European Expansion and Conquest

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What made European expansion possible?
European expansion between the 15th and 18th centuries
Before 1500 it could not have been guessed that Europe would dominate the world. In this
section, we investigate how and why, in less than two centuries, Europe was able to
colonise large parts of the world. We will focus on the early processes of colonisation and
the consequences on the colonisers and colonised societies, on ideas of racial superiority
and on the balance of power in the world.
What is colonialism?
Colonialism is the process by which European countries take direct political control of
territories, called colonies, in various parts of the world outside of Europe. They exploit
these colonies economically, taking their raw materials, to feed industries and markets in
Europe. It was part of the process of the growth of industrial capitalism. Colonies are
therefore overseas territories that were ruled by the kings or companies of Europe.
Sometimes the colonisers were able to dominate local traditional leaders (such as English
control of India and China). In other areas, such as the Americas and South Africa, they
invaded the land, destroying traditional societies, and turned it into commercial
plantations owned by Europeans and worked by slaves.
The colonies that were seized by industrial European powers from the late 1830s, after
the industrial revolution and ending of slavery, were very different from the early colonies
established by merchant kings and companies from 1500 – 1800.
Where the power lay before 1500
By 1450 European expansion had, in fact, already begun down the west coast of Africa.
The Arabs were technically more advanced than the Europeans and built better ships with
better rigging. It was they who began to voyage down the west coast of Africa where they
traded directly with African coastal societies. The Portuguese learned navigational
techniques from these Arabs.
Initially the Portuguese exploratory expeditions were privately financed and were
undertaken by members of the merchant class or nobility. These early voyages were aimed
at finding trading communities to establish trading relations with, but the Europeans often
resorted to raiding the areas for products and slaves. These expeditions were lucrative and
soon the monarchs in Portugal and Spain began to take an interest in the planning, funding
and investment of trading expeditions. Not only did these early expeditions establish
trading relations but they also brought valuable data and information about social and
power relations, markets, topography, climate and illnesses.
This made possible the dream of these early Europeans of finding a way to trade directly
with the gold producing regions of West Africa and the spice producing regions of Asia and
the Pacific Ocean islands in the east. Up to now they had had to rely on trade with the
Arabs and for centuries European kings had been dependent on Arab/Muslim overland
traders to get the gold, fi ne silk cloth and especially the spices that they needed from the

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East. The Arab traders acted as middlemen and their monopoly of trade negatively affected
the prices of goods.
In 1453 the expanding Turkish Empire captured the old Christian city of Constantinople
(now Istanbul). This disrupted the Arab/Muslim overland trade and the European kings of
Spain and Portugal, on the West Coast of Europe, began to think more seriously about the
possibility of an alternative trade route to Asia.
Before 1600: How Portugal and Spain took the lead
By the 15th century maritime commerce had been established in the Mediterranean,
Baltic and North Seas. This seafaring experience and knowledge were valuable to
adventurers and pioneers who were seeking an alternative route to the Far East. The
Portuguese and Spanish kings recruited experienced seafarers from Northern Italy (such
as Christopher Columbus) to help design better ships, called caravels, which could go on
long sea voyages and had the capacity for large cargoes. They equipped these ships that
they built with cannons and muskets (an early form of rifle) that had been developed from
Chinese knowledge of gunpowder. They developed new navigational instruments that
enabled sea captains to navigate and plot their positions accurately. This advance in
military technology and the naval advances enabled the two countries to take the lead in
expansion and trade. Although Portugal established colonies at the Canary Islands and the
Azores (see the map alongside) in the North Atlantic in 1420 and 1427 respectively, it
became evident from early expeditions that the Portuguese were initially more interested
in establishing a trading empire while the Spanish were interested in a territorial one
incorporating colonies.

Portuguese explorations
The Portuguese had an idea. From the reports of Muslim travellers, Europeans knew about
the Indian Ocean trade networks, and the Portuguese were determined to try to find a sea
route that would connect them to the wealth of the East. Italian scientists and geographers
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had created maps of the world based on information from early European and Muslim
travellers, which suggested that it might be possible to reach the East if they sailed south
around Africa or West across the Atlantic. In 1486 the king of Portugal commissioned
Bartolomeu Dias to find the southern route to the East by following the coast of Africa. Dias
successfully sailed around the Cape and made contact with Arab-Swahili trading
settlements on the East Coast of Africa. In 1498, the Portuguese king sent an expedition
led by Vasco da Gama to complete the journey that Diaz had begun. Da Gama’s voyage
was planned as a military expedition with orders to capture the main centres of the Indian
Ocean trade for the King of Portugal.

Spanish explorations
In 1492 the King of Spain hired Christopher Columbus to undertake a voyage westwards
to find a route to the East. They were all unaware of the American continent at that time.
When Columbus struck land in South America after a journey lasting seventy days, he
believed that he had reached Asia. Instead he had discovered a new continent that was
unknown in Europe at the time. Although Columbus was a deeply religious man, he was
also driven by a desire for wealth and believed in conquering the newly discovered areas
for the Spanish monarchy. The indigenous people were not given any say in the matter.
When the islanders rebelled they were defeated, and many taken back to Spain as slaves.
In America, the Spanish discovered a different kind of wealth: silver and gold. They
plundered what they could of these metals from local communities. In search of more,
Spain invaded and colonised much of central and South America, destroying the original
indigenous American kingdoms that they encountered. Once they had taken all the silver
and gold that they could, they took over the actual silver mines, forcing the indigenous
people to work in them as labourers and slaves.
There was one important difference between the Portuguese and Spanish sea-borne
trading empires. In Asia, the Portuguese were not able to conquer the land of the Eastern
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rulers. They could only destroy the Arab-Swahili trading system of the Indian Ocean and
establish a few trading settlements such as the town of Goa on the West coast of India.
But this was all they needed to do to control the trade in spices – possibly at that time
even more valuable than gold in Europe.
In the Americas, the Spanish destroyed the indigenous American civilisations by warfare
and through disease. They were able to colonise all the land they conquered.
Why were spices so valuable to the Europeans of the 1500s?
The fact is that they were far more important than flavouring to make food taste better.
Most European farmers were poor and did not produce enough grain to feed animals
through long winters. There was no refrigeration. So when an animal was slaughtered,
people had to make the meat last for many months. Spices helped preserve meat and hide
the rotten flavour. Spices were not just a luxury in Europe, they were a necessity, and their
market value reflected this.
Portugal and Spain dominate foreign trade and empire
For the next 100 years, Portugal and Spain were the leading European kingdoms engaged
in overseas trade and empire. They had the support of the Catholic Church, which believed
that the ‘heathen’ people in the acquired territories should be converted to Catholicism. In
1493 the Pope had divided the world between Portugal and Spain. At the Treaty of
Tordesillas, Spain was given the right to colonise and exploit all land West of the line, and
Portugal was given the right to conquer land to the East of the line. The Catholic Church
had an extremely strong influence in Portugal and Spain and with its support, the two
countries were able to dominate trade and the colonisation of other territories.

