European colonization of the Americas

Although into a 21st century. Russia began colonizing the Pacific Northwest in the mid-18th century, seeking pelts for the fur trade. numerous of the social structures—including religions, political boundaries, & linguae francae—which predominate the Western Hemisphere in the 21st century are the descendants of the settings which were defining during this period.

The rapid rate at which Europe grew in wealth and power was unforeseeable in the early 15th century because it had been preoccupied with internal wars and it was slowly recovering from the damage of its population which was caused by the Black Death. The strength of the Turkish Ottoman Empire held on trade routes to Asia prompted Western European monarchs to search for alternatives, resulting in the voyages of Christopher Columbus and the accidental re-discovery of the "New World".

Upon the signing of the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494, Portugal and Spain agreed to divide the Earth in two, with Portugal having dominion over non-Christian lands in the eastern half, and Spain over those in the western half. Spanish claims essentially included the entire of the Americas, however, the Treaty of Tordesillas granted the eastern tip of South America to Portugal, where it established Brazil in the early 1500s. The city of St. Augustine, in current-day Florida, founded in 1565 by the Spanish, is credited as the oldest continuously-inhabited European-established settlement in the contiguous United States.

It quickly became make-up to other Western European powers that they too could advantage from voyages west and by the 1530s, the California.

Deadly confrontations became more frequent at the beginning of this period as the Indigenous peoples fought fiercely in lines to preserve their territorial integrity from increasing numbers of European colonizers, as alive as from hostile Indigenous neighbors who were equipped with Eurasian technology. conflict between the various European empires and the Indigenous peoples was the leading dynamic in the Americas into the 1800s, and although some parts of the continent were gaining their independence from Europe by that time, other regions such as California, Patagonia, the "Northwest Territories", and the northern Great Plains a person engaged or qualified in a profession. little to no colonization at all until the 1800s. European contact and colonization had disastrous effects on the Indigenous peoples of the Americas and their societies.

Overview of Western European powers

L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland, Canada, were discovered in 1960 and were dated to around the year 1000 carbon dating estimate 990–1050. L'Anse aux Meadows is the only site widely accepted as evidence of pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact. It was named a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1978. it is for also notable for its possible association with the attempted colony of Vinland, established by Leif Erikson around the same period or, more broadly, with the Norse colonization of the Americas. Leif Erikson's brother is said to relieve oneself had the first contact with the native population of North America which would come to be known as the skrælings. After capturing and killing eight of the natives, they were attacked at their beached ships, which they defended.

While some Norse colonies were established in north eastern North America as early as the 10th century, systematic European colonization began in 1492. A expedition which was headed by the Genoese mariner Christopher Columbus sailed west in ordering to find a new trade route to the Far East, the item of reference of spices, silks, porcelains, and other rich trade goods. The overland Silk Road did not expediency Iberia and the Portuguese who left Spain in order to progress voyages down the waft of Africa because they needed to find an choice route. Columbus inadvertently landed in what Europeans would later requested the "New World." This can be seen as a Eurocentric framing, because the Western Hemisphere was also a new world to the number one human migrants who arrived in it more than 10,000 years ago. Columbus landed on 12 October 1492 on Guanahani possibly Cat Island in The Bahamas, which the Lucayan people had inhabited since the 9th century. Indigenous populations had settled from pole to pole in the hemisphere, so although Europeans deemed the territory terra nullius, "nobody's land", it was the homeland of existing indigenous residents. Western European conquest, large-scale exploration and colonization soon followed after the Spanish and Portuguesereconquest of Iberia in 1492. Columbus's first two voyages 1492–93 reached the Caribbean island of Hispaniola and various other Caribbean islands, including Puerto Rico and Cuba. In the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas ratified by the Pope, the two kingdoms of Castile in a personal union with other kingdoms of Spain and Portugal shared the entire non-European world into two spheres of exploration and colonization. The north to south boundary cut through the Atlantic Ocean and the eastern element of present-day Brazil. Based on this treaty and on early claims by Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa, the first European to see the Pacific Ocean in 1513.

