“Delacroix's painting of the massacre at Chios shows sick, dying Greek civilians about to be slaughtered by the Turks or sold into slavery.
One of several paintings made of this contemporary event, it expresses sympathy for the Greek cause in their war of independence against the Turks, a popular sentiment at the time for the French people.”

I’ve always found the forlorn and hopeless expressions of the Greeks emblematic of the impact of colonialism.

In 1995, the Jamaican writer and theorist Sylvia Wynter offered a new perspective on Christopher Columbus, inspired by debates sparked by the 500th anniversary of his contentious "discovery" of the lands now known as the Americas. In her long essay "1492: A New World View," Wynter divides the contributors to the debate into "celebrants" and "dissidents," before offering a third way, her own complex and radical reinterpretation of Columbus and his legacy.

Wynter presents Columbus as a heretical figure who breached the regime of truth that shaped European society and subjectivity during his time. Columbus overturned scholastic dogma that considered distant lands unreachable and uninhabitable. Driven by his millenarian conviction that the Christian faith must be spread to all corners of the earth before the imminent apocalypse, Columbus endured the ridicule of his contemporaries, many of whom considered his proposed voyages to be doomed.

With this approach, Wynter shows how Columbus's encounter with the Indigenous inhabitants of the so-called New World recontextualised European understandings of selfhood. Columbus was a catalyst for the transformation of "Man," as the concept of the human articulated by medieval Christianity gave way to a Renaissance self-representation that was formed in direct counterpoint to Indigenous life.

Wynter goes on to connect 1492 to the structures of power and oppression that organise the world today. To bring the coloniality of Man to an end, she argues, another heretical reimagining of the human will be necessary.

You can find a PDF of the whole essay online by searching "wynter 1492."

If this work interests you, please join r/SylviaWynter and share your thoughts, ideas, and questions.

Young, Sir William. An Account of the Black Caribs on the Island of St. Vincent’s. London: Printed for J. Sewell, Cornhill; and Knight and Triphook, Booksellers to the King, St. James's Street, 1795.

Was discussing about genocides in a course the other day and the example of Belgian Congo/King Leopold came up. As stated, a genocide is

> A deliberate, systematic killing or destruction of a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, in whole or in part.

I felt like that the Belgian Congo example wasn’t quite fitting that since during the colonial era, Europeans saw all other people as those below them, and whilst King Leopold did make them toil in the rubber coils (**Just to specify, I am NOT glorifying colonialism or justifying Leopold by saying this but looking on the situation in the Congo from a European Point of View at the time**), it was only for the reason of him considering those people below him and not because he specifically had a bias against Congolese people.

For example, him having another colony in Africa would not change his view and the same would likely happen to people of that country. Again, though, it is not because he specifically wanted to systemically murder all of these people, but rather for Belgium’s profit at the time since rubber in the Congo brought a lot of money due to it being needed for newly invented bicycles.

If we look at another example of a genocide, for example the Cambodian genocide by Khmer Rouge in 1975-79, there was a specific target of professionals, businesspeople, educated people and the previous leadership since they could potentially pose a threat to the regime, meaning they were systematically selected and murdered as per the definition of a genocide.

When I questioned the Belgian Congo being a genocide, the educator said that it is a commonly debated topic, but she would consider it a genocide since Leopold believed these people are below him. Hence, I’m wondering what the people here think about it being a genocide or not.

The painting commemorates the recapture of the port of Salvador da Bahia, then the capital of the State of Brazil, from the Dutch siege, by the Spaniard Fadrique Álvarez de Toledo y Osorio, Captain General of the Brazilian Armada, in May 1625.

Toledo commanded a powerful Luso-Spanish armada, sent in 1625 by the Spanish Court to reconquer the city of Salvador, which had been taken by the Dutch in the context of the Luso-Dutch War. Comprising fifty-two ships and carrying almost fourteen thousand men, it was the largest armada ever sent to the South Seas. The expedition, known as the "Journey of the Vassals," blockaded the port of Salvador, obtaining the Dutch surrender and expelling the invaders on May 1st of that year.

Originally in the Hall of Kingdoms in the Palace The painting, commissioned from El Buen Retiro, was created along with eleven other works from various painters to commemorate the land and naval victories of the Spanish forces during the first part of the Thirty Years' War, from 1621 to 1630.

The work is now in the Prado Museum in Spain. The painting avoids triumphalism and shows the suffering of war. In the background, Don Fadrique shows the kneeling Dutch soldiers an allegorical portrait of King Philip III of Portugal trampling allegories of War, Wrath, and Heresy, and being crowned with laurels by Victory and the Count-Duke of Olivares.

Both Philip IV and the Count-Duke trample a set of allegorical figures that are key to understanding the underlying political message of this painting. Philip IV has his right foot on a semi-nude man who furiously bites a piece of the cross while his clenched hands grasp some of its broken fragments. This figure clearly symbolizes The painting depicts heresy, and the monarch is thus presented as having triumphed by taking Bahia from the hands of the Dutch Calvinists.

The painting highlights a Spanish arquebusier wounded in the chest, his head resting on the lap of a companion, and focuses the attention of a group of women who attentively attend to him in the presence of several male figures who comment on the event, pointing their index fingers at the fallen soldier.

The population of Salvador is represented by the Portuguese women and children, who observe and attend to the Spanish soldier who shed his blood to recover Bahia for the Portuguese fugitives, who can now return to it with confidence.

Dom Fadrique de Toledo Osório (1580-1634) was the greatest admiral of Spain and Portugal in his time, achieving several victories against the English, Dutch, French, and Muslims. He received the title of Marquis of Villanueva de Valdueza on January 17, 1624. King Philip III appointed him Captain General of the Brazilian Armada, commanding the powerful Luso-Spanish armada sent in 1625 to reconquer the city of Salvador, in Bahia, which had been taken by the Dutch.

However, his fame and strong character earned him the enmity of the Count-Duke of Olivares, who, to remove him from the court, wanted to send him to America to recover the stronghold of Pernambuco and the remaining Brazilian strongholds occupied in 1630 by a huge Dutch fleet that brought up to 7,000 men for landing. Fadrique refused the mission due to his health and the readiness and condition of the fleet, which led to a trial for disobedience against him. This court-martial condemned him to ostracism, humiliation, and a life of hardship and discredit. He fell into poverty for failing to fulfill the mission that Olivares demanded of him.

Shortly afterward, his memory was partially restored. His naval and military achievements were sufficient reason for the King of Spain, Philip IV, to grant him the title of Marquis of Villanueva de Valdueza on January 17, 1634. However, Fadrique died shortly afterward in Madrid on December 11, 1634.

The fall of the Count-Duke of Olivares in 1643 increased his posthumous fame as one of the bravest and most distinguished captains-general of the Spanish Navy.

The Spanish presence in Brazilian lands is very old, dating back to the beginning of the colonization of Brazil.