How the Dutch, English and French entered the picture

Through the 1500s, English, Dutch and French merchants saw the fabulous wealth that
Portuguese and Spanish ships were bringing back to Europe. They were determined to get

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a share of this wealth. However, the Portuguese and Spanish were equally determined to
keep them out.
The English and Dutch rulers were not as wealthy as the Portuguese and Spanish kings.
So their merchants had to organise themselves and find ways of breaking the Portuguese
and Spanish control of trade. They also developed new technologies that would make this
possible, and, more importantly, new institutions that would soon give them the upper
hand.
The Dutch
The Dutch had recently won their independence from Spanish rule in 1648, and were
enjoying a period of religious, intellectual and commercial freedom greater than any other
part of Europe at the time. Scientists, artists and merchants from many parts of Europe
came to settle in Amsterdam, and Amsterdam soon became the centre of international
trade and innovation in Europe.
In 1602 one of the most important innovations in organisation took place with the
establishment of the Dutch East India Company (called in Dutch the Vereenigde Oost-
Indische Compagnie or VOC) and the Amsterdam stock exchange where investors could
buy shares in the VOC. The VOC was the world’s first ‘joint stock company’ – an
organisation that could be owned by many different shareholders and could focus
exclusively on large-scale trading activities without the distractions and inefficiencies of
being part of the State bureaucracy. At its launch the VOC raised a huge amount of capital
investment from over 1 800 investors, most of whom were merchants and other wealthy
middle-class citizens. This then helped make Dutch exploration possible.
The VOC was the world’s first global corporation. By 1680 it was the richest and most
powerful company in the world with a merchant fleet of over 150 ships and 40 giant
warships. For a hundred years, the VOC held a virtual monopoly of the global spice trade.
At its height, it employed almost 50 000 people worldwide and was involved in sugar
refining, cloth manufacturing, tobacco curing, weaving, glass making, distilling and brewing
in addition to its global trading activities. It also had a private army of 10 000 men.
The English
The way the English decided to join in the acquisition of wealth was different. They became
pirates. They found that the best way to attack and rob the slow Spanish ships returning
from the Americas was to build smaller and lighter ships armed with improved guns. By
the late 1500s, the English navy was regularly plundering Spanish ships returning from
the Americas laden with silver and gold. In 1588, the modern, light, fast moving and well-
equipped warships of the British navy defeated the slow, old-fashioned Spanish warships
of the king’s Armada (navy). England became the dominant trading and colonial power in
the Atlantic Ocean and in the Americas.
And then in 1592 a British navy squadron intercepted a Portuguese ship, the Madre de
Deus, returning from the East. She was three times as big as any English ship and was
filled with different kinds of treasure. There were chests of jewels and pearls, gold and
silver coins, the fi nest silk and cotton cloth, tapestries and carpets fi t for a palace, 425
tons of pepper, 45 tons of cloves, 35 tons of cinnamon and other spices, 25 tons of
cochineal (a fabric dye), tea from China and much more. English merchants realised what

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they could gain in the East and, soon after the VOC was formed, English merchants formed
the Royal East India Company to add the treasures of the East to what they were already
gaining from the West. They were unable to challenge Dutch control of the Pacific Spice
Islands, and instead focused on capturing the trade between the Indian mainland and
China.

The French
Although France was involved in internal and external conflict in Europe, it also colonised
parts of the new Americas, namely territories and islands in the Caribbean.
The balance of power in the world
In less than two centuries from the first Portuguese voyages, European powers had
expanded their trading activities to all the continents. From this time on, the world became
their battleground as they struggled for dominance within Europe and tried to control the
oceans and to expel their competitors from Asia, America or Africa. Increasingly, events in
one part of the globe would have repercussions in other parts as several continents were
drawn into one worldwide system of connections in a new wave of European-dominated
globalisation.
In the East, European powers focused on controlling the seas and trade with whole regions
of Asia. At first the Europeans were not able to colonise the ancient kingdoms inland, but
this began to change after 1800 as the commercial and military power of Europe grew and
rivalry between the different powers became more intense.
Southern Africa was an exception to this pattern. In both Mozambique and South Africa,
the Portuguese king and the VOC established permanent settlements which grew into
slave societies.

