists. From Columbus, who invented Caribbean cannibals with an eye on his forehead and dog noses in 1493, there is a direct thread to Reichsfuhrer Himmler, who explained the specifics of the war on the Eastern Front at a meeting of the SS leaders in mid-1942:

“In all previous campaigns, the enemies of Germany had enough common sense and decency to succumb to superior strength, thanks to their“ long-standing and civilized ... Western European sophistication. ” In the battle for France, enemy units surrendered as soon as they received a warning that "further resistance is meaningless." Of course, “we, the SS men” came to Russia without illusions, but until the last winter too many Germans were unaware that “the Russian commissars and the stubborn Bolsheviks are full of brutal will to power and animal stubbornness, which makes them fight to the end and has nothing in common with human logic or duty ... but it is an instinct inherent in all animals. " The Bolsheviks were "animals" so "deprived of all human things" that "surrounded and without food, they resorted to the murder of their comrades in order to survive longer", behavior bordering on "cannibalism". This is a "war of annihilation" between "rough matter, the primitive masses, it is better to say, the non-humane Untermans led by the commissars" and the "Germans ..." (Arno J. Mayer. Why Did the Heavens Not Darken? The "Final Solution" in History .New York: Pantheon Books, 1988, p. 281.)

In fact, and in strict accordance with the principle of ideological inversion, not the indigenous inhabitants of the New World, but their conquerors were engaged in cannibalism. The second expedition of Columbus brought to the Caribbean a large batch of mastiffs and greyhounds, trained to kill people and eat their insides. Very soon, the Spaniards began to feed their dogs with humanity. Living children were considered a special delicacy. Colonialists allowed dogs to nibble them alive, often in the presence of their parents.

Dogs eat indians

Spaniard feeding hounds to Indians

Modern historians come to the conclusion that in the Caribbean there was a whole network of "butcher shops" where the bodies of the Indians were sold as dog food. Like everything else in the legacy of Columbus, cannibalism was developed on the mainland. A letter has survived from one of the Inca conquerors of the empire, in which he writes: “... when I returned from Cartagena, I met a Portuguese named Rohe Martin. On the porch of his house hung pieces of chopped-up Indians to feed his dogs, as if they were wild beasts ... ”(Stanard, 88)

In turn, the Spaniards often had to eat their dogs, fed by humanity, when in search of gold and slaves they fell into a difficult situation and suffered from hunger. This is one of the gloomy ironies of this genocide.

Why?

Churchill asks how to explain the fact that a group of human beings, even those such as the Spaniards of the Columbus era, collectively obsessed with a thirst for wealth and prestige, could for a long time show such limitless ferocity, such a brutal inhumanity towards other people. ? Stanard posed the same question earlier, who traced in detail the ideological roots of genocide in America from the early Middle Ages to the Renaissance. “Who are these people whose minds and souls stood behind the genocides of Muslims, Africans, Indians, Jews, Gypsies and other religious, racial and ethnic groups? Who are they who continue to commit massacres today? ” What kind of people could commit these heinous crimes? Christians, Stanard replies and invites the reader to get acquainted with the views of European Christians coming from deep antiquity on gender, race and war. He discovers that by the end of the Middle Ages, European culture had prepared all the necessary prerequisites for a four-hundred-year-old genocide against the indigenous inhabitants of the New World.

Stanard devotes particular attention to the Christian imperative of suppressing “carnal desires,” that is, the Church's repressive attitude towards sexuality in European culture. In particular, he establishes a genetic connection between genocide in the New World and pan-European waves of terror in relation to “witches,” in which some modern scholars see carriers of a matriarchal pagan ideology, popular among the masses and threatening the authority of the Church and the feudal elite.

Stanard also emphasizes the European origin of the concept of race and color.

