The history of the discovery of America by Europeans. European colonization of North America
The first inhabitants of South America were the American Indians. There is evidence that they were from Asia. Around 9000 BC, they crossed the Bering Strait and then descended south, passing through the entire territory of North America. It was these people who created one of the most ancient and unusual civilizations in South America, including the mysterious states of the Aztecs and Incas. The ancient civilization of the South American Indians was mercilessly destroyed by Europeans who began colonizing the continent in the 1500s.
Capture and plunder
By the late 1500s, most of the South American continent had been conquered by Europeans. They were attracted here by enormous natural resources - gold and precious stones. During colonization, Europeans destroyed and plundered ancient cities and brought with them diseases from Europe that wiped out almost the entire indigenous population - the Indians.
Modern population
There are twelve independent states in South America. The most big country, Brazil, covers almost half the continent, including the vast Amazon River basin. Most residents of South America speak Spanish, that is, the language of the conquerors who sailed here from Europe on their sailing ships in the 16th century. True, in Brazil, on whose territory the Portuguese invaders once landed, the official language is Portuguese. In another country, Guyana, they speak English. There are still indigenous American Indians in the highlands of Bolivia and Peru. The majority of Argentina's residents are white, and neighboring Brazil is home to large numbers of descendants of African black slaves.
Culture and sports
South America has become the birthplace of many unusual people and a hospitable home that has brought together many different cultures under its roof. Bright colorful houses in La Boca - a bohemian quarter of the Argentine capital, Buenos Aires. The area, which attracts artists and musicians, is inhabited primarily by Italians, descendants of settlers from Genoa who arrived here in the 1800s.
The most beloved sport on the continent is football, and it is not surprising that it was the South American teams - Brazil and Argentina - who became world champions more often than others. Pele, the most outstanding football player in the history of this game, played for Brazil.
In addition to football, Brazil is famous for its famous carnivals, which are held in Rio de Janeiro. During Carnival, which takes place in February or March, millions of people march through the streets of Rio to the rhythm of samba, and millions more watch the colorful action. The Brazilian Carnival is the most popular holiday held on our planet.
From school we are told that America settled by residents of Asia, who moved there in groups across the Bering Isthmus (in the place where the strait is now). They settled throughout the New World after a huge glacier began to melt 14-15 thousand years ago. Did the indigenous population of America really come to the continent (or rather two continents) in this way?!
However, recent discoveries by archaeologists and geneticists have shaken this harmonious theory. It turns out that America was populated more than once, this was done by some strange peoples, almost related to the Australians, and besides, it is not clear on what transport the first “Indians” got to the extreme south of the New World.
Population of America. First version
Until the end of the 20th century, American anthropology was dominated by the “first Clovis” hypothesis, according to which this culture of ancient mammoth hunters, which appeared 12.5-13.5 thousand years ago, was the oldest in the New World.
According to this hypothesis, people who came to Alaska could survive on ice-free land, because there was quite a bit of snow here, but then the path to the south was blocked by glaciers until the period 14-16 thousand years ago, because of which settlement in the Americas only began after the end of the last glaciation.
The hypothesis was harmonious and logical, but in the second half of the 20th century some discoveries that were incompatible with it were made. In the 1980s, Tom Dillehay, during excavations in Monte Verde (southern Chile), found that people had been there at least 14.5 thousand years ago. This caused a strong reaction from the scientific community: it turned out that the discovered culture was 1.5 thousand years older than Clovis in North America.
In order not to rewrite students and not change their view of the characteristics of the American population, most American anthropologists simply denied the discovery scientific credibility. Already during the excavations, Deley faced a powerful attack on his professional reputation, it came to the closure of funding for excavations and attempts to declare Monte Verde a phenomenon not related to archaeology.
Only in 1997 did he manage to confirm a dating of 14 thousand years, which caused a deep crisis in understanding the ways of settling America. At that time, there were no places of such ancient settlement in North America, which raised the question of where exactly people could get to Chile.
Recently, the Chileans invited Deley to continue the excavations. Under the influence of the sad experience of twenty years of excuses, he at first refused. “I was fed up,” the scientist explained his position. However, he ultimately agreed and discovered tools at the MVI site, undoubtedly made by man, whose antiquity was 14.5-19 thousand years.
History repeated itself: archaeologist Michael Waters immediately questioned the discoveries. In his opinion, the finds may be simple stones, vaguely similar to tools, which means that the traditional chronology of the settlement of America is still out of danger.
Delay's "guns" found
Seaside nomads
To understand how justified the criticism of the new work is, we turned to anthropologist Stanislav Drobyshevsky (MSU). According to him, the tools found are indeed very primitive (processed on one side), but made from materials not found in Monte Verde. Quartz for a significant part of them had to be brought from afar, that is, such objects cannot have a natural origin.
The scientist noted that systematic criticism of discoveries of this kind is quite understandable: “When you teach in school and university that America was settled in a certain way, it is not so easy to abandon this point of view.”
Mammoths in Beringia
The conservatism of American researchers is also understandable: in North America, recognized finds date back to a period thousands of years later than the period indicated by Deley. And what about the theory that before the glacier melted, the ancestors of the Indians blocked by it could not settle south?
However, Drobyshevsky notes, there is nothing supernatural in the more ancient dates of the Chilean sites. The islands along what is now Canada's Pacific coast were not covered by a glacier, and remains of Ice Age bears have been found there. This means that people could easily spread along the coast, crossing by boat and not going deep into the then inhospitable North America.
Australian footprint
However, the strangeness of the settlement of America does not end with the fact that the first reliable discoveries of the ancestors of the Indians were made in Chile. Not long ago it turned out that the genes of the Aleuts and groups of Brazilian Indians have features characteristic of the genes of the Papuans and Australian aborigines.
As the Russian anthropologist emphasizes, the data of geneticists fits well with the results of the analysis of skulls previously found in South America and having features close to Australian ones.
In his opinion, most likely, the Australian trace in South America is associated with a common ancestral group, part of which moved to Australia tens of thousands of years ago, while others migrated along the coast of Asia north, up to Beringia, and from there reached the South American continent .
The appearance of Luzia is the name of a woman who lived 11 thousand years ago, whose remains were discovered in a Brazilian cave. 
As if this were not enough, genetic studies in 2013 showed that the Brazilian Botacudó Indians are close in mitochondrial DNA to the Polynesians and some of the inhabitants of Madagascar. Unlike the Australoids, the Polynesians could easily have reached South America by sea. At the same time, the traces of their genes in eastern Brazil, and not on the Pacific coast, are not so easy to explain.
It turns out that for some reason a small group of Polynesian sailors did not return after landing, but overcame the Andean highlands, which were unusual for them, to settle in Brazil. One can only guess about the motives for such a long and difficult overland journey for typical seafarers.
So, a small part of the American aborigines has traces of genes that are very distant from the genome of the rest of the Indians, which contradicts the idea of a single group of ancestors from Beringia.
