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At the beginning of the eighteenth century, immigrants from Europe settled into a considerable amount of areas of South America, Central America, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand. This had led to several natives being pushed out into other areas. These European settlements were called ‘colonies’. The sources of Native history are: Oral History of the Natives, historical and fiction work written by the Natives, Galleries and Museums of Native art, and “Why Weren’t We Told” by Henry Reynolds.
American and Australian history textbooks focused on how the Europeans’ discovered’ countries, including America and Australia, until the twentieth century. They rarely mentioned the native people, and whenever they did, they were described as ‘savages’ and were hostile to the Europeans. Until the 1960s, the native peoples were encouraged to write or narrate their histories. With the establishment of Native museums and galleries in America, Canada, and Australia, people worldwide are now getting aware of their stories and struggles and how indigenous people were displaced.
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European Imperialism
After the seventeenth century, the American empires of Spain and Portugal stopped their expansions, and other countries such as France, Holland and England established their colonies via trade routes primarily in America, Africa, and Asia. Ireland at the time was a colony of England. While it was clear that the prospect of profit drove these countries to establish colonies, the nature of the control on those colonies varied. In countries like India and the subcontinent, trading companies such as The East India Company became sources of political power in South Asia, defeated rulers, and annexed their territories with their own administrative system. They collected taxes from landowners and built railways to make trade easier, excavated mines and established big plantations.
In Africa, colonies were mostly established along the coast. It was only in the nineteenth century that the European countries decided to divide Africa into colonies.
North America
It is believed the native peoples of North America might have come from Asia over 30,000 years ago via a land bridge across the Bering Straits and moved further south 10,000 years after the last Ice Age. They lived in groups along the river valley, increasing their population once the climates stabilised. Goods and services were exchanged via the Barter System instead of any currencies. The indigenous people there lived in bands that later became villages. They would chiefly cultivate vegetables and maize, and food mainly consisted of meat and fish. They spoke numerous languages but were not available in written form. Their origins and histories were passed down to generations in the oral form. They were friendly and welcoming to the Europeans who had arrived at their villages in the late seventeenth century. They came there to trade for fish and furs that the natives were hunting experts. The indigenous people were addicted to alcohol and tobacco, and the Europeans took advantage of this to dictate the terms of trade.
Comparison of the Mutual Perceptions
The European colonists perceived the native people as brutes and uncivilised ‘noble savages’. The eighteenth-century Europeans considered civilised people as the ones who were literate, had an organised religion, and stayed in urban areas.
For the natives, the goods they exchanged were gifts to the Europeans, whereas they were commodities to be sold for a profit.
The natives did not know how the ‘faraway markets’ worked. They had no idea that prices of goods fluctuate every year. Hence, they would get confused when they would receive more things in exchange for their gifts and sometimes less from the traders.
They were also not happy with the slaughtering of animals by the traders for the greed of fur. In their impatience to obtain more furs for maximum profit, the Europeans had slaughtered many beavers. This led the Natives to be afraid that the animals would take revenge for the lost lives.
A few European traders left the European native areas to settle in America. These Europeans belonged to a different sect of Christianity than those settled in Europe. They gradually moved to the inner native lands of America. There they used iron tools to cut out the forests.
The Natives and the Europeans viewed forests differently. The Natives identified forest tracks invisible to the Europeans. The Europeans imagined the forests to be cut down and converted into green cornfields.
The Gold Rush and the Growth of Industries
The countries of Canada and America came into existence towards the end of the eighteenth century. At that time, these countries had occupied just a fraction of the land that they do now. Over hundreds of years of expansions and conquests have led to their current sizes. Large areas of the USA were bought from France via the Louisiana Purchase, some from Russia (present-day Alaska), and much of the Southern USA was won from Mexico. No one took the consent of the Natives during these expansions. The Natives were then forced to work in plantation farms, resulting in many.
There had been this belief that there was gold in North America. In the 1840s, traces of gold were found in California, leading to the ‘Gold Rush’ that had thousands of Europeans rushing to California to make a quick fortune. The Gold Rush led to railway lines across the continent wherein the Chinese were employed for the construction.
Numerous industries developed that manufactured railway equipment. Since the Europeans started settling and making families, they bought large land areas for farming. Gradually this led to large scale farming by clearing vast areas of Native land. To make this possible, farming machinery was also being manufactured. This employment generation led to the growth of towns and factories across the country. Within 30 years, the USA was the leading industrial power by 1890.
America was no longer a ‘frontier’ that pulled the Europeans away to the West. The areas between the Atlantic and the Pacific Ocean became States. The life of hunting followed by thousands of Native people came to an end. It started colonising areas in Hawaii And the Philippines and became an imperial power.
Constitutional Rights of the Natives in America
The settlers had been rallying for democratic independence in the 1770s against the monarchs and the aristocrats. They wanted the Constitution to include an individual’s Right to Property that the state could not override. However, both the Democratic Rights- Right to Property and the Right to Vote was reserved for White men only. It was not until the 1920s that things changed for the Natives in the USA and Canada. In the USA, the Indian Reorganisation Act of 1934 gave natives in reservations the right to buy land and take loans. In 1954, the ‘Declaration of Indian Rights’ accepted citizenship of Native people in the USA. The Constitution Act of 1982 of Canada accepted the existing aboriginal and treaty rights of the natives.
Australia
The early settlers of this island continent were convicts deported from England because they were not to return to their country again after their jail terms had ended. Due to no other alternative but to stay there, they did not hesitate to eject the natives from their own land and take over for cultivation. These natives were employed in farms with conditions so harsh that it was almost similar to Slavery. Later Chinese immigrants provided cheap labour, but they were later banned owing to Australia’s non-white policy. Until 1974, the Australian Government feared that ‘dark’ people from South Asia or Southeast Asia might migrate to Australia in large numbers, hence keeping them out with this policy.
In 1968, people came to know about the trials and tribulations of the Native Aborigines through a lecture by the anthropologist W.E.H. Stanner titled ‘The Great Australian Silence’, which was about the silence of the historians on the Aborigines.
From 1974, the White Australia policy ended, resulting in the entry of Asian immigrants. This gave rise to Multiculturalism as an official policy that gave equal respect to all cultures, including native culture.
In 1992, the Australian High Court declared terra nullius as legally invalid and recognised native claims to land to be fair from before 1770. The Australian Government observed A National Sorry Day on 26th May 1999 as a public apology for the native children who lost their lives due to segregation of the whites and the Natives from the 1820s to the 1970s.
CONCLUSION
After the late 1700s, the Spanish and Portuguese stopped expanding. Other European countries, such as the French, English, and Dutch, were now involved. Some of them gained political power by overthrowing previous rulers and establishing their own regime.
The people of America lived a basic life and relied on a subsistence economy. They create friendship by exchanging commodities with Europeans. Unfortunately, European selfishness influenced their way of life in various ways and displaced indigenous people out of their homeland.
