European race-mixing in Africa similar to Latin America?

[Skokie]

There would have to have been a very strong pull factor (like gold) for the Spaniards or Portuguese to settle in Africa at this time. Europeans were notoriously ill-suited to the torrid climate of much of Africa and they had no resistance to tropical disease.

If they started a colony in the Cape, with its climate so very similar to the Iberian peninsula, I think they would end up with more of a homogenous/white society rather than a mulatto one. But then why would they want to go through the hassle of investing in a New Iberia when the old one was right there at their fingertips? They already had all the olives and wine they needed. What use would the Mediterranean climate of South Africa be to them? They were after the manufactured products, textiles, silks and spices that only India, China and the Indies could offer.

Perhaps it's possible if we move the date later on into the late 18th and 19th centuries, but then you have to look to the political fortunes of Spain and Portugal during that time….

 

[virgulino]

That's not a racial thing, Aleksandr Pushkin, the founder of the russian literacture, was himself a descendant of a african former slave, and it was Russia, one of the most autocentric nations of Europe that barely had contact with Africa. Most of the brazilian élite has some degree of african blood, as all the caribbean countries. To think that some slaves became free and eventualy gained social status, doesn't mean that the slavery system granted social mobility as the work systems that were being applied in Europe. That's also true to the Encomienda system. Latin American society was much more stratified then any European or Anglo-American society. And, seriously, I feel like an idiot to have to proof that the situation of a latin american in the colonial times was much worse then the Western European society. If you want to rewrite history you have to show documents, you can't do history without document.

The only places that the native languages had survived were barely controlled by Spain, Paraguay was a great jesuit mission and the Philippines was itself a colony of New Spain.And, be careful, in some latin american cicles, to deny the ethnocide of the indians is racism and it's as worse to deny the holocaust in Europe.

 

[Hendryk]

But then why would they want to go through the hassle of investing in a New Iberia when the old one was right there at their fingertips? They already had all the olives and wine they needed. What use would the Mediterranean climate of South Africa be to them?

Gold, diamonds, more gold... The kind of stuff the Spanish looted an entire continent in search of.

Just have Spain claim the Cape (probably in order to skim off the spice trade with the East Indies), then some Spanish settler strikes gold, and before you know it TTL's South Africa will be like Peru in OTL, complete with a mestizo class.

 

[Skokie]

Gold, diamonds, more gold... The kind of stuff the Spanish looted an entire continent in search of.

Just have Spain claim the Cape (probably in order to skim off the spice trade with the East Indies), then some Spanish settler strikes gold, and before you know it TTL's South Africa will be like Peru in OTL, complete with a mestizo class.

Yeah, that could work. It's the logical choice. I could also see a tri-racial thing happening with the addition of East Indian workers.

Devil's advocate: Were gold and diamonds recoverable in the period of Spanish/Portugues dominance? Wasn't the emergence of a mixed-race culture of the Americas a result of the lack of Spanish/Portuguese women plus guns, germs and steel--and wouldn't it be different in South Africa?

 

[CanadianGoose]

Why are the Anglo-Americans and Germanics so much more brutal colonizers than the French and the Iberians?

Protestantism. Catholics were seeing "savages" as human beings in need of enlightement. Protestants believed that Allmighty blessed them by giving them tool to rule over sagaves and cursed "natives" by denying them those tools.

 

[corourke]

There was a lot of mixing in the early Portuguese empire. Colonial administrators in forts all along Africa took native wives. However because of the very light nature of early Portuguese colonial administration (usually just a representative of the crown working within the existing native administrative structure) the offspring of such marriages were often entirely integrated in their mother's society. They were perhaps of more political utility to the Portuguese crown because of their mixed background and native grasp of the language than a comparable person of full African descent, but they were still seen as (and probably self-identified as) African.

The main problem, as touched on before, is the huge numbers of Africans already in Africa, but I think the best European nation to start with is Portugal. The Cape (also mentioned before) is probably the best place to create this fictional mulatto nation, as the Khoisan were less resistant to European diseases, as well as the Cape simply being less densely populated than most places in Africa.

A good book that touches on the subject is Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World

 

[Strategos' Risk]

Judging by Brazil alone, the Portuguese are really into interbreeding with natives.

 

[William Blake]

Judging by Brazil alone, the Portuguese are really into interbreeding with natives.

BTW, since the life
expectancy of a portuguese on certain african colonies was really low, the
portuguese crown was in the habit of putting brazilians there to make up for
the lack of administrative manpower.