30 thousand years before us
However, there are also more radical deviations from the idea of settling America in one wave and only after the melting of the glacier. In the 1970s, Brazilian archaeologist Nieda Guidon discovered the cave site of Pedra Furada (Brazil), where, in addition to primitive tools, there were many fire pits, the age of which radiocarbon analysis showed from 30 to 48 thousand years.
It is easy to understand that such figures caused great resentment among North American anthropologists. The same Deley criticized radiocarbon dating, noting that traces could remain after a fire of natural origin.
Guidon reacted sharply to such opinions of her colleagues from the United States in Latin American language: “A fire of natural origin cannot arise deep in a cave. American archaeologists need to write less and dig more.”
Drobyshevsky emphasizes that although no one has yet been able to challenge the dating of the Brazilians, the doubts of the Americans are quite understandable. If people were in Brazil 40 thousand years ago, where did they go later and where are the traces of their presence in other parts of the New World?
Toba volcano eruption
The history of mankind knows cases when the first colonizers of new lands almost completely died out, leaving no significant traces. This happened with Homo sapiens, who settled in Asia. Their first traces there date back to a period up to 125 thousand years ago, but geneticists say that all of humanity descended from a population that came out of Africa much later - only 60 thousand years ago.
There is a hypothesis that the reason for this could be the extinction of the then Asian part as a result of the eruption of the Toba volcano 70 thousand years ago. The energy of this event is considered to exceed the total power of all combined nuclear weapons ever created by humanity.
However, even the event is more powerful nuclear war it is difficult to explain the disappearance of significant human populations. Some researchers note that neither Neanderthals, nor Denisovans, nor even Homo floresiensis, who lived relatively close to Toba, became extinct from the explosion.
And judging by individual finds in South India, local Homo sapiens did not become extinct at that time either, traces of which for some reason are not observed in the genes of modern people. Thus, the question of where the people who settled in South America 40 thousand years ago could have gone remains open and to some extent casts doubt on the most ancient finds such as Pedra Furada.
Genetics vs genetics
Not only archaeological data often come into conflict, but also such seemingly reliable evidence as genetic markers. This summer, Maanasa Raghavan's team at the Natural History Museum in Copenhagen announced that genetic data refute the idea that more than one wave of ancient settlers contributed to the settlement of the Americas.
According to them, genes close to Australians and Papuans appeared in the New World later than 9 thousand years ago, when America was already populated by people from Asia.
At the same time, the work of another group of geneticists led by Pontus Skoglund came out, which, based on the same material, made the opposite statement: a certain ghost population appeared in the New World either 15 thousand years ago, or even earlier, and, perhaps, settled there before the Asian wave of migration, from which the ancestors of the vast majority of modern Indians originated.
In their opinion, the relatives of the Australian Aborigines crossed the Bering Strait only to be forced out by the subsequent wave of “Indian” migration, whose representatives came to dominate the Americas, pushing the few descendants of the first wave into the Amazon jungle and the Aleutian Islands.
Ragnavan's reconstruction of the peopling of America
If even geneticists cannot agree among themselves about whether the “Indian” or “Australian” components became the first aborigines of America, it is even more difficult for everyone else to understand this issue. And yet something can be said about this: skulls similar in shape to Papuan ones have been found on the territory of modern Brazil for more than 10 thousand years.
The scientific picture of the settlement of the Americas is very complex, and at the present stage is changing significantly. It is clear that groups of different origins took part in the settlement of the New World - at least two, not counting the small Polynesian component that appeared later than the others.
It is also obvious that at least some of the settlers were able to colonize the continent despite the glacier - bypassing it in boats or on ice. At the same time, the pioneers subsequently moved along the coast, quite quickly reaching the south of modern Chile. Apparently, the first Americans were very mobile, expansive, and skilled at using water transport.
There are many legends and more or less reliable stories about brave sailors who visited North America long before Columbus. Among them are Chinese monks who landed in California around 458, Portuguese, Spanish and Irish travelers and missionaries who allegedly reached America in the 6th, 7th and 9th centuries.
It is also believed that in the 10th century. Basque fishermen fished on the Newfoundland shallows. The most reliable information, obviously, is about Norwegian sailors who visited North America in the 10th-14th centuries, getting here from Iceland. It is believed that the Norman colonies were not only in Greenland, but also on the Labrador Peninsula, Newfoundland, New England and even in the Great Lakes region. However, the settlements of the Normans already in the 14th century. fell into decay, without leaving behind any noticeable traces regarding the connections between the cultures of the northern part of the American and European continents. In this sense, the discovery of North America began anew in the 15th century. This time, the British reached North America before other Europeans.
English expeditions in North America
English discoveries in America begin with the voyages of John Cabot (Giovanni Gabotto, or Cabbotto) and his son Sebastian, Italians in English service. Cabot, having received two caravels from the English king, had to find a sea route to China. In 1497, he apparently reached the shores of Labrador (where he met Eskimos), and also, possibly, Newfoundland, where he saw Indians painted with red ocher.
This was the first in the 15th century. meeting of Europeans with the “redskins” of Northern America. In 1498, the expedition of John and Sebastian Cabot again reached the shores of North America.
The immediate practical result of these voyages was the discovery of rich fish deposits off the coast of Newfoundland. Entire flotillas of English fishing boats flocked here, and their number increased every year.
Spanish colonization of North America
If English sailors reached North America by sea, the Spaniards moved here by land from the southern regions, as well as from their island possessions in America - Cuba, Puerto Rico, San Domingo, etc.
The Spanish conquerors captured the Indians, plundered and burned their villages. The Indians responded to this with stubborn resistance. Many invaders found death in a land they never conquered. Ponce de Leon, who discovered Florida (1513), was mortally wounded in 1521 by Indians while landing in Tampa Bay, where he wanted to establish a colony. In 1528, the hunter for Indian gold, Narvaez, also died. Cabeza de Vaca, the treasurer of the Narvaez expedition, wandered for nine years in the southern part of the North American continent among Indian tribes. At first he fell into slavery, and then, having freed himself, he became a merchant and healer. Finally, in 1536, he reached the shores of the Gulf of California, already conquered by the Spaniards. De Vaca told many wonderful things, exaggerating the wealth and size of the Indian settlements, especially the “cities” of the Pueblo Indians, which he visited. These stories aroused the interest of the Spanish nobility in the areas lying north of Mexico, and gave impetus to the search for fabulous cities in the southwest of North America. In 1540, the Coronado expedition set off from Mexico in a northwest direction, consisting of a detachment of 250 horsemen and infantry, several hundred Indian allies and thousands of Indians and black slaves enslaved. The expedition passed through the arid deserts between the Rio Grande and Colorado rivers, capturing the “cities” of the Pueblo Indians with the usual cruelty of the Spanish colonialists; but neither the expected gold nor precious stones were found in them. For further searches, Coronado sent detachments in different directions, and after wintering in the Rio Grande Valley, he moved north, where he met the Prairie Pawnee Indians (in the present state of Kansas) and became acquainted with their semi-nomadic hunting culture. Not finding the treasure, the disappointed Coronado turned back and... Having collected the remnants of his troops along the way, he returned to Mexico in 1542. After this expedition, the Spaniards became aware of a significant part of the mainland within the current states of Arizona, New Mexico, Kansas and the southern parts of the states of Utah and Colorado, the Grand Canyon of Colorado was discovered, and information was received about the Pueblo Indians and prairie tribes.
