Esther M. Zimmer Lederberg
Thomas Lodge, Phillis: 1595
Click images or captions to view pages
Elizabethan Colonialism: Enslaving New World Peoples
Return
About 1588, Thomas Lodge made a voyage to the islands of Terceras
and the Canaries with Captain Clarke (perhaps the 'John Clark' who
was one of the commanders with Sir Richard Grenville and Lane in
the Virginia voyage of 1585, no other Captain Clarke of the time
seems known; no one of the name took part in the Earl of Cumberland's
voyage to the Canaries in 1589). Despite the absence of details, the
experience pleased Lodge, and he repeated it. In August 1591 he sailed,
with Thomas Cavendish, the circumnavigator, for South America, and
visited the Straits of Magellan and Brazil. At Santos, in the latter
country, he inspected the library of the Jesuits, and like his
fellow-travellers suffered much privation. Lodge apparently cared not
to notice the genocide of the Garaní and other South American
natives, nor the corruption of the Jesuites that led to the Jesuits
being expelled by the Pope from the New World (Lodge had converted
to Catholicism). Lodge seems to have been again in England early in
1593, and brought back no very good opinion of his commander, Cavendish.
A Jesuit "reduction" was a type of settlement for indigenous people in
North and South America established by the Jesuit Order from the 16th
to the 18th centuries. The Spanish and Portuguese Empires adopted a
strategy of gathering native populations into communities called "Indian
reductions" (reducciones de indios or "reduções") or missions.
The objectives of the reductions were to organize and intensively exploit
the unpaid labor of the native indigenous inhabitants while also imparting
Christianity and European culture (as the conquistadores also practiced in
the New World encomiendas). The conquistadore encomiendas were quite successful:
it has been estimated that in a very short while, 80% to 90% of the natives
died. The Jesuit reductions proved to be very successful in also conquering
the New World (see John Donne's elegy XIX). The Jesuits attempted to create
a theocratic "state within a state" in which the native peoples in the camps,
guided by the Jesuits, would remain isolated and could be exploited as slaves.
Such success had to be controlled, else there would be no one to enslave, and
the Crown would need to import labourers, such as African slaves.
Brazil used slaves on "industrial-like" plantations (fazendas): Sugar, Indigo,
Coffee, etc. as well as expoitation of minerals: diamond, emerald, mercury,
gold, silver mines, pearls, salt, etc. Africans were imported from Angola to
replace Indians as slave laborers: the Indians were no longer numerous enough.
This was not an easy task: Poor Portuguese had to travel from Portugal or
Portugeuse African or Asian colonies and be taught how to create slave fazendas,
but the Jesuites helped: "manuals" were written and used to teach how fazendas
and slaves could be used to exploit these laborers (the infamous "ppp" manuals:
can be seen in the opening scene in the film "Quilombo"). Most Brazilian slaves
resided in Maranhão, Pernambuco, Bahia and in Minas Gerais (General Mines).
The importation of black slaves to Brazil began in 1538. In 1888, slavery was
abolished in Brazil (the last nation in the Western Hemisphere to officially
abolish slavery: it was time for "Industrial slavery"). People might be curious
as to the death statistics of slaves: How many? Average ages? Longevity. This
might prove embarrassing, thus the Brazilian government destroyed these records
as (they said) "no one would be interested".
Website Terms of Use