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___________________________________________________________________________
How slavery transformed the colonies and the colonisers
The consequences of slavery
Slavery transformed both the colonisers (western European powers) and the colonised.
Wealth from the East Indian merchant companies and the American colonies transformed
the western European powers. Western Europe became the new centre of world economic
and military power.
Amsterdam and the other Dutch ports became centres of wealth and power through which
all the luxuries and commodities from America and the East made their way into Europe.
The ports of Bristol and Liverpool in England came to depend on the sugar plantations of
Jamaica and Barbados. By 1800 an estimated four-fifths of British incomes drawn from
overseas came from the sugar plantations of the West Indies. The French cities of Nantes
and Bordeaux also drew a similar proportion of their wealth from French-held Caribbean
colonies such as Saint Domingue (present day Haiti).
Slavery and its contribution to European wealth
Plantations required huge amounts of land, labour and machines in order to produce profit
table amounts of sugar and this, in turn, meant that huge capital investments were
necessary.
The joint stock companies, by now wealthier than many governments, were able to
mobilise the capital required to invest in plantations and in the provision of slaves.
Commercial banks were developed to bring together the savings of many investors to
finance new commercial ventures overseas.
An innovating entrepreneurial merchant class developed, focused on profits and creating
wealth. This challenged the power of the traditional ruling classes in European society.
Science and technological innovations flourished leading to new and more effective
weapons of war, methods of production and consumption.
In Europe, a mass consumer market grew up based on new commodities such as sugar,
cotton, tobacco and tea. Trade was no longer only in luxury goods for the ruling classes.

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This European global trading system affected the societies of the Americas, Africa and Asia
in different ways. Some parts of the world were invaded and colonised from the beginning
and production systems based on slaves were established. In West Africa, which was the
source of most of the slaves that drove this economic system, powerful slave trading
African kingdoms that controlled the trade in slaves with Europe developed. Outside of
these kingdoms, slave raids and wars devastated large parts of West Africa.

Ideas of racial superiority

Inevitably in each region European exploitation and conquest led to profound social
changes in both the conquered territories and in Europe. It also entrenched ideas of the
racial superiority in the Europeans, driven by their conquest of indigenous people. These
ideas were used to justify the conquest and control of the indigenous people. Slaves were
owned and seen as tools for production and the growth of wealth. They in no way benefitted
from this themselves, but were merely exploited.
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The colonial expansion of the Portuguese and the Dutch
Portugal and the destruction of Indian Ocean trade
The Portuguese knew about the Indian Ocean trading system and wanted to take over the
wealth of the Arab-Swahili traders, and try and gain control of the gold producing areas.
With their larger ships armed with cannons, the Portuguese were able to destroy East
African trading towns, and take over the entire Indian Ocean trade. However, they failed in
their attempts to take over the gold producing areas of southern Africa, and Mozambique
became little more than a convenient stopping place for Portuguese ships on their way to
and from India and the East Indies.
Processes of conquest and colonisation
In 1498, the king of Portugal sent an expedition led by Vasco da Gama around the Cape
of Good Hope and up the East African coast to find the sea route to India, and to capture
what he could of the wealth of the East. None of the Muslim rulers that Da Gama met was
interested in what he had to offer them, but he attacked many Arab ships and seized
enough spices, silk and gold to pay sixty times the cost of his voyage.
Da Gama undertook three more voyages to India. The Portuguese could offer little of value
to the rulers of East Africa, Asia and the Indian Ocean because they were not interested in
European goods. But the Portuguese ships carried cannons and relied on force to establish
their control of the Indian Ocean trade. Muslim trading ships and settlements were
attacked, and their goods seized wherever they were found. This was undertaken with
great cruelty.
In another notorious incident Da Gama attacked a fleet of Muslim pilgrims on their way to
Mecca, looted the ship, locked 400 passengers in the hold, including an ambassador from
Egypt, and burnt them to death. In Source 2.4 a later Portuguese traveller summarises the
result of the Portuguese treatment of other nations, especially the Muslims.
The Portuguese concentrated on the spice-producing islands of the East Indies, but were
also determined to take control of the source of the gold that the Swahili had bought from
inland African kingdoms so that they would have something that Eastern rulers wanted.
Da Gama’s logbook describes his first meetings with the Sultan of Mozambique Island.
In 1505 a new expedition under Francisco D’Almeida arrived with orders from the king of
Portugal to demand that the Sultans of the east African towns hand over their wealth,
agree to pay tribute to the king of Portugal, and allow the Portuguese to build a fort.

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In search of the gold mines
Within a few years, the Portuguese had destroyed all the Swahili trading towns in southern
Africa. But controlling the trade proved more difficult. Swahili traders in their small dhows
easily avoided the heavy Portuguese gunboats. The Portuguese traders established trading
posts along the Zambezi River, but they had little to offer the African gold producers. The
Munhu Mutapa, king of the gold producing inland regions (now Zimbabwe), continued to
trade with the Swahili traders as well as with the Portuguese.
In 1569 the king of Portugal sent an army to invade the Munhu Mutapa and other
kingdoms and take over the gold mines themselves. One Portuguese report of 1569
stated:
(The Mutapa kings) shelter in their territory many Moors (Muslim Swahili traders), enemies of the
faith of our Lord Jesus Christ...(We have demanded that he) eject the Moors from his territories
and dominions. Should the king not obey these demands, and not eject and deliver the Moors, war
must be justly made upon this said king for the offences and injuries done to the Portuguese.

The Munhu Mutapa did not want war. The king sent an embassy to the invading force. A
Portuguese priest who accompanied the invading forces wrote:
The embassy declared that the Monomotapa wished to be a friend of the king of Portugal. They
desired nothing else but that the thorns should be cleared from the road and that they would
rejoice to have trade and commerce with us. (We) mentioned the three essential points in his (the
king of Portugal’s) instructions: First that the Moors should be expelled from the country; second,
that they receive the fathers and keep the faith and third, that their king should give (to the king
of Portugal) many of the gold mines that were in his kingdom.