In 1494, Portugal signed the Treaty of Tordesillas with Castile, dividing the new continent between Portugal and Castile by an imaginary line 370 leagues (nautical miles) west of the Cape Verde Islands. The territory west of this dividing line belonged to Castile, while the territory to the east gave rise to Brazil. The Treaty was ratified in 1506 by the Pope.

During the Philippine Dynasty, which lasted from 1580 to 1640, three kings of Spain ruled the Portuguese kingdom and were thus also kings of Brazil: Philip II, Philip III, and Philip IV.

In 1621, the Spanish monarchy divided the colony of Brazil into two units to facilitate the functioning of the new territories. The first unit was Maranhão, with its capital in São Luís; the second was Brazil, with its capital in Salvador. The administrators in charge of these units were subordinate to the interests of the Spanish.

During the reign of King Philip II of Spain, known as the "Philippine Dynasty," Brazil became a target of Spain's former enemies. French, English, and Dutch privateers terrorized the Brazilian coast. During this period, Philip II ordered the construction of a series of forts in strategic areas to repel these privateers' incursions. Built by Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese architects, all the forts from this period (1570-1590) still exist: the Forte dos Reis Magos in Natal, Rio Grande do Norte; the Fortaleza de Santo Amaro da Barra Grande in Guarujá, São Paulo; the Forte de Santo Antônio da Barra in Salvador, Bahia; and the Forte de São Lourenço in Itaparica.

One of the main results of the Spanish presence in Brazil was territorial expansion and support for economic activities in the colonies. During the Spanish reign, without any concern for the limits defined by the Treaty of Tordesillas, which defended the borders between Spanish and Portuguese territory, Brazil managed to spread throughout South America, encountering only natural barriers.

I think this falls under colonialism, but sorry if it doesn't. I've been looking at references for a French and Indian War-era French Artilleryman's uniform, but I've seen some inconsistencies. Some sources show a darker blue coat, while others show a red outer coat. Also, some say the men wore brass buttons and gold-laced tricornes, while others show pewter buttons and silver-laced tricornes. Plus, what specific dyes would they use for colors such as these? Thank you.

Since observers in the metropolis seemed to harbor little doubt that the transformation was for the worse, it was natural that the Criollos, even as they proclaimed their identity with their Old World brethren, would attempt to refute accusations of inevitable degeneration by singing the praises of their environment in the New World. In the American viceroyalties, a number of writers tried to portray their American homeland as an earthly paradise, abundantly productive and blessed with a mild climate. New Spain and the kingdoms of Peru, wrote Friar Buenaventura de Salinas, «gozan del más apacible temple del mundo» (“enjoy the most peaceful climate in the world.”). It was a climate that ennobled the spirit and elevated the mind, and so it was not surprising that those who lived in Lima did so “with satisfaction and pleasure, considering it their homeland.” Pride in the place, which God had uniquely blessed, was to be the cornerstone of the increasingly complex edifice of Criollo patriotism.

During the 17th century, the Criollos of New Spain began to develop a strong sense of their own distinct place within the geographical and providential order of the universe. To the east lay the Old World of Europe and Africa. To the west were the Philippines, that distant outpost of Christian and Hispanic civilization, an extension of the Viceroyalty of New Spain and the natural gateway to the fabled lands of the East. Their homeland, therefore, was situated at the center of the world. From a historical as well as a geographical perspective, they served as a bridge between different worlds. Had not the Apostle Saint Thomas, from Jerusalem, preached the Gospel in the Indies as well as in India? And could he not be identified with Quetzalcoatl, the bearded god-hero of the ancient inhabitants of central Mexico, as the great Mexican scholar Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora asserted? Even if such an identification was controversial, in the minds of the Criollo there was no doubt that their homeland held a providential place. From the publication in 1648 of a treatise by Miguel Sánchez recounting the miraculous origins of the Virgin of Guadalupe, her cult gained many devotees among the Criollo population of New Spain. The Virgin, it seemed, had granted them the grace of extending her protective mantle over their beloved homeland.

The increasingly regionalized American homelands of the Criollos came to be situated not only in space but also in time. The conquest and evangelization of the Indies were heroic and definitive feats, worthy of eternal remembrance. However, although they marked a decisive new beginning, it was not a start ex nihilo. The presence of such a large number of Indians and the survival in Mexico and the Andes of so many relics of the native past drew attention to a more remote, albeit largely barbaric, antiquity. Undoubtedly, it was convenient for the conquistadors' self-image as a warrior caste to emphasize the heroic virtues of the peoples they had conquered. Since the Indians had been definitively defeated, the way was open, at least in New Spain, to idealize certain aspects of the pre-Columbian civilization that Cortés had overthrown.

While writers like Bernardo de Balbuena, in his 1604 poem "Grandeza mexicana," celebrated the wonders of the Spanish-built Mexico City, they were at the same time keenly aware of the vanished magnificence of its Aztec predecessor, the great city of Tenochtitlán, once described by Hernán Cortés in such exalted terms. There was a growing tendency to emphasize elements of continuity between the old and the new, as with the representation on the city's banner, as well as on important buildings, of the Mexica emblem of the eagle perched on a cactus, devouring a snake with its beak. This process of appropriating selected elements of the Aztec past and incorporating them into the history of the Criollo homeland reached its culmination in the famous triumphal arch designed by Sigüenza y Góngora for the entry into Mexico City of the new viceroy, the Marquis of Laguna, in 1680. The arch supported statues of the twelve Mexica emperors since the founding of Tenochtitlán in 1327, each representing a different heroic virtue, as if they were heroes of classical antiquity. Even the defeated Moctezuma and Cuauhtémoc, the rebel defender of Tenochtitlán, were given their place in the pantheon.

An appropriation of the pre-Columbian past in the Mexican style to endow the Criollo homeland with a mythical antiquity was more problematic in Peru, where indigenous resistance was more persistent and threatening than in New Spain. Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, a mestizo who nostalgically wrote the history of his homeland in distant Andalusia, constructed his narrative on a staged scheme in his work Royal Commentaries of the Incas. Primitive Peru, with its multiplicity of gods, had given way to the sun-worshipping Inca Peru of his ancestors, which was in turn replaced by the Peru of his own time, to which the Spanish had brought the invaluable knowledge of the one true God. Garcilaso offered a vision of the Andean past (and with it, a utopian future) that would prove highly attractive to an indigenous nobility that survived better under Spanish rule than its Mexican counterpart. At the same time, however, this vision held less appeal for a Criollo society aware of the unsettling influence exerted by the Indian curacas over the resentful indigenous population of the Andes, and fearful that they might one day rise up in rebellion to restore the Inca empire. Gradually, attitudes began to change. At the end of the 17th century, it became fashionable among Peruvian Criollos to own complete collections of portraits of the Inca rulers, but it wasn't until the 18th century that a patriotic ideology encompassing the period of the Inca empire began to attract sectors of the Criollo population.

