The history of the colonization of America

The history of New America is not many centuries old. And it began in the 16th century. It was then that new people began to arrive on the continent open to Columbus. The migrants from many countries of the world had different reasons for coming to the New World. Some of them just wanted to start a new life. The second dreamed of getting rich. Still others sought asylum from religious persecution or from persecution of the authorities. Of course, all these people belonged to different nationalities and cultures. They differed from each other skin color. But they all had one desire - to change their lives and create a new world from scratch. Thus began the history of the colonization of America.

Pre-Columbian Period

People inhabited North America for more than one millennium. However, information about the natives of this continent before the period of appearance here of immigrants from many other parts of the world is very scarce.

As a result of scientific research it was established that the first Americans were small groups of people who migrated to the continent from Northeast Asia. Most likely, they have mastered these lands about 10-15 thousand years ago, having passed from Alaska through the shallow or frozen Bering Strait. Gradually, people began to move deeper, to the south of the American continent. So they reached Tierra del Fuego and the Strait of Magellan.

Also, researchers believe that in parallel with this process, small groups of Polynesian inhabitants moved to the continent. They settled in the southern lands.

Both those and other settlers, known to us as Eskimos and Indians, are rightfully considered the first inhabitants of America. And due to the long residence on the continent - the indigenous population.

The discovery of a new continent by Columbus

The Spaniards visited the New World first of Europeans. Traveling in an unknown world for them, they marked on the map of India, the Cape of Good Hope and the western coastal areas of Africa. But the researchers did not stop there. They began to seek the shortest path that would lead a man from Europe to India, which promised great economic benefits to the monarchs of Spain and Portugal. The result of one of these campaigns was the discovery of America.

This happened in October 1492, just then the Spanish expedition, led by Admiral Christopher Columbus, approached a small island that was in the Western Hemisphere. This was the first page in the history of the colonization of America. In this outlandish country rush immigrants from Spain. Following them in the Western Hemisphere appeared residents of France and England. The period of colonization of America began.

Spanish conquerors

The colonization of America by the Europeans initially did not cause any resistance from the local population. And this contributed to the fact that immigrants began to behave very aggressively, enslaving and killing the Indians. The Spanish conquerors displayed special cruelty. They burned and plundered the local villages, killing their inhabitants.

Already at the very beginning of America's colonization, Europeans brought many diseases to the continent. The local population began to die from the epidemics of smallpox and measles.

In the middle of the 16th century, Spanish colonists dominated the American continent. Their possessions stretched from New Mexico to Cape Gori and brought the royal treasury a fabulous profit. In this period of colonization of America, Spain repulsed all attempts of other European states to gain a foothold in this resource-rich territory.

However, at the same time, the balance of power began to change in the Old World. Spain, where the kings unreasonably spent huge flows of gold and silver coming from the colonies, gradually began to give up their positions, yielding to their England, in which the economy developed at a rapid pace. In addition, the decline of a previously powerful country, the mistress of the seas and the European superpower, accelerated the long-term war with the Netherlands, the conflict with Britain and the Reformation of Europe, which was heavily funded. But the last point of Spain's departure into the shadow was the death in 1588 of the Invincible Armada. After that, the leaders in the process of colonization of America were England, France and Holland. Settlers from these countries created a new immigration wave.

Colonies of France

The migrants from this European country were primarily interested in valuable furs. At the same time, the French did not seek to seize the land, since in their homeland the peasants, despite the burden of feudal duties, still remained owners of their allotments.

The beginning of the colonization of America by the French was laid at the dawn of the 17th century. It was during this period that Samuel Champlain founded a small settlement on the peninsula of Acadia, and a little later (in 1608) - the city of Quebec. In 1615, the possessions of the French stretched to the lakes of Ontario and Huron. These territories were dominated by trading companies, the largest of which was the Hudson Bay Company. In 1670, its owners received a charter and monopolized the purchase of fish and furs from the Indians. Local residents have become "tributaries" of companies, hitting the network of liabilities and debts. In addition, the Indians were simply robbed, constantly exchanging the valuable fur they got for worthless trinkets.

Great Britain

The beginning of colonization of North America by the British started in the 17th century, although the first attempts were made by them a century earlier. The settlement of the New World by subjects of the British crown accelerated the development of capitalism in their homeland. The source of the prosperity of the British monopolies was the creation of colonial trading companies that successfully worked on the foreign market. They also brought fabulous profits.

Features of colonization of North America by Great Britain consisted in the fact that on this territory the government of the country formed two trading companies, which had large funds. It was the London and Plymouth firms. These companies had royal certificates, according to which they owned lands located between 34 and 41 degrees north latitude, and without any restrictions extending deep into the country. Thus, England appropriated a territory that originally belonged to the Indians.

In the early 17 century. A colony was established in Virginia. From this enterprise, a commercial Virgin company expected big profits. At its own expense, the firm delivered immigrants to the colony, which for 4-5 years worked their debts.

In 1607 a new settlement was formed. It was the colony of Jemstown. It was located in a marshy place, where many mosquitoes lived. In addition, the colonists have set themselves against the indigenous population. Constant skirmishes with Indians and diseases soon took the lives of two-thirds of the settlers.