The church always supported the slave trade, although in the early Middle Ages it basically forbade keeping Christians enslaved. Indeed, for the Church, only a Christian was a man in the full sense of the word. The "infidels" could become human only by adopting Christianity, and this gave them the right to freedom. But in the 14th century, an ominous change took place in the politics of the Church. With the increase in the volume of slave trade in the Mediterranean, so did profits from it. But this income was threatened by a loophole left by the clergy in order to strengthen the ideology of Christian exceptionalism. Earlier ideological motives came into conflict with the material interests of the Christian ruling classes. And in 1366, the prelates of Florence authorized the import and sale of “unfaithful” slaves, explaining that “unfaithful” means “all slaves of the wrong origin, even if they had become Catholics at the time of their importation,” and that “the infidels by origin "Means simply" from the earth and the race of the unbelievers. " Thus, the Church changed the principle justifying slavery from religious to ethnic, which was an important step towards the genocides of modern times, based on unchanging racial and ethnic characteristics (Armenian, Jewish, gypsy, Slavic and others).

European racial “science” did not lag behind religion. The specificity of European feudalism was the requirement of genetic exclusivity of the nobility. In Spain, the concept of "purity of blood", limpieza de sangra, became central to the end of the 15th and throughout the 16th century. Nobility could not be achieved by wealth or merit. The origins of “racial science” lie in genealogical research of the time, which was conducted by an army of specialists in checking genealogy lines.

Of particular importance was the theory of “separate and unequal origin,” put forward by the famous Swiss physician and philosopher Paracelsus by 1520. According to this theory, Africans, Indians, and other non-Christian "colored" peoples did not descend from Adam and Eve, but from other and lower ancestors. Paracelsus' ideas were widespread in Europe on the eve of the European invasion of Mexico and South America. These ideas were an early expression of the so-called theory of "polygenesis", which has become an indispensable part of the pseudoscientific racism of the 19th century. But even before the publication of the writings of Paracelsus, similar ideological justifications for the genocide appeared in Spain (1512) and Scotland (1519). The Spaniard Bernardo de Mesa (later the Bishop of Cuba) and the Scot Johann Mager came to the same conclusion that the indigenous inhabitants of the New World were a special race, which God intended to be slaves of European Christians. The height of the theological debate of Spanish intellectuals on the subject of whether the Indians are people or monkeys falls on the middle of the 16th century, when millions of people in Central and South America died from terrible epidemics, brutal massacres and hard labor.

The official historian of the Indies, Fernandez de Ovieda, did not deny atrocities against the Indians and described "countless brutal deaths, innumerable like stars." But he considered it acceptable, for "to use gunpowder against the Gentiles is to smoke incense for the Lord." And to the pleas of Las Casas to spare the inhabitants of America, the theologian Juan de Sepulveda declared: "There can be no doubt that nations so uncivilized, so barbaric and corrupted by so many sins and perversions have been justly conquered." He quoted Aristotle, who wrote in his Politics, that some people are “slaves by nature” and “must be driven like wild animals to make them live right”. To which Las Casas replied: “Let's forget about Aristotle, because, fortunately, we have the covenant of Christ: Love your neighbor as yourself.” (But even Las Casas, the most passionate and humane European defender of the Indians, felt compelled to admit that they are "possibly complete barbarians").

But if among the church intelligentsia opinions about the nature of the native inhabitants of America could differ, among the European masses reigned complete unanimity. 15 years before the great debate between Las Casas and Sepulveda, the Spanish observer wrote that “ordinary people“ universally consider wise people who are convinced that the American Indians are not people, but “a special, third kind of animals between a man and a monkey were created God to better serve man. ” (Stanard, 211).

So, in the early 16th century, the racist apology of colonialism and suprematism was formed, which in the hands of the Euro-American ruling classes will serve as an excuse ("protection of civilization") for subsequent genocides (and still coming?). It is not surprising, therefore, that on the basis of his research, Stanard puts forward the thesis of a deep ideological connection between the Spanish and Anglo-Saxon genocide of the peoples of America and the Nazi genocide of Jews, Gypsies and Slavs. European colonialists, white settlers, and Nazis had the same ideological roots. And this ideology, adds Stanard, remains alive today. It was on it that US interventions in Southeast Asia and the Middle East were based.

List of references

J. M. Blaut. The Colonizer’s Model of the World. Geographical Diffusionism and Eurocentric History. New Yourk: The Giulford Press, 1993.

Ward Churchill. A Little Matter of Genocide. Holocaust and the Denial in the Americas 1492 to the Present. San Francisco: City Lights, 1997.

