Before European contact, indigenous peoples from Siberia migrated to North America across the Bering Strait beginning 16,000 years ago. Their populations expanded throughout the Americas, reaching an estimated 50 million inhabitants prior to European arrival. Meanwhile in Europe, the Roman Empire united much of the continent but later weakened and fell, leaving a power vacuum. In the 15th century, Spain funded Columbus' expedition seeking a route to Asia but he instead made landfall in the Americas. Over subsequent decades, the powerful Aztec and Inca Empires were conquered with devastating consequences for indigenous populations. European powers raced to claim territory in the Americas, though vast areas remained unsettled for centuries.

1. Part One: Before English America

2. Somewhere between 16-14
thousand years ago, populations
from Siberia began to cross the
Bering Strait into North America.
By 8,000 B.C. these populations
had reached the southern tip of
South America.
The population numbers prior to
European contact are hazy (and
prone to acrimonious debate), but
somewhere around 50 million is
often cited (with perhaps 10
million in what is now the United
States).

3. While the peoples of
the Americas
remained largely
independent of one
another, those of
Europe were united
almost entirely under
the banner of the
Roman Empire by the
dawn of the Christian
era.

5. While the Romans gave to Europe law and
infrastructure, as well as preserving and
popularizing the accomplishments of the
Greeks, ultimately the Empire grew weak and
disunited.
The division of the Empire into multiple parts
by the Emperor Diocletian (though done for
good reasons) led to factionalism and
infighting, while Barbarian invasions loomed
on the frontiers.

7. While the eastern part of the empire enjoyed
greater wealth and population, it likewise saw
fewer successful barbarian incursions. In 474
A.D. the last western emperor was deposed,
though the eastern (popularly known as
Byzantine) Empire lived on for the next
thousand years.
While the emperor Justinian made great efforts
to re-conquer the west, his gains were
ultimately short-lived.

9. The vacuum left by the passing of a united
Rome was soon to be filled however. The
unification of the Arab tribes under
Mohammed led to the beginning of a century
of conquests. The Sassanid Persian and
Byzantine empires (both exhausted by decades
of war) were unable to oppose these new
invasions. The Persians were entirely
conquered, and though Byzantium survived,
its Levantine and African provinces were lost.

11. With the Arab armies expanding into Spain
and threatening Western Europe, and
Byzantium focused upon its own defence, the
denizens of the former Western Empire had to
look to their own defence.
While the Arab conquests eventually reached
their apex and were confined to Spain, fighting
continued for centuries along the frontiers,
leading to almost perpetual low-intensity
conflict.

12. As the centuries went on Western Europe
gradually grew stronger and more cohesive,
with larger and more powerful states
emerging. It was not until the dawn of the
ninth century that a new empire emerged
under the rule of the great ruler Charlemagne.
While the Carolingian Empire would not last in
the long term, it did establish the precedent of
powerful, assertive powers in the West, the
first since the fall of Rome.

14. While Byzantium enjoyed a golden age in the
aftermath of the Arab conquests, in the late
eleventh century military disaster overtook the
empire, with much of Anatolia lost to Turkic
invaders. Appeals for aid to the West,
combined with threats to Christian pilgrims in
the Middle East and enthusiasm for religion
and conquest in Western Europe led to the
Crusades, a series of military campaigns that
saw Western derived states established on the
Levantine coast.

16. Eventually the Crusades degenerated into little more than
politically motivated campaigns for honor or loot, and the
dawn of the thirteenth century saw Crusaders seize
Constantinople. While it would eventually be retaken, the
Byzantine Empire had been fatally weakened as a result.
Western hostility hobbled Byzantium, and continued Turkic
incursions eroded its territory. In 1453 A.D. Constantinople
fell once and for all, ending fifteen centuries of the Roman
Empire. While Western Europe now faced the Turkish
Ottoman Empire alone, they had been shielded by
Byzantium for a millennium, and were now strong enough
to fend for themselves.

18. While Western Europe successfully fended off Ottoman
aggression in the coming centuries, the presence of this
new, assertive power threatened traditional trade
routes between Europe and Eastern Asia.
The sea routes through the Eastern Mediterranean and
the land routes through the Ukrainian steppe were now
compromised, necessitating new sea routes to the
wealthy states of South and East Asia.

21. During the Middle Ages, Viking explorers and
adventurers had voyaged west, settling in Iceland,
Greenland, and as it later turned out Newfoundland.
However these settlements were extremely small and
isolated. The economic impetus at the end of the Middle
Ages ushered in a far more intense period of
exploration.
While the Portuguese were some of the earliest and
most prolific explorers, it was Spain that had the largest
impact on what would soon be known as the ‘New
World’.

22. Spanish society had been shaped throughout the entirety of the
Middle Ages by on all encompassing event: The Reconquista.
Since the Islamic conquest of most of the Iberian Peninsula,
Christian Spaniards in the north had waged a war of almost eight
centuries to re-conquer it, ending in 1492 with the fall of Grenada
(the same year as their discovery of the New World).
As a result of this, the Spanish had developed a culture
exceptionally talented in the military arts, as well as powerfully
motivated to spread and protect their Christian religion. The
recent unification of Spain likewise served as an impetus to
strengthen and expand their empire.

26. In the same year as the fall of Grenada, the united
Spanish monarchy funded an expedition under
Christopher Columbus. Though the intention was to
sail to East Asia, the presence of the Americas
interfered with that objective.
While it eventually became clear that this new land was
not Asia, it nonetheless appealed to the Spaniards as a
source of wealth and a land of opportunity.

29. While the Caribbean islands were easy enough to conquer
given the enormous technological advantage the Spanish
enjoyed (as well as the ravages of disease that were
inadvertently introduced), they soon set their eyes on the
mainland.
In what is now modern Mexico, the powerful Aztec Empire
(known to the local peoples as the ‘Triple Alliance’) was
unequivocally the greatest polity in North America. While
they possessed great power, the Spanish were tempted by
the great rewards that conquests on the mainland would
entail.

32. In 1519 the Spanish under Hernan Cortes landed on the
mainland and began their advance inland. Despite
setbacks and great difficulties, Cortes led his men as
well as the native peoples who had allied with them
inland to the capital of the Aztec Empire.
While the story of the conquest in a long and riveting
one, is short the capital fell in the summer of 1521. The
conquest of Mesoamerica would drag on for a further
sixty years.

33. In South America, the greatest power on the continent
was the Inca Empire. Initially scouted by the Spanish
conquistador Francisco Pizarro, by the time he began his
conquest in earnest in 1532 the Incas were suffering a
civil war, unrest in their outlying territories, and the
effects of smallpox. The immense wealth of the Inca was
a powerful motivation for the Spaniards, and ultimately
it would take decades to complete and consolidate the
conquest of the Inca, at great loss to the local peoples.

35. In the decades and centuries following the initial
Spanish expeditions to the Americas, virtually all of the
American continents were claimed by a handful of
European powers.
However, while they may have been ‘spoken for’, many
of these territories were only notionally under European
control. Vast swathes of North America remained
unsettled well into the nineteenth century, and even
today there are areas in both North and South America
that have seldom if ever seen an outsider.

37. During the course of the sixteenth century England had
grown in power, but found itself stymied by its
powerful nemesis Spain. After the defeat of the Spanish
Armada (which had attempted to invade and conquer
England) in 1588, Spanish power began a long decline,
and England was free to pursue a colonial agenda.
Here began English America, the precursor to the United
States.