At the same time (1539-1542), an expedition by de Soto, a participant in Pizarro’s campaign, was sent to the southeast of North America. As soon as the stories of Cabeza de Vaca reached him, de Soto sold his property and equipped an expedition of a thousand people. In 1539 he sailed from Cuba and landed on the west coast of Florida. De Soto and his army wandered for four years in search of gold across the vast territory of the current US states: Florida, Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, Tennessee, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana and the southern part of Missouri, sowing death and destruction in the country of peaceful farmers . As contemporaries wrote about him, this ruler was fond of killing Reapers as a sport.
In northern Florida, De Soto had to deal with Indians who, since the time of Narva, had vowed to fight the aliens tooth and nail. It was especially difficult for the conquerors when they reached the lands of the Chickasawa Indians. In response to the outrages and violence of the Spaniards, the Indians once set fire to De Soto's camp, destroying almost all food supplies and military equipment. Only in 1542, when de Soto himself died of a fever, the pitiful remnants (about three hundred people) of his once richly equipped army on homemade ships barely reached the shores of Mexico. This ended the Spanish expeditions of the 16th century. deep into North America.
By the beginning of the 17th century. Spanish settlements occupied a fairly large area both on the Atlantic coast of North America (Florida, Georgia, North Carolina) and on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico. In the west they owned California and areas roughly corresponding to the current states of Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico. But in the same 17th century. France and England began to push Spain. The French colonies in the Mississippi Delta divided the possessions of the Spanish crown in Mexico and Florida. To the north of Florida, further penetration of the Spaniards was blocked by the British.
Thus, the influence of Spanish colonization was limited to the southwest. Soon after Coronado's expedition, missionaries, soldiers, and settlers appeared in the Rio Grande Valley. They forced the Indians to build forts and missions here. Among the first to be built were San Gabriel (1599) and Santa Fe (1609), where the Spanish population was concentrated.
The steady weakening of Spain, especially since the end of the 16th century, the decline of its military, and above all, naval power, undermined its position. The most serious contenders for dominance in the American colonies were England, Holland and France.
The founder of the first Dutch settlement in America, Henry Hudson, built fur storage huts on Manhattan Island in 1613. The city of New Amsterdam (later New York) soon arose on this site, becoming the center of the Dutch colony. The Dutch colonies, half of whose population were British, soon came into the possession of England.
French colonization began with fishing entrepreneurs. As early as 1504, Breton and Norman fishermen began to visit the Newfoundland shoals; the first maps of the American coast appeared; in 1508, an Indian was brought to France “for show”. Since 1524, the French king Francis I sent sailors to the New World with the aim of further discoveries. Particularly noteworthy are the voyages of Jacques Cartier, a sailor from Saint-Malo (Brittany), who for eight years (1534-1542) explored the surroundings of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, ascended the river of the same name to the island, which he named Mont Royal (Royal Mountain; now , Montreal), and called the land along the banks of the river New France. We owe him the earliest news about the Iroquois tribes of the river. St. Lawrence; The sketch and description he made of a fortified Iroquois village (Oshelaga, or Hohelaga) and the dictionary of Indian words he compiled are very interesting.
In 1541, Cartier founded the first agricultural colony in the Quebec region, but due to a lack of food supplies, the colonists had to be taken back to France. This interrupted the attempts of French colonization of North America in the 16th century. They resumed later - a century later.
Founding of French colonies in North America
The main driving force of French colonization for a long time was the pursuit of valuable furs. The seizure of land did not play a significant role for the French. French peasants, although burdened with feudal obligations, remained, unlike the landless English yeomen, landowners, and there was no massive flow of immigrants from France.
The French began to gain a foothold in Canada only at the beginning of the 17th century, when Samuel Champlain founded a small colony on the Acadia Peninsula (southwest of Newfoundland), and then the city of Quebec (1608).
By 1615, the French had already reached Lakes Huron and Lake Ontario. Open territories were given to trading companies by the French crown; The Hudson's Bay Company took the lion's share. Having received a charter in 1670, this company monopolized the purchase of furs and fish from the Indians. Company posts were set up along the banks of rivers and lakes along the route of Indian nomads. They turned the local tribes into "tributes" of the company, entangling them in networks of debts and obligations. The Indians were drunk and corrupted; they were fleeced, exchanging precious furs for trinkets. The Jesuits, who appeared in Canada in 1611, diligently converted the Indians to Catholicism, preaching humility before the colonialists. But with even greater zeal, keeping up with the agents of the trading company, the Jesuits bought furs from the Indians. This activity of the order was no secret to anyone. Thus, the Governor of Canada Frontenac informed the French government (70s of the 17th century) that the Jesuits would not civilize the Indians, because they want to maintain their guardianship over them, that they care not so much about the salvation of souls, but about the extraction of all good, missionary their activities are an empty comedy.
The beginning of English colonization and the first permanent English colonies of the 17th century.
The French colonialists of Canada very soon had competitors in the form of the British. The English government considered Canada a natural continuation of the British crown's possessions in America, based on the fact that the Canadian coast was discovered by the English Cabot expedition long before the first voyage of Jacques Cartier. Attempts to found a colony in North America by the British took place back in the 16th century, but they were all unsuccessful: the British did not find gold in the North, and those seeking easy money neglected agriculture. Only at the beginning of the 17th century. The first real agricultural English colonies arose here.
The beginning of the mass settlement of the English colonies in the 17th century. opened a new stage in the colonization of North America.
The development of capitalism in England was associated with the success of foreign trade and the creation of monopoly colonial trading companies. To colonize North America by subscribing to shares, two trading companies with large funds were formed: London (South, or Varginskaya) and Plymouth (Northern); royal charters transferred lands between 34 and 41° N. to their disposal. w. and unlimitedly into the interior of the country, as if these lands belonged not to the Indians, but to the government of England. The first charter for the founding of a colony in America was received by Sir Hamfred D>Kilbert. He led a preliminary expedition to Newfoundland and was shipwrecked on the way back. Gilbert's rights passed to his relative, Sir Walter Raleigh, a favorite of Queen Elizabeth. In 1584, Reilly decided to establish a colony in the area south of the Chesapeake Bay and named it Virginia in honor of the “virgin queen” (Latin virgo - girl). The following year, a group of colonists set off for Virginia and settled on Roanoke Island (in what is now the state of North Carolina). A year later, the colonists returned to England, since the chosen place turned out to be unhealthy. Among the colonists was the famous artist John White. He made many sketches from the life of local Indians - Algoikins 1. The fate of the second group of colonists who arrived in Virginia in 1587 is unknown.
