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, after being freed, 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 out 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 continent 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 English, 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
Home driving force French colonization for a long time There was a 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 drunken 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 wrecked on the way back. Gilbert's rights passed to his relative, Sir Walter Raleigh, Queen Elizabeth's favorite. In 1584, Reilly decided to found 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 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. Basic labor force On large plantations in Virginia and Maryland, poor people brought from England appeared. Throughout the 17th century. “indentured servants,” as these poor people were called, forced to work off the cost of their passage 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" with 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 reports as a 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 colonies. 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 claim 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 Friederici), the common opinion that the custom of scalping has long been very widespread among the Indians of North America is completely incorrect. 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 it more easy operation cutting off the scalp (previously wooden and bone knives were 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 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, became 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.
Relations between the colonists and local residents- Indians were not always hostile. Simple 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 grains, and ground grain into flour using wooden Indian chairs. Traces of many borrowings from Indian cuisine are reflected in the language and food of 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 ("impromptu" flour custard pudding), hald corn (husked 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. The 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. At the beginning of the 18th century. 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 cultivating 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 the interior of the 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. Great importance had shipbuilding, trade in fish and timber. 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, rural population made up the overwhelming majority, and the townspeople kept livestock and had vegetable gardens for a long time.
In the middle colonies (New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania), farming developed on fertile lands, producing grain crops or specializing in raising livestock. In New York and New Jersey, more than in others, large land ownership was widespread, 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.
America was first a land and then a country that was born in the imagination before in reality, wrote Susan Mary Grant. Born from the cruelty of conquerors and the hopes of ordinary workers, they became one of the most powerful states in the world. The history of America is the formation of a chain of paradoxes.
The country, created in the name of freedom, was built by the labor of slaves; a country struggling to establish moral superiority, military security and economic stability does so in the face of financial crises and global conflicts, not least of which it itself causes.
It all started with colonial America, created by the first Europeans who arrived there, who were attracted by the opportunity to get rich or freely practice their religion. As a result, entire indigenous peoples were forced out of their native lands, became impoverished, and some were completely exterminated.
America is a significant part of the modern world, its economy, politics, culture, and its history is an integral element of world history. America is not only Hollywood, the White House and Silicon Valley. This is a country where customs, habits, traditions and characteristics are united different nations, formed a new nation. This constant process is amazingly a short time created an amazing historical phenomenon - a superstate.
How did it develop and what does it represent today? What is its impact on the modern world? We will tell you about this now.
America before Columbus
Is it possible to get to America on foot? In general, it’s possible. Just think, less than a hundred kilometers, more precisely ninety-six.
When the Bering Strait freezes, Eskimos and Chukchi cross it in both directions even in bad weather. Otherwise, where would a Soviet reindeer herder get a brand new hard drive?.. Blizzard? Freezing? Just like a long time ago, a man dressed in reindeer fur buries himself in the snow, stuffs his mouth with pemmican and dozes until the storm subsides...
Ask the average American when American history begins. Ninety-eight answers out of a hundred in 1776. Americans have an extremely vague idea of the times before European colonization, although the Indian period is as integral a part of the country’s history as the Mayflower. And still there is a line beyond which one story ends tragically, and the second develops dramatically...
Europeans landed on the American continent off the East Coast. The future Native Americans came from the northwest. 30 thousand years ago the north of the continent was bound mighty ice and deep snows all the way to the Great Lakes and beyond.
Still, most of the first Americans arrived through Alaska, then leaving south of the Yukon. Most likely, there were two main groups of settlers: the first came from Siberia, with their own language and customs; the second several centuries later, when the land isthmus from Siberia to Alaska went under the water of a melted glacier.
They had straight black hair, smooth dark skin, a wide nose with a low bridge, slanted Brown eyes with a characteristic fold at the eyelids. More recently, in the underwater cave system of Sac Actun (Mexico), underwater speleologists discovered the incomplete skeleton of a 16-year-old girl. She was given the name Naya - water nymph. Radiocarbon and uranium-thorium analyzes showed that the bones had lain at the bottom of the flooded cave for 12-13 thousand years. Naya's skull is elongated, distinctly closer to the ancient inhabitants of Siberia than to the rounded skulls of modern Indians.
