@PatrickIber @Vinncent @epiphanope @tonhocampos_ @hicksydan This distinction was drawn out in the late 19th-century by a French economist, Leroy-Beaulieu, who was writing about imperialism in his day. For him, settler colonies were all those which had large populations of European origin and exploitation colonies were those which did not.
@PatrickIber @Vinncent @epiphanope @tonhocampos_ @hicksydan Therefore, Brazil, the US, Australia and South Africa were settler colonies, while Indonesia and India were not. But Caio Prado Jr published an influential book which argued that New England (and implicitly the US) was a settler colony while Brazil and everywhere else were not.
@PatrickIber @Vinncent @epiphanope @tonhocampos_ @hicksydan To him, settler colonies were those which had as their main purpose to settle population. Therefore, exploitation was secondary. It was the other way around with exploitation colonies. Novais built upon it and from his book many textbooks and teachers perpetuated this idiocy.
@PatrickIber @Vinncent @epiphanope @tonhocampos_ @hicksydan Why is it an idiocy? @Vinncent already made some great points and @PatrickIber added another good one, but I’ll summarize below what I tell my students.
1) all colonies were established with monetary gain in mind. New England just happened to be a failure in this regard.
1) all colonies were established with monetary gain in mind. New England just happened to be a failure in this regard.
@PatrickIber @Vinncent @epiphanope @tonhocampos_ @hicksydan 2) New England was the destination of less settlers than the British Caribbean or the Southern colonies, and the Great migration of 1630-42 was the result of a persecution of Puritans that was never to be repeated, not of a selfless government directive to settle a New World.
@PatrickIber @Vinncent @epiphanope @tonhocampos_ @hicksydan 3) New England was the exception rather than the rule in Colonial Anglo-America. The richest colonies were all slave colonies, and New England depended upon their trade with them for their prosperity.
@PatrickIber @Vinncent @epiphanope @tonhocampos_ @hicksydan 4) New England also had the subjugation of non-European peoples as the basis of its society, be it through violent wars against Native Americans, their enslavement by the thousands of the participation in the slave trade.
@PatrickIber @Vinncent @epiphanope @tonhocampos_ @hicksydan 5) Brazil did indeed received about ten times more enslaved Africans than the US, but that means little. Thanks to a higher standard living overall (which benefited the slaves to some extent), less punitive work regimens (sugar was a killing field) and low manumission...
@PatrickIber @Vinncent @epiphanope @tonhocampos_ @hicksydan ... the enslaved population reproduced itself and grew enough to turn the US into the country with more enslaved persons in the mid nineteenth-century.
@PatrickIber @Vinncent @epiphanope @tonhocampos_ @hicksydan I don’t have the time right now to delve further into this subject, but @lmonasterio and @lnrdmrqs know a lot more about the subject than I do, so the ball is in their court!