C. L. R. James. The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution. New York: Vintage, 1989.

Arno J. Mayer. Why Did the Heavens Not Darken? The "Final Solution" in History. New York: Pantheon Books, 1988.

David Stannard American Holocaust: The Conquest of the New World. Oxford University Press, 1993.

Almost half of the New Kingdom of Spain founded by them was located where the headquarters of Texas, California, New Mexico and others are located today. The Spanish origin also has the name of the state of Florida - as the Spaniards called the lands they knew in the southeast North America. In the valley of the Hudson River, a colony of New Netherlands arose; further south, in the Delaware River Valley, is New Sweden. Louisiana, which occupied vast territories in the basin of the largest river of the Mississippi continent, was the property of France. In the XVIII century. the northwestern part of the continent, modern Alaska, began to develop Russian industry-lenniks. But the most impressive successes in the colonization of North America were the British.

For immigrants from the British Isles and from other countries of Europe overseas opened up wide financial opportunities, attracted here the hope of free labor and personal enrichment. America was also attracted by its religious freedom. Many Englishmen moved to America during the period of revolutionary upheaval in the middle of the 17th century. Religious sectarians, ruined peasants, urban poor were leaving for the colony. All kinds of adventurers and adventurers rushed across the ocean; exiled criminals. The Irish and Scottish fled here when life in their homeland became completely unbearable.

South North America washed by the waters Mexican Gulf. Floating on it, the Spaniards discovered the peninsula Floridacovered with dense forests and swamps. Nowadays it is a famous resort and a place to launch American spacecraft. Ispants went to the mouth of the largest river in North America - Mississippiflowing into Gulf of Mexico. In the Mississippi Native American - "big river", "father of the waters." Her waters were muddy, trees torn uproot floated along the river. To the west of the Mississippi, the wetlands were gradually replaced by drier steppes - prairiesthat roamed herds of bison, similar to bulls. Prairies stretched right down to the foot Rocky mountainsstretching from north to south throughout North America. The rocky mountains are part of a huge mountain country Cor-dealer. Cordillera overlook the Pacific Ocean.

On the Pacific coast, the Spaniards discovered peninsula of california and Gulf of california. Flows into it colorado river - "red." The depths of its valley in the Cordillera struck the Spaniards. Under their feet was a cliff 1800 meters deep, at the bottom of which a river was flowing with a barely noticeable silver snake. For three days people walked along the edge of the valley Grand Canyon, searched for a descent down and could not find.

The northern half of North America was mastered by the British and French. In the middle of the XVI century, the French pirate Cartier discovered the bay and saint La Vrentia River In Canada. The Indian word "Canada" - a settlement - became the name of a huge country. Moving up the St. Lawrence River, the French reached Great Lakes. Among them - the largest freshwater lake in the world - Top. On the Niagara River, flowing between the Great Lakes, a very powerful and beautiful was discovered Niagara Falls.

Immigrants from the Netherlands founded the city of New Amsterdam. Now it is called New York and is the largest city United states of america.

At the beginning of the 17th century, the first British colonies appeared on the Atlantic coast of North America - settlements whose inhabitants grew tobacco in the south and grain and vegetables in the north.

Thirteen (13) Colonies

Systematic colonization of North America began after the approval on the English throne of the Stuart dynasty. The first British colony Jamestown was founded in 1607 in Virginia. Then, as a result of the massive resettlement of the English Puritans overseas, the development began New England.First Puritan colony in modern state Massachusettsappeared in 1620. In subsequent years, settlers from Massachusetts, dissatisfied with the religious intolerance that reigned there, founded colonies Connecticutand Rhode Island. After the Glorious Revolution, Colony Separates from Massachusetts New hampshire.

On the lands north of Virginia, granted by Charles I to Lord Baltimore, a colony was founded in 1632 Maryland. On the lands located between Virginia and New England, the first appeared Dutch and Swedish colonists, but in 1664 they were captured by the British. New Netherlands was renamed to colony New Yorkand a colony arose south of it New Jersey. In 1681, W. Penn received a royal charter on lands north of Maryland. In honor of his father, the famous admiral, a new colony was named Pennsylvania. Throughout the XVIII century. separated from her Delaware. In 1663, settlement began south of Virginia, where colonies later appeared. North Carolina and South Carolina. In 1732, King George (George) II authorized the development of land between South Carolina and Spanish Florida, which were named after him Georgia.