The Munhu Mutapa realised the military power of the Portuguese and agreed to the terms.
Their king became a Christian and one of his princes was sent to the Portuguese
settlement of Goa in India. Think about the arrogance of the Portuguese who assumed
such dominance over other people in their own land.
Ultimately, however, the invasion was a failure. Many Portuguese died of malaria and in
wars. Even where they did force chiefs to give them control of areas with gold mines, they
soon gave them up because there was too little gold and it was too hard getting it out of
the rock. And so the results of the Portuguese invasion were the destruction of the Swahili
trading system and the destabilisation of the African chiefdoms, as well as the destruction
of the trade in gold.
Colonialism and the impact of slavery
With the collapse of the gold trade, the Portuguese lost interest in southern Africa, and as
they did in America, the king of Portugal ‘gave’ the interior of Mozambique to a Portuguese
official or viceroy. The viceroy in turn gave huge areas called prazos to Portuguese settlers.
They were allowed to exploit the land and people in whatever way they could, resulting in
slavery and causing much conflict and instability among local communities.
The Portuguese prazeros exacted tribute from Africans living on ‘their’ land. Some were
able to organise private armies of more than five thousand soldiers and slaves.
By 1800, the Portuguese presence in Mozambique was reduced to the trading post at
Delagoa Bay (now Maputo). From here they traded mainly ivory from interior producers.

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This trade, as we shall see in Topic 4, enabled African chiefs inland to become strong, and
the Portuguese never tried to penetrate inland here. After the slave trade was made illegal
in West Africa, Portuguese slave traders from Brazil began to buy slaves from Delagoa Bay.
This led to further conflict inland and to the growing power of the Gaza kingdom of
Soshangane, which had taken control of the interior.
The Dutch East India Company in South Africa
During the 1600s the Dutch East India Company (VOC) became the richest and most
powerful company in the world. It had taken over many of the Portuguese trading
settlements in the East and established colonies on the spice producing islands of Java
(Batavia), Sri Lanka and others. It held a virtual monopoly of the global spice trade which
it carried back to Europe in its huge fleet of ships.
By 1650, the VOC’s trading empire contributed more than 15% of the entire economy of
the Netherlands. But this empire was always under threat from the rival trading nations of
England, France and Portugal. The Cape of Good Hope was a vital stopping place for
merchant ships from all European countries on their way to and from the East. It was one
of the few places along the west Coast of Africa where fresh water was always available.
But in itself it had no economic value to the Europeans.

Processes of conquest and colonisation

As competition for trade with Asia increased among the European powers, some began to
think of colonising the Cape as a way of protecting their commercial operations in Asia. In
the 1620s an English merchant claimed to rule the Cape in the name of the Queen of

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England – but the English government was not interested in colonising it. Then, in 1652,
the directors of the VOC decided to establish a military station at the Cape, which would
offer VOC ships ‘the means of procuring vegetables, meat, water and other needful
refreshments’ and to stop the Cape from falling under the control of its rivals. It was also
to serve as the most western outpost of their sphere of influence in the Indian Ocean.
The VOC did not hope for commercial profit in South Africa itself. And, at first, it did not
intend to establish a permanent settlement at all. But as the trade expanded, the VOC
station could not produce all that the merchant ships required. Also, the VOC could not get
all the meat it needed by trading with the Khoekhoe who were reluctant to trade their cattle
as their wealth was counted in cattle. So the VOC decided to encourage Dutch settlers to
establish private farms on the land around the station.
By 1700 the settlement around Table Bay harbour was still very small – only about 2 000
people. But Cape Town had become a village of about 70 houses in which there lived a
mix of European burghers and their slaves. The burghers in the town made their living as
traders, carpenters, shopkeepers, bakers, brewers and other trades. Around the town lived
a number of burgher farmers who used slaves to produce vegetables, wheat and wine to
trade with the passing ships, and further out lived a few cattle and goat farmers and their
slaves, as well as traders who bartered cattle from reluctant indigenous Khoekhoe
communities. Slaves imported from East Africa and the Indian Ocean islands did the
manual work in the colony.
The burgher farmers and the VOC were often in conflict. The VOC did not want to establish
an expensive colony at the Cape. Its main interest was in Asia and the Cape was seen as
an important but expensive possession that ran at a loss to the VOC for all of its 143-year
rule. After colonising just enough land to secure the produce it needed, the VOC tried to
avoid expanding the colony and starting conflict with the Khoekhoe. But they could not
control the burghers who, over the next hundred years, were always pushing into new land
and trying to escape the control of the VOC.
When the Khoekhoe realised that the Dutch were not just visitors, and were going to stay,
their initial friendliness turned to hostility. Khoekhoe communities valued their cattle and
were not always willing to sell them to the Dutch. This forced the Company to trade with
communities further and further inland.
The relationship between the Cape Colony and the Khoekhoe herders of the South-West
was a combination of peaceful trade and fierce resistance. In 1659 the Khoekhoe started
a war of resistance that caused almost half the Company employees and burghers to try
and flee the Cape on passing ships. In 1660 the Khoekhoe, who had not been defeated,
accepted an offer of peace.
The Dutch settlers and the Khoekhoe in the 1600s
From the outset, the relationship between the Khoekhoe and the Dutch was quite complex,
as Source 2.13 on the next page shows.
The expanding frontier
The VOC ships on the way to and from the East created a demand for meat that soon
exceeded the ability of farmers in the colony to supply. Dutch cattle farmers, or trekboers,

