( Spain) The Reconquista the start of the Military industri

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•  The Reconquista normalized a warrior culture. Nobility gained prestige through military success, and land was often granted as a reward for participation in campaigns. 
•  This religious justification bled into later colonization: conquering non-Christian lands (and people) was seen not just as legitimate, but righteous 
•  Soldiers and nobles expected spoils of war—land, gold, titles. This expectation carried over into the Americas. 
•  When the Reconquista ended in 1492 (same year Columbus sailed), Spain redirected its military adventurism overseas. 

•  It began with a series of papal bulls (official declarations by the Pope) in the 15th century, notably Dum Diversas (1452), Romanus Pontifex (1455), and Inter Caetera (1493). 

• These gave Christian monarchs the "right" to claim lands they "discovered" that were not already ruled by Christians, non-Christian peoples had no legitimate sovereignty over their own lands. If Christians arrived and planted a flag, it was theirs.

• In Dum Diversas (1452), Pope Nicholas V explicitly granted the King of Portugal the right:
   “to invade, search out, capture, vanquish, and subdue all Saracens and pagans... and to reduce their persons to perpetual slavery.”
  This wasn’t just about land—it was about people.
   

• The concept of perpetual slavery tied into emerging European ideas of racial hierarchy. Over time, “non-Christian” became synonymous with “non-European” and then simply “non-white.”
  This helped set the stage for modern racial slavery, where being African or Indigenous wasn’t just a cultural identity—it was considered a mark of inferiority.

• The doctrine wasn't just a religious idea—it became enshrined in law.
   
•  The Supreme Court cited it in Johnson v. M'Intosh (1823), ruling that Native Americans didn’t own land in the European legal sense and couldn’t sell it independently.

• The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in  Scott v. Sandford that Black people, whether enslaved or free, could not be U.S. citizens and had no standing to sue in federal court. Chief Justice Roger B. Taney famously wrote that Black people were: “so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.”

•  The Reconstruction Era (1865–1877) is often taught as a moment of progress: the Civil War ended, slavery was abolished, and new rights were extended to Black Americans. And yes, there were major gains—on paper, but beneath the surface, many of the same practices and ideologies from slavery and the Doctrine of Discovery era stayed intact, just under new names and systems. 

• The 13th Amendment ended slavery except as punishment for a crime:
   “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime... shall exist within the United States.” This loophole was immediately exploited.

• The 14th and 15th Amendments promised citizenship, equal protection, and voting rights, but state governments, especially in the South, systematically undermined these rights. Violence and terror from groups like the Ku Klux Klan became normal, Poll taxes, literacy tests, and grandfather clauses were used to block Black voters.

 This is one of the wildest twists in U.S. legal history. The 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, was designed to protect formerly enslaved people by guaranteeing citizenship, equal protection under the law, and due process, but fast forward just a few years, and guess who starts benefiting from it the most? Corporations—not the people it was meant to protect.  This allowed Corporations to claim "due process" and "equal protection" rights, blocking laws that regulated business practices or restricted their profits.

• The Supreme Court didn't officially rule on whether corporations are protected by the 14th Amendment—but a headnote written by the court reporter (not part of the actual ruling!) stated:
   “The court does not wish to hear argument on whether the Fourteenth Amendment applies to corporations. We are all of the opinion that it does.”
  That line, though not legally binding, became hugely influential. Future cases treated it as precedent.

• The capitalist class—largely made up of wealthy landowners, industrialists, and financiers—used the legal protections granted by the 14th Amendment to:

1. Defend their interests against regulation (minimum wages, workplace safety laws, etc.).
    
2. Maximize profits by cutting labor costs and maintaining power over workers.

The 14th Amendment gave corporations the legal standing to dominate both the economy and political systems through lobbying and legal action. It ensured that corporations, not workers, had constitutional protections, and the state and federal governments were less likely to intervene to protect workers’ rights or redistribute wealth. Over time, this system became even more entrenched as economic inequality deepened. Corporate elites maintained control over both land and wages, and the illusion of freedom from slavery was maintained, even as economic oppression continued.
 