At the beginning of the 17th century. Walter Reilly's project to create a colony in Virginia was carried out by the commercial Virginia Company, which expected large profits from this enterprise. The company, at its own expense, transported settlers to Virginia, who were required to work off their debt within four to five years.
The location for the colony (Jamestown), founded in 1607, was poorly chosen - swampy, with many mosquitoes, unhealthy. In addition, the colonists very soon alienated the Indians. Disease and skirmishes with Indians killed two-thirds of the colonists within a few months. Life in the colony was built on a military scale. Twice a day the colonists were collected by drumming and formation, sent to the fields to work, and every evening they also returned to Jamestown for dinner and for prayer. Since 1613, colonist John Rolfe (who married the daughter of the leader of the Powhatan tribe, “Princess” Pocahontas) began cultivating tobacco. From that time on, tobacco became a source of income for the colonists and even more so for the Virginia Company for a long time. To encourage immigration, the company gave land grants to the colonists. The poor, who worked off the cost of the journey from England to America, also received an allotment, for which they made payments to the owner of the land in a firmly fixed amount. Later, when Virginia became a royal colony (1624), and when its administration passed from the company to the hands of a governor appointed by the king, with the presence of qualifying representative institutions, this duty turned into a kind of land tax. Immigration of the poor soon increased even more. If in 1640 there were 8 thousand inhabitants in Virginia, then in 1700 there were 70 thousand of them. 1 In another English colony - Maryland, founded in 1634, Lord Baltimore immediately after the founding of the colony introduced the allocation of land to the colonists - planters, large entrepreneurs.
Both colonies specialized in growing tobacco and therefore depended on imported English goods. The main labor force on the large plantations of Virginia and Maryland were poor people exported from England. Throughout the 17th century. “indentured servants,” as these poor people were called, forced to work off the cost of their journey to America, made up the majority of immigrants to Virginia and Maryland.
Very soon, the labor of indentured servants was replaced by the slave labor of blacks, who began to be imported into the southern colonies in the first half of the 17th century. (the first large shipment of slaves was brought to Virginia in 1619),
Since the 17th century free settlers appeared among the colonists. The English Puritans - the “Pilgrim Fathers” - headed to the northern Plymouth Colony, some of whom were sectarians who fled religious persecution in their homeland. This party included settlers who belonged to the Brownist sect 2 . Leaving Plymouth in September 1620, the ship " May flower"("May flower") with the pilgrims arrived at Cape Cod in November. In the first winter, half of the colonists died: the settlers - mostly city dwellers - did not know how to hunt, cultivate the land, or fish. With the help of the Indians, who taught the settlers to grow corn, the rest in the end not only did not die of hunger, but even paid off the debts for their passage on the ship. The colony, founded by sectarians from Plymouth, was called New Plymouth.
In 1628, the Puritans, who suffered oppression during the reign of the Stuarts, founded the colony of Massachusetts in America. The Puritan Church enjoyed great power in the colony. A colonist received the right to vote only if he belonged to the Puritan church and had good reviews preacher Under this arrangement, only one-fifth of the adult male population of Massachusetts had the right to vote.
During the years of the English Revolution, emigrant aristocrats (“cavaliers”) began to arrive in the American colonies, who did not want to put up with the new, revolutionary regime in their homeland. These colonists settled primarily in the southern colony (Virginia).
In 1663, eight courtiers of Charles II received a gift of land south of Virginia, where the colony of Carolina (later divided into South and North) was founded. The tobacco culture, which enriched the large landowners of Virginia, spread to the neighboring colonies. However, in the Shenandoah Valley, in western Maryland, and also south of Virginia - in the swampy areas of South Carolina - there were no conditions for growing tobacco; there, as in Georgia, rice was grown. The owners of Carolina made plans to make a fortune by growing sugar cane, rice, hemp, flax, and producing indigo and silk, i.e., goods that were scarce in England and imported from other countries. In 1696, the Madagascar variety of rice was introduced into Carolina. From then on, its cultivation became the main occupation of the colony for a hundred years. Rice was grown in riverine swamps and on the seashore. Hard work under the scorching sun in malarial swamps was placed on the shoulders of black slaves, who in 1700 made up half of the population of the colony. In the southern part of the colony (now the state of South Carolina), slavery took root to an even greater extent than in Virginia. Large slave-owning planters, who owned almost all the land, had rich houses in Charleston, the administrative and cultural center of the colony. In 1719, the heirs of the first owners of the colony sold their rights to the English crown.
North Carolina had a different character, populated mainly by Quakers and refugees from Virginia - small farmers hiding from debts and unbearable taxes. There were very few large plantations and black slaves there. North Carolina became a crown colony in 1726.
In all these colonies, the population was mainly replenished by immigrants from England, Scotland and Ireland.
Much more varied was the population of the colony of New York (formerly the Dutch colony of New Netherland) with the city of New Amsterdam (now New York). After the capture of this colony by the British, it was given to the Duke of York, brother of the English king Charles II. At this time, the colony had no more than 10 thousand inhabitants, who, however, spoke 18 different languages. Although the Dutch did not constitute a majority, Dutch influence in the American colonies was great, and wealthy Dutch families enjoyed great political influence in New York. Traces of this influence remain to this day: Dutch words entered the American language; The Dutch architectural style left its mark on the appearance of American cities and towns.
English colonization of North America was carried out on a large scale. America seemed to the poor in Europe as a promised land, where they could find salvation from the oppression of large landowners, from religious persecution, and from debt.
Entrepreneurs recruited immigrants to America; Not limiting themselves to this, they organized real raids, their agents got people drunk in taverns and sent drunken recruits to ships.
English colonies arose one after another 1. Their population grew very quickly. The agrarian revolution in England, accompanied by massive dispossession of land among the peasantry, drove out of the country many robbed poor people who were looking for an opportunity to obtain land in the colonies. In 1625, there were only 1980 colonists in North America, in 1641 there were 50 thousand immigrants from England alone 2. According to other sources, in 1641 there were only 25 thousand colonists in the English colonies 3 . After 50 years, the population grew to 200 thousand 4. In 1760 it reached 1,695 thousand (of which 310 thousand were black slaves), 5 and five years later the number of colonists almost doubled.
The colonists waged a war of extermination against the owners of the country - the Indians, taking away their land. In just a few years (1706-1722), the tribes of Virginia were almost completely exterminated, despite the “kinship” ties that connected the most powerful of the leaders of the Virginia Indians with the British.
