Development of labor systems in North America from the arrival of the Spanish Empire through the British colonial era.
Labour system is a plan or system for utilizing convict labor often authorized by the law. Labor to work on the farm, build a structure or process raw materials. In North America, during both the sixteenth and seventeenth century, people could only deprive the power of animals, water, wind, and other human beings. Europeans who colonized America were faced by a shortage of labor to work in their farms (Davies, 2017).
Through that, they needed more labor, and so they sort the Americans to help the other colonists. The Spanish government, therefore, granted legal rights for essential work to get more human labor. This then showed the general view of colonization by the Spanish government. The Spanish had a strong belief that indigenous people would work for them by right of conquest thereby bringing them Catholicism. The Spanish people saw the native people as less of the landowners, and they sought to control the native land.
They imposed correct religious beliefs upon the land’s inhabitants. The native people were not in for the idea, and they then resisted both the labor obligations and their effort to change their ancient belief systems. From Mahoney (2015), the encomienda system involved too much violence. Bartolome de Las Casas, a Spaniard denounced the brutality by the Spanish rule. One Dominican called Las Casas owned Indian slaves and received the encomienda after witnessing how the native people were treated, he turned against the encomienda.
La Casas released his native slaves then began advocating for humane treatment of the aboriginal people. He went further to lobby for new legislation which is the New Laws to eliminate slavery. Las Casas wrote about the inhuman treatment of Indians to inspire the black legend. The English writers also spoke against the harsh Spanish rule on the native.
They justified their efforts as more humane. Africans formed an essential element of the labor landscape by the middle of the sixteenth century. They produced cash crops such as sugar and tobacco for the European market. From Davies (2017), these Europeans viewed Africans as pagans and through that, the enslaved Africans. They were also able to control African’s lives. Each time the natives tried resisting the Europeans rule, they met physical, mental, sexual violence and more harassment. These inhuman Europeans sold slaves to Spanish, Dutch and English colonies both in America and the Caribbean where sugar was the primary export. Many Africans found themselves growing, harvesting and processing sugarcane in their normal routine of physical labor.
Motivations and actions of different European colonies
Economic and political motives; according to Woolf (2018), crusades had introduced the European people to those goods and the luxury of the east long before the sixteenth century. Products such as spices became a necessity yet they had become extremely costly. They had to be transported over a very long distance and sometimes dangerous overland routes. Europeans then started desiring for a new less expensive way to Asia to get those commodities.
This led to intense economic and political rivalry among the European powers to see who could secure the prizes first. Many individuals went to the new world due to several reasons but most commonly to seek their fortunes. Some of the young Spaniards had expectations of finding new wealth in the mines. On the other side, the English settlers expected to venture into the land and commerce thereby acquiring more wealth (Mahoney, 2015).
Religious motives; religion was a compelling motive for both the rulers and the ordinary people. According to the Spanish conquerors, they had to take priests with them during every expedition. The English and Dutch, on the other hand, were just as committed to spreading the Protestants gospel and encouraged missionary enterprise among the Native Americans. Some of the colonists moved to America with the intentions to have freedom of religion. They sought places where they would freely exercise their religious practices.
Adventure and myth; curiosity, the love of experience and fascination with the possibility of tracing people and places of a different kind. Some people looked for Prester John, a legendary Christian king who was believed to rule somewhere in Africa. Others were fascinated by the fables of exotic people. They thought that some people had tails, others no heads and some had heads popping from their chests (Woolf, 2018). The Amazon women had tails on the mythical islands of California, of a fountain for youth in Florida, of exotic plants and animals. The reports did capture the imagination thereby stimulating a desire to explore more places.
Technology; the technological innovation contributed a great deal to the expansion of Europe. The use of compass became widespread by the fifteenth century, and transport by ships was made easy and fewer accidents encountered. Astrolabe is a device used to observe the position of the sun and the stars. This device was invented during that time. Also, the particular technique for map making and charting the seas kept improving with time (Woolf, 2018).
According to Mahoney (2015), the earliest European colonizers of the Americas, the Spanish did not develop important slave societies in their various colonies. The Spanish assumed control of the large central and South American empires system for tribute reasons. Those Europeans who followed found nothing similar to them as natural wealth in those regions they settled in. The African slaves who had been captured earlier during the intertribal wars but later directed for sale in what became a lucrative slave trade.
They were sold and later shipped to the Americas so that they would be the workforce for European colonial businesses. This African type of enslavement was driven to satisfy the urge for labor needs. The value of African journey was sold as chattel (Filler, 2017).
These slaves became a large part of the population and their work such a large part of the economy in the various European colonies with which they are now called “slave colonies.” Therefore, slavery happens to be inevitable in multiple European territories.
Slaves, as well as the emergence of new European tastes and markets, resulted in an enormous and hugely profitable system of transatlantic trade. Those who survived during the horrific
References
Davies, T., Isakjee, A., & Dhesi, S. (2017). Violent inaction: The necropolitical experience of refugees in Europe. Antipode, 49(5), 1263-1284.
Filler, L. (2017). The crusade against slavery: 1830-1860. Routledge.
Mahoney, J. (2015). Explaining the great continuity: ethnic institutions, colonialism, and social development in Spanish America. In Patrimonial Capitalism and Empire (pp. 43-62). Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
Woolf, L. (2018). Empire and Commerce in Africa: A study in economic imperialism. Routledge.