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The term Latin America refers to the Spanish and Portuguese-speaking countries in the Americas. Before the arrival of Europeans in the late 15th and early 16th centuries, the region was home to many indigenous people, many of which had advanced civilizations, most notably, the Aztec, Inca and Maya. In the early nineteenth century nearly all of the region attained its independence, giving rise to new countries, although a few, small colonies remain. In the colonial era most of the immigration comprised Spanish and Portuguese settlers, as well as some settlers and overseers from France and the Netherlands. Large numbers of black African slaves were imported. Most were purchased by the sugar plantations in the West Indies, where life expectancy was very short, or plantations in Brazil, which was much healthier. A large scale immigration took place from the 1840s to 1914, chiefly to Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, Venezuela, Uruguay, and Chile. Most of the new immigrants came from Italy, Spain, Britain, and Germany; some Japanese and Chinese immigrants also arrived. ==Origin of the term and definition== The idea that a part of the Americas has a cultural or racial affinity with all Romance cultures can be traced back to the 1830s, in particular in the writing of the French Saint-Simonian Michel Chevalier, who postulated that this part of the Americas were inhabited by people of a "Latin race," and that it could, therefore, ally itself with "Latin Europe" in a struggle with "Teutonic Europe," "Anglo-Saxon America" and "Slavic Europe." The idea was later taken up by Latin American intellectuals and political leaders of the mid- and late-nineteenth century, who no longer looked to Spain or Portugal as cultural models, but rather to France.〔McGuiness, Aims (2003). "Searching for 'Latin America': Race and Sovereignty in the Americas in the 1850s" in Appelbaum, Nancy P. et al. (eds.). ''Race and Nation in Modern Latin America''. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 87-107. ISBN 0-8078-5441-7〕 The actual term "Latin America" was coined in France under Napoleon III and played a role in his campaign to imply cultural kinship with France, transform France into a cultural and political leader of the area and install Maximilian as emperor of Mexico. In the mid-twentieth century, especially in the United States, there was a trend to occasionally classify all of the territory south of the United States as "Latin America," especially when the discussion focused on its contemporary political and economic relations to the rest of the world, rather than solely on its cultural aspects.〔 〕 Concurrently, there has been a move to avoid this oversimplification by talking about "Latin America and the Caribbean," as in the United Nations geoscheme. Since, the concept and definitions of Latin American are very modern, going back only to the nineteenth century, it is anachronistic to talk about "a history of Latin America" before the arrival of the Europeans. Nevertheless, the many and varied cultures that did exist in the pre-Columbian period had a strong and direct influence on the societies that emerged as a result of the conquest, and therefore, they cannot be overlooked. They are introduced in the next section. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「History of Latin America」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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