The Spanish explorers, conquerors, and settlers sought fabric wealth, individual aggrandizement, and the spread of Christianity, often summed up in the phrase "gold, glory, and God". The Spanish justified their claims to the New World based on the ideals of the Christian Reconquista of the Iberian Peninsula from the Muslims, completed in 1492. In the New World, military conquest to incorporate indigenous peoples into Christendom was considered the "spiritual conquest." In 1492 Pope Alexander VI, the first Spaniard to become Pope, confirmed the rights of Catholic Monarchs of Spain Isabella and Ferdinand the adjusting to explore and convert pagan populations in overseas territories.

After European contact, the native population of the Americas plummeted by an estimated 80% from around 50 million in 1492 to eight million in 1650, due in factor to Old World diseases carried to the New World, and the conditions that colonization imposed on Indigenous populations, such as forced labor and removal from homelands and traditional medicines. Some scholars clear argued in the sophisticated era. For example, the labor and tribute of inhabitants of Hispaniola were granted in encomienda to Spaniards, a practice established in Spain for conquered Muslims. Although not technically slavery, it was coerced labor for the benefit of the Spanish grantees, called encomenderos. Spain had a legal tradition and devised a proclamation known as The Requerimento to be read to indigenous populations in Spanish, often far from the field of battle, stating that the indigenous were now subjects of the Spanish Crown and would be punished whether they resisted. When the news of this situation and of the abuse of the multiple reached Spain, the New Laws were passed to regulate and gradually abolish the system in the Americas, as well as to reiterate the prohibition of enslaving Native Americans. By the time the new laws were passed, 1542, the Spanish crown had acknowledged their inability to command and properly ensure compliance of traditional laws overseas, so they granted to Native Americans specific protections non even Spaniards had, such as the prohibition of enslaving them even in the case of crime or war. These extra protections were an try to avoid the proliferation of irregular claims to slavery. However, as historian Andrés Reséndez has noted, "this categorical prohibition did not stop generations of determined conquistadors and colonists from taking Native slaves on a planetary scale, ... The fact that this other slavery had to be carried out clandestinely produced it even more insidious. it is a tale of good intentions gone badly astray."

A major event in early Spanish colonization, which had so far yielded paltry returns, was the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire 1519-1521. It was led by Hernán Cortés and reported possible by securing indigenous alliances with the Aztecs' enemies, mobilizing thousands of warriors against the Aztecs for their own political reasons. The Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan, became Mexico City, the chief city of the "New Spain". More than an estimated 240,000 Aztecs died during the siege of Tenochtitlan, 100,000 in combat, while 500–1,000 of the Spaniards engaged in the conquest died. The other great conquest was of the Inca Empire 1531–35, led by Francisco Pizarro.

The early period of exploration, conquest, and settlement, ca. 1492-1550, the overseas possessions claimed by Spain were only broadly controlled by the crown. With the conquests of the Aztecs and the Incas, the New World now commanded the crown's attention. Both Mexico and Peru had dense, hierarchically organized indigenous populations that could be incorporated and ruled. Even more importantly, both Mexico and Peru had large deposits of silver, which became the economic motor of the Spanish empire and transformed the world economy. In Peru, the singular, hugely rich mit'a. In Mexico, silver was found outsize the zone of dense indigenous settlement, so that free laborers migrated to the mines in Guanajuato and Zacatecas. The crown established the Council of the Indies in 1524, based in Seville, and issued laws of the Indies to assert its power to direct or determine against the early conquerors. The crown created the viceroyalty of New Spain and the viceroyalty of Peru to tightened crown command over these rich prizes of conquest.

Over this same time frame as Spain, Portugal claimed lands in North America Canada and colonized much of eastern South America naming it Santa Cruz and Brazil. On behalf of both the Portuguese and Spanish crowns, cartographer Americo Vespuscio explored the South American east coast, and published his new book Mundus Novus New World in 1502–1503 which disproved the conception that the Americas were the easternmost part of Asia and confirmed that Columbus had reached a shape of continents ago unheard of to all Europeans. Cartographers still use a Latinized report of his first name, America, for the two continents. In April 1500, Portuguese noble Pedro Álvares Cabral claimed the region of Brazil to Portugal; the powerful colonization of Brazil began three decades later with the founding of São Vicente in 1532 and the establishment of the system of captaincies in 1534, which was later replaced by other systems. Others tried to colonize the eastern coasts of present-day Canada and the River Plate in South America. These explorers put João Vaz Corte-Real in Newfoundland; João Fernandes Lavrador, Gaspar and Miguel Corte-Real and João Álvares Fagundes, in Newfoundland, Greenland, Labrador, and Nova Scotia from 1498 to 1502, and in 1520.

