European colonization of the Americas

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

American Discovery Viewed by Native Americans, a 1922 painting by Thomas Hart Benton, now housed in the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, United States[1]

During the

colonization of the Americas, involving a number of European countries, took place primarily between the late 15th century and the early 19th century. The Norse had explored and colonized areas of Europe and the North Atlantic, colonizing Greenland and creating a short term settlement near the northern tip of Newfoundland circa 1000 AD. However, due to its long duration and importance, the later colonization by the European powers involving the continents of North America and South America is more well-known.[2][3][4][5]

During this time, the European empires of

genocide of the Indigenous peoples in the Americas,[2][3][4][5] and the establishment of several settler colonial states.[2][3][4][5][6] Some settler colonies, including New Mexico, Alaska, the northern Great Plains, the North-Western Territory, and Greenland in North America, the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, the Yucatán Peninsula, and the Darién Gap in Central America, and the northwest Amazon, the central Andes, the Guianas, the Gran Chaco, and Araucanía in South America
remain relatively rural, sparsely populated with Indigenous people as of the 21st century.

Russia began colonizing the Pacific Northwest in the mid-18th century, seeking pelts for the fur trade. Many of the social structures—including religions,[7][8] political boundaries, and linguae francae—which predominate in the Western Hemisphere in the 21st century are the descendants of those that were established during this period.

The rapid rate at which some European nations 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 loss of population caused by the Black Death.[9] The Ottoman Empire's domination of 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
.

With 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 world's eastern half, and Spain over those in the western half. Spanish claims essentially included all 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, and the East Indies to Spain, where It established the Philippines. The city of Santo Domingo, in the current-day Dominican Republic, founded in 1496 by Columbus, is credited as the oldest continuously inhabited European-established settlement in the Americas.[10]

By the 1530s, other Western European powers realized they too could benefit from voyages to the Americas, leading to

Alaska to California
.

Violent conflicts arose during the beginning of this period as indigenous peoples fought to preserve their territorial integrity from increasing European colonizers and from hostile indigenous neighbors who were equipped with Eurasian technology. Conflict between the various European empires and the indigenous peoples was a leading dynamic in the Americas into the 1800s, although some parts of the continent gained their

.

Other regions, including California, Patagonia, the North Western Territory, and the northern Great Plains, experienced 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.[2][3][4][5]

Western European powers

Norsemen

Newfoundland), Helluland (Baffin Island), and Markland (Labrador) travelled by the Icelandic Sagas, including in the Saga of Erik the Red and Saga of the Greenlanders

Norse colonization of the Americas.[15] Leif Erikson's brother is said to have 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.[16]

Spain

Christopher Columbus voyages
Ferdinand Magellan and other circumnavigation explorers
Amerigo Vespucci wakes up "America" in Americae Retectio, engraving by the Flemish artist Jan Galle (circa 1615)

While the Norse established some colonies in the north-eastern part of North America as early as the tenth century, systematic European colonization began in 1492. A

expedition sailed west in order to find a new trade route to the Far East, the source of spices, silks, porcelains, and other rich trade goods. Ottoman control of the Silk Road, the traditional route for trade between Europe and Asia, forced European traders to look for alternative routes. The Genoese mariner Christopher Columbus led an expedition to find a route to East Asia, but instead landed in The Bahamas.[17] Columbus encountered the Lucayan people on the island Guanahani (possibly Cat Island), which they had inhabited since the ninth century. In his reports, Columbus exaggerated the quantity of gold in the East Indies, which he called the "New World
". These claims, along with the slaves he brought back, convinced the monarchy to fund a second voyage. Word of Columbus's exploits spread quickly, sparking the Western European exploration, conquest, and colonization of the Americas.

The Discovery of America (Johann Moritz Rugendas).

Spanish explorers, conquerors, and settlers sought material wealth, prestige, and the spread of Christianity, often summed up in the phrase "gold, glory, and God".[18] 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.[19] In the New World, military conquest to incorporate indigenous peoples into Christendom was considered the "spiritual conquest". In 1493, Pope Alexander VI, the first Spaniard to become Pope, issued a series of Papal Bulls that confirmed Spanish claims to the newly discovered lands.[20]

After the final

Iberia, the Treaty of Tordesillas was ratified by the Pope, the two kingdoms of Castile (in a personal union with other kingdoms of Spain) and Portugal in 1494. The treaty divided the entire non-European world into two spheres of exploration and colonization. The longitudinal
boundary cut through the Atlantic Ocean and the eastern part of present-day Brazil. The countries declared their rights to the land despite the fact that Indigenous populations had settled from pole to pole in the hemisphere and was their homeland.

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 part to Old World diseases carried to the New World,

The silver mountain of Potosí, in what is now Bolivia. It was the source of vast of amounts of silver that transformed the world economy.