Five more British colonies were based on the territory of modern Canada.

In all the colonies, various forms of representative government existed, but the majority of the population was deprived of the right to vote.

The economy of the colonies

Colonies varied greatly in the types of economic activity. In the north, where small-scale farming predominated, home crafts associated with it developed, and foreign trade, shipping, and marine crafts were widely developed. In the south, large agricultural plantations prevailed, on which tobacco, cotton, and rice were grown.

Colony Slavery

Growing production required labor. The presence of undeveloped territories to the west of the borders of the colonies doomed to failure any attempts to turn the white poor into wage labor, since for them there was always the opportunity to move to free land. Indians could not be forced to work for white masters. Those of them whom they tried to make slaves quickly died in captivity, and the merciless war waged by immigrants against the Indians led to the mass extermination of the red-skinned Aboriginal people of America. The problem of labor was solved by the massive import of slaves from Africa, which in America were called blacks. The slave trade has become a major factor in the development of colonies, especially southern ones. By the end of the XVII century. blacks have become the predominant workforce and, in fact, the foundation of plantation economies in the south. Material from the site

Europeans were looking for passage from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific. At the beginning of the XVII century, the Englishman Henry Hudson tried to sail along the northern American coast between the mainland and the islands lying north Canadian Arctic Archipelago. The attempt failed, but Hudson discovered a huge Hudson Bay - a real “ice bag”, along which ice floats in the summer.

In the spruce and pine forests of Canada, the French and British hunted fur animals, traded their skins for the Indians. In the middle of the XVII century, the English company of Hudson's Bay appeared, engaged in the purchase of furs. The company’s agents penetrated deep into the mainland, bringing information about new rivers, mountains, lakes. At the end of the XVIII century, Alexander Mackenzie and his companions on boat boats from birch bark made a trip along the rivers and lakes of northern Canada. They hoped that the cold river, later called by the name Mackenziewill lead to the Pacific Ocean. The traveler himself called it a "river of disappointment", realizing that it flows into the Arctic Ocean. Mackenzie left for his homeland, in Scotland - a country in the north of the British Isles, to study geography. When he returned, he climbed the river valleys and crossed the Rocky Mountains. Having passed the mountain passes of the Cordy Lier, Mackenzie began to go down the rivers flowing to the west, and in 1793 he was the first to go to the Pacific coast.

In fact, from the first trip of Columbus and acquaintance with the indigenous people of the islands of the West Indies, a bloody history of the interaction of Native Americans with Europeans began to take shape. The Caribs were exterminated - ostensibly for their commitment to cannibalism. They were followed by other islanders for refusing to fulfill slave duties. The first witness of the atrocities of the Spanish colonialists was the witness of these events, the outstanding humanist Bartolome Las Casas in the treatise "The Shortest Messages on the Destruction of the Indies", published in 1542. Hispaniola "was the first where Christians entered; here began the extermination and death of the Indians. Having ravaged and devastated the island, the Christians began to take away wives and children from the Indians, forced them to serve themselves and used them in the worst way ... And the Indians began to look for means that could throw Christians out of their land, and then they took up arms ... Christians on horseback, armed with swords and spears, mercilessly killed the Indians. Entering the villages, they did not leave anyone alive ... ”And all this for the sake of profit. Las Casas wrote that the conquistadors "walked with a cross in his hand and an insatiable thirst for gold in his heart." Following Haiti in 1511, Diego Velazquez with a detachment of 300 people conquered Cuba. The natives were destroyed mercilessly. In 1509, an attempt was made to establish two colonies on the coast of Central America under the leadership of Olonse de Ojeda and Diego Nikuez. The Indians opposed. 70 Ojeda satellites were killed. Most of Nikuez’s companions died from wounds and diseases. Survivors of the Spaniards near the Gulf of Darien founded a small colony "Golden Castile" under the leadership of Vasco Nunez Balboa. It was he who in 1513, with a detachment of 190 Spaniards and 600 Porter Indians, crossed the mountain range and saw the wide Gulf of Panama, and beyond it the vast southern sea. Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Panama 20 times, built the first Spanish ships for sailing in the Pacific Ocean, and opened the Pearl Islands. The units of Ojeda and Balboa included the desperate hidalgo Francisco Pizarro. In 1517, Balboa was executed, and the governor of the colony was Pedro Arias d'Avil. In 1519 the city of Panama was founded, which became the main base for the colonization of the Andean Highlands, the fabulous wealth of the countries of which the Spaniards were well heard. In 1524-1527 reconnaissance voyages to the shores of Peru were carried out. In 1528, Pizarro went to Spain for help and returned to Panama in 1530, accompanied by volunteers, including four of his half-brothers. During 1531 - 1533 years. Pizarro, Alvarado and Almagro detachments fought along the ridges and valleys of the Andes. The prosperous Inca state with a highly developed common culture, a culture of agriculture, handicraft production, aqueducts, roads and cities was defeated, and countless wealth was seized. The Pizarro brothers were elevated to the knighthood, Francisco became the Marquis, governor of the new possession. In 1536, he founded the new capital of possession - Lima. The Indians did not accept defeat, and for several years there was a stubborn war and the destruction of the rebellious.

