[QUOTE=pinguin]
Are you suggesting non white people is inferior? If so, have you counted how many non-whites has the U.S.?
[/QUOTE]
He didn’t say anything remotely like that. :rolleyes: His argument revolved around agriculture. Just scroll up. He’s responding to another 'dopers post there (though it’s unattributed it’s easy enough to figure out who posted it).
ETA: And just to be clear, Capitaine Zombie isn’t saying white people are superior either.
-XT
The English and the Spanish had differing views towards the native populations. Under the Spanish it was possible for an Indian to become “civilized.” If you converted to Catholicism, because farmers, etc, it was actually possible for you to be, if not welcomed, at least accepted. The Spanish viewed them as barbarians but barbarians with souls. There was also a much greater acceptance of mestizo culture.
Whereas the English had a greater policy of exclusion. Even their “praying Indians” weren’t considered actual people. The English never really accepted Indians, they just pushed them more and more into the frontier.
I don’t think that Chile is a good example to introduce here. Chile got urbanized and industrialized in 19th century thanks to the nitrates production. Then they kept having things good with copper in 20th century, and the total population never was all that large. Kind of like Norway with the oil, only for a much longer period.
Actually, maybe a country closer in spirit to Mexico would be Peru. They also had some nitrates and stuff, and also had the huge ethnic division. In 20th century they also got oil. And, overall, I don’t think things worked out for them, any more than for Mexico. Even down to having bouts of Marxist dictatorial flu which seems to strike precisely the countries with big Amerindian populations (while getting savagely crushed in white countries like Argentina).
Never accepted Indians? I don’t think so. At least, not as an absolute. Pocahontas, Sacagawea aren’t just an exception. And if you want to see assimilation you must look into Canada, where Meti are quite common, and Canada was ruled by Britain a lot longer than the U.S.
By the way, people forget some strange facts that appear in American history once in a while. For instance, Sequoyah printed a newspaper in Cherokee at the 1820s! And the newspaper was printed and read in a “white” town! Who was the public that read Cherokee in a white town, I wonder.
In any case, it is true that Spaniards accepted Indians a lot more, but it is also true they considered Indians like small children, that should be educated in Christ by charity.
The differences are not racial, though, as it has been suggested.
Of all these countries, Chile was settled by soldiers, rather than farmers, and intermarry mainly with a very violent warrior people. So, this country has been accustumed to discipline and stand suffering since long ago.
By comparison, Argentineans look chaotic, no matter they have a lot of resources and education!
You’re right, I can’t say the English never accepted Indians. There are very few absolutes in history. But as a whole, under Spain mestizo culture was embraced more so than in English territories.
And irt Canada, yes, Britain owned it longer than they did the U.S. but during the beginning of the country’s history is was ruled by France who too, embraced mixed culture more than the British.
Well, for the Spaniards in the Americas, maybe. But even today, when mestizos and indigenous people move to Spain, the discrimination they suffer is terrible.
From what I’ve heard Spain is still going through a sort of withdrawal from losing their empire. It still effects them. I don’t know, I’ve never been.
[WARNING! Speculative argument!] If we’re worried about the formation of a middle class farming population, wouldn’t arable land per person be most important? If so, Canada’s still miles ahead of Mexico, as you showed.
I’m not speaking with the firmest grasp of the history, but ISTM that the Mexico was a region of relatively dense population carved up by a relatively small number of conquistadors. Once slavery had been ruled out, large numbers of peasants had to be retained to work the fields.
In the US, steady of immigrants were absorbed by waves of westward expansion, pushing the natives out as they went and creating an agricultural middle class. (Of course in the South we had slavery, and African-Americans can be said to be living something of a “post colonial” existence.)
Meanwhile, being in close contact with Britain and Northern Europe–home of the Industrial Revolution–meant that the US got on board that train early on. In Mexico, the wealthy elites were content and had little motivation to pursue industrialization, while the non-elites had little opportunity.
As for Japan, they never struck me as the land of small government but rather a highly regimented society, and so although they industrialized late, when the decision was made to industrialize, they industrialized. (Did Mexico ever have much in the way of coal? I know they have oil, but coal was the stuff of the early IR and the have it in the British Isles, Appalachia, and Japan.)
The ubiquity of the Catholic Church in Mexico seems likely to have played a role, but just how might require some more analysis–apart from its suppression of birth control, which I think is significant.
Agreed.
It is quite different to build a country with skillful immigrants hungry of opportunities, than to reform a country deep into poverty and analphabetism. This have been the main problem of Latin America and why it has taken so long to develop. But things have changing in recent years.
Our main problem today is not lack of education or even lack of capital, as once it was. Today the main problem in some key countries of the region, like Mexico, Brazil and Colombia, it is violence. Criminality it is today the main risk on the regions future.
Pretty much you have to ask “what did north-western Europeans do right that almost everyone else didn’t?”. Somehow in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries England, France, the Netherlands and what later became Germany got on the road to progress. Spain was a big deal in it’s day but peaked too early and ossified culturally at the late-Rennaisance level. It’s comparable to asking how the Japanese became advanced while the rest of east Asia was still backward.
I see your point, but I’m relatively certain that the European powers did not have ninjas.
Nope. Is not that north-western Europeans do things right. It is the push and force of the immigrants!
For instance, in Latin America we know that some immigrants are particularly industrious, like the Germans, the Lebanese, the Japanese, Chinese and Koreans.
And with respect to development, you must count with Latin America catching up the developed world in the long term. We grow faster.
Harmonious cultural blending is one thing, but I think it’s more a question of peasants working fields finding themselves under new management rather than being displaced onto reservations by large numbers of yeoman farmers.
Cultural factors may play a role. Hispanic culture in general is less oriented toward work, industry, and so on than the rather famous “Protestant work ethic” of Anglo-Saxons and Germans and those culturally influenced by them.
That’s complete horseshit.
-XT
Half Germany is Catholic, so that theory falls on its roots. And remember that some northerner peoples, like the French, the Irish and the Poles are also Catholics.
And with respect to Hispanic culture less oriented to work, I think that is a prejudice that is not based on reality. The fact is a Hispanic worker here in Latin America has to work twice as much as in the U.S. to get half the standard of living. We work like crazy. No wonder that Mexican workers in the U.S. building industry have a prestige.
Did you really just say that?
The Spaniards didn’t make much difference between the European poor worker and the Indian poor either. They were extremely classists. Even in intermarriage!
For instance, the Spanish captains only married the Indian women from the elite; those associated to chiefdoms with lot of land and subjects. The poor European foot soldier wasn’t so lucky, so entered the ranks of the poors together with Indians.