In the north, in New England, the Puritans resorted to other means: they acquired land from the Indians through “trades.” Subsequently, this gave rise to official historiographers to assert that the ancestors of the Anglo-Americans did not encroach on the freedom of the Indians and did not capture them, but bought their lands by concluding treaties with the Indians. For a handful of gunpowder, a handful of beads, etc., one could “buy” a huge plot of land, and the Indians, who did not know private property, usually remained in the dark about the essence of the deal concluded with them. In the pharisaical consciousness of their legal rightness, the settlers expelled the Indians from their lands; if they did not agree to leave the land chosen by the colonists, they were exterminated. The religious fanatics of Massachusetts were especially ferocious.
The Church preached that the beating of the Indians was pleasing to God. In manuscripts of the 17th century. It is reported that a certain pastor, having heard about the destruction of a large Indian village, praised God from the church pulpit for the fact that six hundred pagan “souls” were sent to hell that day.
A shameful page of colonial policy in North America was the scalp bounty. As historical and ethnographic studies have shown (Georg Friderici), the common opinion that the custom of scalping has long been very widespread among the Indians of North America is completely wrong. This custom was previously known only to a few tribes of the eastern regions, but even among them it was used relatively rarely. Only with the arrival of the colonialists did the barbaric custom of scalping really begin to spread wider and wider. The reason for this was, first of all, the intensification of internecine wars incited by the colonial authorities; wars, with the introduction of firearms, became much more bloody, and the spread of iron knives made the operation of cutting the scalp easier (wooden and bone knives were previously used). The colonial authorities directly and directly encouraged the spread of the custom of scalping, assigning bonuses for the scalps of enemies - both Indians and whites, their rivals in colonization.
The first prize for scalps was awarded in 1641 in the Dutch colony of New Netherland: 20 m of wampum each 1 for each Indian scalp (a meter of wampum was equal to 5 Dutch guilders). From then on, for more than 170 years (1641-1814), the administration of individual colonies repeatedly awarded such bonuses (expressed in English pounds, Spanish and American dollars). Even Quaker Pennsylvania, famous for its relatively peaceful policy towards the Indians, allocated 60 thousand pounds in 1756. Art. especially for prizes for Indian scalps. The last prize was offered in 1814 in the Indiana Territory.
Some exception to the cruel policy of exterminating the Indians was, as mentioned above, Pennsylvania - a colony founded in 1682 by a wealthy Quaker, the son of an English admiral, William Penn for his like-minded people persecuted in England. Penn sought to maintain friendly relations with the Indians who continued to live in the colony. However, when the wars between the English and French colonies began (1744-1748 and 1755-1763), the Indians who had entered into an alliance with the French were involved in the war and were driven out of Pennsylvania.
In American historiography, the colonization of America is most often presented as if Europeans colonized “free lands,” that is, territories not actually inhabited by Indians 1 . In fact, North America, and its eastern part in particular, was, due to the conditions of Indian economic activity, quite densely populated (in the 16th century, about 1 million Indians lived in the territory of what is now the United States). The Indians, who were engaged in hunting and shifting agriculture, required large areas of land. By driving the Indians off the land, “buying” plots of land from them, the Europeans doomed them to death. Naturally, the Indians resisted as best they could. The struggle for land was accompanied by a number of Indian uprisings, of which the so-called “War of King Philip” (Indian name Metacom), a talented leader of one of the coastal Algonquin tribes, is especially famous. In 1675-1676 Metacom raised up many of the New England tribes, and only the betrayal of a group of Indians saved the colonists. By the first quarter of the 18th century. the coastal tribes of New England and Virginia were almost completely exterminated.
The relations of the colonists with the local Indians were not always hostile. Ordinary people - poor farmers very often maintained good neighborly relations with them, adopted the experience of the Indians in agriculture, and learned from them to adapt to local conditions. So, in the spring of 1609, the colonists of Jamestown learned from captured Indians how to grow corn. The Indians set fire to the forest and planted corn mixed with beans between the charred trunks, fertilizing the soil with ash. They carefully looked after the crops, hilled up the sprouted corn and destroyed weeds. Indian corn saved the colonists from starvation.
The residents of New Plymouth were no less indebted to the Indians. After spending the first difficult winter, during which half of the settlers died, in the spring of 1621 they cleared the fields abandoned by the Indians and sowed 5 acres with English wheat and peas and 20 acres - under the leadership of one Indian - with corn. Wheat did not grow, but corn rose, and from then on throughout the colonial period it was the main agricultural crop in New England. Later, the colonists achieved good wheat harvests, but it did not replace corn.
Like the Indians, the English colonists stewed meat with grains and vegetables, fried corn kernels, and ground grain into flour using wooden Indian chairs. Traces of many borrowings from Indian cuisine are reflected in the language and food of the Americans. Thus, in the American language there are a number of names for dishes made from corn: poun (corn cake), hominy (hominy), maga (porridge made from corn flour), hasty pudding (“improvised” flour custard pudding), hald corn (hulled corn), sakkotash (a dish of corn, beans and pork) 2.
In addition to corn, European colonists borrowed from the Indians the culture of potatoes, groundnuts, pumpkins, zucchini, tomatoes, some varieties of cotton and beans. Many of these plants were brought by Europeans from Central and South America in the 17th century. to Europe, and from there get to North America. This was the case, for example, with tobacco.
The Spaniards, the first Europeans to adopt the custom of smoking tobacco from the Indians, took over the monopoly of its sale. Virginia colonists, as soon as the food problem was resolved, began experimenting with local varieties of tobacco. But since they were not very good, they sowed all the suitable land in the colony that was free from crops of corn and other cereals with tobacco from the island of Trinidad.
In 1618, Virginia sent 20 thousand pounds worth of tobacco to England. Art.., in 1629 - by 500 thousand. Tobacco in Virginia in these years served as a means of exchange: taxes and debts were paid with tobacco, the first thirty grooms of the colony paid for brides brought from Europe with the same “currency”.
Three groups of English colonies
But by the nature of production and by the social system, the English colonies can be divided into three groups.
Plantation slavery developed in the southern colonies (Virginia, Maryland, North and South Carolina, Georgia). Large plantations arose here, owned by a landed aristocracy, more closely related by origin and economic interests to the aristocracy of England than to the bourgeoisie of the northern colonies. Most of all goods were exported to England from the southern colonies.
The use of slave labor of blacks and the labor of “bonded servants” became widespread here. As is known, the first Negro slaves were brought to Virginia in 1619; in 1683 there were already 3 thousand slaves and 12 thousand “bonded servants” 1. After the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714), the English government received a monopoly on the slave trade. From that time on, the number of Negro slaves in the southern colonies increasingly increased. Before the Revolutionary War, there were twice as many blacks as whites in South Carolina. IN early XVIII V. in all the English colonies of North America there were 60 thousand, and by the beginning of the War of Independence - about 500 thousand black slaves 2. Southerners specialized in the cultivation of rice, wheat, indigo and, especially in the early years of colonization, tobacco. Cotton was also known, but its production played almost no role before the invention of the cotton gin (1793).
Near the vast lands of the planter, tenants settled, renting land on the basis of sharecropping, labor, or for money. The plantation economy required vast lands, and the seizure of new lands proceeded at an accelerated pace.
