1.3 European Expansion
Columbus was not the first European to reach North America. In fact, there is much controversy over whether Columbus reached North America at all since he only landed in the Caribbean and Central America. There is evidence that Scandinavians reached the northernmost areas of North America, in present day Canada, and even established a colony there around 1000 CE. However, Columbus’ misunderstood the basic dimensions of the planet, even though educated Asians and Europeans of the 15th century, who knew the world was round, knew that the Earth’s vast size would doom any attempt to reach Asia by going west from Europe if that area was entirely ocean. As a result, he thought such an expedition was possible.
Instead, Columbus encountered the land and peoples of the Western Hemisphere. Complex factors in the history of the “Christian” (a term that was often an ethnic identity in addition to religious affiliation) societies of the Iberian Peninsula led Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand to provide him with the resources for his expedition in 1492. On October 12, 1492, after two months at sea, his expedition encountered the islands south of North America.1 The atrocities that followed in his later expeditions would become repetitively familiar in the conquest and colonization of native peoples in the Americas in the centuries of Europe’s world-wide expansion that followed. The relative isolation of the Western Hemisphere from the Eastern Hemisphere meant its peoples had very limited immunities to contagions from the Old World, leading to epidemics and pandemics that – exacerbated by the brutalities of conquest, cultural and settlement colonization, and enslavement – would kill many millions of native peoples. The demographic collapse this caused in turn opened the New World to a more permanent settlement expansion of European societies than seen in, for example, Asia and Africa.
Columbus’ lucky stumble would have a snowball effect, beginning a period of European expansion and exploration that would occupy the minds of most Western European countries for the next several centuries.
Spanish America
While much of Spain’s New World empire would extend from the Caribbean south into Central and South America, they did attempt to bring North America under their control as well. The conquest of the Mesoamerican peoples, especially the Mexica and their empire, would lay the groundwork for the emerging new culture of what would become Mexico. Despite the brutalities of conquest, the particular circumstances of that conquest would prevent the wholesale collapse of the conquered peoples into chattel slavery as seen further east. The milpa would leave native peoples, including those of mixed race, with legal personhood, though nowhere near equality. That legal personhood, access to courts, and related elements for native peoples would not be seen in the English-speaking colonies for over three hundred years.
This, in turn, allowed European, Native American, and African cultural elements to begin the process of syncretism. New foods, new constructions of language, and new genomics would begin the people and culture of Mexico. Mexico, in turn, would have a long-term influence and impact on the development of America and the eventual United States. Mexica, the name of the people who dominated the Aztec Empire before conquest, would become not only the name of New Spain after its eventual independence form the Spanish Empire, but would influence terms in America English like Chicano.
Outside of the conditions in places like Mesoamerica, colonization was even more brutal and even further from actual equality. In the sixteenth century, the Spanish established a settlement at St. Augustine in Florida after expelling Native Americans and French Huguenots. They tried to use a mission system meant to covert Native Americans to Catholicism and bring them under governmental control. They also expanded north out of Mexico into present day New Mexico. There they exploited the Pueblo peoples and within a century, probably due to elements of the Columbian Exchange as well as exploitation, the population of the Puebloan peoples plummeted to just a few thousand. Spain’s control of the southwest and Florida remained tenuous.2
Spanish Rivals
In Europe, political and religious unrest continued to plague the continent. These conflicts were expensive, emptying treasuries and reducing populations. Eventually, Spain’s rivals would also turn their attention to expansion. The influx of precious metals and other wealth from New Spain and Peru inspired the other European monarchs to attempt to fill their own treasuries. Additionally, the emerging divisions and clash between what became known as the Catholic Church and the much later Protestant movement provided religious motivations, or at least justifications.
Protestant lands like England wanted to prove that their God and interpretation of religious dogma was the proper one. Other complex factors of rivalry, competition, and the conflicts of new powers attempting to take space from dominant empires led to a long series of religious wars in Europe that spread to competition in the New World. But while the French were firmly on the Catholic side, they too carried out a rivalry with Spain that would drive them to seek colonies in the New World. Eventually the religious conflicts in Europe began to die down, yet these violent disagreements were being transferred to the new continent.