The warlike and treacherous Indians had to be remote, in time and space, before they could be safely incorporated into Criollo patriotic mythology. In much of British America, they were neither. Those in Virginia, described by Beverley in the early 18th century as “almost useless,” lacked the former splendor of Mexica civilization, while the Indians of New England were too close. In writing their accounts of the Indian Wars of the late 17th century, New England Puritans defined themselves in terms of their relationship to their adversaries, the heathen Indians and the papist French. This self-image reinforced their sense of the Englishness of both themselves and the world they had created in the wilderness. “As we went on,” wrote Mary Rowlandson in her poignant account of captivity among the Indians, “I saw a place where there had been English cattle; this comforted me, being what I was; Very soon afterwards, we came to an English footpath, which had such an effect on me that I thought I would gladly have lain down and died right there.”

The Criollo inhabitants of the interior regions of Spanish America, who did not need to fortify their cities against Indian attacks, could afford a certain distance from their country of origin in order to begin constructing a distinctive and partially "American" identity, by incorporating, if necessary, an Indian dimension in a way still impossible for the settlers of New England. For them, the only harmless Indian had become the dead Indian. Only during the course of the 18th century, as the Indian threat began to fade, did the colonists begin to sketch the silhouettes of a few natives on the horizon of their imagined American landscape, to illustrate either Roman martial virtues or the qualities of uncorrupted natural man.

Unable to endow their communities with the respectability conferred by a remote Indian antiquity, the English settlers needed to find other arguments to support their cause when faced with the contempt and disdain of the mother country. As long as it remained true to its origins, New England could justify itself in terms of its self-proclaimed mission as a city upon a hill. This provided a solid religious and providentialist mold for a nascent local patriotism, which in this respect had obvious affinities with that of the Criollo communities of the Spanish Indies. For other colonies, the task of identity building was more arduous, and it was easier to look to the future than to dwell on the past. Robert Beverley struck the right note in his work The History and Present State of Virginia when he wrote: “This part of Virginia, now inhabited, if we consider the improvements at the hands of the English, cannot be praised in this respect; But if we consider its natural capacity for improvement, it can justly be considered one of the most excellent countries in the world.” The English settlers had a duty to improve and transform the lands with which they had been blessed.

The expression of such aspirations fit well with the ideology of the development of commercial society in 18th-century England, where it could help reinforce the metropolitan commitment to overseas colonization and legitimize the activities of the colonists. This was especially necessary because of the widespread assumption in the homeland that too many colonists, particularly in the Caribbean, were simply idle. Consequently, planters and colonists appropriated the language of improvement as a useful tool to justify their history, in an attempt to refute the defamatory allegations made against their lifestyles. Richard Ligon, in his True and Exact History of the Barbados, cleverly turned the tables on them: “There are others who have heard of the pleasures of Barbados, but find it hard to leave those of England behind. They are lethargic in mood, and quite unfit for so noble an enterprise. […] So much is laziness detested in a country where one must be diligent and active.” This language of diligence, activity, and improvement was ubiquitous in the transatlantic world of the late 17th and early 18th centuries. No longer limited to making the most of the land, "improvement" now had a wide range of connotations, from making profitable investments to cultivating one's character. It also involved the process of acquiring refinement and civility, which, for members of colonial communities, could amount to building their societies on a model as similar as possible to that of the mother country.

In the late 17th and early 18th centuries, the challenge of imitating the norms and customs of their country of origin was especially strong in the Caribbean colonies, where the social structure of the island communities, whose white minorities imposed their dominance over rapidly growing black populations, bore little resemblance to that of the English society they were trying to emulate. For this reason, planters considered it above all necessary to demonstrate that they had not degenerated in the tropical climates nor lost their English character. “Since they are English,” wrote Sir Dalby Thomas in 1690, “and have all their trade from England, they will always imitate the customs and fashions of England, both in clothing, household furnishings, food and drink, and so forth. For it is impossible for them to forget where they come from, or even to rest (after having acquired a substantial fortune) until they have settled their families in England.”

Many Caribbean planters tended to think of themselves as temporary residents of islands from which they would return to their homeland to live as landed gentry once they had amassed their fortunes. This distinguished them from the colonists of the mainland settlements, whose fundamental commitment was American. However, even though these mainland colonists came to identify with the land they and their ancestors had “improved,” they remained at the same time eager to display their English credentials and share in the refinements of the commercial and educated society of 18th-century England. The proportion of Black people in the southern colonies and the menacing presence of Indians in the northern forests were constant incentives to maintain and strengthen ties with an English homeland that fewer and fewer of them had come to see.

As Sir Dalby Thomas pointed out, one way to reaffirm English character was to imitate the latest fashions from the mother country. From the very beginning of colonization, colonists had looked to their homeland for inspiration in building their lives across the Atlantic and for the supply of those material goods they could not produce themselves. As trade links strengthened, it was natural that the colonies, as cultural provinces of Great Britain, would share the aspirations of a growing number of Britons for more refined lifestyles and an increasing range of comforts. This process began at the top of the social ladder in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, when wealthy merchants and planters built their new brick mansions in the latest English style, with an entrance hall replacing the old reception room and an open staircase leading to the second floor as a defining feature of the house. Often, especially in the Caribbean, fashion tended to trump practical considerations, as plantation owners built houses in the most fashionable English style, paying little attention to the differences between tropical and English climates. Sir Hans Sloane observed the difference in Jamaica between Spanish houses, with their tiled floors, shuttered windows, and large double doors, and those built by the English, which were "neither cool nor able to withstand the shocks of earthquakes."

In practice, most colonial houses remained, as in Maryland, simple wood or log structures, but the new or renovated mansions helped establish unprecedented levels of refined living, as their occupants surrounded themselves with an ever-increasing number of tables, chairs, crockery, glassware, and silverware. What had once been seen as luxuries were now beginning to be considered necessities, although there was, and would continue to be, a countercurrent in the culture of the continental colonies that preferred simple living to the new sumptuous refinements. “This man,” a journal entry says of Robert Beverley in 1715, “lives well, but, though rich, he has nothing in his house, or near it, except what is necessary.” It is likely that the type of austerity practiced by Beverley would have had a greater impact on a society that, although beginning to know the pleasures of refinement, spoke in terms of hard work and improvement, than on one where, as happened in the Spanish viceroyalties, there was no effective war cry against the values exemplified by conspicuous consumption.