In the northern colonies, which united in 1642, the year the Civil War began in England, into one colony - New England (New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut), Puritan colonists predominated.
Situated along rivers and near bays, the New England colonies remained isolated from each other for a long time. Settlement took place along rivers connecting the coast with internal parts mainland. More and more territories were captured. The colonists settled in small villages organized on a communal basis, initially with periodic redistribution of arable land, then only with common pasture.
In the northern colonies, small farmer landownership developed, and slavery did not spread. Shipbuilding, trade in fish and timber were of great importance. Maritime trade and industry developed, and the industrial bourgeoisie grew, interested in free trade, which was constrained by England. The slave trade became widespread.
But even here, in the northern colonies, the rural population made up the overwhelming majority, and city dwellers kept livestock and had vegetable gardens for a long time.
In the middle colonies (New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania) it developed on fertile lands farming, which produced grain crops or specialized in raising livestock. In New York and New Jersey, more than in others, large land ownership was common, and land owners leased out plots of it. In these colonies, settlements were mixed: small towns in the Hudson Valley and Albany and large land holdings in Pennsylvania and in parts of the colonies of New York and New Jersey.
Thus, several structures coexisted in the English colonies for a long time: capitalism in the manufacturing stage, closer to English than, for example, to Prussian or Russian of the same time; slavery as a way of manufacturing capitalism until the 19th century, and then (before the war between the North and the South) - in the form of plantation slavery in a capitalist society; feudal relations in the form of remnants; patriarchal way of life in the form of small-scale farming (in the mountainous western regions of the North and South), among which, although with less force than among the farmers of the eastern regions, capitalist stratification occurred.
All processes of the development of capitalism in North America took place in the peculiar conditions of the presence of significant masses of free farming.
In all three economic regions into which the English colonies were divided, two zones were created: the eastern, inhabited for a long time, and the western, bordering the Indian territories - the so-called “border” (frontier). The border continuously retreated to the west. In the 17th century it passed along the Allegheny Range in the first quarter of the 19th century. - already along the river Mississippi. The inhabitants of the “border” led a life full of dangers and a difficult struggle with nature, which required great courage and solidarity. These were “bonded servants” who fled from plantations, farmers oppressed by large landowners, urban people fleeing taxes and religious intolerance of sectarians. Unauthorized seizure of land (squatterism) was a special form of class struggle in the colonies.
Encyclopedic YouTube
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✪ Specifics of the colonization of North America. Video lesson on General History 7th grade
✪ “Terra incognita” or Russian colonization of America
✪ Conquista and conquistadors (narrated by Andrey Kofman)
✪ The development of America by Europeans. How Whites Took Over America (with Russian texts)
✪ Mexican-American War (narrated by historian Andrei Iserov)
Subtitles
The history of the discovery of America by Europeans
Pre-Columbian era
Currently, there are a number of theories and studies that suggest with a high probability that European travelers reached the shores of America long before the expeditions of Columbus. However, it is certain that these contacts did not lead to the creation of lasting settlements or the establishment of strong ties with the new continent, and thus did not have a significant impact on the historical and political processes both in the Old and New Worlds.
Columbus's voyages
Colonization of South and Central America in the 17th centuries
Chronology of the most important events:
- - Christopher Columbus lands on the island.
- - Amerigo Vespucci and Alonso de Ojeda reach the mouth of the Amazon.
- - Vespucci, after his second voyage, finally comes to the conclusion that the open continent is not part of India.
- - After a 100-day trek through the jungle, Vasco Nunez de Balboa crosses the Isthmus of Panama and reaches the Pacific coast for the first time.
- - Juan Ponce de Leon goes in search of the legendary fountain of eternal youth. Having failed to reach the search object, he nevertheless discovers gold deposits. Names the peninsula Florida and declares it a Spanish possession.
- - Fernando Cortez enters Tenochtitlan, captures Emperor Montezuma, thus beginning the conquest of the Aztec Empire. His triumph leads to 300 years of Spanish rule in Mexico and Central America.
- - Pascual de Andogoya discovers Peru.
- - Spain establishes a permanent military base and settlement in Jamaica.
- - Francisco Pizarro invades Peru, destroys thousands of Indians and conquers the Inca Empire, the most powerful state of the South American Indians. A huge number of Incas die from chickenpox brought by the Spaniards.
- - Spanish settlers found Buenos Aires, but five years later they were forced to leave the city under the pressure of the Indians.
Colonization of North America (XVII-XVIII centuries)
But at the same time, the balance of power in the Old World began to change: the kings spent the streams of silver and gold flowing from the colonies, and had little interest in the economy of the metropolis, which, under the weight of an ineffective, corrupt administrative apparatus, clerical dominance and lack of incentives for modernization, began to lag further and further behind from England's booming economy. Spain gradually lost its status as the main European superpower and mistress of the seas. The long-term war in the Netherlands, huge amounts of money spent fighting the Reformation throughout Europe, and the conflict with England accelerated the decline of Spain. The last straw was the death of the Invincible Armada in 1588. After the largest fleet of the time was destroyed by English admirals and, to a greater extent, by a violent storm, Spain withdrew into the shadows, never to recover from the blow.
Leadership in the “relay race” of colonization passed to England, France and Holland.
English colonies
The ideologist of the English colonization of North America was the famous chaplain Hakluyt. In 1587, Sir Walter Raleigh, by order of Queen Elizabeth I of England, made two attempts to establish a permanent settlement in North America. An exploration expedition reached the American coast in 1584 and named the open coast Virginia (English Virginia - “Virgin”) in honor of the “Virgin Queen” Elizabeth I, who never married. Both attempts ended in failure - the first colony, founded on Roanoke Island off the coast of Virginia, was on the verge of destruction due to Indian attacks and lack of supplies and was evacuated by Sir Francis Drake in April 1587. In July of the same year, a second expedition of colonists numbering 117 people landed on the island. It was planned that ships with equipment and food would arrive in the colony in the spring of 1588. However, for various reasons, the supply expedition was delayed for almost a year and a half. When she arrived at the site, all the buildings of the colonists were intact, but no traces of people, with the exception of the remains of one person, were found. The exact fate of the colonists has not been established to this day.
At the beginning of the 17th century, private capital entered the picture. In 1605, two joint-stock companies received licenses from King James I to establish colonies in Virginia. It should be borne in mind that at that time the term “Virginia” denoted the entire territory of the North American continent. The first of the companies is the London Virginia Company. Virginia Company of London) - received the rights to the south, the second - "Plymouth Company" (eng. Plymouth Company) - to the northern part of the continent. Despite the fact that both companies officially declared their main goal to be the spread of Christianity, the license they received gave them the right to “search for and mine gold, silver and copper by all means.”
