European colonization of the Americas

The European colonization of the Americas describes the history of the settlement and
establishment of control of the continents of the Americas by most of the naval powers of
Western Europe.

Political map of the Americas in 1794

Spanish conquistador style armour

American Discovery Viewed by Native Americans (Thomas Hart Benton, 1922). European
"discovery" and colonization would have disastrous effects on the indigenous peoples of the
Americas and their societies.

Systematic European colonization began in 1492, when a Spanish expedition headed by the
Italian explorer Christopher Columbus sailed west to find a new trade route to the Far East but
inadvertently landed in what came to be known to Europeans as the "New World". He ran
aground on 5 December 1492 on the northern part of Hispaniola, which the Taino people had
inhabited since the 9th century; the site became the first permanent European settlement in the
Americas. Western European conquest, large-scale exploration and colonization soon
followed. Columbus's first two voyages (1492–93) reached the Bahamas and various
Caribbean islands, including Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, and Cuba. In 1497, Italian explorer
John Cabot, on behalf of England, landed on the North American coast, and a year later,
Columbus's third voyage reached the South American coast. As the sponsor of Christopher
Columbus's voyages, Spain was the first European power to settle and colonize the largest
areas, from North America and the Caribbean to the southern tip of South America.

The Spaniards began building their empire of the Americas in the Caribbean, using islands
such as Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Hispaniola as bases. The North and South American mainland
fell to the conquistadors precipitating an estimated 8,000,000 deaths of indigenous
populations primarily through the spread of Afro-Eurasian diseases.[1] Some authors have
argued this demographic collapse to be the first large-scale act of genocide in the modern era.
[2]
Florida fell to Juan Ponce de León after 1513. From 1519 to 1521, Hernán Cortés waged a
campaign against the Aztec Empire, ruled by Moctezuma II. The Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan,
became Mexico City, the chief city of what the Spanish were now calling "New Spain". More
than 240,000 Aztecs died during the siege of Tenochtitlan. Of these, 100,000 died in combat.
[3]
Between 500 and 1,000 of the Spaniards engaged in the conquest died. Later, the areas that
are today California, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Texas, Missouri, Louisiana, and
Alabama were taken over by other conquistadors, such as Hernando de Soto, Francisco
Vázquez de Coronado, and Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca. Farther to the south, Francisco
Pizarro conquered the Inca Empire during the 1530s. The de Soto expedition was the first
major encounter of Europeans with North American Indians in the eastern half of the United
States. The expedition journeyed from Florida through present-day Georgia and the Carolinas,
then west across the Mississippi and into Texas. De Soto fought his biggest battle at the
walled town of Mabila in present-day Alabama on October 18, 1540. Spanish losses were 22
killed and 148 wounded. The Spaniards claimed that 2,500 Indians died. If true, Mabila was
the bloodiest battle ever fought between Native Americans and Europeans in the present-day
United States.[4] The centuries of continuous conflicts between the North American Indians
and the Anglo-Americans were secondary to the devastation wrought on the densely
populated Meso-American, Andean, and Caribbean heartlands.[5]

The British colonization of the Americas started with the unsuccessful settlement attempts in
Roanoke and Newfoundland. The English eventually went on to control much of Eastern
North America, the Caribbean, and parts of South America. The British also gained Florida
and Quebec in the French and Indian War.[6]

Other powers such as France also founded colonies in the Americas: in eastern North
America, a number of Caribbean islands and small coastal parts of South America. Portugal
colonized Brazil, tried colonizing the eastern coasts of present-day Canada and settled for
extended periods northwest (on the east bank) of the River Plate. The Age of Exploration was
the beginning of territorial expansion for several European countries. Europe had been
preoccupied with internal wars and was slowly recovering from the loss of population caused
by the Black Death; thus the rapid rate at which it grew in wealth and power was
unforeseeable in the early 15th century.[7]

Eventually, most of the Western Hemisphere came under the control of Western European
governments, leading to changes to its landscape, population, and plant and animal life. In the
19th century over 50 million people left Western Europe for the Americas.[8] The post-1492
era is known as the period of the Columbian Exchange, a dramatically widespread exchange
of animals, plants, culture, human populations (including slaves), ideas, and communicable
disease between the North and South American and Afro-Eurasian hemispheres following
Columbus's voyages to the Americas.
Henry F. Dobyns estimates that immediately before European colonization of the Americas
there were between 90 and 112 million people in the Americas; a larger population than
Europe at the same time.[9]