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moved across the colonial borders to find pasture for their animals. At first they combined
hunting with illegal cattle trading with the Khoekhoe. As nomadic farmers and adventurers
who lived mostly in their wagons, they often took the law into their own hands.
By 1670 cattle traders had crossed the Hottentots Holland Mountains to the areas as far
as what is now Mossel Bay to the East. By 1780 they had entered the land of the Nama in
the North and the Attaqua further east. Thousands of sheep and hundreds of head of cattle
were traded for iron, copper, beads and tobacco.
From 1703 the VOC issued grazing permits to farmers who applied to take their livestock
beyond the settled regions for a few months. This began a system of ‘loan farms’ which
helped the trekboers expand into the interior, taking the best pastures and hunting
grounds. By 1700 the initial, fairly peaceful, trading relations between the trekboer settlers
and Khoekhoe and San communities was replaced by violent raids and counter-raids.
Boers were often forced to abandon their farms and appeal to the VOC for help. For the
next 100 years there was constant raiding and counter raiding on the northern and eastern
colonial frontiers. Khoisan captured in war were forced to work for farmers. Sometimes
the men were killed, and children brought back to the Colony as servants. Raiding
communities to capture children for servants became common.
But it was not only war that destroyed the Khoekhoe population. Just as we will see
happening in the Americas, in 1713 smallpox spread throughout the colony killing
thousands. This happened because in February 1713 a ship landed at Cape Town carrying
passengers who were ill with smallpox. By April, Company slaves who had washed some
of the clothes of those passengers were beginning to die of smallpox. Over the next few
months, smallpox had spread throughout the colony and crossed the frontier killing
thousands of Khoekhoe who had no natural immunity to European diseases.
In 1770, a large movement of escaped slaves, white outlaws and Khoe servants together
with desperate Khoe and San attacked the colony on the northern frontier. In the end, with
Company support, the combined settler forces with their guns and horses, broke the
Khoisan resistance.
The Dutch trekboers were not the only people on the colonial frontier. There were runaway
slaves, Khoekhoe and mixed-race communities. And there were missionaries who
established mission stations in the interior and attracted large communities of people
whose homes and communities had been destroyed in war. By the early 1800s the
colony’s borders had expanded to beyond the Orange River in the North and to the land of
the Xhosa to the East. Its population had risen to almost 150 000, and Cape Town had
become a thriving commercial town with over 20 000 people living in 1 600 houses.
Furthermore, Stellenbosch, Paarl, Genadendal, Worcester, Swellendam and Graaff -Reinet
had all grown into towns serving a rural economy that was exporting wine, meat, hides and
wheat.
But the economy and society were based on violent seizure of resources from indigenous
communities, the destruction of those communities and their absorption into colonial
society as forced labour on settler farms. Cape Town and the western agricultural parts of
the colony remained a society of wealthy Dutch landowners, servants, labourers and
slaves. The sources below summarise the relationships between the different competing
interests on the colonial frontier at this time.

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Colonialism and slavery
From the earliest days of the colony, imported slaves were the most important source of
labour for the VOC and the free burgher settlers.

Origins of Cape slaves

Slaves at the Cape came from many different parts of the world and spoke many different
languages. In order for masters and slaves to communicate, and for slaves to
communicate with each other, a common language of ‘kitchen Dutch’ emerged among the
slaves. This was the beginning of Afrikaans, which has many words of Malay origin.
But the burghers also took advantage of the diverse origins of the slaves to create racial
divisions between African and Malay slaves. A British official, WW Bird wrote about Cape
slavery as follows:
The Negro, who is the least valuable, was brought from Madagascar and Mozambique. These
slaves are chiefly hewers and carriers of wood, and drawers of water, coolies, or public porters for
hire, and are also employed by the Boers and others as the hardiest labourers of the field...The
Malay slaves are coachmen, tailors, painters, shoemakers, carpenters, and fishermen.

In the fertile and well-watered areas close to Cape Town, prosperous Dutch farmers
established wine and wheat farms, and supplied merchants in Cape Town with agricultural
products. The wealthy landowners, merchants and Company government officials (who
often used their official positions to benefit themselves) were the dominant group in Cape
society. Mostly imported slaves did the work on the farms. In Cape Town and other towns
a number of slaves and free blacks became skilled craftsmen like carpenters, blacksmiths,
builders and leather workers.

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Further inland, small stock farmers on the drier land over the mountains from Cape Town
provided meat and wild animal products to the Cape Town market. At first they practised
a mix of farming and trade with the Khoekhoe, but after 1703 moved beyond the frontier
where relations with the Khoekhoe turned to conflict and dispossession. Here, as we have
seen, labour was done by Khoekhoe who had lost their land and cattle and were desperate
to survive, and captives from slave raids and war.
Racial attitudes
Although most slaves remained slaves throughout their lives, some were freed and a few
married VOC burghers at a time when other women were in short supply. The first recorded
example of a slave-burgher marriage was on 6 July 1658. Later the hardening of racial
attitudes ended cross-racial marriages.
Very often, slave owners fathered children by slave women whom they did not marry. These
children were especially valued by the masters. The traveller Otto Mentzel wrote:
They are found useful at a very tender age and cost little to bring up. They are likewise better
mannered and better educated than imported slaves. Female slaves sometimes live with
Europeans as husband and wife with the permission of their masters who benefit in two ways: the
cost of upkeep of the slave is reduced through the presents she receives from the man and her
children are the property of her master since children of female slaves are themselves slaves

The impact of slavery

Slavery is inherently violent, and Cape society was based on violence and racial exclusion
and exploitation. The settlers developed a racial ideology supported by religious arguments
to justify the unequal system. They believed their Christian civilization entitled them to
dispossess and incorporate other cultures. In Cape Town, the leaders of the Dutch
Reformed Church were the rich and powerful settlers and officials. On the frontier, the
church was very important to the small, widely dispersed trekboer community. It helped
them to maintain a common culture and identity. It prevented the trekboers from breaking
away entirely from the wealthy Cape Dutch. Both groups of Dutch settlers developed a
conservative, religious and inward-looking society in which ideas of forced labour and
racial superiority were central to their whole existence.
The Company and the burghers kept tight control over their slaves with a mixture of
violence, division and humiliation. Slaves did not always accept their position, even when
the consequences for disobedience or resistance were extreme. We have almost no record
of what slaves themselves thought, as most slaves could not write. We depend on the
descriptions of European travellers and on official documents to understand the impact
that slavery had on slaves.
The Company itself was extremely harsh in its punishment of slaves, as these extracts from
court records show:
1674 July 26: Two slaves: Housebreaking and attempted Theft: sentenced to be flogged (whipped)
and branded (with a burning hot iron), to have both ears cut off , and to labour in chains for 12
years.
1773 July 22: Maart, slave of the widow Nel, convicted of the murder of his master, W Nel, by
stabbing him: sentenced to be tied to a cross, and to be pinched by a red hot pincer in eight
different places, and then to be broken (have his arms and legs broken) and his head cut off .

