Portugal and Spain Colonization in the Americas: A Comparison

Portugal and Spain both had colonies in the Americas. From the 1494 the Treaty of Tordesillas between Spain and Portugal, Portugal gained the eastern half of South America, Brazil. Economically, Spain’s colony was focused on mining as Portugal was more focused on the Agriculture ( from their lack of gold and silver) Also, while Spain had a heavier role in controlling their viceroyalties both socially and religiously because of the potential uproar of the highly civilized society, Portugal was involved less as it id not have such a huge civilization as Spain. Spain’s colony in America needed a limited amount of labor for their mining, and most of it was reserved for the Indians (Incas) that made up 95% of the populations. The remaining 5% were whites born in Spain (peninsulares), whites born in the New World ( creoles), which made up 2% and Mixed bloods (mestizos and mulattoes), less than 3%. Spain unlike a lot of the other European colonies, including Portugal, had a lot of race mixing. Portugal’s Brazil being a agricultural colony needed a lot of laborers. They had a lucrative sugar trade, which made them the riches single region in the entire Americas, and after Brazilian Indians were devastated by disease, they depended on the Atlantic Slave Trade. Unlike the Spanish, the Portugese rarely intermarried. Whites would marry mulattoes, but they almost never married blacks, and there was a feud between the white ruling class as well, between the Brazilian-born and the Portugal-born. Unlike the Spanish, Portugal didn’t have a powerful bureaucracy, which limited the potential of having colonies to seek independence. After Spain’s decline of power in Europe in 1650, creoles and mix blood population increased getting them more actively related in politics and governing than before, and indian population decreased