Origins vs. Environment: Methods of Colonization in the New World

Christopher Columbus landed in the Indies in 1492 while searching for a shorter water route to China and India. After this, the New World became a place attractive for its religious freedom, trading opportunities, land, and farming potential unavailable in some places in Europe at the time. Three countries involved in settling America are Spain, England, and France. Spain conquered the land, seizing it along with its population. The English, on the other hand, did not claim the population; instead, they took the land and displaced its people. In contrast to both the Spanish and English, the French made alliances with the population, traded with them, and became their ally in war. The origins of the Spanish and English determined their actions, and the environment the French encountered in the new world influenced theirs.

Spain was a strong state in Europe at 400 AD. The Spaniards desired to express the awareness of their existence in the world. They lived their life as “an anxious movement through the vast region of the ought-to-be.” The Spaniards’ settlement of the New World was their culture playing out in America. The Visigoths were Germans who had been chased into Rome by the Huns, where they killed the king and, in search of a Visigothic province, marched to Spain. In 700 AD, a Muslim army defeated the Visigothic kingdom until 1492. This discord between the Muslim Spanish and Catholic Germans who both desired Spain caused the Battle of Tours in 732 AD. Friction with the Visigoths and Muslims created racism, ignited by the Reconquista. The Reconquista was an eight-hundred year war Spain became involved in from 711-1492 AD. As the Spanish Arabs’ culture became more advanced than the Visigoths’, the Visigoths ...

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In conclusion, the Spanish and English’s actions in America were determined by their origins, the history and society of country they immigrated from; while the French’s course of action in Canada was impacted by the environment they experienced in the New World. The Spanish’s acts of conquest, such as of the people of Central America, trace back to their roots of discrimination against other peoples incited by the Reconquista. The French’s radically different actions of alliances and trade with the Indians of Canada were due to the beaver, and the advantage of trading with the Indians to possess it. England’s method of displacement and colonization was influenced by their strong need of land. A country’s course of action is determined by many reasons, but at the root of each country’s method of colonization, origin or environment is the deciding factor.