In the tissue of Naya's molar tooth, geneticists also discovered intact mitochondrial DNA. Passing from mother to daughter, she retains the haplotype of the full set of genes of her parents. In Naya, it corresponds to the P1 haplotype, common among modern Indians. The hypothesis that Native Americans were descended from early Paleo-Americans who migrated across the Bering Land Bridge from eastern Siberia has received the strongest evidence possible. The Institute of Cytology and Genetics of the Russian Academy of Sciences believes that the settlers belonged to the Altai tribes.
The first inhabitants of America
Beyond the icy mountains, to the south, lay a magical land with a warm and humid climate. It covers almost the entire territory of what is now the United States. Forests, meadows, varied animal world. During the last glaciation, several breeds of wild horses crossed Beringia, later either exterminated or extinct. In addition to meat, ancient animals supplied humans with technologically necessary materials: fur, bone, skins, and tendons.
An ice-free strip of tundra stretched from the coast of Asia to Alaska, a kind of bridge across the present-day Bering Strait. But in Alaska, only during short periods of warming did the passages thaw, opening the way to the south. Ice pressed those going to the Mackenzie River, to the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains, but soon they reached the dense forests of what is now the state of Montana. Some went there, others went west, to the coast Pacific Ocean. The rest generally went south through Wyoming and Colorado to New Mexico and Arizona.
The bravest made their way even further south, through Mexico and Central America to the southern American continent; they will reach Chile and Argentina only centuries later.
It is possible that the ancestors of the Native Americans reached the continent through the Aleutian Islands, although this is a difficult and dangerous route. It can be assumed that the Polynesians, excellent sailors, sailed to South America.
In Marms Cave (Washington State), the remains of three human skulls dating from the 11th to 8th millennia BC were discovered, and nearby - a spear tip and a bone tool, which gave reason to assume the discovery of a unique ancient culture of the indigenous people of America. This means that even then there were people living on these lands who were capable of creating smooth, sharp, comfortable and beautiful products. But it was there that the US Army Corps of Engineers needed to build a dam, and now the unique exhibits lie under twelve meters of water.
Speculation has been made about who visited this part of the world before Columbus. There definitely were Vikings.
The son of the Viking leader Erik the Red, Leif Eriksson, setting out to sea from the Norwegian colony in Greenland, sailed through Helluland (“the country of boulders,” now Baffin Island), Markland (the forest country, the Labrador Peninsula), Vinland (“the grape country,” most likely New England). After spending the winter in Vinland, the Viking ships returned to Greenland.
Leif's brother, Thorvald Eriksson, built a fortification with housing in America two years later. But the Algonquins killed Thorvald, and his companions sailed back. The next two attempts were a little more successful: Eric the Red's daughter-in-law Gudrid settled in America, initially established profitable trade with the Skra-lings, but then returned to Greenland. The daughter of Eric the Red, Freydis, was also not lucky enough to attract the Indians to long-term cooperation. Then, in a fight, she hacked to death her companions, and after the strife, the Normans left Vinland, where they lived for quite a long time.
The hypothesis about the discovery of America by the Normans was confirmed only in 1960. The remains of a well-equipped Viking settlement were found in Newfoundland (Canada). In 2010, a burial was found in Iceland with the remains of an Indian woman with the same Paleo-American genes. It came to Iceland around 1000 AD. and stayed there to live...
There is also an exotic hypothesis about Zhang He, a Chinese military leader, who with a huge fleet sailed to America, supposedly seventy years before Columbus. However, it does not have reliable evidence. The infamous book by the American Africanist Ivan Van Sertin spoke about the huge fleet of the Sultan of Mali, which reached America and determined its entire culture, religion, etc. And here there was not enough evidence. So external influences were kept to a minimum. But in the New World itself, many tribes arose that existed quite separately and spoke different languages. Those of them3 who were united by similarity of beliefs and blood ties formed numerous communities.
They themselves built houses and settlements of high engineering complexity, which have survived to this day, processed metal, created excellent ceramics, learned to provide themselves with food and grow cultivated plants, play ball and domesticate wild animals.
