¶ … Colonial Slavery
Much of the conventional wisdom around slavery rightly centers around the issue of racism. To many Europeans, the darker skin and different culture of the African peoples indicates the latter's inferiority and lesser level of development. Many Europeans justified colonization based on the idea of bringing civilization to the savage heathens. Others believed that the inferiority of the African races also meant that slavery was a natural social order.
A closer look at the history of colonialism and slavery, however, indicates forces at work other than racism. There were four distinct colonial periods in from the 16th to the late 20th century, and the actions of colonial powers such as Portugal and Spain were not always explained simply by skin color.
This paper reflects on the other forces that underlay the European colonization efforts.
It looks at the role played by patriarchy and religion in the colonial experience. The paper also looks at how the global economic forces spawned by colonialism in turn gave rise the modern slave trade and turned people into nothing more than commodities and sources of labor.
The Portuguese system of colonialism emerged during the 15th century, as the Portuguese were among the earliest Europeans to visit Sub-Saharan Africa. At this time, colonialism was a coastal phenomenon, since the African continent presented formidable physical barriers. However, the early coastal stations were also able to take advantage of the slave trade that had already existed, even...
First, as stated earlier, they served as springboards for slave traders who took slaves from further inland. These settlements also helped missionaries convert Africans to the Catholic faith.
In fact, for the Portuguese, Catholicism trumped skin color. African Natives who professed to the Catholic faith gained the rights and advantages of Portuguese citizenship. The Portuguese even mandated intermarriage between Portuguese and native populations, a significant fact considering the French and British colonizers had passed ordinances against the very same practice in their colonies.
It is interesting to note, however, that this mandate allowing intermarriage applied only to the Portuguese males. In the social system prevailing in Europe at the time, wives became "property" of their husband and their husband's families upon marriage. The laws mandating intermarriage between Portuguese males and native women were thus built on this same understanding. Upon their marriage, the native women and any subsequent children from the marriage would be Portuguese and no longer African.
For the Portuguese at least, many other factors mitigated the role of skin color.
Through marriage and religious conversion, members of colonized peoples could achieve a…