On December 20, 1606, the colonists set sail aboard three ships and, after a difficult, almost five-month voyage, during which several dozen people died of hunger and disease, they reached Chesapeake Bay in May 1607. Chesapeake Bay). Over the next month they built a wooden fort, named after the king, Fort James ( English pronunciation named Yakov). The fort was later renamed Jamestown, the first permanent British settlement in America.
Official US historiography considers Jamestown the cradle of the country, the history of the settlement and its leader, Captain John Smith. John Smith of Jamestown) is covered in many serious studies and works of art. The latter, as a rule, idealize the history of the city and the pioneers who inhabited it (for example, the popular cartoon Pocahontas). In fact, the first years of the colony were extremely difficult, during the hungry winter of 1609-1610. Of the 500 colonists, no more than 60 remained alive, and, according to some accounts, the survivors were forced to resort to cannibalism to survive the famine.
American stamp issued for the tercentenary of the founding of Jamestown
In subsequent years, when the issue of physical survival was no longer so pressing, the two most important problems were tense relations with the indigenous population and economic feasibility existence of the colony. To the disappointment of the shareholders of the London Virginia Company, neither gold nor silver was found by the colonists, and the main product produced for export was ship timber. Despite the fact that this product was in certain demand in the metropolis, which had depleted its forests, the profit, as from other attempts at economic activity, was minimal.
The situation changed in 1612, when the farmer and landowner John Rolfe (eng. John Rolfe) managed to cross a local variety of tobacco grown by the Indians with varieties imported from Bermuda. The resulting hybrids were well adapted to the Virginia climate and at the same time met the tastes of English consumers. The colony acquired a source of reliable income and for many years tobacco became the basis of Virginia’s economy and exports, and the phrases “Virginia tobacco” and “Virginia mixture” are used as characteristics of tobacco products to this day. Five years later, tobacco exports amounted to 20,000 pounds, a year later it was doubled, and by 1629 it reached 500,000 pounds. John Rolfe provided another service to the colony: in 1614, he managed to negotiate peace with the local Indian chief. The peace treaty was sealed by marriage between Rolf and the chief's daughter, Pocahontas.
In 1619, two events occurred that had a significant impact on the entire subsequent history of the United States. This year, Governor George Yardley George Goddley) decided to transfer part of the power Council of Burghers(English) House of Burgesses), thereby establishing the first elected legislative assembly in the New World. The first meeting of the council took place on July 30, 1619. That same year, a small group of Africans of Angolan descent were acquired as colonists. Although they were not formally slaves, but had long-term contracts without the right to terminate, it is customary to begin the history of slavery in America from this event.
In 1622, almost a quarter of the colony's population was destroyed by rebel Indians. In 1624, the license of the London Company, whose affairs had fallen into disrepair, was revoked, and from that time on Virginia became a royal colony. The governor was appointed by the king, but the colony council retained significant powers.
Settlement of New England
In 1497, several expeditions to the island of Newfoundland associated with the names of the Cabots marked the beginning of English claims to the territory of modern Canada.
In 1763, under the Treaty of Paris, New France came into the possession of Great Britain and became the province of Quebec. Rupert's Land (the area around Hudson Bay) and Prince Edward Island were also British colonies.
Florida
In 1763, Spain ceded Florida to Great Britain in exchange for control of Havana, which the British occupied during the Seven Years' War. The British divided Florida into East and West and began to attract settlers. For this purpose, the settlers were offered land and financial support.
In 1767, the northern boundary of West Florida was substantially moved so that West Florida included parts of the present-day territories of Alabama and Mississippi.
During the American Revolutionary War, Great Britain retained control of East Florida, but Spain was able to capture West Florida through an alliance with France, which was at war with England. The 1783 Treaty of Versailles between Britain and Spain gave all of Florida to Spain.
Caribbean Islands
The first English colonies appeared on Bermuda (1612), St. Kitts (1623) and Barbados (1627) and were then used to colonize other islands. In 1655, Jamaica came under British control and was taken from the Spanish Empire.
Central America
In 1630, British agents founded the Providence Company. (Providence Company), whose president was the Earl of Warwick, and whose secretary was John Pym, occupied two small islands near the Mosquito Coast and established friendly relations with the local residents. From 1655 to 1850, England and then Great Britain claimed a protectorate over the Miskito Indians, but numerous attempts to establish colonies were unsuccessful, and the protectorate was contested by Spain, the Central American Republics and the United States. Objections from the United States were caused by fears that England would gain an advantage in connection with the proposed construction of a canal between the two oceans. In 1848, the capture of the city of Greytown (now called San Juan del Norte) by the Miskito Indians, with the support of the British, caused great excitement in the United States and almost led to war. However, with the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty of 1850, both powers pledged not to fortify, colonize, or dominate any part of the territory. Central America. In 1859, Great Britain transferred the protectorate to Honduras.
The first English colony on the banks of the Belize River arose in 1638. In the middle of the 17th century, other English settlements were created. Later, British settlers began harvesting logwood, from which a substance used in the manufacture of dyes for fabrics was extracted, which was of great importance for the wool-spinning industry in Europe (see the article Belize#History).
South America
In 1803, Britain captured the Dutch settlements in Guiana, and in 1814, under the Treaty of Vienna, it officially received the lands, united in 1831 under the name British Guiana.
In January 1765, British captain John Byron explored Saunders Island on the eastern tip of the Falkland Islands archipelago and declared its annexation to Great Britain. Captain Byron named the bay located on Saunders Port Egmont. Here in 1766 Captain MacBride founded an English settlement. In the same year, Spain acquired French possessions in the Falklands from Bougainville and, having consolidated its power there in 1767, appointed a governor. In 1770, the Spanish attacked Port Egmont and drove the British from the island. This brought the two countries to the brink of war, but a later peace treaty allowed the British to return to Port Egmont in 1771, without either Spain or Britain relinquishing their claims to the islands. In 1774, in anticipation of the looming American Revolutionary War, Britain unilaterally abandoned many of its overseas possessions, including Port Egmont. When the British left the Falklands in 1776, they erected a plaque here to confirm their rights to the area. From 1776 to 1811, a Spanish settlement remained on the islands, administered from Buenos Aires as part of the Viceroyalty of the Rio de la Plata. In 1811, the Spaniards left the islands, also leaving a sign here to prove their rights. After declaring independence in 1816, Argentina claimed the Falklands as its own. In January 1833, the British again landed in the Falklands and notified the Argentine authorities of their intention to restore their authority on the islands.
Timeline of the founding of the English colonies
- 1607 - Virginia (Jamestown)
- 1620 - Massachusetts (Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay Settlement)
- 1626 - New York
- 1633 - Maryland
- 1636 - Rhode Island
- 1636 - Connecticut
- 1638 - Delaware
- 1638 - New Hampshire
- 1653 - North Carolina
- 1663 - South Carolina
- 1664 - New Jersey
- 1682 - Pennsylvania
- 1732 - Georgia
French colonies
By 1713, New France had reached its greatest size. It included five provinces:
- Acadia (modern Nova Scotia and New Brunswick).
