Conflict between the various European empires and the Indigenous peoples was the leading dynamic in the Americas into the 1800s, and although some parts of the continent were gaining their independence from Europe by that time, other regions such as California, Patagonia, the " Northwest Territories", and the northern Great Plains experienced little to no colonization at all until the 1800s. Within a century, the Swedish had established New Sweden, the Dutch had established New Netherland, and Denmark–Norway along with the other aforementioned powers had made several claims in the Caribbean, and by the 1700s, Denmark–Norway had revived its former colonies in Greenland, and Russia had begun to explore and claim the Pacific Coast from Alaska to California.ĭeadly confrontations became more frequent at the beginning of this period as the Indigenous peoples fought fiercely to preserve their territorial integrity from increasing numbers of European colonizers, as well as from hostile Indigenous neighbors who were equipped with Eurasian technology. It quickly became clear to other Western European powers that they too could benefit from voyages west and by the 1530s, the British and French had begun colonizing the northeast tip of the Americas.
Augustine, in current-day Florida, founded in 1565 by the Spanish, is credited as the oldest continuously inhabited European-established settlement in the United States. 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. Upon 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 eastern half, and Spain over those in the western half.
The strength of the Turkish Ottoman Empire over trade routes to Asia prompted Western European monarchs to search for alternatives, resulting in the voyages of Christopher Columbus and the accidental re-discovery of the " New World". The rapid rate at which Europe 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. Many of the social structures-including religions, political boundaries, and linguae francae-which predominate the Western Hemisphere in the 21st century are the descendants of the structures which were established during this period.
Russia began colonizing the Pacific Northwest in the mid-18th century, seeking pelts for the fur trade. Some formerly European settler colonies-including New Mexico, Alaska, the Prairies or northern Great Plains, and the " Northwest Territories" in North America the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, the Yucatán Peninsula, and the Darién Gap in Central America and the northwest Amazon, the central Andes, and the Guianas in South America-remain relatively rural, sparsely populated and Indigenous into the 21st century. During this time, several empires from Europe-primarily Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, Russia, the Netherlands and Sweden-began to explore and claim the land, natural resources and human capital of the Americas, resulting in the displacement, disestablishment, enslavement, and in many cases, genocide of the indigenous peoples, and the establishment of several settler colonial states. Although the Norse had explored and colonized areas of the North Atlantic, colonizing Greenland and creating a short term settlement near the northern tip of Newfoundland circa 1000 CE, the later and more well-known wave by the European powers is what formally constitutes as beginning of colonization, involving the continents of North America and South America. ĭuring the Age of Discovery, a large scale European colonization of the Americas took place between about 14. American Discovery Viewed by Native Americans, painting by Thomas Hart Benton (1922), Salem, Peabody Essex Museum.
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