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The Company issued instructions to the Cape government to make sure that slave-owners
used ‘mild’ punishments. In reality, they had little power to control what farmers did, and
did little to punish farmers when cruel punishments were reported. In Source 2.19 from
1732, the historian Robert Ross describes how a farmer, Crugel, was charged with beating
his slave so severely that he died.
But control was not only ensured through violence. Slaves were treated as children. No
matter how old they were, they were called jong and meid (boy and girl). Part of a letter
written by a slave owner in 1806 gives us an idea of how some masters saw their slaves:
‘I have seldom occasion for punishment, and they are well aware of its being regularly inflicted
when they deserve it. I treat them as my children, and they return it with gratitude.’

Here is another traveller’s observation of the auction in 1824 of a farm and its stock –
including the owner’s slaves.
Among the stock of the farm was a female slave and her three children. The farmers examined
them as if they had been... cattle. They were sold separately, and to different purchasers. The
tears, the anxiety, the anguish of the mother... and the touching sorrow of the poor young ones,
while they clung to their distracted parent, contrasted with the marked [indifference] of the
spectators...

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Spanish conquests in the Americas
The processes of conquest and colonisation
Two countries, Portugal and Spain, had taken the lead in the European discovery of sea
routes that opened up new lands for colonisation and economic exploitation and so begun
the process of globalisation. In the previous unit, you found out about the Portuguese
exploration around the coast of Africa and into the Indian Ocean.
In this unit we will investigate the Spanish exploration of what became known as ‘the New
World’ – Central and South America.
There were many reasons why individuals joined the voyages of exploration: to find wealth
(gold, silver and spices); to increase their country’s power and prestige in Europe; to open
up trade; to spread the Christian religion; and to build empires for exploitation of raw
materials. Three names stand out in the history of Spanish exploration: Christopher
Columbus; Hernán Cortés and Francisco Pizarro.
Christopher Columbus was an Italian from Genoa. He was unable to find business partners
in Italy, and so in April 1492 he entered into a business contract with King Ferdinand and
Queen Isabella of Spain. They, as well as some bankers, would fund his voyages and in
return he would receive 10% of any profits he made from his expeditions. Columbus hoped
to reach India and the region of the spice trade by sailing west. In the past the spice trade
had been carried on overland, with the Muslims travelling east. Although Europeans at that
time had some knowledge of Africa – they knew at least that there was a continent around
which they would have to sail – they did not know that there was a continent to the west.
They had no idea that the Americas existed.

In October 1492 Christopher Columbus landed on an island, one of those today known as
the Caribbean islands, that he named San Salvador. He believed that he had reached the
coast of India. He ordered his men to ‘bear witness’ that he was taking possession of the
island for the King and Queen of Spain and for the Catholic Faith. On October 12 1492
Columbus had his first encounter with the indigenous people, the Arawak. Because he
thought he had reached India, Columbus called them Indians. He wrote in his journal that
he thought they would be good servants and that he would take six back to Spain for the

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King and Queen. He also noted how friendly and generous they were to the Spanish who
had landed on their island.
Columbus made four voyages to the Caribbean, but did not found a lasting colony. He also
did not find the wealth that he had hoped for. Disappointed, he planned to capture the
Arawak and ship them to Spain as slaves to try to make money that way. The Queen
refused permission, but in spite of that, in February 1495, Columbus captured some 500
Arawak and took them back to Spain. By 1496 Columbus had taken over the island of
Hispaniola by force, and encouraged Spanish colonists to carry out slaving raids.
From the beginning, the Columbian legacy took its toll on the New World: forced labour,
disease and starvation rapidly killed off the indigenous people of Hispaniola (modern
Haiti). In 1493 the population had been approximately 100 000; in 1570, 300 people
survived.

Treaty of Tordesillas
The development of printing meant that the news of Columbus’s voyages spread rapidly in
Europe. The Catholic Church encouraged exploration as part of their mission to convert
people to their faith. Portugal and Spain, supported by the Catholic Pope at the time,
decided to divide the non-Christian world between them. As we saw in Unit 1, this was
made formal when the Treaty of Tordesillas was signed in 1494. Spain got rights to
colonise the lands west of the line while Portugal claimed all the lands to the east, including
India, the East Indies and Brazil. Columbus’s voyages and the settlement of the Caribbean
islands were followed by the Spanish conquest of the mainland by the Spanish