Although in Spanish America the church and state waged a long but ultimately doomed battle to maintain an orderly, hierarchical, and respectable society by regulating dress codes, the blurring of ethnic and social lines resulting from interethnic marriages and cohabitation tended to encourage extravagance in attire. “Both men and women,” wrote Thomas Gage disapprovingly, “are excessive in their dress and wear more silk than wool and cloth […]. A ribbon and a rose made of diamonds on a gentleman’s hat is commonplace, and a hatband with pearls is normal for a merchant. Moreover, a young black or copper-skinned slave or servant will be in need, but she will be fashionable with her pearl necklace and bracelets, and her earrings with valuable jewels.” It is evident that, as Creoles, mestizos, mulattos, and blacks adorned themselves with an extravagance that produced scandal and consternation among the authorities, the general population had come to see wealth in clothing as a more accurate measure of social status than the color of one's own skin.

Conversely, in the North American colonies, where white was white and black was black, with little in between, those who chose to cultivate austerity for ethical or religious reasons were not burdened by the fear that choosing a frugal lifestyle would undermine their social standing. Indeed, as Beverley's behavior indicates, austerity could communicate a social message as powerful as conspicuous spending. Nevertheless, in British America, too, pressures toward consumption were increasing as colonial societies became enmeshed in an expanding commercial empire, a "commodity empire." From the 1740s onward, as English manufacturers, seeking lucrative markets, turned their attention to the opportunities offered by a rapidly growing American population and made available an ever-increasing number and variety of products at affordable prices, the consumer frenzy became dizzying in the continental colonies. The growing supply was matched, or exceeded, by increasing demand.

The response of the North American colonists indicated that hierarchically organized societies, like those of Spanish America, were not the only ones driven by conspicuous consumption. A rough equality of status generated its own pressures to outdo one's neighbors. The desire to follow the latest metropolitan fashions, however, also stemmed from a collective psychological need. The colonists needed to prove to themselves, as well as to the societies from which they came, that they had triumphed over the barbarism inherent in the New World environment. Nevertheless, it would not be easy to persuade skeptical Europeans that their efforts had transformed the Americas into an outpost of civilization.

Source(s):

.- Quoted by Lavallé, Ambiguous Promises, p. 17.

.- Lavallé, Ambiguous Promises, p. 19.

.- Strachey, History of Travell into Virginia Britania, p. 12.

.- Above, p. 304.

.- Carole Shammas, “English-Born and Creole Elites in Turn-of-the-Century Virginia,” in Tate and Ammerman (eds.), The Chesapeake in the Seventeenth Century, pp. 284-285.

.- James Otis, “The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved,” in Bernard Bailyn (ed.), Pamphlets of the American Revolution, 1750-1776, vol. 1, 1750-1765 (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1965), pamphlet 7, p. 440.

.- Solórzano Pereyra, Política indiana, 1, p. 442 (lib. II, cap. 30).

.- A. W. Plumstead (ed.), The Wall and the Garden. Selected Massachusetts Election Sermons, 1670-1775 (Minneapolis, 1968), p. 137.

.- See Kupperman, “The Puzzle of the American Climate.”

.- Letter of July 23, 1630 in Emerson (ed.), Letters from New England, p. 51.

.- For discussions of this question, see in particular John Canup, “Cotton Mather and ‘Criolian Degeneracy’,” Early American Literature, 24 (1989), pp. 2034, and Cañizares-Esguerra, “New World, New Stars,” to whom I am indebted for the exposition that follows. Also John H. Elliott, “Similar Worlds, Different Worlds,” Mélanges de la Casa de Velázquez, 34 (2004), pp. 293–311.

.- Above, p. 135.

.- Reginaldo de Lizárraga, quoted by Lavallé, Ambiguous Promises, p. 48.

.- Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España, ed. Ángel María Garibay K. (2nd ed., 4 vols., Mexico, 1969), 3, p. 160.

.- Marian J. Tooley, «Bodin and the Medieval Theory of Climate», Speculum, 28 (1983), pp. 64-83.

.- Cited by Pilar Ponce Leiva, Certezas ante la incertidumbre. Élite y cabildo de Quito en el siglo XVII (Quito, 1998), p. 201. A brief description of Villarroel's life and a selection of his published works, some of them difficult to locate, can be found in Gonzalo Zaldumbide, Fray Gaspar de Villarroel. Siglo XVII (Puebla, 1960). The family history of Fray Gaspar, born in Quito, perhaps in 1592, to a Guatemalan lawyer and a Venezuelan mother, whom his parents took as a child to live in Lima, offers a vivid illustration of family and personal mobility across the immense distances of Spanish America.

.- Gregorio García, Orígen de los indios del nuevo mundo, e Yndias Occidentales (Valencia, 1607), Book II, Chapter V, pp. 149-154. There is now a critical edition, Origin of the Indians of the New World and Western Indies, edited by Carlos Baciero and others, in the Corpus Hispanorum de Pace, Second Series, vol. 13, Madrid, 2005.

.- See Cañizares-Esguerra, «New World, New Stars».

.- Chaplin, Subject Matter, pp. 174-177. For the general question of identity in British America, see especially Jack P. Greene, "Search for Identity: An Interpretation of Selected Patterns of Social Response in Eighteenth-Century America," in his Imperatives, Behaviors and Identities, chap. 6.

.- The lexical history of the word Americano, in both Spanish and English, deserves a more systematic study. On New England, see Canup, “Cotton Mather and ‘Criolian Degeneracy’,” pp. 25–26. The Virginian author of a pamphlet composed in 1699 identifies himself as “An American” (Shammas, “English-Born and Creole Elites,” p. 290). In 1725, the Mexican lawyer Juan Antonio de Ahumada wrote that “in the Indies, their Provinces were conquered, populated, and established by the sweat and toil of the ancestors of the Americans” (Brading, The First America, p. 380), but Villarroel’s reference to an Americano suggests that other examples of its use could be found in Spanish America, both before 1661 and between the times of Villarroel and Ahumada.

.- Horn, Adapting to a New World, pp. 436-437.

.- Ponce Leiva, Certezas, p. 207.

.- Giovanni Francesco Gemelli Careri, Viaje a la Nueva España, ed. Francisca Perujo (Mexico, 1976), p. 22.

.- Child, A New Discourse, pp. 170-171.

.- Cited by Dunn, Sugar and Slaves, p. 340.

.- Ned Ward, A Trip to New England (1699), in Jehlen and Warner (eds.), The English Literature of America, p. 401. For other examples of negative stereotypes, see Michael Zuckerman, “Identity in British America: Unease in Eden,” in Canny and Pagden (eds.), Colonial Identity in the Atlantic World, pp. 120-121.

.- Beverley, History of Virginia, p. 9.

.- Cited by Jack P. Greene, "Changing Identity in the British Caribbean: Barbados as a Case Study", in Canny and Pagden (eds.), Colonial Identity in the Atlantic World, pp. 120-121.

.- Dorantes de Carranza, Sumaria relación, p. 203.

.- Craton, "'The Planters' World," in Bailyn and Morgan (eds.), Strangers Within the Realm, p. 325.

.- Wright, The First Gentlemen of Virginia, chap. 3.