For example, the labor and tribute of

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 if they resisted.[25] When the news of this situation and of the abuse of the institution 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 control and properly ensure compliance of traditional laws overseas, so they granted to Native Americans specific protections not even Spaniards had, such as the prohibition of enslaving them even in the case of crime or war. These extra protections were an attempt to avoid the proliferation of irregular claims to slavery.[26] 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 made it even more insidious. It is a tale of good intentions gone badly astray."[27]

A major event in early Spanish colonization, which had so far yielded paltry returns, was the

New Spain". More than an estimated 240,000 Aztecs died during the siege of Tenochtitlan, 100,000 in combat,[28] 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
.

Spanish historical and territorial presence in North America.

During the early period of exploration, conquest, and settlement, c. 1492–1550, the overseas possessions claimed by Spain were only loosely 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

viceroyalty of New Spain and the viceroyalty of Peru
to tightened crown control over these rich prizes of conquest.

Portugal

Discovery of Brazil.

Over this same time frame as Spain,

Latinized version 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 effective 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 include 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

quinto real collected by the Casa de Contratación), in addition to collecting all the taxes they could. By the late 16th century silver from the Americas accounted for one-fifth of the combined total budget of Portugal and Spain.[29] In the 16th century perhaps 240,000 Europeans entered ports in the Americas.[30][31]

France

Map of North America (1656–1750). France in blue, Great Britain in pink and purple, and Spain in orange.

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. Explorers included Giovanni da Verrazzano in 1524; Jacques Cartier (1491–1557), and Samuel de Champlain (1567–1635), who explored the region of Canada he reestablished as New France.[32]

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 changes were few in a society that clung tightly to its recently formed traditions.[33][34]

British

British colonization began with North America almost a century after Spain. The relatively late arrival meant that the British could use the other European colonization powers as models for their endeavors.

Anabaptists also flocked to Pennsylvania. The lure of cheap land, religious freedom and the right to improve themselves with their own hand was very attractive.[37]

Thirteen Colonies of North America:
Dark Red = New England colonies.
Bright Red = Middle Atlantic colonies.
Red-brown = Southern colonies.

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.[

Florida and Quebec in the French and Indian War
.

John Smith convinced the colonists of Jamestown that searching for gold was not taking care of their immediate needs for food and shelter. The lack of food security leading to extremely high mortality rate was quite distressing and cause for despair among the colonists. To support 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.[citation needed
]

From the beginning of Virginia's settlements in 1587 until the 1680s, the main source of labor and a large portion of the immigrants were

indentured servants looking for new life in the overseas colonies. During the 17th century, indentured servants constituted three-quarters of all European immigrants to the Chesapeake Colonies. Most of the indentured servants were teenagers from England with poor economic prospects at home. Their fathers signed the papers that gave them free passage to America and an unpaid job until they became of age. They were given food, clothing, housing and taught farming or household skills. American landowners were in need of laborers and were willing to pay for a laborer's passage to America if they served them for several years. By selling passage for five to seven years worth of work, they could then start on their own in America.[39] Many of the migrants from England died in the first few years.[9]

Economic advantage also prompted the

Act of Union 1707 with the Kingdom of England creating the united Kingdom of Great Britain and giving Scotland commercial access to English, now British, colonies.[41]

Dutch

New Amsterdam on lower Manhattan island, was captured by the English in 1665, becoming New York.

The Netherlands had been part of the

Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen became the administrator of the colony (1637–43), building a capital city and royal palace, fully expecting the Dutch to retain control of this rich area. As the Dutch had in Europe, it tolerated the presence of Jews and other religious groups in the colony. After Maurits departed in 1643, the Dutch West India Company took over the colony, until it was lost to the Portuguese in 1654. The Dutch retained some territory in Dutch Guiana, now Suriname. The Dutch also seized islands in the Caribbean that Spain had originally claimed but had largely abandoned, including Sint Maarten in 1618, Bonaire in 1634, Curaçao in 1634, Sint Eustatius in 1636, Aruba
in 1637, some of which remain in Dutch hands and retain Dutch cultural traditions.

On the east coast of North America, the Dutch planted the colony of

Weckquaesgeeks.[42] Dutch fur traders set up a network upstream on the Hudson River
. There were Jewish settlers from 1654 onward, and they remained following the English capture of New Amsterdam in 1664. The naval capture was despite both nations being at peace with the other.

Russia

New Archangel (present-day Sitka, Alaska), the capital of Russian America, in 1837

Russia came to colonization late compared to Spain or Portugal, or even England.

Cossack explorers along rivers sought valuable furs of ermine, sable, and fox. Cossacks enlisted the aid of indigenous Siberians, who sought protection from nomadic peoples, and those peoples paid tribute in fur to the czar. Thus, prior to the eighteenth century Russian expansion that pushed beyond the Bering Strait
dividing Eurasia from North America, Russia had experience with northern indigenous peoples and accumulated wealth from the hunting of fur bearing animals. Siberia had already attracted a core group of scientists, who sought to map and catalogue the flora, fauna, and other aspects of the natural world.

A major Russian expedition for exploration was mounted in 1742, contemporaneous with other eighteenth-century European state-sponsored ventures. It was not clear at the time whether Eurasia and North America were completely separate continents. The first voyages were made by

Seward's Folly
".

