The history of South America is the study of the past, particularly the written record, oral histories, and traditions, passed down from generation to generation on the continent in the Earth's western hemisphere and (chiefly) southern hemisphere. South America has a history that spans a wide range of human cultural and civilizational forms. While millennia of independent development were interrupted by the Portuguese and Spanish colonization drive of the late 15th century and the demographic collapse that followed, the continent's mestizo and indigenous cultures remain quite distinct from those of their colonizers. Through the trans-Atlantic slave trade, South America (especially Brazil) became the home of millions of people in the African diaspora. The mixing of races led to new social structures. The tensions between colonial countries in Europe, indigenous peoples and escaped slaves shaped South America from the 16th through the 19th Centuries. With the revolution for independence from Spanish crown during the 19th century, South America underwent yet more social and political changes among them nation building projects, European immigration waves, increased trade, colonization of hinterlands, and wars about territory ownership and power balance, the reorganization of Indian rights and duties, liberal-conservative conflicts among the ruling class, and the subjugation of Indians living in the states frontiers, that lasted until the early 1900s.
Read more about History Of South America: European Colonization, 17th and 18th Centuries, Independence and 19th Century, Recent History
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“History in the making is a very uncertain thing. It might be better to wait till the South American republic has got through with its twenty-fifth revolution before reading much about it. When it is over, some one whose business it is, will be sure to give you in a digested form all that it concerns you to know, and save you trouble, confusion, and time. If you will follow this plan, you will be surprised to find how new and fresh your interest in what you read will become.”
—Anna C. Brackett (1836–1911)
“The history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a certain clash of human temperaments.”
—William James (1842–1910)
““And now this is the way in which the history of your former life has reached my ears!” As he said this he held out in his hand the fatal letter.”
—Anthony Trollope (1815–1882)
“The Great South Beach of Long Island,... though wild and desolate, as it wants the bold bank,... possesses but half the grandeur of Cape Cod in my eyes, nor is the imagination contented with its southern aspect.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“If violence is wrong in America, violence is wrong abroad. If it is wrong to be violent defending black women and black children and black babies and black men, then it is wrong for America to draft us, and make us violent abroad in defense of her. And if it is right for America to draft us, and teach us how to be violent in defense of her, then it is right for you and me to do whatever is necessary to defend our own people right here in this country.”
—Malcolm X (1925–1965)