Colonization of North America

The Colonization of North America took place from the 1600s to the 1900s, England, Spain, Denmark, France, and

the United States were the colonial powers, European colonization spread through other continents / micro-continents around the Americas, European colonization ended after all countries gained independence, after European colonization, the United States did colonization in Hawaii, Alaska, and much of the United States, Russia and the Netherlands were also colonial powers in North America, until U.S. Annexation of those colonies.

Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire
The Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire was one of the most significant events in the Spanish colonization of the Americas. The invasion began in February 1519, and was declared victorious on August 13, 1521, when a coalition army of Spanish conquistadors and Tlaxcalan warriors led by Hernán Cortés and Xicotencatl the Younger captured Tenochtitlan, the capital of the Aztec Empire.

During the Spanish campaign, Cortés allied with a number of the tributaries and rivals of the Aztecs, including theTotonacs, and the Tlaxcaltecas. After eight months of battles and intrigue, which overcame the diplomatic resistance of the Aztec Emperor Montezuma to his visit, Cortés arrived in Tenochtitlan on November 8, 1519, where he took up residence. After an Aztec attack on Nauhtlan, a city on the coast, that left several Spaniards dead, Cortés took Montezuma captive in his own palace and ruled through him for months. After the massacre at the Main Temple of Tenochtitlan and a rebellion by the population of the city, Cortés and his men had to fight their way out of the capital city during the Noche Triste in June, 1520. However, the Spanish and Tlaxcalans would return with reinforcements and a siege plan that led to the fall of Tenochtitlan a year later.

The collapse of the Aztec Empire was a major milestone in the formation of New Spain, which would not be formalized by the Spanish Crown until 1535 A.D.

English settlement
England made its first successful efforts at the start of the 17th century for several reasons. During this era, English proto-nationalism and national assertiveness blossomed under the threat of Spanish invasion, assisted by a degree of Protestant militarism and the energy of Queen  Elizabeth. At this time, however, there was no official attempt by the English government to create a colonial empire. Rather, the motivation behind the founding of colonies was piecemeal and variable. Practical considerations, such as commercial enterprise, overpopulation and the desire for freedom of religion, played their parts. The main waves of settlement came in the 17th century. After 1700 most immigrants to Colonial America arrived as  indentured servants —young unmarried men and women seeking a new life in a much richer environment. [19]  Between the late 1610s and the American Revolution, the British shipped an estimated 50,000 convicts to its American colonies. [20]  The first  convicts  to arrive pre-dated the arrival of the  Mayflower.

New France and colonization
French interest in the New World began with Francis I of France, who in 1524 sponsored Giovanni da Verrazzano to navigate the region between Florida and Newfoundland in hopes of finding a route to the Pacific Ocean.[49]  In 1534, Jacques Cartier planted a cross in theGaspé Peninsula and claimed the land in the name of Francis I.[50]  Despite initial French attempts at settling the region having ended in failure, French fishing fleets began to sail to the Atlantic coast and into the St. Lawrence River, trading and making alliances with First Nations.[50]  In 1600, a trading post was established at Tadoussac by François Gravé Du Pont, a merchant, and Pierre de Chauvin de Tonnetuit, a captain of the French Royal Navy.[51]  However, only five of the sixteen settlers (all male) survived the first winter and returned to France.[51]

In 1604, a North American fur trade monopoly was granted to Pierre Dugua Sieur de Monts.[52]  Dugua led his first colonization expedition to an island located near to the mouth of the St. Croix River. Among his lieutenants was a geographer named Samuel de Champlain, who promptly carried out a major exploration of the northeastern coastline of what is now the United States.[52]  In the spring of 1605, under Samuel de Champlain, the new St. Croix settlement was moved to Port Royal (today's Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia) then abandoned in 1607.[48] [51]

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.1875px;font-family:sans-serif;">In 1608 Champlain founded what is now Quebec City, which would become the first permanent settlement and the capital of New France. He took personal administration over the city and its affairs, and sent out expeditions to explore the interior. Champlain himself discovered Lake Champlain in 1609. By 1615, he had travelled by canoe up the Ottawa River through Lake Nipissing and Georgian Bay to the center of Huron country near Lake Simcoe.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-53" style="line-height:1em;">[53]  During these voyages, Champlain aided the Wendat (aka 'Hurons') in their battles against the Iroquois Confederacy.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-54" style="line-height:1em;">[54]  As a result, the Iroquois would become enemies of the French and be involved in multiple conflicts (known as the French and Iroquois Wars) until the signing of the Great Peace of Montreal in 1701.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-55" style="line-height:1em;">[55]

