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The exploration of North America by European sailors and geographers was an effort by major European powers to map and explore the continent with the goal of economic, religious and military expansion. The combative and rapid nature of this exploration is the result of a series of countering actions by neighboring European nations to ensure no ...
Word of Columbus's exploits spread quickly, sparking the Western European exploration, conquest, and colonization of the Americas. The Discovery of America (Johann Moritz Rugendas). Spanish explorers, conquerors, and settlers sought material wealth, prestige, and the spread of Christianity, often summed up in the phrase "gold, glory, and God". [18]
1496: Santo Domingo, the first European permanent settlement, is built. [7] 1497: John Cabot reaches Newfoundland. [8] 1498: In his third voyage, Columbus reaches Trinidad and Tobago. 1498: La Isabela is abandoned by the Spanish. 1499: João Fernandes Lavrador maps Labrador and Newfoundland
Furthermore, local tribal leaders did not simply give up their own people for the aforementioned commodities but rather through intertribal wars, debts, and civil crime offenders. [5]: 54 Labor in the Spanish and Portuguese colonies became scarce. European diseases and forced labor began killing the indigenous people in insurmountable numbers.
Spain sponsored a major exploration led by Italian explorer Christopher Columbus in 1492; it quickly led to extensive European colonization of the Americas. The Europeans brought Old World diseases which are thought to have caused catastrophic epidemics and a huge decrease of the native population .
The French and Indian War (1754–1763) was the American extension of the general European conflict known as the Seven Years' War. Previous colonial wars in North America had started in Europe and then spread to the colonies, but the French and Indian War is notable for having started in North America and spread to Europe.
Initially, European activity consisted mostly of trade and exploration. Eventually Europeans began to establish settlements. The three principal colonial powers in North America were Spain, England, and France, although eventually other powers such as the Netherlands and Sweden also received holdings on the continent.
The first documented settlement of Europeans in the Americas was established by Norse people around 1000 AD in what is now Newfoundland, called Vinland by the Norse. Later European exploration of North America resumed with Christopher Columbus's 1492 expedition sponsored by Spain. English settlement began almost a century later.