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conquistadors. They generally had three aims – to make converts to Christianity, to gain
wealth and to gain fame by claiming land and establishing colonies.
Expanding Spanish influence: Aztec and Inca Empires
The Spanish explorer-soldiers or conquistadors who followed Columbus formed
commercial ‘companies’ to finance their expeditions and organised themselves along
military lines. The leader of the expedition became the senior settler in a new colony. Those
who formed the ‘company’ made large investments in ships, clothing, weapons and horses
and acted as officers. The ordinary members of the expedition usually supplied their own
equipment and provisions in return for a share in the ‘booty’ which the expedition hoped
to get. While the ordinary members had no formal military training, the conquistadors
depended heavily on the military advantage that their steel weapons and horses gave them
to conquer the indigenous people, take over their land and force them to work as slaves.
By 1492 there were two major empires in South America: the Aztec Empire in what is now
Mexico and the Inca Empire in present-day Peru. The Aztec empire was relatively new
dating from approximately the 14th century. The empire was still growing when the
Spaniards appeared at the southern boundary of the Valley of Mexico.
The Aztec empire
The Aztec people consisted of a number of groups in central Mexico. Their capital,
Tenochtitlan, was built on a series of islands surrounded by lakes and canals.
They ruled the Valley of Mexico until the arrival of the Spanish. At its height in 1519 the
Aztec empire stretched from the Pacific to the Gulf of Mexico, from Central Mexico all the
way to Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras.
The most famous Aztec emperor was Moctezuma II, who was in power when the Spanish,
led by Hernán Cortés, reached the Aztecs.
Government and religion in Aztec society were closely linked. Human sacrifice was central
to their belief system, causing the sun to rise each morning, the crops to grow, and
favourable weather to occur. Between 1446 and 1453 the region suffered a number of
devastating natural disasters: a plague of locusts, drought, floods, bad frosts, and
starvation. Thousands of people were sacrificed in an attempt to restore the natural order.
The Spaniards were horrified at the sacrifices and this could have been one of the reasons
why they were determined to end the Aztec rule in the region.
The Aztecs had a class system of nobles, commoners, peasants and slaves. There was a
small class of travelling merchants or traders. The travelling merchants were not only
involved in commerce, but also communicated important information across the empire
and at times were used as spies. The Aztecs were the first to have compulsory education
for all. Children were educated at home until the age of 15. The home schooling was
monitored by the state. From the age of 15 all boys were sent to telpuchcalli or houses of
youth. There they learned the history and religion of the Aztecs, the art of war and fighting,
the trade or craft specific to their class, and the religious and civic duties of everyday
citizenship. The children of the nobility attended another school, a school of nobility or
calmecac. There they learned the religious duties of priests and the secret knowledge of

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their religion. Music, drama, song and poetry were highly valued, and some Aztec poetry
still survives.

Defeat of the Aztecs

In 1519 Hernán Cortés led a Spanish expedition into what is now Mexico. He had about
500 men, 17 horses and 10 cannon when he set out. Within three years Cortés had
conquered the huge Aztec empire, taken captive the emperor Moctezuma and founded
Mexico City as the capital of a colony he called New Spain.
The Spaniards reached Tenochtitlan on 8 November 1519. Some Aztec sources, written
many years later, claimed that the Aztec emperor, Moctezuma, thought the arrival of the
Spanish was the fulfilment of a prophecy and that Cortés was the god Quetzalcoatl.
However, modern historians have questioned the truth of the story, as the first of the
sources was written 50 years after the death of Moctezuma. Also the information came
from a group that had been conquered by the Aztecs who portrayed their own rulers in a
positive way and the Aztecs, particularly Moctezuma, in a negative way.
When Cortés arrived at Tenochtitlan, Moctezuma welcomed him with great ceremony. They
exchanged gifts. Moctezuma allowed the Spaniards to live as guests in one of his palaces
for several months.
It is not clear why the relations between the Spanish and the Aztecs deteriorated. The
Spanish held Moctezuma hostage. While Cortés was away his Spanish troops massacred
an unarmed crowd at a religious ceremony. Moctezuma was held hostage as security for
the safety of the Spaniards. During a battle between the Aztecs and the Spaniards,
Moctezuma was killed. The Spanish accused the Aztecs of killing Moctezuma by stoning;
the Aztec account says that the Spaniards killed the emperor. Once the emperor had been
killed, the Spanish had to flee Tenochtitlan.

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Cortés and his men took refuge among the Tlaxcala, enemies of the Aztecs, and together
they laid siege to Tenochtitlan and although the Aztecs put up fierce resistance, disease,
starvation and battle brought about their collapse. Cortés ordered the destruction of
Tenochtitlan. Mexico City, which became the centre of Spanish America, was built on its
ruins. After the defeat of the Aztecs, Spanish power spread rapidly through the Aztec
empire.
The Inca empire
Ten years later, Francisco Pizarro defeated the Inca Empire. The Inca Empire was the
largest in the region of the west coast of southern America. The Incas had enormous wealth
in gold and silver.
The Inca state was highly centralised, with government dominated by the emperor and a
small group of nobles from the capital, Cusco. Society was made up of clans of families,
who lived and worked together. Each had a chief. Control over the vast empire was
facilitated by the construction of over 14 000 miles of well-built roads. Communication and
transport was efficient and fast, linking the mountain communities with those living in the
lowlands. Since the Inca lived in the Andes Mountains, the roads took great engineering
and architectural skill to build. On the coast, the roads were not surfaced, but those in the
mountains were paved with flat stones. Stone walls were built to prevent travellers from
falling off the cliffs. The Inca did not discover the wheel, so all travel was on foot. Rest
houses were built every few kilometres. Travellers could spend a night, cook a meal and
feed their llamas.
The defeat of the Inca By 1530 the Inca were engaged in a civil war, partly caused by a
severe smallpox epidemic, which weakened the empire. Their Emperor, Huayna Capac,
and his heir had both died from smallpox in about 1528, causing a political crisis in the
region. Two other sons, Atahualpa and Huasca, claimed the throne, leading to the civil war,
which ravaged the Inca cities, almost destroyed the economy and led to a rapid decline in
the population. Early in 1532, Atahualpa defeated Huasca and became Emperor of the
Inca. In 1532 Pizarro reached the Inca Empire.
The first encounter between the Emperor (Atahualpa) and Pizarro was on 16 November
1532. Pizarro invited the Emperor to a feast in his honour. Pizarro planned an ambush and
when the Emperor arrived, he and his unarmed escort of a few thousand men were
attacked. Thousands of Incas were slaughtered, and the Emperor was captured. Atahualpa
offered the Spaniards an enormous ransom of gold and silver in exchange for his release,
which Pizarro accepted. But when the ransom was delivered, the Emperor was executed
on 29 August 1533. The Spanish then installed Atahualpa’s brother, Manco Inca Yupanqui,
upon the Empire’s throne. Yupanqui cooperated with the Spaniards while the
conquistadors fought to put down resistance in the north.
Meanwhile an associate of Pizarro’s, Diego de Almagro, attempted to claim Cuzco (capital
of the Inca Empire) for himself. Yupanqui attempted to use this intra-Spanish feud, which
included the assassination of Pizarro at his palace in Lima on 26 June 1541, to his
advantage, recapturing Cuzco in 1536, but the Spanish retook the city, effectively ending
the Inca Empire.

