The document summarizes the colonization of the Americas by European powers beginning in the 15th century. It describes how Spain conquered vast territories from Mexico to South America through the expeditions of Hernan Cortes and Francisco Pizarro, aided by superior technology and diseases that weakened native populations. It also discusses how the Spanish colonial system exploited native groups and imported African slaves to extract wealth in the forms of gold, silver, and agricultural goods. Finally, it outlines how other European powers like France and England later established their own colonial holdings in North America.

2.  Motivations?
 Gold, Glory, and God!
 Hispaniola (Haiti and Dom. Rep.),
Cuba, and Puerto Rico
 Native Americans – suffered
terribly as they contracted
European diseases
 Hernan Cortes – Mexico in 1519,
headed to Tenochtitlan
› Formed alliances with groups
that didn’t like the Aztecs to rally
an army
› Moctezuma welcomes him into
the capital, quickly don’t get
along
› Spaniards pushed out, retreat
and plan, return and conquer
Tenochtitlan – Mexico City

3.  Francisco Pizarro – finds the
Incan empire in the midst of
civil war and easily takes
over
 Spanish forces stretch from
Ecuador to Chile and
continue adding most of the
rest of S. America (except
Brazil)
 Reasons for Spaniards
success?
› Superior military technology
(horses, gun powder, and
thick armor)
› Diseases of the Europeans

4.  Stretched from California to S. America
 Catholic Church played a key role – see it
as a perfect opportunity to spread
Christianity – Jesuits help a great deal
 Economic Benefits are HUGE:
› Raw materials exported back to Europe
› Colonies can only by Spanish manufactured
goods
› Silver and gold brought back by the shiploads
› Sugar cane plantations
› Encomienda system (labor from locals)

5. • Peninsulares – Iberian descent, top gvt and
Cath Ch
• Creoles – American born, own plantations,
ranches, and mines
• Mestizos – Native American + European
• Mulattoes – African + European
• Lowest Classes – Native American and then
Africans

6. • Priest who wrote letter to the king
condemning the encomienda system
• King bans enslavement of the Natives
• Spain and Portugal turn to Africa for
labor

7.  Brazil is their biggest colony
 Also use Africans and the Native
Americans to work sugar plantations

8.  The rest of Europe is very frustrated by
Spain’s control over colonial trade
 Privateers (pirates) who were Dutch,
English and French begin preying on
Spanish ships carrying supplies (esp. gold
and silver)
 European governments often
encouraged and facilitated the
privateers
› Ex. Queen Elizabeth and Sir Francis Drake

9.  Samuel de Champlain – first permanent
settlement, Quebec, Canada – 1608
 New France
 Louis XIV, powerful absolutist (and
Catholic) French King – prohibits
Protestants from settling in France.
 By early 1700s French forts, missions, and
trading posts stretch from Quebec to
Lousiana

10.  Jamestown, Virginia – 1607
 Plymouth, Massachusetts - 1620
 1600 and 1700s – 13 English colonies
established
› Commercial ventures
› Havens for religious persecution

11.  Spain, Netherlands,
Portugal, England, and
France
 France and England
emerge as major powers
during the 1700s
 Caribbean, North
America, and India
› Seven Years War – (French
and Indian War in N.
America, 7 yrs war in India)
› 1763 – Treaty of Paris
 Britain gets land East of the
Mississippi River, France gets
Canada
 France forced out of India
 France gains some sugar-
producing islands in the
Caribbean