Tuscany

Duke

Ferdinand I de Medici made the only Italian attempt to create colonies in America. For this purpose the Grand Duke organized in 1608 an expedition
to the north of Brazil, under the command of the English captain Robert Thornton.

Thornton, on his return from the preparatory trip in 1609 (he had been to the

Christianization

Franciscan Alonso de Molina's 1565 Nahuatl (Aztec) dictionary, conceived for friars to communicate with the indigenous peoples in central Mexico in their own language.

Beginning with the

Indigenous peoples' native religions was systematically perpetrated by the European Christian colonists and settlers from the 15th–16th centuries onwards.[3][2][4][5][7][8]

During the

Jesuits often created missions, bringing together dispersed Indigenous populations in communities supervised by the friars in order to more easily preach the gospel and ensure their adherence to the faith. These missions were established throughout Spanish America which extended from the southwestern portions of current-day United States
through Mexico and to Argentina and Chile.

As

philosopher Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, held the Valladolid debate, with the former arguing that Native Americans were endowed with souls like all other human beings, while the latter argued to the contrary to justify their enslavement. In 1537, the papal bull Sublimis Deus
definitively recognized that Native Americans possessed souls, thus prohibiting their enslavement, without putting an end to the debate. Some claimed that a native who had rebelled and then been captured could be enslaved nonetheless.

When the first

Indigenous peoples' native religions.[52] However, in Pre-Columbian Mexico, burning the temple of a conquered group was standard practice, shown in Indigenous manuscripts, such as Codex Mendoza. Conquered Indigenous groups expected to take on the gods of their new overlords, adding them to the existing pantheon. They likely were unaware that their conversion to Christianity entailed the complete and irrevocable renunciation of their ancestral religious beliefs and practices. In 1539, Mexican bishop Juan de Zumárraga oversaw the trial and execution of the Indigenous nobleman Carlos of Texcoco for apostasy from Christianity.[53] Following that, the Catholic Church removed Indigenous converts from the jurisdiction of the Inquisition, since it had a chilling effect on evangelization. In creating a protected group of Christians, Indigenous men no longer could aspire to be ordained Christian priests.[54]

Throughout the Americas, the

Jesuits were active in attempting to convert the Indigenous peoples to Christianity. They had considerable success on the frontiers in New France[55] and Portuguese Brazil, most famously with Antonio de Vieira, S.J;[56] and in Paraguay, almost an autonomous state within a state.[57]

Eliot Indian Bible

The

Mamusse Wunneetupanatamwe Up-Biblum God, a translation by John Eliot of the gospel into Algonquian
, was published in 1663.

Religion and migration

Catholic cathedral in Mexico City
The Kahal Zur Israel Synagogue in Mauritsstad (Recife) is the oldest synagogue in the Americas. An estimated number of 700 Jews lived in Dutch Brazil, about 4.7% of the total population.[58]

Cartagena de Indias in Colombia to maintain religious orthodoxy and practice. The Portuguese did not establish a permanent office of the Portuguese Inquisition in Brazil, but did send visitations of inquistors in the seventeenth century.[59]

English and Dutch colonies, on the other hand, tended to be more religiously diverse. Settlers to these colonies included

Lutherans, as well as Jews, Quakers, Mennonites, Amish, and Moravians.[60] Jews fled to the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam when the Spanish and Portuguese inquisitions cracked down on their presence.[61]

Disease and indigenous population loss

Nahua
suffering from smallpox

The European lifestyle included a long history of sharing close quarters with domesticated animals such as cows, pigs, sheep, goats, horses, dogs and various domesticated

indigenous people of the Americas
.

Epidemics of smallpox (1518, 1521, 1525, 1558, 1589), typhus (1546), influenza (1558), diphtheria (1614) and measles (1618) swept the Americas subsequent to European contact,[63][64] killing between 10 million and 100 million[65] people, up to 95% of the indigenous population of the Americas.[66] The cultural and political instability attending these losses appears to have been of substantial aid in the efforts of various colonists in New England and Massachusetts to acquire control over the great wealth in land and resources of which indigenous societies had customarily made use.[67]

Such diseases yielded human mortality of an unquestionably enormous gravity and scale – and this has profoundly confused efforts to determine its full extent with any true precision. Estimates of the

pre-Columbian population of the Americas
vary tremendously.

Others have argued that significant variations in population size over pre-Columbian history are reason to view higher-end estimates with caution. Such estimates may reflect historical population maxima, while indigenous populations may have been at a level somewhat below these maxima or in a moment of decline in the period just prior to contact with Europeans. Indigenous populations hit their ultimate lows in most areas of the Americas in the early 20th century; in a number of cases, growth has returned.[68]

According to scientists from University College London, the colonization of the Americas by Europeans killed so much of the indigenous population that it resulted in climate change and global cooling.[69][70][71] Some contemporary scholars also attribute significant indigenous population losses in the Caribbean to the widespread practice of slavery and deadly forced labor in gold and silver mines.[72][73][74] Historian Andrés Reséndez, supports this claim and argues that indigenous populations were smaller previous estimations and "a nexus of slavery, overwork and famine killed more Indians in the Caribbean than smallpox, influenza and malaria."[75]

Slavery