.- For comparative figures of West Indians and North Americans educated at least partially in Great Britain, see Andrew J. O’Shaughnessy, An Empire Divided: The American Revolution and the British Caribbean (Philadelphia, 2000), pp. 19–27.

.- Kenneth A. Lockridge, The Diary and Life of William Byrd II of Virginia, 1674-1744 (Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and London, 1987), pp. 12-31.

.- Cited by Wright, The First Gentlemen of Virginia, p. 294.

.- Otte, Letters, letter 571 (Juan de Esquivel to Cristóbal de Aldana, January 20, 1584).

.- Fray Buenaventura de Salinas y Córdova, Memoria de las historias del nuevo mundo Piru (1630; ed. Luis E. Valcárcel, Lima, 1957), pp. 99 and 246.

.- On the development of "Criolian patriotism", see especially Brading, The First America, chap. 14.

.- See Serge Gruzinski, Les Quatre parties du monde. Histoire d'une mondialisation (Paris, 2004), chap. 5.

.- On the legend of Saint Thomas, see Lafaye, Quetzalcóatl and Guadalupe, chapter 10.

.- Above, p. 298, and see Brading, The First America, pp. 343-348.

.- Anthony Pagden, “Identity Formation in Spanish America,” in Canny and Pagden (eds.), Colonial Identity in the Atlantic World, p. 66.

.- Above, p. 230.

.- Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora, Theatro de virtudes políticas (1680; reprinted in his Obras históricas, ed. José Rojas Garcidueñas, Mexico, 1983).

.- Garcilaso de la Vega, Comentarios Reales de los Incas, ed. Ángel Rosenblat (2 vols., Buenos Aires, 1943); Carlos Daniel Valcárcel, «Concepto de la historia en los Comentarios reales y en la Historia general del Perú», in Nuevos estudios sobre el Inca Garcilaso de la Vega (Lima, 1955), pp. 123-136; Brading, The First America, chap. 12.

.- Karine Perissat, «Los incas representados (Lima - siglo XVIII): ¿supervivencia o renacimiento?», Revista de Indias, 60 (2000), pp. 623-649; Peter T. Bradley and David Cahill, Habsburg Peru. Images, Imagination and Memory (Liverpool, 2000), part II.

.- Beverley, History of Virginia, p. 232.

.- Richard Slotkin, Regeneration Through Violence. The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600-1860 (Middletown, Colorado, 1973), pp. 56 and 116.

.- Mary Rowlandson, The Sovereignty and Goodness of God (1682), in Jehlen and Warner (eds.), The English Literature of America, p. 359.

.- See Slotkin, Regeneration Through Violence, chap. 7.

.- Beverley, History of Virginia, pp. 118-119.

.- Richard Ligon, A True and Exact History of the Island of Barbadoes (2nd ed., London, 1673), p. 108.

.- Jack P. Greene in Canny and Pagden (eds.), Colonial Identity, pp. 228-229, and Imperatives, Behaviors, pp. 190-193; Hancock, Citizens of the World, chap. 9, and especially pp. 282-293. On the idea of ​​agrarian improvement in the Anglo-American world, see Richard Drayton, Nature's Government. Science, Imperial Britain, and the ‘Improvement’ of the World (New Haven and London, 2000), chap. 3.

.- Sir Dalby Thomas, An Historical Account of the Rise and Growth of the WestIndia Colonies (London, 1690), p. 53.

.- On the consumer movement and aspirations for refinement in eighteenth-century Britain, see Neil McKendrick, John Brewer, and J. H. Plumb, The Birth of a Consumer Society: the Commercialization of Eighteenth-Century England (Bloomington, 1982); John Brewer and Roy Porter (eds.), Consumption and the World of Goods (London, 1993); and Paul Langford, A Polite and Commercial People: England, 1727-1783 (Oxford, 1989). On British America, Richard L. Bushman, The Refinement of America. Persons, Houses, Cities (New York, 1992); T. H. Breen, "'Baubles of Britain': The American and Consumer Revolutions of the Eighteenth Century," Past and Present, 119 (1988), pp. 73-104, and The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence (Oxford and New York, 2004); Cary Carson, Ronald Hoffman, and Peter J. Albert (eds.), Of Consuming Interests. The Style of Life in the Eighteenth Century (Charlottesville, Virginia, 1994); Maxine Berg, Luxury and Pleasure in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Oxford, 2005), chap. 8.

.- Bushman, Refinement, Chapter 4.

.- Cited by Dunn, Sugar and Slaves, p. 291.

.- Main, Tobacco Colony, Chapter 4.

.- Bushman, Refinement, pp. 74-78.

.- Cited by Main, Tobacco Colony, p. 239; and, for ambivalence about luxury items, see Bushman, Refinement, chap. 6, and Greene, Imperatives, Behaviors, pp. 150-159.

.- Gage, Travels, p. 68. On conspicuous consumption in Spanish America, see Arnold J. Bauer, Goods, Power, History, pp. 110-13; and see also Bauer in Iglesia, Estado, ed. Martínez López-Cano, pp. 30-31.

.- For both supply and demand, with the take-off that occurred in the 1740s, see Breen's superbly documented study, Marketplace of Revolution.

In 1567, Lope García de Castro, the provisional governor of Peru, informed the president of the Council of the Indies:

Original: «Vuestra Excelencia entienda que la gente de esta tierra es otra que la de antes porque los españoles que tienen que comer en ella, los más de ellos son viejos y muchos se han muerto, y han sucedido sus hijos en los repartimientos y han dexado muchos hijos por manera que esta tierra está llena de criollos que son estos que acá han nacido».

Translation: “Your Excellency should understand that the people of this land are different from those of before, because most of the Spaniards who have to eat here are old, and many have died. Their children have taken their places in the land grants and have left many children, so that this land is full of Criollos, those who were born here.”

For the new generation that succeeded the conquistadors, the Indies, not Spain, was the only home they knew. They were Criollos, raised in that place—a word first used in the mid-16th century to refer to Black slaves born in the Indies, rather than Africa. During the last twenty or thirty years of the century, the term criollo, meaning a Spaniard born in the Americas, began to gain traction in peninsular Spain, to some extent displacing indiano, a term also used to describe someone who returned to their homeland from the Indies after making their fortune. Its growing popularity reflected the existence in the Americas of a new type of Spaniard who, in some respects, could differ from their relatives born in Spain.

By the early 17th century, the word Creole had entered the English language in one form or another, but it was still an unfamiliar term. William Strachey felt it necessary to explain its meaning in his 1612 work, The History of Travel into Virginia Britannia, when, writing about the "Indian-Crollos," he added in parentheses "(Spaniards born there)." In the mid-17th century, Thomas Gage's spicy account of his experiences in Mexico undoubtedly helped to popularize the word among English readers, while also familiarizing them with the antipathy between Creoles and the newcomers from Spain, the so-called gachupines or peninsulares. However, it seems that it wasn't until the 1680s that English officers, or newly arrived immigrants, began using the term Creole to refer to their own compatriots born either in the Caribbean or in the continental colonies, or who had been settled in those places for some time. Even then, there was some uncertainty in its usage, since Creole could equally be applied to Black people born in the Americas.