- Hudson's Bay (modern Canada)
- Louisiana (central part of the USA, from the Great Lakes to New Orleans), divided into two administrative regions: Lower Louisiana and Illinois (French: le Pays des Illinois).
Spanish colonies
The Spanish colonization of the New World dates back to the discovery of America by the Spanish navigator Columbus in 1492, which Columbus himself recognized as the eastern part of Asia, the eastern coast of China, or Japan, or India, which is why the name West Indies was assigned to these lands. The search for a new route to India was dictated by the development of society, industry and trade, and the need to find large reserves of gold, for which demand had increased sharply. Then it was believed that there should be a lot of it in the “land of spices”. The geopolitical situation in the world changed and the old eastern routes to India for Europeans, which now passed through lands occupied by the Ottoman Empire, became more dangerous and difficult to pass, meanwhile there was a growing need for the implementation of other trade with this rich region. At that time, some already had ideas that the earth was round and that India could be reached from the other side of the Earth - by sailing west from the then known world. Columbus made 4 expeditions to the region: the first - 1492-1493 - the discovery of the Sargasso Sea, the Bahamas, Haiti, Cuba, Tortuga, the founding of the first village, in which he left 39 of his sailors. He declared all lands to be the possessions of Spain; second (1493-1496) years - complete conquest of Haiti, discovery
Essentially, from the first voyage of Columbus and his acquaintance with the aborigines of the West Indian islands, a bloody history of interaction between the indigenous people of America and Europeans began to take shape. The Caribs were exterminated, allegedly for their commitment to cannibalism. They were followed by other islanders for refusing to perform slave duties. The first to tell about the atrocities of the Spanish colonialists was the witness of these events, the outstanding humanist Bartolomé Las Casas in the treatise “ Shortest messages about the destruction of the Indies,” promulgated in 1542. The island of Hispaniola “was the first where Christians entered; here was the beginning of the extermination and death of the Indians. Having ravaged and devastated the island, the Christians began to take away the wives and children of the Indians, forced them to serve themselves and used them in the worst possible way... And the Indians began to look for means by which they could throw the Christians out of their lands, and then they took up arms ... Christians on horseback, armed with swords and spears, mercilessly killed the Indians. Entering the villages, they did not leave anyone alive...” And all this for the sake of profit. Las Casas wrote that the conquistadors “went with a cross in their hand and an insatiable thirst for gold in their hearts.” Following Haiti in 1511, Diego Velazquez conquered Cuba with a detachment of 300 people. The natives were destroyed mercilessly. In 1509, an attempt was made to establish two colonies on the coast of Central America under the leadership of Olonce de Ojeda and Diego Nicues. The Indians objected. 70 of Ojeda's companions were killed. Most of Nicues's companions also died from wounds and disease. The surviving Spaniards near the Gulf of Darien founded the small colony of “Golden Castile” under the leadership of Vasco Nunez Balboa. It was he who, in 1513, with a detachment of 190 Spaniards and 600 Indian porters crossed the mountain range and saw the wide Bay of Panama, and beyond it the boundless southern sea. Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Panama 20 times, built the first Spanish ships for sailing in the Pacific Ocean, and discovered the Pearl Islands. The desperate hidalgo Francisco Pizarro was part of the detachments of Ojeda and Balboa. In 1517, Balboa was executed, and Pedro Arias d'Avil became governor of the colony. In 1519, the city of Panama was founded, which became the main base for the colonization of the Andean highlands, the Spaniards had heard well about the fabulous riches of the countries of which. In 1524-1527 . exploratory voyages were carried out to the shores of Peru. In 1528, Pizarro went to Spain for help. He returned to Panama in 1530, accompanied by volunteers, including his four half-brothers. Alvarado and Almagro fought through the ridges and valleys of the Andes. The prosperous state of the Incas, with a highly developed general culture, agriculture, craft production, waterways, roads and cities, was destroyed, untold wealth was seized. The Pizarro brothers were elevated to the rank of knighthood, Francisco became a marquis. , governor of the new possession. In 1536, he founded the new capital of the possession - Lima. The Indians did not accept defeat, and for several more years there was a stubborn war and the destruction of the rebellious.
In 1535 - 1537 a detachment of 500 Spaniards and 15 thousand Indian porters under the leadership of Almagro made a very difficult long raid across the tropical part of the Andes from the ancient Incan capital of Cusco to the city of Co-quimbo south of the Atacama Desert. During the raid, about 10 thousand Indians and 150 Spaniards died from hunger and cold. But more than a ton of gold was collected and transferred to the treasury. In 1540, Pizarro commissioned Pedro de Valdivia to complete the conquest of South America. Valdivia crossed the Atacama Desert, reached central Chile, founded a new colony and its capital, Santiago, as well as the cities of Concepcion and Valdivia. He ruled the colony until he was killed by the rebel Araucanians in 1554. The southernmost part of Chile was explored by Juan Ladrillero. He passed the Strait of Magellan from west to east in 1558. The contours of the South American continent were determined. Attempts were made for deep exploration into the interior of the continent. The main motive was the search for Eldorado. In 1524, the Portuguese Alejo Garcia with a large detachment of Guarani Indians crossed the southeastern part of the Brazilian Plateau and reached a tributary of the Parana River - the river. Iguazu, discovered a grandiose waterfall, crossed the Laplata lowland and the Gran Chaco plain and reached the foothills of the Andes. In 1525 he was killed. In 1527 - 1529 S. Cabot, who was at that time serving in Spain, in search of the “silver kingdom”, climbed high up the La Plata and Parana, and organized fortified towns. The towns did not last long; abundant deposits of silver were not found. In 1541, Gonzalo Pizarro with a large detachment of 320 Spaniards and 4 thousand Indians from Quito crossed the eastern chain of the Andes and reached one of the tributaries of the Amazon. There, a small ship was built and launched, whose crew of 57 people, under the leadership of Francisco Orellana, was supposed to explore the area and get food. Orellana did not return back and was the first to cross South America from west to east, sailing along the Amazon to its mouth. The detachment was attacked by Indian archers, who were not inferior in courage to the men. Homer's myth about the Amazons received a new registration. Travelers in the Amazon for the first time encountered such a formidable phenomenon as the poroca, a tidal wave that rolls into the lower reaches of the river and can be traced for hundreds of kilometers. In the dialect of the Tupi-Guarani Indians, this stormy water shaft is called “amazunu”. This word was interpreted by the Spaniards in their own way and gave rise to the legend of the Amazons (Sivere, 1896). The weather was favorable for Orellana and his companions; they made a voyage by sea to the island of Margarita, where Spanish colonists had already settled. G. Pizarro, who did not wait for Orellana, with his thinned detachment, was forced to storm the ridge again in the opposite direction. In 1542, only 80 participants in this transition returned to Quito. In 1541 - 1544 Spaniard Nufrio Chavez with three companions again crossed the South American continent, this time from east to west, from southern Brazil to Peru, and returned back the same way.