•  Sharecropping emerged after slavery was abolished, and it kept Black Americans (and poor whites) trapped in a cycle of poverty and debt.  Landowners would provide land, tools, and housing, but tenants (mostly Black) had to pay with a portion of their crops. High-interest rates, dishonest accounting, and bad harvests meant many sharecroppers were indebted to landowners, and this debt peonage was often as oppressive as slavery itself. 

• As the U.S. industrialized, the sharecropping system began to transition into the wage labor system we recognize today.
• Instead of working land, many former slaves and poor white families were now working in factories or on railroads, often under harsh, unsafe conditions.
   
• Just like sharecropping, wage labor was often unfree—workers were paid low wages that didn’t cover basic living costs, kept in perpetual debt to company stores, and could be fired at will without any job security.
   
• This created a cycle where workers couldn’t escape poverty, despite being paid money. The wages were so low that the workers' lives were essentially still controlled by employers—similar to the dependency of sharecroppers or slaves.

• Redlining, where banks and financial institutions deliberately denied loans or restricted access to mortgage financing in predominantly Black or non-white neighborhoods. This practice effectively disenfranchised Black communities, preventing them from building wealth through homeownership. Even after redlining was outlawed by the Fair Housing Act of 1968, modern banks continue to engage in practices like racial profiling in lending, where Black people, even with similar financial profiles as white applicants, are more likely to be denied loans or offered higher interest rates.

• The prison-industrial complex is a multi-billion-dollar industry that profits from the incarceration of people, disproportionately Black and Latino. Private prisons and corporations that run them benefit from state contracts and government subsidies for housing prisoners. Many of these corporations also benefit from prison labor—workers who are paid extremely low wages and used to manufacture goods or perform services for private companies. These companies include major brands such as Victoria's Secret, AT&T, IBM, and Walmart.
   
• Corporations like Geo Group and CoreCivic run privatized prisons, and their business model relies on the continuous incarceration of people, particularly people of color, in order to maximize their profits.

• Modern payday lenders and check-cashing services often target low-income, minority communities, exploiting financial vulnerability. These businesses typically offer short-term loans with high interest rates, leading people to fall into a cycle of debt that they can’t escape. Predatory loans often charge exorbitant fees and interest rates, which can reach 400% or more annually. These loans are designed to trap borrowers, especially those who are Black or from poor communities, into a cycle of debt and financial instability. Similar to the exploitative nature of sharecropping (where Black farmers were often trapped in debt to landowners), payday loans create financial servitude, further enriching corporations at the expense of already disadvantaged communities.

• Gentrification is the process of wealthier (often white) people moving into low-income neighborhoods, displacing long-term residents—many of whom are Black or Brown. Major corporations and developers often benefit from this process, purchasing property at low prices and then raising rents or selling at a higher price to wealthier individuals. This leads to housing instability and displacement for people who have lived in these neighborhoods for generations, often resulting in economic destabilization and loss of community. In many cases, it also pushes out small businesses owned by Black or Brown entrepreneurs. Banks play a role in this process by gentrifying neighborhoods, approving loans to real estate developers and large corporations, while discriminating against minority homeowners and small businesses that could benefit from development.

• Many large corporations, especially in the fashion and electronics industries, profit from sweatshops in developing countries, where workers are often paid extremely low wages and subjected to dangerous working conditions. The workers in these sweatshops are typically people of color, and the corporations exploit the global divide to get cheap labor in exchange for minimal wages while generating massive profits. This practice is similar to the way plantations or slave labor operated in earlier times: Black people and other marginalized groups were dispossessed of their labor to benefit wealthy elites.

• Large corporations and billionaires have the means to hide their wealth in tax havens or manipulate financial laws to avoid paying taxes, which could otherwise fund social programs aimed at reducing inequality. Banks often assist in these tax avoidance schemes, making it easier for corporations and the wealthy to hoard resources.
  This leads to economic disparity where working-class and poor communities, which disproportionately include Black and Brown people, bear the brunt of taxation while corporations and the wealthy elite pay significantly lower tax rates.