This is approximately what the New World was like at the time of the fateful meeting with Europeans - Spanish sailors under the command of a Genoese captain. According to the poet Henry Longfellow, the great Gaia-Wata, the cultural hero of all North American tribes, dreamed of her as an inevitable fate.
Western European colonization of “new” lands in the 16th-17th centuries. - This is a very important process in the development of the American continent. Europeans moved to uncharted lands in search of better life. At the same time, the colonialists encountered resistance and conflicts with the local residents - the Indians. In this lesson you will learn how the conquest of Mexico and Central America took place, how the civilizations of the Aztecs, Mayans and Incas were destroyed and what were the results of this colonization.
Western European colonization of new lands
Background
The discovery of new lands was associated with the Europeans' search for new sea routes to the East. Habitual trade communications were cut off by the Turks. Europeans needed precious metals and spices. The progress of shipbuilding and navigation allowed them to make long sea voyages. Technological superiority over the inhabitants of other continents (including the possession firearms) allowed the Europeans to make rapid territorial gains. They soon discovered that colonies could be a source of great profit and quick enrichment.
Events
1494 - Treaty of Tordesillas on the division of colonial possessions between Spain and Portugal. The dividing line ran across the Atlantic Ocean from north to south.
1519 - About five hundred conquistadors led by Cortez landed in Mexico.
In 1521, the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan was captured. A new colony was founded on the conquered territory - Mexico. ( about the Aztecs and their ruler Montezuma II).
1532-1535 - Conquistadors led by Pizarro conquer the Inca Empire.
1528 - the beginning of the conquest of the Mayan civilization. In 1697, the last Mayan city was captured (the resistance lasted 169 years).
The penetration of Europeans into America led to massive epidemics and the death of a huge number of people. The Indians had no immunity to Old World diseases.
1600 - the English East India Company was created, which equipped and sent ships to the “spice islands”.
1602 - The Dutch East India Company is created. From the government, the company received the right to seize land and manage the local population.
By 1641, most of Indonesia's fortresses were in Dutch hands.
1607 - The city of Jamestown, the first English settlement in the New World, is founded.
1608 - The French establish the colony of Quebec in Canada.
XVII century - The French colonized the Mississippi River Valley and founded the colony of Louisiana there.
1626 - The Dutch found New Amsterdam on Manhattan Island (future New York).
1619 - English colonists bring the first group of slaves to North America.
1620 - English Puritans found the colony of New Plymouth (north of Jamestown). They are considered the founders of America - the Pilgrim Fathers.
End of the 17th century - There are already 13 English colonies in America, each of which considered itself a small state (state).
Participants
The conquistadors were Spanish conquerors who participated in the conquest of the New World.
Hernan Cortes- Spanish nobleman, conquistador. Led the conquest of the Aztec state.
Francisco Pizarro- conquistador, led the conquest of the Inca state.
Conclusion
In the 16th century, two major colonial empires emerged - Spanish and Portuguese. The dominance of Spain and Portugal in South America was established.
The colony was headed by a viceroy appointed by the king.
In Mexico and Peru, the Spaniards organized gold and silver mining. Trade in colonial goods brought great profits. Merchants sold goods in Europe at 1000 times the price at which they were purchased in the colonies. Europeans became acquainted with corn, potatoes, tobacco, tomatoes, sugar molasses, and cotton.
A single world market gradually emerged. Over time, a slave-owning plantation economy developed in the colonies. Indians were forced to work on the plantations, and from the beginning of the 17th century. - slaves from Africa.
Colonies became a source of enrichment for Europeans. This led to competition between European countries for possession of colonies.
In the 17th century, France and Holland ousted the Spaniards and Portuguese in the colonies.
In the XVI-XVIII centuries. England won the battle for the seas. It became the strongest naval and colonial power in the world.
The lesson will focus on Western European colonization of “new” lands in the 16th-17th centuries.
Great geographical discoveries radically changed the vector of development of the American continent. XVI-XVII centuries in the history of the New World is called conquest, or colonization (which means “conquest”).
The aborigines of the American continent were numerous Indian tribes, and in the north - the Aleuts and Eskimos. Many of them are well known today. Thus, in North America lived the Apache tribes (Fig. 1), later popularized in cowboy films. Central America is represented by the Mayan civilization (Fig. 2), and the Aztec state was located on the territory of the modern state of Mexico. Their capital was located on the territory of the modern capital of Mexico - Mexico City - and was then called Tenochtitlan (Fig. 3). In South America, the largest Indian state was the Inca civilization.
