30.8 America: a.d. 1501 to 1600

Eastern and central south america

Horses which had been introduced far to the west in Peru by Pizarro were, within a few years, to be found running in large, wild herds even in the pampas of eastern South America. Sugar cane reached Brazil in about 1520 and sugar mills were set up in about 1550, so that soon there appeared the eternal trinity - the master's house, the slaves cabins and the sugar mill. Still the master had to sell his product and it was European trade that commanded production and output in Brazil and elsewhere in the New World. (Ref. 292 ) As early as 1521 the Portuguese began building forts in Brazil, hoping to reach the legendary empire of gold from the east, across the Chaco. The Guaranis tribes, already used to pillaging the rich Incanized slopes of the eastern Andes, helped the Portuguese expeditions. When the Spaniard Martinez de Irala reached the upper Andes in 1548, that part of Peru and Bolivia were already under Portuguese control. But Asuncion, now in Paraguay, 600 miles inland from the Atlantic, had been settled in 1542 by the Spaniard de Vaca

Bahia was founded as the administrative capital for the Portuguese in 1549 and between 1575 and 1600 coastal Brazil had become the foremost sugar producing territory in the western world, averaging 1,600 tons a year, shipped to Europe. Soon there were shops on the streets of Sao Paulo and after 1580 Portuguese middlemen invaded the whole of Spanish America as shopkeepers and peddlers. The natives were nomadic and not easily made into a labor force and tended to slip away as the Portuguese arrived, so slave ships shuttled between Angola and Brazil, with payment given in Africa in low grade Brazilian tobacco. Then in half a century Paulist bandeiras spread out from Sao Paulo over half the continent from the Rio de la Plata to the Amazon and Andes in search of slaves, precious stones and gold. (Ref. 260 ) It has been estimated that by 1583 there were 25,000 whites, 18,000 civilized Indians and 14,000 Negro slaves in the territory. The towns of Brazil, which Braudel (Ref. 260 ) has described as so many miniature versions of Sparta or Thebes, were run by the men of property, the Spanish cabildos .

Argentina had been discovered even earlier in 1516 by the Spanish Juan Diaz de Solis and the coasts explored by Diego Garcia in 1526. Buenos Aires was founded in 1534 by Pedro de Mendoza but the village soon died out or was destroyed. When it was rebuilt in 1580 it was chiefly by Portuguese merchants. Their ships streamed west across the Atlantic laden with rice, fabrics, black slaves and perhaps some gold, would arrive at Buenos Aires, then go up the Rio de la Plata to Ascension, where they would trade for silver reals coming down the Pilcomayo River. (Ref. 292 )

Magellan and 265 men rounded Cape Horn as early as 1520 on their famous globe circling trip, but it was about 1579 that Europeans came in contact with the natives of Patagonia. They were described as being light-skinned men with thick, bushy black, wiry hair, who smeared their bodies with red paint and grease. The Europeans attempted a colony there and brought sheep, which the Patagonians promptly hunted. Today there are no true Patagonians left. Additional Notes

Forward to America: A.D. 1601 to 1700

Choose different region

• Intro to Era
• Africa
• Central and Northern Asia
• Europe
• The Far East
• The Indian Subcontinent
• The Near East
• Pacific