Comparison

Comparison Essay After the arrival of the Europeans, colonization in Latin America and North America began to evolve. When they first sought to establish their presence in the Americas, they brought technology not available to the peoples they encountered. Spanish conquerors defeated the Aztec and Inca empires and imposed their own rule in Mexico and Peru. In later decades, Portuguese planters built sugar plantations on the Brazil coastline. The French, English, and Dutch migrants displaced indigenous people in North America and established settler colonies under the rule of European people. The French and English took over North America and Spanish and Portuguese took over South America. These colonies, northern and southern, had political, economical, and social similarities as well as differences. North and South America shared economic similarities. Both colonies had slaves for their plantations. The Spaniards had the encomienda system and had different cultivation of crops. The encomienda system gave Spanish settlers the right to compel Tainos work in their mines or fields. Encomenderos looked out for their workers’ health and welfare and to encourage them to convert to Christianity. In the North, deposits of gold were thin but optimistic Spanish explorers located rich sources of silver in Mexico and Peru. By the 1640s, French, English, and Dutch had intention of establishing plantations in the Caribbean and offered conditions for cultivation of cash crops. Besides having these economic similarities and differences, these colonies also shared social. Latin and North America compare socially by their social process in dividing their social hierarchy and structure. In the South, their social structure consisted of different racial and ethnic communities. European migrants transformed social order and established imperial states. All European territories became multicultural and ethnical mixed and the Spanish and Portuguese territories became