European colonization of the Americas

A massive European colonization of the Americas started in 1492 when Columbus arrived to America, thus opening the Columbian Exchange period. The Norse however are considered to be the first European colonists when they started, but then abandoned, a colonization of Vinland about 500 years before Columbus.

The first conquests were made by the Spanish, who quickly conquered most of South and Central America and large parts of North America. The Portuguese took Brazil, the English, French and Dutch conquered islands in the Caribbean Sea. They also colonized parts of North-America: New England, New Netherlands and Louisiana.

The first colonizations were expeditions organized by nations, later colonization was often done by individuals fleeing poverty and religious persecution in Europe.

Early state-sponsored colonists

Map showing those territories that at a determined moment in time belonged to Spain (red) and Portugal (purple).

The first phase of European activity in the Americas began with the oceanic crossings of Christopher Columbus (1492-1500), sponsored by Spain, whose original attempt was to find a new route to India and China, known as "the Indies". These were followed by other explorers such as John Cabot, who discovered Newfoundland and was sponsored by England. Pedro Alvares Cabral, who discovered Brazil for Portugal. Amerigo Vespucci who in voyages from 1497 to 1513, sailing for Spain and Portugal, established that Columbus had discovered a new set of continents. Map makers still use his name, America, for two continents. Other explorers included Giovanni da Verrazzano, sponsored by France, and, the Portuguese, João Vaz Corte-Real, in Newfoundland and Samuel de Champlain (1567-1635) and his exploration of Canada.

These oceanic crossings were followed, notably in the case of Spain, by a phase of conquest: The Spaniards, just having finished a war driving the Muslims out of the Iberian peninsula were the first to try colonization. Helped immensely by outbreaks of old world diseases which killed millions of natives and their apparent immunity to them they replaced the local Native American oligarchies and imposed a new religion: Christianity on the people. To reward their troops they often alloted Indian towns etc. to their troops and officers. Black African slaves were introduced to substitute for Native Americans labor in some locations. The Spaniards, needing the native's labor and cooperation, allowed the Catholic Church to evangelize in Quechua, Nahuatl and Guarani, contributing to the expansion of these American languages and equipping them with writing systems. One of the first primitive schools for Americans was founded by Fray Pedro de Gante in 1523.

The Portuguese 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 French, Spanish and Portuguese royal governments all expected to rule these settlements and at collect at least 20% of all treasure found plus collect whatever taxes they could think up.

Religious immigration

Other groups of colonists came to America searching for the right to practice their religion without persecution. After the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century, King Henry VIII renunciation of the Catholic church and the publication of the Bible in English many began to question the organization of the existing Church of England. One of the primary manifestations of this was the "Puritan" movement--which wanted to "purify" the existing Church of England of it many residual Catholic rites that had no mention in the Bible.

As the English monarch, Charles I tried to impose his belief in the right of "Divine Right of Kings" to do as he pleased. Ministers and many people in England had a strong feeling of persecution. Crackdowns by the English Church led to the migration of about 20,000 Puritans to New England from about 1629 to 1642. One other manifestation was the English Civil War (1642-1650) that led to Charles I's capture and beheading under Puritan Oliver Cromwell. Pennsylvania was given to William Penn in settlement of a debt the king owed his father. Its government was set up by William Penn in about 1682 to become primarily a refuge for persecuted English Quakers; but others were welcomed. Baptists, Quakers and German and Swiss Protestants flocked to Pennsylvania.

The lure of cheap land, religious freedom and the right to improve themselves with their own hand was very attractive to those who wished to escape from persecution and poverty. In America, all these groups gradually worked out a way to live together peacefully and cooperatively in the roughly 150 years preceding the American Revolution.

Major religious groups immigrating to the New World included:
*Separatists, more commonly known as Pilgrims, 1620
*Puritans,1630
*Quakers, 1682
*Lutherans, 1682
*Catholics, from the 1840's

Economic immigrants

Many of the other immigrants to the American colonies came for reasons that were economic. Inspired by the Spanish riches from their disease assisted conquest of the Aztecs, Incas, and other large Native American populations in the sixteenth century, the first Englishmen to settle in America hoped for some of the same rich discoveries when they first established a settlement in Jamestown, Virginia. They were sponsored by common stock companies financed by "Adventurers". The main purpose of this colony was the hope of finding gold or the possibility (or impossibility) of finding a passage through the Americas to the Indies. It took strong leaders, like John Smith, to convince the colonists of Jamestown that searching for gold was not taking care of their immediate needs for food and shelter and that "he who shall not work shall not eat." (That is a direction from the New Testament.) The extremely high mortality rate almost convinced everyone that the whole idea would never work. The discovery of Tobacco cultivation and trade quickly became the sustaining economic driver of Virginia and other early fledgling English colonies in North America. The original investors in these enterprises lost most of their investments and the government of England was content to heavily tax the survivors income.

From the beginning of Virginia's settlements until the 1680's, the main source of labour and a large portion of the immigrants were indentured servants looking for new life in the overseas colonies. During the seventeenth century, indentured servants constituted three-quarters of all European immigrants to the Chesapeake region. Most of the indentured servants were originally English farmers who had been pushed off their lands due to the expansion of livestock raising and overcrowding in the countryside. This unfortunate turn of events served as a push for thousands of people (mostly single men) away from their situation in England. There was hope, however, as American landowners were in need of labourers and were willing to pay for a labourer's passage to America if they served them for several years. By selling passage for five to seven years worth of work they could hope to start out on their own in America.

In the French colonial regions, the focus of economy was the trading with the natives. Farming was set up primarily to provide subsistence only. The fur trade was also practiced by the Russians on the northwest coast of North America and Alaska. After the French and Indian War, Great Britain captured virtually all French possessions in North America, leaving only a few fishing isles to France.

Forced immigration

Slavery existed in America, prior to the presence of Europeans, as the Natives often captured and held other tribe's members as captives. Some of these captives were even forced to undergo human sacrifice under some tribes, such as the Aztecs. The Spanish followed with the enslavement of local aborigines in the Caribbean. As the native populations declined through disease, they were often replaced by Africans imported through a large commercial slave trade. By the 18th century, the overwhelming number of black slaves was such that Native American slavery was less common. Africans, who were taken aboard slave ships to the Americas, were primarily obtained from their African homelands by coastal tribes who captured and sold them. The high incidence of nearly always fatal disease, to Europeans, kept nearly all slave capture activities confined to native African tribes. Rum, guns and gun powder were some of the major trade items traded for slaves. Approximately three to four hundred thousand in all, black slaves kept streaming into the ports of Charleston, South Carolina and Newport, Rhode Island until about 1810. The total slave trade to islands in the Caribbean, Brazil, Mexico etc. is thought to total somewhere between three and five million slaves.

European colonization of the Americas: Encyclopedia BETA