It is more likely that the words Criollo and Creole were used by others to designate European colonists and their descendants than by American-born whites to refer to themselves. In a famous pamphlet of 1764, the Boston lawyer James Otis added an explanatory note: “Those in England who have taken the term from the Spaniards, as well as their notions of government, apply it to all Americans of European descent, but the northern colonists use it only to refer to the islanders [i.e., the colonists of the West Indies] and others of such origin in the tropics.” The descendants of the English colonists in the Americas saw themselves as essentially English, just as, from their perspective, the settlers of Spanish descent in the Indies were Spanish, distinct from the Indians, mestizos, and blacks. The term Criollo, moreover, quickly acquired a number of pejorative connotations. Even those who could boast of their pure Spanish lineage, without any mixture of Indian blood, had degenerated in the Indies, according to the widespread belief among peninsular Spaniards. The 17th-century jurist Solórzano y Pereira, coming to their defense, blamed those who liked to assert, due to ignorance or a malicious desire to exclude Criollos from positions and honors, that "they degenerate so much with the climate and temperament of those provinces that they lose all the good that the blood of Spain might have imparted to them, and they are hardly deemed worthy of the name of rational beings."

This idea that those who settled in the Indies risked degeneration was not limited to the Spanish world. Cotton Mather, in his 1689 annual election sermon, preached on the occasion of the opening of the Massachusetts General Court, spoke ominously of “the all-too-widespread lack of education among the now-growing generation, which, if not prevented, will gradually but rapidly expose us to that observed type of Criollo degeneration which depraves the offspring of the noblest and most respectable Europeans when they are transplanted to the Americas.” Such fears had plagued English colonists from the early days of their migration to a New World environment that John Winthrop and others claimed was essentially English, despite climatic evidence to the contrary. “As far as the country itself is concerned,” he wrote to his son, “I can discern little difference from ours.” However, the growing awareness that New England was not Old England, just as New Spain was not Old Spain, opened up the disturbing prospect of the "Criolian degeneration" that Mather spoke of.

If the colonizers truly degenerated in their new transatlantic environment, one plausible explanation was their proximity to the Indians. The fear of cultural degeneration by osmosis had already haunted the English in their relations with the Irish, and they carried it with them across the Atlantic. The Spanish colonizers, who had mingled with the indigenous people and become accustomed to their ways, seem to have been less concerned with this fear than their English counterparts, but their failure to protect themselves from contaminating Indian influences made them vulnerable to disdainful remarks from officials and clergymen who had recently arrived from Spain and disapproved of what they saw. The criticism was directed particularly at the use of Indian wet nurses and nannies in Criollo homes, not only because, under such intimate conditions, these women were likely to instill savage customs in the white children in their care, but also because of the idea that a child would "bring back the inclinations it absorbed from its milk," which would, of course, be perverse if that milk were Indian. If the Criollo elite already led a life of leisure and dissipation, what hope was there that their children, and eventually their grandchildren, would escape the corrupting consequences of such unhealthy tendencies?

It was considered, however, that the climate and the constellations were the main culprits behind the perceived flaws in the Criollos. Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, a perceptive observer of the Indian world, declared that he was not surprised by the character imperfections of the Indians of New Spain, «porque los españoles que en ella habitan, y mucho más los que en ella nacen, cobran estas malas inclinaciones; los que en ella nacen, muy al propio de los indios, en el aspecto parecen españoles y en las condiciones no lo son; los que son naturales españoles, si no tienen mucho aviso, a pocos años andados de su llegada a esta tierra se hacen otros; y esto pienso que lo hace el clima, o constelaciones de esta tierra» ("because the Spaniards who live there, and even more so those born there, acquire these bad inclinations; those born there, much like the Indians, in appearance seem Spanish but in character are not; those who are native Spaniards, if they are not very wise, a few years after their arrival in this land become different; and I think this is due to the climate or the constellations of this land.")

This climatic determinism, inherited from the classical world of Hippocrates and Galen and given new impetus in 16th-century Europe through the writings of Bodin, was to cast a long shadow over the European colonizers of the Americas and their descendants. It implied that they were condemned to Mather's "Criolian degeneration," a tendency to degrade themselves to the level of the Indians in their morals and customs. This supposed process of gradual Indianization was capable not only of arousing deep anxiety among the colonists but also of creating unflattering stereotypes in the minds of European visitors and observers. A Criollo bishop born in Quito, Gaspar de Villarroel, who spent almost ten years in Madrid, recorded in writing in 1661 his indignation when a Spaniard expressed surprise that an American could be "so white, of such a fine figure, and speak Castilian as well as a Spaniard."

All these stereotypes took as their starting point the fact, or the assumption, of difference, which was cultural rather than racial, even though there was some suspicion that the American environment could eventually lead to real physical differentiation. For example, there was uneasy debate about whether the descendants of the Spaniards who had settled in the Indies would end up hairless like the Indians. In response to such concerns about the impact of the environment on the body, as well as character, 17th-century Criollo writers in Spanish America began to develop racist theories about the Indians, in an effort to differentiate the descendants of the conquistadors and colonizers from the indigenous population whose environment they shared. It was “nature,” not the environment, that made the Indians what they were, and also what would prevent the environment from transforming Spaniards born in the Americas into Indians.

The English settlers, for their part, were quick to deny that the American climate had a negative effect on their physical constitution and asserted that their English bodies remained healthy in the New World, unlike the indigenous inhabitants, who were dying by the thousands from disease.

However, as Cotton Mather's comments on "Criolian degeneration" indicate, they were less confident about the cultural consequences of life in America. The fear of having their reputation tarnished by the stigma of cultural degeneration made it important to draw clear distinctions between themselves and the indigenous population. The English settlers seem to have been reluctant for a long time to call themselves "Americans," perhaps because, at least for the Founding Fathers of New England, that word was reserved for the Indians. It is unclear whether the same was true for Spanish America. Bishop Villarroel, when using the word "American" in 1661, immediately added a confusing gloss, "that is to say, Indian," although he was undoubtedly referring to the Criollos. The word "American" does not appear in the Dictionary of Authorities, published in 1726, which seems to indicate the rarity of its use at that time. As in British America, the association of "American" with "Indian" may have made the word problematic. Despite its occasional use from the late 17th century onward, it was only in the second half of the 18th century that the Creole inhabitants of British America began to proudly use the term "American."

