American History

American History

Introduction

England's interest in America began to awaken with the voyages of Sir Francis Drake and the slave trader John Hawkins in the latter part of the sixteenth century. Drake's seizure of Spanish ships and the wealth being returned to Europe by the Spanish explorers was of particular interest to Queen Elizabeth I. She had a financial stake in at least one of Drake's voyages. Queen Elizabeth sought to encourage further exploitation of the New World in 1578 by granting a patent to Sir Humphrey Gilbert for discoveries in America. The patent allowed Sir Humphrey to settle and explore any part of the New World not already claimed by a Christian prince. Although he was allowed to claim such discoveries for himself and his heirs, Sir Humphrey did not live to enjoy the benefits of owning what is now the richest nation in the world. He disappeared after a voyage to America in 1583. Sir Humphrey's interests in America then passed to his brother Adrian and to a half brother, Walter Raleigh.

America was ripe for plucking. The Indian cultures that had developed over thousands of years would be destroyed by the European immigrants and their descendants. That dismantling would take about four hundred years to complete, but it was inevitable as soon as the American paradise revealed itself to the white men who sailed from Europe. This cultural destruction would be wrought by European diseases and the introduction of a market economy, as well as by the sheer rapaciousness of the new emigrants. When the European financiers learned of Columbus's voyage, the New World's fate was sealed. The Europeans' lust for gold, wealth, and adventure was an irresistible lure that would focus the energy of Europe. Efforts to exploit the New World began almost immediately after Columbus's discovery. Columbus would himself make three more journeys to the New World for that purpose. His second expedition involved some seventeen ships and hundreds of men. The finance for that journey was supplied by a sale of assets confiscated from Jews during the Inquisition. Other explorers would follow as the Spaniards began an all-out effort to exploit the gold and silver deposits of Latin America. Whole Indian cultures would be destroyed as Spanish galleons returned laden with bullion.

Colonization of North America

The colonial phase of North American exploration can be said to have ended with the Declaration of Independence in 1776, or the Treaty of Paris of 1783—when Great Britain conceded defeat in the American Revolution—or the drafting of the first constitution of the United States of America in 1787. Yet there was still colonial activity. France, although it had ceded its North American holdings to Great Britain and Spain in an earlier Treaty of Paris at the end of the French and Indian War in 1763, for a brief period, from 1800 to 1803, controlled land in North America with the retrocession from Spain of the region stretching from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains, known as the Louisiana ...