Rice. 1. Apache tribes
Rice. 2. Mayan civilization
Rice. 3. The capital of the Aztec civilization - Tenochtitlan
Participants in the colonization of America (conquests) were called conquistadors, and their leaders were called adelantados. The conquistadors were impoverished Spanish knights. The main reason that prompted them to seek happiness in America was the ruin, the end of the Reconquista, as well as the economic and political aspirations of the Spanish crown. The most famous adelantodos were the conqueror of Mexico, who destroyed the Aztec civilization, Hernando Cortez, Francisco Pizarro, who conquered the Inca civilization, as well as Hernando de Sota, the first European to discover the Mississippi River. The conquistadors were robbers and invaders. Their main goal was military glory and personal enrichment.
Hernando Cortez is the most famous conquistador, conqueror of Mexico, who destroyed the Aztec empire (Fig. 4). In July 1519, Hernando Cortez and his army landed on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. Leaving the garrison, he went deep into the continent. The conquest of Mexico was accompanied by the physical extermination of the local population, the plunder and burning of Indian cities. Cortez had Indian allies. Despite the fact that the Europeans were superior to the Indians in the quality of weapons, their numbers were thousands of times smaller. Cortez concluded an agreement with one of the Indian tribes, which made up most of his army. According to the treaty, after the conquest of Mexico this tribe was to gain independence. However, this agreement was not respected. In November 1519, Cortes and his allies captured the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan. For more than six months, the Spaniards held power in the city. Only on the night of July 1, 1520, the Aztecs managed to expel the invaders from the city. The Spaniards lost all their artillery and the loss of life was great. Soon, having received reinforcements from Cuba, Cortes again captured the Aztec capital. In 1521, the Aztec state fell. Until 1524, Hernando Cortez ruled Mexico alone.
Rice. 4. Hernando Cortez
The Mayan civilization lived south of the Aztecs, in Central America, on the Yucatan Peninsula. In 1528, the Spaniards began conquering Mayan territories. However, the Mayans resisted for more than 169 years, and only in 1697 the Spaniards were able to capture the last city inhabited by the Mayan Indian tribe. Today, about 6 million descendants of the Mayan Indians live in Central America.
A famous Adelantado who conquered the Inca Empire was Francisco Pizarro (Fig. 5). Pizarro's first two expeditions of 1524-1525. and 1526 were unsuccessful. It was not until 1531 that he set out on his third expedition to conquer the Inca Empire. In 1533, Pizarro captured the Inca leader Atahualpa. He managed to obtain a large ransom for the leader, and then Pizarro killed him. In 1533, the Spaniards captured the capital of the Incas, the city of Cusco. In 1535, Pizarro founded the city of Lima. The Spaniards named the captured territory Chile, which means “cold.” The consequences of this expedition were tragic for the Indians. Over half a century, the number of Indians in the conquered territories decreased by more than 5 times. This was due not only to the physical extermination of the local population, but also to diseases that Europeans brought to the continent.
Rice. 5. Francisco Pizarro
In 1531, Hernando de Soto (Fig. 6) took part in Francis Pizarro's campaign against the Incas, and in 1539 he was appointed governor of Cuba and undertook an aggressive campaign in North America. In May 1539, Hernando de Sota landed on the coast of Florida and walked as far as the Alabama River. In May 1541, he reached the coast of the Mississippi River, crossed it and reached the Arkansas River valley. He then fell ill, was forced to turn back, and died in Louisiana in May 1542. His companions returned to Mexico in 1543. Although contemporaries considered de Soto's campaign a failure, its significance was still very great. The aggressive attitude of the conquerors towards the local population led to the outflow of Indian tribes from the territory of the Mississippi River. This facilitated further colonization of these territories.
In the XVI-XVII centuries. Spain captured vast territories on the American continent. Spain held onto these lands for a long time, and the last Spanish colony was recaptured only in 1898 by a new state - the United States of America.