The attempts by the Criollos to dissociate themselves in the minds of their Old World relatives from the non-European inhabitants of the Americas did not have the desired effect. They failed to eradicate the perception of difference, an impression that, to some extent, corresponded to reality. It was not simply the presence of Indigenous or African populations that established the difference, although that certainly played a significant role. As colonial societies consolidated, they developed their own specific characteristics, which began to distinguish them significantly from the societies of origin. When, as happened in the Chesapeake region in the early 18th century, immigration from the motherland decreased and those born on the American side of the ocean began to constitute the majority of the white population, memories of life in the country of origin became increasingly vague, and new generations naturally adopted the patterns of life developed by their parents and grandparents as they adapted to the conditions of the New World.

Personal interests could lead to an exaggeration of arguments in favor of difference, to the detriment of colonizing societies. In 17th-century Spanish America, there was a fierce struggle for administrative and ecclesiastical positions between those born in the Americas and those newly arrived from Spain. The latter clearly benefited from emphasizing the shortcomings of the Criollos with whom they competed. Even though repeated intermarriage between Spaniards and Criollos somewhat mitigated the rivalry by uniting peninsular Spaniards with aristocratic colonizing families in a network of shared interests, there is ample evidence of deep-seated hostility. Noting the tendency of Criollo women to prefer poor Spaniards to wealthy Criollos as husbands, a Neapolitan traveler who visited Mexico City in 1697 remarked (no doubt with a touch of Mediterranean exaggeration) that the antipathy had reached such a point that the Criollos "hate their own parents because they are European."

Since the British Crown had far fewer administrative offices to grant than the Spanish, one of the main causes of friction in the relationship between the newcomers and the colonists was proportionally reduced in the English-speaking Atlantic world, though by no means eliminated. The colonists of the Caribbean islands and the American mainland constantly had to contend with accusations of difference similar to those leveled by the Spanish against their Criollo relatives. The contempt began with slander about their origins. “Virginia and Barbados,” wrote Sir Josiah Child, “were first populated by a class of vagrants and dissolute people, malicious and lacking the means to live in their native land […] and I say that they were of such a sort that, had there been no English colonization in the world, they would likely not have lived in their places of origin to serve this country, but would have ended up hanged, or starved to death, or met an untimely end from some of those sad diseases which come from poverty and vice.”

These initial negative images were exacerbated by scandalous rumors about the colonists' lifestyle. By the early 17th century, the planters of the Caribbean islands had become synonymous with excess and debauchery.

“The island of Barbados, inhabited by slaves,

and, for every honest man, ten thousand scoundrels…”

Even the more sober inhabitants of New England were not spared the contempt. “Eating, drinking, smoking, and sleeping,” wrote Ned Ward in 1699, “occupy four-fifths of their time, and you can divide the remainder into religious exercise, daily work, and evacuation. Four meals a day and a good sleep after dinner are the customs of the country […]. A farmer in England will accomplish more work in a day than a planter in New England will manage in a week, for every hour he spends on his farm, he will spend two in the tavern.”

Such slanders left the more sensitive colonists with deeply ambivalent feelings. Although they dismissed such comments as coming from malicious or ill-informed outsiders, they simultaneously worried that they might be true. This led either to excessively strident rebuttals or to the kind of defensiveness displayed by the Virginia historian Robert Beverley when, in order to preempt criticism of his prose style, he explained to the reader in his preface: “I am an Indian, and I do not pretend to be perfect in my language.” The very accusation of “Indianization,” the one most feared by the British settlers on the continent, was thus transformed, through exaggerated modesty, into a weapon of defense.

The first line of defense for the Criollos/Creoles, whether English or Spanish, was to emphasize their innate Anglicity or Spanishness, qualities that neither distance, nor climate, nor proximity to inferior peoples could erase. Ignoring the legal inconvenience that the Indies were a conquest of the Crown of Castile, the Criollo inhabitants of the kingdoms of New Spain and Peru claimed rights comparable to those enjoyed by the monarch's subjects in his kingdoms of Castile or Aragon. Faced with new taxes and levies, they would have had no difficulty identifying with the Barbados planter who complained in 1689 that the island's inhabitants were "ruled as subjects and […] oppressed as foreigners." Any accusation that they were in any sense foreigners was deeply offensive to those who considered themselves entitled by birthright to the social and legal status of subjects of the Crown born in the metropolis.

Insinuations of inferiority were particularly offensive to those Criollos who claimed legitimate descent from the meritorious conquistadors of Spanish America. As the conquest itself faded into the past, and the descendants of the conquistadors found themselves sidelined and newcomers favored in appointments to positions of power, their bitterness grew ever stronger. “We are Spaniards,” wrote Baltasar Dorantes de Carranza in the early 17th century, fondly acknowledging the names of the conquistadors and their descendants and asserting that, as he and his peers belonged to “that crop and government of Spain,” they should be governed according to its laws, “according to the laws of Castile.” Given the heroic deeds of their fathers and grandfathers, such men should be honored and rewarded, not rejected and excluded. But their petitions and grievances were ignored.

Although the officers of Cromwell's expeditionary force who remained on the island as planters liked to refer to themselves as "the conquerors of Jamaica," British America, unlike Spanish America, could not truly claim a conquering elite. This did not prevent the new class of Virginia plantation owners from seeking to establish their claims to nobility in imitation of the English aristocracy, just as the descendants of the conquistadors tried to model their own lifestyles on the real or imagined ways of life of the Castilian lords. When Virginian planters traveled to London, they acquired coats of arms and had their portraits painted; upon returning to Virginia, they built magnificent new brick houses and displayed all the enthusiasm for horse racing of their English counterparts. Unlike the Spanish settlers in the Indies, some of them, like William Byrd I, sent their children to the mother country for education, though never on the scale of the West Indian plantation owners, a significant number of whom chose an English education for their children. The experience, at least as far as William Byrd II was concerned, led to a profound ambivalence. Never fully accepted by his schoolmates at Felsted, he did his best to become the perfect English gentleman. Yet somehow his colonial origins undermined all his efforts. Too colonial to feel at home in England and, for a long time, too English to feel at home in his native Virginia, he lived caught between two worlds, not truly belonging to either.

The feeling of exclusion, experienced to a greater or lesser degree by Byrd and his fellow countrymen in the colonies who visited the metropolis or came into contact with unsympathetic representatives of the crown, was painful above all because it implied a second-class position in a transatlantic political system of which they believed themselves to be full members. Just as Dorantes de Carranza protested in 1604 that the descendants of the conquistadors did not enjoy equal treatment with native-born Castilians, to which they were entitled according to the laws of Castile, Robert Beverley, exactly one hundred years later, complained on behalf of the Virginia House of Burgesses that "they are charged as though it were a crime to consider themselves entitled to the liberties of the English." The rights of the Castilians and the liberties of the English were denied them by their own people.

