* These two figures include Indigenous Americans, European settlers and African slaves brought by force.Ĭalculations of Eric Toussaint based upon Angus Madison, 2001 Table 1.Ĭomparison between evolution of the population in Western Europe and Latin America between 15 (in millions) A convenient justification for exploitation and extermination. It is worth recalling that during a long period of time, Europeans, supported by the Vatican, did not consider indigenous people from the Americas as human beings. In the case of most islands of the Caribbean Sea, the whole indigenous population had been wiped out. One century later, only around 8 million inhabitants were left (including European settlers and the first African slaves). In 1500, just at the beginning of the brutal intervention of the Spaniards and the Portuguese in Central and South America, this region had at least 18 million inhabitants (some authors put forward much larger figures of close to 100 million ). Later on, they completed their domination in Australia and finally Africa. Simultaneously, European powers started the conquest of Asia. In particular, see the voyage of Leif Ericsson to the “Americas” at the beginning of the 11 th century (he moved from Labrador to the northern part of Newfoundland) where a colony was briefly established, forgotten for a long time, in the Meadows Bay.]] counterparts together conquered the whole geographical area, commonly known as the Americas, by causing the death of the vast majority of the indigenous population in order to exploit the natural resources (in particular gold and silver). The Spanish conquistadors and their Portuguese, British, French and Dutch[[One must add the Danes, who made some conquests in the Caribbean Sea, without forgetting in the North, Greenland (“discovered” several centuries before).Īs a matter of interest, the Norwegians had reached Greenland and Canada much before the 15 th century. It was the starting point of a brutal and bloody intervention of European sea powers in the history of American peoples, a region of the world that had, up to then, remained insulated from regular relationships with Europe, Africa and Asia. The beginning of Globalization goes back to the outcomes of the first voyage of Christopher Columbus that brought him, on October 1492, to the shore of an island in the Caribbean Sea.
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