Another English colony, Maryland, was founded in 1634. In it, British settlers received land plots and became planters and large entrepreneurs. Workers in these areas were English poor, who worked out the cost of moving to America.

However, over time, instead of bonded servants in the colonies began to use the labor of Negro slaves. They began to be brought mainly to southern colonies.

For 75 years after the formation of the colony of Virginia, the British created 12 more such settlements. These are Massachusetts and New Hampshire, New York and Connecticut, Rhode Island and New Jersey, Delaware and Pennsylvania, North and South Carolina, Georgia and Maryland.

Development of English colonies

The poor of many countries of the Old World sought to get to America, because in their view it was a promised land, giving salvation from debts and religious persecutions. That is why the European colonization of America had a wide scale. Many entrepreneurs no longer limited themselves to recruiting immigrants. They began to arrange real raids on people, soldering them and sending them to the ship until they sobered up. That is why there was an unusually rapid growth in the English colonies. This was facilitated by the agrarian revolution in Great Britain, as a result of which the peasants were massively de-landed.

Robbed by their government, the poor began to seek the possibility of buying land in the colonies. So, if in 1625 on the territory of North America lived 1980 immigrants, then in 1641, only English immigrants there were about 50 thousand. In another fifty years the number of residents of such settlements was about two hundred thousand people.

Behavior of immigrants

The history of America's colonization is overshadowed by the extermination war against the indigenous inhabitants of the country. The settlers took the land from the Indians, completely destroying the tribes.

In the north of America, which was called New England, natives of the Old World went a little different way. Here, the land from the Indians were acquired through "commercial transactions". Subsequently, this was the reason for the assertion that the ancestors of the Anglo-Americans did not infringe upon the freedom of the indigenous people. However, people from the Old World acquired huge tracts of land for a bunch of beads or for a handful of gunpowder. At the same time, Indians who were not familiar with private property, as a rule, did not even guess at the essence of the contract concluded with them.

A contribution to the history of colonization was made by the church. She elevated the beating of Indians to the rank of God-pleasing deed.

One of the shameful pages in the history of America's colonization is the award for scalps. Before the arrival of the settlers, this bloody custom existed only in some tribes inhabiting the eastern territories. With the arrival of the colonialists, this barbarism began to spread more and more. The reason for this was unleashed internecine wars, in which firearms began to be used. In addition, the process of scalping greatly facilitated the spread of iron knives. After all, the wooden or bone tools that the Indians had before colonization, in many ways complicated this operation.

However, the relations of the settlers with the indigenous inhabitants were not always so hostile. Ordinary people tried to maintain good-neighborly relations. Poor farmers borrowed from the Indians agricultural experience and learned from them, adapting to local conditions.

Migrants from other countries

But anyway, the first colonists who settled in North America did not have unified religious beliefs and belonged to different social strata. This was due to the fact that people from the Old World belonged to different nationalities, and, consequently, had different beliefs. For example, English Catholics settled in Maryland. Huguenots from France settled in South Carolina. The Swedes settled Delaware, and in Virginia was full of Italian, Polish and German artisans. On the island of Manhattan in 1613 appeared the first Dutch settlement. Its founder was Henry Hudson. The Dutch colonies, centered on the city of Amsterdam, became known as the New Netherlands. Later these settlements were captured by the British.

The colonialists were entrenched on the continent, for which until now every fourth Thursday in November they thank God. America celebrates Thanksgiving. This holiday is immortalized in honor of the first year of life of immigrants in a new place.

The appearance of slavery

The first black Africans arrived in Virginia in August 1619 on a Dutch ship. Most of them were immediately redeemed by the colonists as servants. In America, the Negroes became lifelong slaves.

Moreover, this status even became inherited. Between the American colonies and countries of East Africa, the slave trade began to be carried out constantly. Local leaders willingly changed their young people to weapons, gunpowder, textiles and many other goods brought from the New World.

Development of southern territories

As a rule, the settlers chose the northern territories of the New World because of their religious considerations. In contrast, the colonization of South America pursued economic goals. Europeans, having little ceremony with the indigenous people, resettled them to lands that are poorly fit for existence. A resource-rich continent promised immigrants a large income. That is why in the southern regions of the country began to cultivate tobacco and cotton plantations, using the labor of slaves brought from Africa. Most of the goods to England were exported from these territories.

Settlers in Latin America

Territories south of the United States, Europeans began to explore also after the discovery of Columbus New World. And today, colonization by Europeans of Latin America is regarded as an unequal and dramatic clash of two different worlds, which ended in the enslavement of the Indians. This period lasted from the 16th to the early 19th century.

The colonization of Latin America led to the death of ancient Indian civilizations. After all, most of the indigenous population was exterminated by immigrants from Spain and Portugal. The surviving inhabitants fell under the subordination of the colonialists. But at the same time, cultural achievements of the Old World were brought to Latin America, which became the property of the peoples of this continent.

Gradually European colonists began to turn into the most growing and important part of the population of this region. And the bringing of slaves from Africa began a complex process of forming a special ethnocultural symbiosis. And today we can say that the colonial period of the 16th-19th centuries left an indelible mark on the development of modern Latin American society. In addition, with the advent of the Europeans, the region began to get involved in world capitalist processes. This became an important prerequisite for the economic development of Latin America.