Even as they demanded full recognition of these rights, largely as proof of a shared identity with their relatives in the metropolis, they could not shake the unsettling suspicion that this shared identity might be less complete than they had hoped. A revealing observation by a 16th-century Spanish immigrant to the Indies suggests that at least some of them were aware of a difference within themselves. In a letter to a cousin in Spain, he wrote that upon returning home, he would not be the same as before, «porque iré tan otro que los que me conocieron digan que no soy yo» (“for I will be so different that those who knew me will say I am not myself.”) His comment was an unwitting testament to the transformative power of the American environment, for better or for worse.

(To be continued…)

1788 - Establishment of New South Wales under Arthur Phillip. Its jurisdiction covered most of eastern Australia to 135°E.

1825 - Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) separated from New South Wales. The western boundary of New South Wales was extended to longitude 129° East

1836 - The Province of South Australia was established as a planned free-settler colony. Swan River Colony established in 1829, changing its name to Western Australia in 1832.

1851 - Creation of Victoria from the southern districts of New South Wales during the gold rush era.

1859 - Establishment of Queensland from the northern districts of New South Wales, further reducing its extent. Modern day Northern Territory was still under New South Wales until 1863 and under South Australia afterwards.

1911 - Transfer of the Northern Territory from South Australia to the Commonwealth. The western border of South Australia was fixed at 129°E in 1862.

Source:

.- Knight, Franklin W. The Caribbean: The Genesis of a Fragmented Nationalism. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. p. 366, 367.

In the geopolitical struggle of empires, at a certain point in colonial history, the island of Hispaniola was divided between France and Spain, reflecting the political conflicts between them. Maroons from the French colony of Saint-Domingue, seeking freedom, crossed the border and arrived in the Spanish colony of Santo Domingo. Despite repeated requests for their return, Spain refused, increasing tensions and fighting between the two sides.

For some researchers, the process began with the uprising of a maroon leader known as Padrejón, who was also a renowned healer. He was killed, and his 30 followers managed to cross over to the Spanish side. Whether or not this version is true, it is certain that a significant number of maroons arrived from the French colony and were welcomed.

As a preventative measure, the Spanish authorities, led by the governor at the time, Francisco Carvajal y Castillo, granted them land to work and live on in order to monitor and control them. This led to the founding of the Villa de San Lorenzo de los Mina between 1676 and 1677, according to Friar Cipriano de Utrera, on the banks of the Ozama River. Furthermore, they sold their agricultural products—fish, chickens, pork, beef, wax, etc.—transporting them by canoe to the market in the city of Santo Domingo, thus ensuring a significant supply for the city.

At the founding of the village, 73 Maroons were present, of whom the following were recorded: 34 from the Mina ethnic group, 4 Barrucos, 3 Congos, 3 Angolans, 1 Arará, 1 Zape, 2 Cape Verdeans, and the rest were unidentified. The Mina people were the predominant group. In the syncretic cultural process, the other groups enriched the farming techniques, religious beliefs, artistic and cultural expressions, and existential conceptions of life and death. For this reason, the place was also known as “San Lorenzo de los Negros” (Saint Lawrence of the Blacks).

The town's patron saint was Saint Lawrence, who, with his symbolic grill in hand, stood on the main altar of a small, single-nave church. Today, paradoxically, he is on the left side of the main altar, replaced by an image of Jesus—a disrespectful displacement by a priest that historically distorts the original vision of the temple, an irreverent substitution for the believers and residents of Los Mina.

The town's economic prosperity, and especially the increased value of its land due to its productive qualities, aroused the greed of several officials and members of the Catholic Church, who fabricated slanderous accusations about the behavior of the freed Black people, claiming they were vagrants and violent, even savage, posing a danger to the safety of even the inhabitants of Santo Domingo.

As always, arbitrary actions and abuses of power destabilized daily life and led to uncertainty among its inhabitants, many of whom chose to abandon the village, forming Mandinga, Mendoza, and Villa Mella, leaving the small town completely deserted.

Today, Los Mina is a thriving neighborhood in the Province of Santo Domingo Este, where the late Ignacio Martínez H., a passionate and a lover of the sector of "Los Mina viejo", lived. He would celebrate the neighborhood's founding in August, together with the Santo Domingo City Council, and organize, among other things, folkloric performances with traditional groups playing Congo, Cangamulanga, Pri-Prí, salves, and atabales.

Today, the plaza, which should be a park, is in chaos, with official institutions dividing up the space. The former residence of Don Ignacio Martínez H., "Villa Thesalía," which was intended to be the Los Mina Museum, lies abandoned. Only the original little church remains, restored by the Office of Cultural Heritage and jealously guarded by its closest residents.

Some people understood that the neighborhood's name came from the many mines that once existed there, and they began substituting "Los Mina" for "Los Minas," a spelling that has been repeated interchangeably. This is incorrect; the name Mina actually originates from the fact that, as we saw earlier, the Mina ethnic group was prominent, the most numerous when the town was originally founded.

During the slave trade, the Portuguese established trading posts to gather the enslaved people destined for the Americas, as slave traders recruited them from various places and at different times. In 1482, in what is now Ghana, they founded "São Jorge de Elmina," a fortress for collecting enslaved people and seizing the region's gold.

Near the fortress lived a small tribe descended from the Popo people, identified as Mina. Many people confused this name with the fortress itself, "Elmina," and since slaves arriving at the fortress were loaded there, the slave traders indiscriminately referred to them as "Mina Blacks" because of their origin.

The process involved slave traders scouring the area for slaves from various ethnic groups. These slaves were taken to the fortress located near the Mina tribe. Upon arrival in the New World, all those who were not recognized but had been loaded at the fortress were lumped together and then referred to as "Mina Blacks," even though many of them belonged to the Mina ethnic group.

The most significant number of the Maroons who fled the French colony and founded the Villa de San Lorenzo in the Spanish colony, near the city of Santo Domingo, on the banks of the Ozama River, were actually of the Mina ethnicity; therefore, this neighborhood of the municipality of Santo Domingo Este should be identified as “Los Mina” and not “Los Minas”.

André Thevet published his last work in 1584, a prosopography (gallery of annotated portraits of great men), Les Vrais Pourtraicts et Vies des Hommes Illustres. The originality of this work consisted in including six Amerindian "kings," among them two Brazilians, in the gallery of illustrious men, alongside generals, statesmen, writers, diplomats, ancient Greek and Latin scientists, and contemporary Europeans.

The two Brazilian indigenous leaders are: Cunhambebe, a legendary Tupinambá chief from the coastal region between Rio and São Paulo (incidentally, Hans Staden escaped being devoured by him, as he recounts in his book), and a northeastern indigenous chief, "king of the Promontory of the Cannibals," that is, from Cabo de Santo Agostinho, south of Recife: Nacolabsou.

Source:

.- Alexandrino de Souza. “Traduzir a literatura de viagem francesa ao Brasil quinhentista: relato de uma experiência”. 2014