The Pope in 1493, by the Treaty of Tordesillas and as subsequently amended by further treaties, laid the foundation for Western world dominance.
The Pope divided the world into two halves, gave the Western half to Spain and the Eastern half to Portugal. Spain, through the treaties, got all of Central and South America, except Brazil. The Spanish and the Portuguese settled their people there to the decimation of native populations, a decimation which has continued till today. Nothing much has changed.
No one queried or questioned the Pope’s right to give the world to two countries; nor were the opinions of those people and places given away to Spain and Portugal canvassed. The Pope could not. He did not know these people and the places he so cavalierly gave away.
In the Americas, Spain and Portugal, armed by the technological marvel of sea faring ships and guns roamed wherever they pleased. The 1493 Papal Bull and all the subsequent amendments emboldened Spain and Portugal to the heights hitherto unknown and unreachable.They believed that they were authorized by no one less than God to do as they pleased in what later became the New World. Their citizens settled in Brazil, Argentina and South of the United States. In the case of Brazil, the map they used in dividing the world wrongly placed Brazil as part of the Eastern world awarded to Portugal. Other areas of the Papal award to Portugal included Africa, India, Thailand, Malaysia, right up to Indonesia and its 1,700 Islands. Portuguese and Spanish nationals went out to inhabit as much of the world as they could, exporting their language and customs to these far off places. Today, all of Central and South America except Brazil speaks Spanish. Brazil speaks Portuguese as they do in Cape Verde, Mozambique, and parts of Asia.
The Pope by his action led to the foundation of Western civilization, industrial revolution, the cult of White superiority and world wealth and power causing the imbalances which continue to this day. The rest of the world outside Europe, with the exception of the United States has been trying to catch up ever since. What Europe needed, they took like slaves for sugar and tobacco plantations. They deculturized everyone else, leading to the replacement of a mishmash of Western culture and religion throughout the world. Moreover the continued need of wealth in Europe and the US was one of the reasons for the Slave Trade.
Racism became the norm; propagated by convicts sent from Europe to the United States (US), Australia, Canada and the West Indies. The Whites in these new territories took on superior airs in relation to the indigenous population.
Spain and Portugal carted away tons of silver, gold, cloves and different kinds of spices. They established European rule which led to the slave trade, probably the most pernicious action of humanity. The Spanish and Portuguese destroyed the centuries-old civilization of the Aztecs, Incas and Mayas and over 100 other civilizations in Latin America. Those civilizations were among the oldest, most advanced social and political civilization with a mountain of knowledge about engineering, architecture, astronomy, physics, medicine, agriculture (planting, irrigation etc.) and other aspects of human endeavour.
These civilizations gave the world a plethora of food such as maize, beans, plantains, cassava, pineapples, potatoes, tomatoes, tobacco, strawberries, blueberries, various pepper, sunflower seeds, rubber, avocado, cocoa, vanilla etc. They also taught the visitors geology, sculpture, melting and mining forgold, silver and other precious stones, sculpture, writing etc.
It was not long before the infallibility of the Pope in doctrine, in dividing the world between Spain and Portugal was challenged by other European countries principally Belgium, Britain, France, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy and some others,. who all rejected the Pope’s decree. Britain even set out on its own adventures to Canada, Africa, Asia, New Zealand and Australia.Setting up penal colonies on the Eastern coast of the United States and in Australia.Britain was to claim all of West Africa, South Africa, India, Malaysia, China and other countries in which it established its presence.
Other European countries did likewise and made territorial claims which have stood the test of time. The Germans were also in South West Africa and East Africa whilst the Belgians gunned for Central Africa and West Africa, North Africa, the Middle East and so on. But Germany found much fatter prizes among its neighbours in Europe and started several wars in Europe. They attacked Belgium, Scandinavia, France, Poland, Hungary and other Eastern European nations, thus becoming the bête noiré of Europe, after France’s own expansionist phase during the reigns of Louis XIV and Napoleon. These European wars saw a pause through the 1885 treaty of Berlin which acknowledged several German claims in Africa, Europe and the Middle East, among other countries of the world.
In a sense the European Whites in Africa, the Americas, Asia and Australia only practised what had happened to them, subject as they were to numerous wars, quasi colonization, the mixing of tribes in Europe as each wave of conquerors were replaced by new ones. But these various people found accommodation and even assimilation and acceptance as they settled in different countries in Europe. But the Europeans on arrival in Americas, Asia and Africa, gave no such luck to the indigenes. Slaughter was common. The reset button was the superiority of the West – my way or no way, the high way they said to the indigenes.
The new arrivals from Europe even fought civil wars all over. In the United States of America the South and North fought a civil war on slave trade. Their mindset as they moved to Africa and Asia was much the same: punishing and pillaging the population of the local inhabitants, some of whom even joined in exploiting their own kith and kin. The slave trade saw the transfer of millions of Africans to the Americas and the Caribbean in the most inhumane conditions; it propagated the hateful doctrine of racial discrimination to the detriment of the black and brown. History has not paid nearly enough attention for these exigencies. There is the debate about reparation, which still does not get enough airing but maybe someday it will.
The fine words of the American Declaration of Independence were for the Whites – no one else: not for the indigenous owners of the land or the slaves who worked the land (Slaves 3/5th of American citizens).
The question today is whether that sense of White superiority has stopped or been diminished. I leave you to answer that question. Do business relations between Europe and Africa have any taint of superiority? Has China changed these dynamics? Can Africa do that? Will the doctrine of diversification, climate change etc. make any difference as the West abandons globalization for an introspective ideology pushed by the ALT RIGHT?
It is ironic that Europeans, who felt no compunction to immigrate, to the Americas, Australia, and Africa should today, be opposed to immigration and have made the subject the centre piece of politics in the West, forgetting that they too were once immigrants.
President Trump’s immigration policy has many complex hues but most of it is fired by racism. The Spanish and Portuguese during the 15th – 16th centuries had intermarried with local indigenous people and Africans. The result is a series of blood lines not considered White but mestizos and other categories. Today Mexico has over 33 million indigenous people, a larger number of Mestizos 70% of its population is mixed; several millions are in other Central American countries – the main countries Mr. Trump wants to keep out – Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, whose inhabitants Trump has characterized as criminals, drug sellers, murderers, rapist citizens of “shit hole countries.”
The irony is even more cruel.
Spain is now asking to build a wall between Morocco and Spain and one of the Spanish requests is that Morocco pays for it just as Trump claimed he would build a wall between Mexico and the United States (US) and Mexico will pay for it. How can Spain, which trampled all over North and South America be against immigration?
The flow of wind does not respect national boundaries. Perhaps immigration, like the wind, would not, in the long run, respect national boundaries.
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