Rice. 6. Hernando de Soto
Not only Spain colonized the lands of the American continent. At the end of the 16th century, England made two unsuccessful attempts to establish colonies in North America. Only in 1605 were there two joint stock companies received a license from King James I to colonize Virginia. At that time, the term Virginia meant the entire territory of North America.
The First London Virginia Company was licensed for the southern part of North America, and the Plymouth Company for the northern part. Officially, both companies set as their goal the spread of Christianity on the continent; the license gave them the right to search and mine gold, silver and other things on the continent by all means. precious metals.
In 1607, the city of Jamestown was founded - the first English settlement in America (Fig. 7). In 1619, two important events occurred. This year Governor George Yardley transferred some of his powers to a council of burghers, thus establishing the first elected city in the New World. legislature. In the same year, a group of English colonists acquired Africans of Angolan origin and, despite the fact that they were not yet officially slaves, from that moment the history of slavery in the United States of America began (Fig. 8).
Rice. 7. Jamestown - the first English settlement in America
Rice. 8. Slavery in America
The population of the colony had a difficult relationship with the Indian tribes. The colonists were attacked more than once by them. In December 1620, a ship carrying Calvinist Puritans, the so-called Pilgrim Fathers, arrived on the Atlantic coast of Massachusetts. This event is considered the beginning of active colonization of the American continent by the British. By the end of the 17th century, England had 13 colonies on the American continent. Among them: Virginia (early Virginia), New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia. Thus, by the end of the 17th century, the British colonized the entire Atlantic coast of the modern United States.
At the end of the 16th century, France began to build its colonial empire, which stretched west from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the so-called rocky mountains, and south to the Gulf of Mexico. France colonizes the Antilles and in South America establishes the colony of Guiana, which is still French territory.
The second largest colonizer of Central and South America after Spain is Portugal. It captured the territories where the state of Brazil is located today. Gradually, the Portuguese colonial empire in the second half of the 17th century fell into decline and gave way to the Dutch in South America.
The Dutch West India Company, founded in 1621, gains a monopoly on trade in South America and West Africa. Gradually, in the 17th century, England and Holland occupied the leading place among the colonial powers (Fig. 9). Between them there is a struggle for trade routes.
Rice. 9. Possessions of European countries on the American continent
Summing up the results of Western European colonization in the 16th-17th centuries, we can highlight the following.
Social change
The colonization of America led to the extermination of the local population; the remaining aborigines were driven into reservations and subjected to social discrimination. The conquistadors destroyed the most ancient cultures of the New World. Along with the colonialists, Christianity spread across the American continent.
Economic changes
Colonization led to the shift of the most important trade routes from inland seas to the ocean. Thus, the Mediterranean Sea lost its decisive importance for the European economy. The influx of gold and silver led to a fall in the price of precious metals and a rise in the prices of other goods. The active development of trade on a global scale stimulated entrepreneurial activity.
Household changes
The European menu included potatoes, tomatoes, cocoa beans, and chocolate. Europeans brought tobacco from America, and from that moment on, the habit of smoking tobacco spread.
Homework
- What do you think caused the development of new lands?
- Tell us about the conquests of the Aztec, Mayan and Incas by the colonists.
- Which European states were the leading colonial powers at the time?
- Tell us about the social, economic and everyday changes that occurred as a result of Western European colonization.
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- Innes Hammond. Conquistadors. History of the Spanish conquests of the XV-XVI centuries. - M.: Tsentrpoligraf, 2002.
- Kofman A.F. Conquistadors. Three Chronicles of the Conquest of America. - St. Petersburg: Symposium, 2009.
- Paul John, Robinson Charles. Aztecs and conquistadors. The death of a great civilization. - M.: Eksmo, 2009.
- Prescott William Hickling. Conquest of Mexico. Conquest of Peru. - M.: Publishing house “V. Sekachev", 2012.
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The history of the country is inextricably linked with its literature. And thus, while studying, one cannot help but touch upon American history. Each work belongs to a particular historical period. Thus, in his Washington, Irving talks about the Dutch pioneers who settled along the Hudson River, mentions the seven-year war for independence, the English king George III and the country's first president, George Washington. With the goal of drawing parallel connections between literature and history, in this introductory article I want to say a few words about how it all began, for those historical moments about which we'll talk are not reflected in any works.