In 1535 - 1537 years. a detachment of 500 Spaniards and 15,000 Indian porters led by Almagro made a very difficult long raid on the tropical part of the Andes from the ancient Inca capital of Cuzco to the city of Co-kimbo south of the Atacama desert. During the raid, about 10 thousand Indians and 150 Spaniards died from hunger and cold. But it was collected and transferred to the treasury more than a ton of gold. In 1540, Pizarro commissioned Pedro de Valdivia to complete the conquest of South America. Valdivia crossed the Atacama Desert, reached the central part of Chile, founded a new colony and its capital Santiago, as well as the cities of Concepcion and Valdivia. He controlled the colony until he was killed by the rebellious Araucans in 1554. The southernmost part of Chile was examined by Juan Ladrillero. He crossed the Strait of Magellan from west to east in 1558. The contours of the South American mainland were determined. Attempts were made to deep intelligence in the interior of the mainland. The main motive was the search for Eldorado. In 1524, Portuguese Alegu Garcia with a large detachment of Guarani Indians crossed the southeastern part of the Brazilian plateau, and went to the tributary of the Parana River - r. Iguazu, opened a grand waterfall, crossed the Laplat Lowland and the Gran Chaco Plain, and reached the foothills of the Andes. In 1525 he was killed. In 1527 - 1529 years. S. Cabot, while serving in Spain, in search of a "silver kingdom" rose high up La Plata and Parana, organized fortified towns. The towns did not last long, no abundant deposits of silver were found. In 1541, Gonzalo Pizarro with a large detachment of 320 Spaniards and 4 thousand Indians from Quito crossed the eastern chain of the Andes and went to one of the tributaries of the Amazon. There was built and launched a small vessel, a team of 57 of which, under the leadership of Francisco Orellana, was supposed to scout the area and get food. Orellana did not return back and was the first to cross South America from west to east, sailing along the Amazon to its mouth. The detachment was attacked by Indian archers who were not inferior in courage to men. Homer's myth about the Amazons received a new registration. Amazon travelers first encountered such a formidable phenomenon as viciousness, a tidal wave that rolls into the lower reaches of the river and can be traced for hundreds of kilometers. In the dialect of the Tupi-Guarani Indians, this stormy water rampart is called "amazuna". This word was interpreted by the Spaniards in their own way and gave rise to the legend of the Amazons (Siver, 1896). The weather was favorable for Orellane and his companions; they also made a voyage by sea to the island of Margarita, on which the Spanish colonists had already settled. G. Pizarro, who did not wait for Orellana, with a thinned squad, was forced to again storm the ridge in the opposite direction. In 1542, only 80 participants in this passage returned to Quito. In 1541 - 1544 years. Spaniard Nufrio Chavez with three satellites again crossed the South American mainland, this time from east to west, from southern Brazil to Peru, and returned the same way.