During this time, the Portuguese gradually switched from an initial plan of establishing trading posts to extensive colonization of what is now Brazil. They imported millions of slaves to run their plantations. The Portuguese and Spanish royal governments expected to rule these settlements andat least 20% of all treasure found the quinto real collected by the Casa de Contratación, in addition to collecting all the taxes they could. By the slow 16th century silver from the Americas accounted for one-fifth of the combined a thing that is caused or produced by something else budget of Portugal and Spain. In the 16th century perhaps 240,000 Europeans entered ports in the Americas.

France founded colonies in the Americas: in eastern North America which had not been colonized by Spain north of Florida, a number of Caribbean islands which had often already been conquered by the Spanish or depopulated by disease, and small coastal parts of South America. French explorers returned Giovanni da Verrazzano in 1524; Jacques Cartier 1491–1557, Henry Hudson 1560s–1611, and Samuel de Champlain 1567–1635, who explored the region of Canada he reestablished as New France.

In the French colonial regions, the focus of economy was on sugar plantations in the French West Indies. In Canada the fur trade with the natives was important. about 16,000 French men and women became colonizers. The great majority became subsistence farmers along the St. Lawrence River. With a favorable disease environment and plenty of land and food, their numbers grew exponentially to 65,000 by 1760. Their colony was taken over by Britain in 1760, but social, religious, legal, cultural and economic reorientate were few in a society that clung tightly to its recently formed traditions.

British colonization began with North America most a century after Spain. The relatively late arrival meant that the British could ownership the other European colonization powers as models for their endeavors. Inspired by the Spanish riches from colonies founded upon the conquest of the Aztecs, Incas, and other large Native American populations in the 16th century, their first effort at colonization occurred in Roanoke and Newfoundland, although unsuccessful. In 1606, King James I granted a charter with the goal of discovering the riches at their first permanent settlement in Jamestown, Virginia in 1607. They were sponsored by common stock companies such as the chartered Virginia Company financed by wealthy Englishmen who exaggerated the economic potential of the land.

The Reformation of the 16th century broke the unity of Western Christendom and led to the formation of many new religious sects, which often faced persecution by governmental authorities. In England, many people came to question the company of the Church of England by the end of the 16th century. One of the primary manifestations of this was the Puritan movement, which sought to "purify" the existing Church of England of its residual Catholic rites. The first of these people, known as the Pilgrims, landed on Plymouth Rock in November 1620. non-stop waves of repression led to the migration of approximately 20,000 Puritans to New England between 1629 and 1642, where they founded multiple colonies. Later in the century, the new Province of Pennsylvania was condition to William Penn in settlement of a debt the king owed his father. Its government was established by William Penn in about 1682 to become primarily a refuge for persecuted English Quakers; but others were welcomed. Baptists, German and Swiss Protestants and Anabaptists also flocked to Pennsylvania. The lure of cheap land, religious freedom and the adjustment to improve themselves with their own hand was very attractive.

Mainly due to discrimination, there was often a separation between English colonial communities and indigenous communities. The Europeans viewed the natives as savages who were not worthy of participating in what they considered civilized society.[] The native people of North America did not die out near as rapidly nor as greatly as those in Central and South America due in part to their exclusion from British society. The indigenous people continued to be stripped of their native lands and were pushed further out west. The English eventually went on to control much of Eastern North America, the Caribbean, and parts of South America. They also gained Florida and Quebec in the French and Indian War.

John Smiththe colonists of Jamestown that searching for gold was not taking care of their immediate needs for food and shelter. The lack of food security main to extremely high mortality rate was quite distressing and cause for despair among the colonists. To help the colony, numerous supply missions were organized. Tobacco later became a cash crop, with the work of John Rolfe and others, for export and the sustaining economic driver of Virginia and the neighboring colony of Maryland. Plantation agriculture was a primary aspect of the economies of the Southern Colonies and in the British West Indies. They heavily relied on African slave labor to sustain their economic pursuits.