Colonization of America 15th – 18th centuries (brief summary)
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
An American philosopher, George SantayanaIf you are asking yourself why you need to know history, then know that those who do not remember their history are doomed to repeat its mistakes.
So, the history of America began relatively recently, when in the 16th century people arrived on the new continent discovered by Columbus. These people were different color skin and different incomes, and the reasons that prompted them to come to the New World were also different. Some were attracted by the desire to start a new life, others sought to get rich, and others were fleeing persecution from the authorities or religious persecution. However, all these people, representing different cultures and nationalities, were united by the desire to change something in their lives and, most importantly, they were ready to take risks.
Inspired by the idea of creating a new world almost from scratch, the pioneers succeeded. Fantasy and dream became reality; they, like Julius Caesar, they came, they saw and they conquered.
I came, I saw, I conquered.
Julius Caesar
In those early days, America was an abundance of natural resources and a vast expanse of uncultivated land inhabited by friendly local people.
If we look a little further back into the past, then, presumably, the first people who appeared on the American continent came from Asia. According to Steve Wingand, this happened about 14 thousand years ago.
The first Americans probably wandered over from Asia about 14,000 years ago.
Steve Wiengand
Over the next 5 centuries, these tribes settled across two continents and, depending on the natural landscape and climate, began to engage in hunting, cattle breeding or agriculture.
In 985 AD, warlike Vikings arrived on the continent. For about 40 years they tried to gain a foothold in this country, but being outnumbered by the indigenous people, they eventually abandoned their attempts.
Then Columbus appeared in 1492, followed by other Europeans who were drawn to the continent by the thirst for profit and simple adventurism.
On October 12, 34 states celebrate Columbus Day in America. Christopher Columbus discovered America in 1492.
The Spanish were the first Europeans to arrive on the continent. Christopher Columbus, being an Italian by birth, having received a refusal from his king, turned to the Spanish king Ferdinand with a request to finance his expedition to Asia. It is not surprising that when Columbus discovered America instead of Asia, all of Spain rushed to this strange country. France and England rushed after the Spaniards. Thus began the colonization of America.
Spain got a head start in the Americas, mainly because the aforementioned Italian named Columbus was working for the Spanish and got them enthusiastic about it early on. But while the Spanish had a head start, other European countries eagerly sought to catch up.
(Source: U.S. history for dummies by S. Wiegand)
Having initially encountered no resistance from the local population, the Europeans behaved like aggressors, killing and enslaving the Indians. The Spanish conquerors were particularly cruel, plundering and burning Indian villages and killing their inhabitants. Following the Europeans, diseases also came to the continent. Thus, epidemics of measles and smallpox gave the process of extermination of the local population stunning speed.
But from the end of the 16th century, powerful Spain began to lose its influence on the continent, which was greatly facilitated by the weakening of its power, both on land and at sea. And the dominant position in the American colonies passed to England, Holland and France.
Henry Hudson founded the first Dutch settlement in 1613 on the island of Manhattan. This colony, located along the Hudson River, was called New Netherland, and its center was the city of New Amsterdam. However, this colony was later captured by the British and transferred to the Duke of York. Accordingly, the city was renamed New York. The population of this colony was mixed, but although the British predominated, the influence of the Dutch remained quite strong. Dutch words entered the American language, and appearance Some places reflect the “Dutch architectural style” - tall houses with sloping roofs.
The colonialist managed to gain a foothold on the continent, for which they thank God every fourth Thursday of the month of November. Thanksgiving is a holiday to celebrate their first year in their new place.
If the first settlers chose the north of the country mainly for religious reasons, then the south for economic reasons. Without standing on ceremony with the local population, the Europeans quickly pushed them back to lands unsuitable for life or simply killed them.
The practical English were especially firmly established. Quickly realizing what rich resources this continent contained, they began to grow tobacco and then cotton in the southern part of the country. And to get even more profit, the British brought slaves from Africa to cultivate plantations.
To summarize, I will say that in the 15th century, Spanish, English, French and other settlements appeared on the American continent, which began to be called colonies, and their inhabitants - colonists. At the same time, a struggle for territory began between the invaders, with particularly strong military actions taking place between the French and English colonists.