The French
Early French explorers tried to locate the Northwest Passage – a passage by river that would cut across North America from east to west and allow the French to succeed in reaching China by sailing west, a task where Columbus had failed. While they did not find the fabled Northwest Passage, the French continued to concentrate on exploration. In 1608, Samuel de Champlain set up a trading post at Quebec along the Saint Lawrence River Valley. This location allowed for easy defense of the interior of the continent. In 1642, they set up a second post at Montreal located at the falls of the Saint Lawrence River.
From the beginning, the French were more interested in cooperating with the Native Americans and establishing a lucrative trade in fur. The experienced fur trappers were American Indians, and any dominance may have stinted the infant fur trade. The result was a cooperative and mutually beneficial relationship, for the most part. Much of what is known today about Native American culture comes from the recordings of Jesuit missionaries. These missionaries, working at the behest of the French, went out and lived amongst the American Indians to proselytize and convert the indigenous peoples to the Jesuit interpretation of Christianity.
Similarly, the majority of the French who settled in North America were male and many married indigenous women creating a small but diverse population early on. Because of the small number of French settlers from Europe, the French colony stayed small geographically and remained largely within the boundaries of their two major outposts. Almost all of France’s lands in North America would fall to the British in the Seven Years War or be purchased later by the new United States of America, yet French culture endure in those areas to this day, as do the strong French influences on native peoples in those areas and on American urban areas like New Orleans and its environs.
The Dutch
Recently freed from Spain after a long period of conflict, “the Dutch embraced greater religious tolerance and freedom of the press” than any other European country. 3 Dutch therefore concentrated on economic gain and trade and embraced skilled merchants and sailors. The Dutch were largely responsible for the concept of mercantilism that would eventually foster modern day capitalism.
In 1609, the Dutch West India Company sponsored an exploratory mission led by Henry Hudson. As a result, in 1614, the Dutch established a fur trading outpost of their own along the Hudson River called Fort Orange (at present day Albany, New York). Due to the Dutch concentration on trade, as the dominant commercial power of the 17th century, New Netherlands, like New France, remained small and largely confined to the river valley which offered easy access to its settlements. Their southernmost outpost was the town known as New Amsterdam on Manhattan Island in present day New York City.
The impact of the Dutch and French fur traders would send destructive waves of change over the native peoples of northeastern North America despite the relative lack of direct conquest and overwhelming cultural colonization. Pandemics from earlier conquests to the south collapsed native populations in the region well before sustained colonization in the area, and the impact of dependency on new technologies – like steel, smelted copper, textiles, and strong alcoholic beverages – that could not be produced by the Neolithic native peoples combined to weaken and even shatter already stressed societies. Moreover, the demand for fur led many native peoples to war with one another over these lucrative and, increasingly, existential trade links caused further damage across the 17th century, and Native Americans overhunted fur animals in ways that created devastating ecological domino effects that then further stressed their societies.
Like New France but even earlier, Dutch holdings in North America – including settlers in what had been Swedish-held settlements – fell to the English. They would become critical parts of the eventual colonies of British America, with New Amsterdam becoming New York and other lands becoming New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware as English-speaking settlers flooded in.
Notes
- Joseph Locke and Ben Wright, eds., “Chapter 1,” The American Yawp: A Massively Collaborative Open US History Textbook (Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press, 2018), III. European Expansion, at http://www.americanyawp.com/text/01-the-new-world/.
- Joseph Locke and Ben Wright, eds., “Chapter 2,” The American Yawp: A Massively Collaborative Open US History Textbook (Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press, 2018), II. Spanish America, at http://www.americanyawp.com/text/02-colliding-cultures/.
- Locke, “Chapter 2,” III. Spain’s Rival’s Emerge.