<p style="line-height:19.1875px;font-family:sans-serif;">After Champlain’s death in 1635, the Catholic Church and the Jesuit establishment became the most dominant force in New France and intended to establish a utopian European and Aboriginal Christian community.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-62" style="line-height:1em;">[62]  In 1642, the Jesuit (Society of Jesus) sponsored a group of settlers, led by Paul Chomedey de Maisonneuve, who founded Ville-Marie, precursor to present-day Montreal.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-Miquelon_63-0" style="line-height:1em;">[63]  The 1666 census of New France was conducted byFrance's intendant, Jean Talon, in the winter of 1665–1666. The census showed a population count of 3,215Acadians and habitants in the administrative districts of Acadia and Canada (New France).<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-Talon_64-0" style="line-height:1em;">[64]  The census also revealed a great difference in the number of men at 2,034 versus 1,181 women.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-Histories_65-0" style="line-height:1em;">[65] The English, lead by Sir Humphrey Gilbert, had claimed St. John's, Newfoundland in 1583 as the first North American English colony by royal prerogative of Queen Elizabeth I.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-DCgil_56-0" style="line-height:1em;">[56]  The English would establish additional colonies in Cupids and Ferryland, Newfoundland beginning in 1610 and soon after founded the Thirteen Coloniesto the south.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-hornsby_57-0" style="line-height:1em;">[57]  On the September 29, 1621, a charter for the foundation of a New World Scottish colony was granted by James VI of Scotland to Sir William Alexander.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-Michael_58-0" style="line-height:1em;">[58]  In 1622, the first settlers left Scotland. They initially failed and permanent Nova Scotian settlements were not firmly established until 1629 during the end of the Anglo-French War.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-Michael_58-1" style="line-height:1em;">[58]  These colonies did not last long: in 1631, under Charles I of England, the Treaty of Suza was signed, ending the war and returning Nova Scotia to the French.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-59" style="line-height:1em;">[59]  New France was not fully restored to French rule until the 1632 Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-60" style="line-height:1em;">[60]  This led to new French immigrants and the founding of Trois-Rivières in 1634, the second permanent settlement in New France.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-61" style="line-height:1em;">[61]

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.1875px;font-family:sans-serif;">Most of the people were farmers, and the rate of population growth was very high. The women had about 30% more children than comparable women who remained in France. Landry says, "Canadians had an exceptional diet for their time. This was due to the natural abundance of meat, fish, and pure water; the good food conservation conditions during the winter; and an adequate wheat supply in most years."

Danish colonization
<p style="line-height:19.1875px;font-family:sans-serif;">In 1721, Lutheran minister Hans Egede and his Bergen Greenland Company received a royal charter from King Frederick IV granting them broad authority over Greenland and commissioning them to seek out the old Norse colony and spread the Reformation among its inhabitants, who were presumed to still be Catholic or to have reverted to paganism. Egede led three boats to Baal's River (the modern Nuup Kangerlua) and established Hope Colony on Kangeq with his family and a few dozen colonists. Finding no Norse survivors, he started a mission among the Inuit and baptized the first child converts in 1724. Meanwhile, his settlers had been ravaged by scurvy and the Dutch attacked and burnt a whaling station erected on Nipisat. The Bergen company went bankrupt in 1727. King Frederick attempted to replace it with a royal colony by sending Major Claus Paarss and several dozen soldiers and convicts to erect a fortress for the colony in 1728 but this new settlement of Good Hope (Godthaab) failed due to mutiny<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-Cranny_4-0" style="line-height:1em;">[4]  and scurvy and the retinue was recalled in 1730.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-ole.21_2-1" style="line-height:1em;">[2]