The Anglo-French wars also took place in Europe. But that is another story …
Having won on all fronts, the British finally established their supremacy on the continent and began to call themselves Americans. Moreover, in 1776, 13 British colonies declared their independence from the English monarchy, then headed by George III.
July 4th – Americans celebrate Independence Day. On this day in 1776, the Second Continental Congress, held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, adopted the Declaration of Independence of the United States.
The war lasted 7 years (1775 - 1783) and after the victory, the English pioneers, having managed to unite all the colonies, founded a state with a completely new political system, the president of which was the brilliant politician and commander George Washington. This state was called the United States of America.
George Washington (1789-1797) - first US president.
It is this transitional period in American history that Washington Irving describes in his work
And we will continue the topic “ Colonization of America" in the next article. Stay with us!
The beginning of the power... what was it like? Who were first settlers USA who were first colonists? Why was the backbone of a future great country founded by immigrants from foreign countries, and not by the indigenous population of such a large continent? As you know, Indians have lived in America for a long time. There is a hypothesis that they were descendants of settlers from the territories now called Siberia, which occurred about 10,000 years ago. It is unlikely that navigation existed at that time, and most likely people only knew how to move on water in small boats. But we should not forget that the continents, formed by layers of the earth’s crust, are in continuous movement, and perhaps in those distant times there was dry land in place of the Bering Strait, which allowed those tribes and communities to immigrate. This is how the indigenous population of America appeared. And at a time when in Europe one century followed another, bringing new discoveries and knowledge to the world, gunpowder was invented, crafts were improved and international trade developed, scattered tribes of Indians lived in America, each of which had its own language. These tribes, like all communities of the primitive system, lived by hunting, animal husbandry and plant growing.
So who were they? first settlers of the USA, disturbing the usual structure of the indigenous population? It is generally accepted that the first European who visited the bergs America, was Christopher Columbus. And this happened in 1492. In world history, it is he who is credited with the discovery of America. But much earlier, around the year 1000, other Europeans - the glorious Icelandic Vikings - visited America. The fact is that in 1960, archaeological confirmation of this fact was discovered on the island of Newfoundland - namely, the remains of Viking settlements. This fact is also described in the Icelandic folk saga chronicles, in which the fact of the discovery of new lands was mentioned. It is curious that, as in the case of Christopher Columbus, the Vikings simply lost their way while sailing to the shores of Greenland (Columbus was heading to Japan when he discovered America). The Vikings had several settlements, but due to clashes with the indigenous population, none of them lasted more than two years. It turns out that there were Vikings America's first colonists from the outside, although not very successful. However, it was thanks to Christopher Columbus that Europeans learned about America, so he is rightfully considered the man who discovered this continent. It is interesting that during his first expedition, Columbus discovered South America (Mexico), and only on the fourth did he reach the central part of America (now the territory of the United States). The first colony of America after the Vikings was in its southern part - it was a Spanish colony founded by Christopher Columbus during his second expedition. But that's South America. What about the part of it that will become the United States in the future? The first colonists of Central America there were the Spaniards again. In 1565, the first European settlement was built - the city of St. Augustine, which still exists today. After the success of Christopher Columbus, the Spaniards explored most of the eastern coast of America, after which they began to move deeper into the continent. Such famous cities like Los Angeles, San Diego and Santa Barbara were founded by the Spaniards. Only 20 years after the founding of the first Spanish colony, the British appeared on the east coast. In 1585, subjects of the English crown founded the island colony of Roanoke, which quickly sank into oblivion. Then there was the more successful English Jamestown (now Virginia), Plymouth and Spanish Santa Fe. But these are completely different stories...
So, the conclusions are: the first settlers from outside, moreover, European settlers there were Icelandic Vikings. This was at the turn of the 10th and 11th centuries AD. A the first successful settlers of the future USA became the Spaniards, more than 500 years after the Vikings appeared in these parts. In general, colonies in America were founded by many different nationalities, in addition to the British and Spaniards, these were Germans, Dutch, Swedes and French. It is curious that the city was founded by the Dutch in 1626 as the capital of the Dutch possessions in North America. It was then called New Amsterdam.
