Page 15 - 2023-bfw-strayer-wow-5e-new.indd

Chapter 4 • Political Transformations, 1450–1750 217

specialized Indigenous gods, while belief in magic, folk medicine, and commu-
nion with the dead remained strong. Memories of the past also endured. The
Tupac Amaru revolt in Peru during 1780–1781 was made in the name of the last
independent Inca emperor. In that revolt, the wife of the leader, Micaela Bastidas,
was referred to as La Coya, the female Inca, evoking the parallel hierarchies of
male and female officials who had earlier governed the Inca Empire (see “The
Emergence of the Incas in the Andes” in Chapter 2).
Thus Spaniards, mestizos, and Indians represented the major social categories
in the colonial lands of what had been the Inca and Aztec empires, while enslaved
Africans and freemen were less numerous than elsewhere in the Americas. Despite
the sharp divisions among these groups, some movement was possible. Indians who
acquired an education, wealth, and some European culture might “pass” as mestizo.
Likewise, more fortunate mestizo families might be accepted as Spaniards over
time. Colonial Spanish America was a vast laboratory of ethnic variety and cultural
change. It was dominated by Europeans, to be sure, but was a rather more fluid and
culturally blended society than the racially rigid colonies of British North America.

Colonies of Sugar
Another and quite different kind of colonial society emerged in the lowland areas
of Brazil, ruled by Portugal, and in the Spanish, British, French, and Dutch colonies
in the Caribbean. These regions lacked the great civilizations of Mexico and Peru.
Nor did they provide much mineral wealth until the Brazilian gold rush of the
1690s and the discovery of diamonds a little later. Still, Europeans found a very
profitable substitute in sugar, which was much in demand in Europe, where it was
used as a medicine, a spice, a sweetener, a preservative, and in sculptured forms
as a decoration that indicated high status. Whereas commercial agriculture in the
Spanish Empire served a domestic market in its towns and mining camps, these
sugar-based colonies produced almost exclusively for export, while importing their
food and other necessities.
Large-scale sugar production had been pioneered by Arabs, who had introduced AP
®
it in the Mediterranean. Europeans learned the technique and transferred it to their CAUSATION
Atlantic island possessions and then to the Americas. For a century (1570–1670), How did sugar transform
Portuguese planters along the northeast coast of Brazil dominated the world market Brazil and the
for sugar. Then the British, French, and Dutch turned their Caribbean territo- Caribbean?
®
ries into highly productive sugar-producing colonies, breaking the Portuguese and AP
Brazilian monopoly. COMPARISON
Sugar decisively transformed Brazil and the Caribbean. Its production, which How did the plantation
involved both growing the sugarcane and processing it into usable sugar, was very societies of Brazil and
labor-intensive and could most profitably occur in a large-scale, almost industrial the Caribbean differ from
those of southern
setting. It was perhaps the first modern industry in that it produced for an international colonies in British North
and mass market, using capital and expertise from Europe, with production facilities America?
located in the Americas. However, its most characteristic feature — the massive use of
Uncorrected proofs have been used in this sample.
Copyright © Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers.
Distributed by Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. For review purposes only. Not for redistribution.

07_strayerap5e_40930_ch04_202-259_2pp.indd 217 7/4/22 9:49 AM