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Manco Inca Yupanqui then retreated to the mountains of Vilcabamba, Peru. For the next
few years he carried out a fierce guerrilla campaign against the Spanish. He was murdered
in 1544. His successors ruled for another 28 years, sometimes raiding the Spanish or
inciting revolts against them. In 1572 the last Inca stronghold was discovered, and the last
ruler, Túpac Amaru, Yupanqui’s son, was captured and executed, finally bringing the Inca
Empire to an end.

Colonialism, slavery and forced labour in Latin America

By 1550 the Spaniards had conquered all Mexico, Central America and the huge Inca
Empire of Peru. The Spanish and Portuguese colonies became known by the general term
Latin America. Spain’s two main colonies were Mexico and Peru.
The Spaniards were most interested in gold and silver. Silver became the most important
export of the Spanish colonies. In the 1540s rich veins of silver were discovered in central
Mexico and in the mountains of present-day Bolivia. The development of the mines meant
there was a huge demand for labour. African slaves were unused to the lack of oxygen at
the high altitudes and so could not be used in the mines in the mountain. And so the
Spanish exploited the traditional forced labour system to provide labour for the mines.

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Forced labour
The encomienda was a system that was employed mainly by the Spanish crown during the
colonisation of the Americas. In the encomienda, the crown granted a person a specified
number of natives for whom they were to take responsibility. The receiver of the grant was
to protect the natives from warring tribes and to instruct them in the Spanish language
and in the Catholic faith. In return, they could extract tribute from the natives in the form
of labour, gold or other products, such as in corn, wheat or chickens.
The forced labour (mita) system was very similar to slavery. The men were forced to work
for a number of weeks or months at the mines. They were paid a daily rate based on how
much silver they produced. At the height of the system, twelve thousand forced labourers
regularly worked at the largest mine in the Americas. The attempts by the Inca to avoid the
forced labour system led to many local villages being abandoned in Peru. As a result, the
indigenous people who previously had controlled the mining were turned into a poorly paid
labour force.
The Spanish used slaves to pan for gold in the rivers at lower altitudes. Between 1492 and
1820 approximately 10 to 15 million Africans were forcibly brought to the New World. Only
about two million Europeans migrated to the area in the same period. In Mexico and Peru,
slaves were used on the sugar and cacao plantations. Cacao was oft en grown on a
sharecropping basis. The plantation owners provided the land and the slaves grew the
crop. The two shared the profits. In some cases, slaves could earn enough to buy their
freedom.
Slavery and forced labour
It was forbidden to enslave the indigenous population, but the first settlers were granted
labour rights, known as encomiendas, over the indigenous people. By the 1620s the
indigenous population had declined to the extent that the encomiendas was no longer
profit table. However, the system of forced labour continued in the form of the mita system,
which was a tax in the form of labour demanded by the government from the indigenous
population. The system was used extensively in the mines.
Slavery’s influence on attitudes to race
Slavery had a great influence on attitudes to race. Many people in the 16th century
believed in the natural order of superiority of races and used these beliefs to justify their
control in the colonies. In all of the Latin American colonies, society was constructed
around race. White settlers were the elite holding all of the positions of power and wealth.
Distinctions were made between those born in Europe, known as peninsulares, and those
born in the colonies. Marriage between Spaniards and indigenous Americans resulted in
the creation of a group called the mestizos. They were regarded as socially superior to the
indigenous people and to the slaves, but were not accepted into white society. Higher
offices and many economic positions were closed to them. Black slaves or indigenous
Americans were at the bottom of the social scale.
The impact of slave trading
Colonisation, the destruction of indigenous peoples and slavery and the slave trade
changed the world forever, especially economically.

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Impact of slaves and forced labour on indigenous societies
Within a century of the arrival of Columbus, the populations of the indigenous Americans
had decreased dramatically. The first smallpox outbreak occurred in 1507 on one of the
Caribbean islands. As they had no immunity to the disease, whole communities fell ill and
the result was what has been called the ‘great dying’. In 1520 the disease followed the
Spaniards to the mainland where it spread rapidly. The high death rate helped Cortés to
defeat the Aztecs. The later civil war linked to the smallpox epidemic among the Inca
contributed to their defeat by Pizarro. In the years that followed, smallpox spread
throughout Latin America. The Spanish attempted to concentrate remaining indigenous
populations in fewer towns and to seize abandoned communal farmland. This destroyed
the coherence of the indigenous society and by moving people together into town,
increased the risk of the spread of smallpox.
How early colonialism changed the world economy
The economic impact of colonisation transformed the economies of most major European
nations. Europe provided the capital, market and technology. Africa provided labour. The
New World provided raw materials. This system is also referred to as the Columbian
exchange. The New World brought gold, silver, corn, potatoes, pineapples, tobacco, beans,
vanilla and chocolate to the Old World in exchange for wheat, sugar, rice, coffee, horses,
cows and pigs. Africa provided slaves to the New World to work on the sugar plantations
and farms.
When Spain conquered the Aztec and Inca empires, it acquired territories so rich in silver
that Spanish America became the world’s leading supplier. The massive amount of
imported silver from America changed the economic situation not only of Spain, but also
Europe and globally. Silver and gold imported from the Americas during the 16th and 17th
centuries made a major contribution to the financial modernisation of Europe. The silver
peso became the ‘universal currency’ of Europe. Spain used the silver to trade for textiles
and other goods from across Europe. About one third of the silver went to the mints of
France, England and Holland, contributing to their modernisation and helping them to
become world powers. Silver became a currency also in Russia, the Baltic States, the
Middle East, India and China. The Chinese trade was particularly important. China had the
largest population of any country in the world at the time, and imported great quantities of
silver.
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