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.1875px;font-family:sans-serif;">Three Moravian missionaries under Matthias Stach arrived in 1733 and began the first of a series of mission stations at Neu-Herrnhut(which later developed into the modern capital Nuuk), but a returning Inuit child brought smallpox from Denmark and a large proportion of the native population died over the next few years. The death of Egede's wife prompted his return to Denmark, with his son Paul left in charge of the settlement. The Danish merchant Jacob Severin was granted authority over the colony from 1734 to 1740, which was extended until 1749, assisted by royal patronage and Moravian sponsorship of some of Egede's missionary activities. He was succeeded by the General Trade Company (Det almindelige Handelskompagni). Both were granted armed ships and full monopolies over trade around their settlements, to prevent better-armed, lower-priced, and better-quality Dutch goods from bankrupting the enterprise.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-ole.21_2-2" style="line-height:1em;">[2]  The ranged nature of their monopolies spurred them to found new settlements: Christianshaab (1734), Jakobshavn (1741), Frederikshaab (1742), Claushavn (1752), Fiskenæsset (1754),Ritenbenck and Egedesminde and Sukkertoppen (1755), Holsteinsborg (1756), Umanak (1758), Upernavik (1771), Godhavn (1773), and Julianehaab (1774). The GTC folded in 1774 and was replaced by the Royal Greenland Trade Department (Kongelige Grønlandske Handel, KGH), which recognized that the island possessed neither fertile farmland nor easily-accessible mineral wealth and that income would be dependent on the whaling and seal-hunting trade with the native Inuit. An early attempt to man a government-run Scandinavian whaling fleet was aborted and instead the KGH's Instruction of 1782 banned further attempts to urbanize the Inuit or alter their traditional way of life through improved employment opportunities or sales of luxury items.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-ole.21_2-3" style="line-height:1em;">[2]  One effect was that construction of new settlements was effectively suspended after Nennortalik (1797) for a century until the establishment of Ammassalik on the eastern shore in 1894. The 1782 Instructions also established separate governing councils for North and South Greenland.

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.1875px;font-family:sans-serif;">Danish intervention on France's behalf during the Napoleonic Wars ended with the severing of Denmark-Norway under the 1814 Treaty of Kiel, which granted mainland Norway toSweden but retained the former Norwegian colonies under the Danish crown. Repeated inquiries into the Greenlandic trade and the end of absolutism in Denmark did not end the KGH's monopolies.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-ole.21_2-4" style="line-height:1em;">[2]  In 1857, the administrators did set up parsissaets, local councils conducted in Kalaallisut with minor control over spending decisions at each station. In 1912, Royal Greenland's independence was ended and its operations were folded into the Ministry of the Interior.

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.1875px;font-family:sans-serif;">Arctic exploration placed claims of Danish sovereignty over the whole of Greenland in doubt: the principle of terra nullius seemed to leave huge tracts of the territory available to new entrants. Denmark responded by slowly acquiring diplomatic agreements recognizing its sovereignty from the parties involved, beginning with the treaty selling the Danish Virgin Islands to the United States in 1917.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-icecave_5-0" style="line-height:1em;">[5]  Norway – which had become independent of Sweden in 1905 – eventually protested and claimed Erik the Red's Land in eastern Greenland in 1931. The Permanent Court of International Justice ruled against Norway two years later,<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-6" style="line-height:1em;">[6]  albeit on questionable grounds.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-icecave_5-1" style="line-height:1em;">[5]

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.1875px;font-family:sans-serif;">The fall of Denmark in early 1940 increased the power and importance of the governors greatly, but by 1941 the island had become an American protectorate. Following the war, the former corporate policy was discontinued: the North and South Greenland colonies were united and the RGTD's monopoly officially ended.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-7" style="line-height:1em;">[7]  In 1953, Greenland's colonial status was ended and it was made an integral part of the Kingdom of Denmark with representation in the Folketing. In 1979, the Folketing granted the island home rule and, in 2009, all matters other than defense and foreign policy were transferred to the regional parliament.

American imperialism
The United States became a colonial power, and colonized much of Central North America, Mexico ceded California, New Mexico, and Arizona to the United States, ending the Mexican-American War, the Republic of Texas was annexed by the United States, later on, Alaska was purchased by the United States, and Alaska was also colonized by the United States, later on, the United States annexed Hawaii, and overthrew the Monarch of Hawaii, and Hawaii was colonized by the United States, all of these former U.S. Colonies in North America are now U.S. States, and the United States was the only North American country to be a colonial power.