American Colonies: The Settling of North America

When the European colonizers arrived, they brought together the ecological systems of the Old and New Worlds and “wrought an environmental revolution” (25). This union disproportionately favored the Europeans, as it provided valuable new imports for Europe while also introducing weeds, pests, and deadly microbes to the Americas.

Before their expeditions to the New World, 15th-century Christians felt increasingly restricted by the wealth, power, and technology of their rivals, the Muslims. They attributed their inferiority to Muslim control of trade routes to the East. There was thus a drive to discover new trade routes, particularly by Spain and Portugal, who had recently retaken the Iberian Peninsula from the Muslims in the reconquista (26).

At the end of the 15th century, new ship technologies were developed (like the caravel) that enabled 14th-century trade to shift into the Atlantic (28). Iberian success on the northwest coast of Africa and the Atlantic islands encouraged “a more intensive mode of colonization: settlement” (29). The local people of the Canary Islands, the Guanche, were essentially eradicated by a combination of disease (brought unwittingly by the Europeans) and enslavement (30). The subjugation of the Canary Islands provide a colonial model for “the discovery, invasion, and remaking of the Americas” (31).