Research paper on Europeans in America Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

On Europeans in America - Research Paper Example In around 1000 A.D., Leif Eriksson is said to have discovered North America (Ingstad, 2000, p.1). The early European explorers were trying to identify sea routes, which would lead them to Asia. The first officially known explorer of these routes was Christopher Columbus who undertook his sailing by order of the monarch of Spain in 1492. He made three expeditions before his death in 1506 and was able to identify the Caribbean Islands in the Bahamas. After his death, the Spanish continued the further explorations of new lands. In 1499, Italian navigators Amerigo Vespucci and Alonso de Ojeda sailed to the northern coast of South America and referred to the newly found land as a new continent. The European mapmakers named the new continent America in honor of Amerigo and Alonso de Ojeda. In 1513, a Spanish explorer Vans co Nunez de Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Panama and became the first European explorer to see the Pacific Ocean. In the same year, Juan Ponce de Leon explored the Bahama s and Florida in search of the Fountain of Youth (Space and Warren, 2011 p.4). In 1497, John Cabot, a navigator from England, traveled to the new world. French explorers Giovanni da Verrazano and Jacques Cartier explored the Atlantic coast of the present US in 1524 and 1534. As European explorers continued to look for the shortest sea routes to Asia, they also thought of colonizing the newly found land. As a result, Spain by hands of Hernan Cortes invaded Mexico in 1519 and Francisco Pizarro invaded Peru in 1532. The Early Settlement in America-New Spain Of all the European nations, Spain was the pioneering one to the colonization of America. Cortes invaded Mexico and defeated the Aztec Empire in the period 1519-1521. By 1533, Pizarro had conquered the Incas of Peru. The Spanish in their search for rumored piles of gold and silver in America sent expeditions to Kansas and Colorado under Francisco Vasquez de Coronado, Hernando de Soto and Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca. These early explo rers were searching for cities made of gold and silver, but they did not find them. Instead, in 1545 they discovered silver at Potosi, in what is presently Bolivia, as well as in Mexico in the same year. The new American gold and silver mines remained a powerful base for Spain’s wealth and power for a century. After the Spanish conquest in the new world, the Spanish Jesuits attempted to convert the Native Americans to Christianity. Mission centers were established in the new empire, in Florida, in New Mexico and in Virginia. After defeating the Native Americans, the Spanish established a system of forced labor known as ecomienda which was later abandoned after the Spanish religious and government authorities witnessed the brutality of the system. The Spaniards, therefore, started establishing large estates of land known as haciendas. In the beginning of the 17 century, the Dutch, Swedish, French and English colonists started arriving in the New World. By then, the Spanish col onies in New Granada (Colombia), Caribbean, New Spain (Mexico) were a century old. The colonies were a major source of power for Spain and became the main source of jealously from other European nations. French Settlement in New World By the year 1530, the French explorers had navigated the coast of America from newly found lands to Carolinas; a French explorer Samuel de Champlain had build a foundation of what came to be known as French Canada (New France) in