Encyclopedia
A massive
European colonization of the Americas started in 1492 when
Columbus reached the
Americas, thus opening the
Columbian Exchange period.
The European colonists, whose lifestyle included sharing close quarters with animal resevoirs of disease , introduced novel germs to the agriculturally-advanced
indigenous peoples of the Americas.
Smallpox ,
typhus ,
influenza ,
diphtheria and
measles epidemics swept ahead of initial European contact killing between 10 million and 110 million
indigenous peoples of the Americas in the largest mass killing of humans ever. These unprecidented epidemics, which killed between 95% and 98% of the indigenous population, subsequently facilitated the conquest of these native civilizations.
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 and colonized parts of North America:
New England,
Louisiana and
New Netherlands.
The first colonizations were expeditions organized by nations . Later colonization was often by individuals fleeing poverty and religious persecution in
Europe.
Controversial early colonizations
Some consider that the Norse to have been the first European
colonists when they started, but then abandoned, a colonization of the northern tip of the island of
Newfoundland, which they called
Vinland, about 500 years before Columbus. Several Viking settlements were established in North America, with some evidence suggesting the Norseman penetrated as far as Minnesota, either coming down from Hudson Bay or going west through the Great Lakes.
Some historians believe that long before the Vikings, immigrants from Celtic lands of Europe had settled in the area of New England. Evidence of settlements during the period of the Roman Republic , by Celtic peoples comes from inscriptions found at a number of locations in the northeast, from Algonquian tales of ancestors who came from "accross the sea" rather than on the overland bridge, from circles of stones in North America that are similar to Stonehenge in England, and from facial features of the Algonquians.
Early state-sponsored colonists
The first phase of European activity in the Americas began with the
Atlantic Ocean crossings of
Christopher Columbus , sponsored by
Spain, whose original attempt was to find a new route to
India and
China, known as "
the Indies". He was followed by other explorers such as
John Cabot, who discovered
Newfoundland and was sponsored by
England.
Pedro Alvares Cabral 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, the Portuguese
João Vaz Corte-Real in
Newfoundland and
Samuel de Champlain who explored
Canada.
These explorations were followed, notably in the case of Spain, by a phase of conquest: The Spaniards, having just 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 own resistance to them, they replaced the 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 American labor in some locations. The Spaniards, needing the natives' labor and cooperation, allowed the
Catholic Church to evangelize in the
Quechua,
Nahuatl and Guarani languages, contributing to the expansion of these
indigenous 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 all the taxes they could.
See also
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's 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 its many residual Catholic rites that they believed 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 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:
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 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." 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 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.
See also
References
