European colonization of the Americas

"Conquest of America" redirects here. For other uses, see Conquest of America (disambiguation).
"Colonization of the Americas" redirects here. For the initial prehistoric migration from Asia, see Peopling of the Americas.
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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 Age of Discovery, a large scale 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 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 Spain, Portugal, Britain, France, Russia, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Sweden began to explore and claim the Americas, its natural resources, and human capital,[2][3][4][5] leading to the displacement, disestablishment, enslavement, and even 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]

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 his accidental arrival at 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 British and French colonializations in the northeast tip of the Americas, including in the present-day United States. Within a century, the Swedish established New Sweden; the Dutch established New Netherland; and Denmark–Norway along with the Swedish and Dutch established colonization of parts of the Caribbean. By the 1700s, Denmark–Norway revived its former colonies in Greenland, and Russia began to explore and claim the Pacific Coast from 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 independence from Europe by then, countries such as the United States continued to fight against Native Americans and practiced settler colonialism. The United States for example practiced a settler colonial policy of Manifest Destiny and the Trail of Tears.

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]

  1. ^ Cardin, Dinah (14 August 2015). "Benton painting Native Americans". www.pem.org. Salem, Massachusetts: Peabody Essex Museum. Archived from the original on 30 September 2020. Retrieved 21 February 2022.
  2. ^ a b c d e Ostler, Jeffrey (2 March 2015). "Genocide and American Indian History". Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History. Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.013.3. ISBN 978-0-19-932917-5. Archived from the original on 10 August 2021. Retrieved 13 October 2021.
  3. ^ a b c d e Whitt, Laurelyn; Clarke, Alan W., eds. (2019). "Settler Colonialism and Indigenous Nations". North American Genocides: Indigenous Nations, Settler Colonialism, and International Law. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 44–70, 71–100. ISBN 978-1-108-42550-6. LCCN 2019008004.
  4. ^ a b c d e Stannard, David E. (1992). "Pestilence and Genocide". American Holocaust: Columbus and the Conquest of the New World. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 57–146. ISBN 0-19-508557-4.
  5. ^ a b c d e Thornton, Russell (1987). "Overview of Decline: 1492 to 1890–1900". American Indian Holocaust and Survival: A Population History Since 1492. The Civilization of the American Indian Series. Vol. 186. Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press. pp. 42–158. ISBN 0-8061-2074-6.
  6. ^ Resendez, Andres (2016). The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. ISBN 9780544602670.
  7. ^ Corrigan, John; Neal, Lynn S., eds. (2010). "Religious Intolerance toward Native American Religions". Religious Intolerance in America: A Documentary History. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press. pp. 125–146. doi:10.5149/9780807895955_corrigan.9. ISBN 9780807833896. LCCN 2009044820. S2CID 183694926.
  8. ^ Pointer, Richard W. (2011). "Part III: The Boundaries of Tolerance and Intolerance in Early America – Native Freedom? Indians and Religious Tolerance in Early America". In Beneke, Chris; Grenda, Christopher S. (eds.). The First Prejudice: Religious Tolerance and Intolerance in Early America. Early American Studies. Philadelphia and Oxford: University of Pennsylvania Press. pp. 168–194. ISBN 9780812223149. JSTOR j.ctt3fhn13.10. LCCN 2010015803.
  9. ^ Taylor, Alan (2001). American Colonies. London and New York: Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0-14-200210-0.
  10. ^ "Colonial City of Santo Domingo". Archived from the original on 2023-03-08. Retrieved 2023-03-07.