Causation 1491-1607

European rivalries stimulate overseas exploration and colonization

At the beginning of this chapter, we highlighted the developing commercial and military rivalries between the strongest powers of western and central Europe, including Spain, France, Great Britain and Netherlands. These imperial rivals initially sought to expand their influence, cultures, and laws into east and southeast Asia and then into the Americas, as well, after Columbus’s arrival in the Caribbean in October 1492. The relentless pursuit of the famed wealth of China and India, and later of Mexico and Peru, induced continued voyages throughout the Caribbean and eventually far into the interior of the western hemisphere. Spain quickly emerged as the most powerful European colonizer in the Americas, but its dominance would gradually be challenged by France and Great Britain, particularly as the French and British began colonizing lands adjacent to, or north of, Spanish imperial claims.

Conquest and resistance in the Americas

As primarily the Spanish, and later other European powers, sought to expand their colonial empires in the Americas, there were frequent, violent clashes as European armies sought to dispossess indigenous societies of their lands and their freedoms. Indigenous peoples resisted, often fiercely, but many were overcome through a combination of diseases, including smallpox, and more powerful weapons and armor that Europeans employed to devastating effect; most estimates of net indigenous population decline in the 16th century exceed 90%. While violent clashes often garner the most attention, indigenous peoples resisted in a variety of ways, including running away and quietly contravening European imperial demands - all of these forms of resistance would be employed for centuries by the newly imported enslaved Africans.

Slavery in the Americas

European colonizers, particularly the Spanish and the Portuguese, initially sought to enslave the indigenous peoples in the Americas, but they gradually learned that they could not enslave the indigenous peoples in the numbers that they wanted for their agricultural and mining efforts - too many natives died, primarily from the diseases that the Spanish and Portuguese had unwittingly introduced. Compounding these tragedies, the Spanish and Portuguese, and later the British, Dutch and French, would import several million enslaved Africans to serve as the primary agricultural and mining labor force in the colonies. As these millions of enslaved Africans became established presences in the Americas, they would in time form significant parts of the overall American population, frequently becoming the vast majority of the population on different Caribbean islands and later in states like South Carolina and Mississippi.

Profound changes in the Americas

As a result of the introduction of new people, new animals, new plants, and even new diseases into the Americas, as well as the enormous extraction of agricultural and mineral wealth from the Americas, the western hemisphere was profoundly transformed. European colonization resulted in the forced captivity and displacement of indigenous peoples from their ancestral lands. Enslaved Africans and indigenous peoples were forced to work for the European colonizers and to tend the newly introduced cattle, horses, and pigs that Europeans introduced to the western hemisphere. The profound ecological, cultural, and ethnic transformations of the Americas would be visible during the 16th century and would become more evident and durable in later centuries.

Profound changes in Europe

Europe would also experience significant changes. The introduction of the potato into European lands transformed the diets of many Europeans, particularly in Ireland, then still part of Great Britain; centuries later, the catastrophic failure of Ireland’s potato crop, caused by a blight, propelled a large influx of Irish immigrants into the United States. European economies were dramatically impacted by the vast amounts of silver imported from the Americas, including leading to sustained inflation in Spain in the 17th century. Massive imports of tobacco from the Americas led to millions of Europeans, primarily men, smoking tobacco and to increases in illnesses stemming from the use of tobacco products.

Profound changes in Africa

Africa would also undergo profound transformations, tragically because of European demands for huge amounts of forced labor. While slavery was not new in Africa, the large-scale capture and sale of African men, women and children tore apart many African societies. Neighboring societies warred with each other to capture more slaves to sell to the Europeans. While European slave traders primarily stayed close to coastal cities and ports, the African slave capturers that they depended on began raiding further into the interior of West and Central Africa to keep pace with rising European demands for enslaved workers. Sustained contact between Europe and Africa would in the 19th century change to massive European colonization of much of Africa.