Network society
is the expression coined in 1991 related to the social, political,
economic and cultural changes caused by the spread of networked, digital
information and communications technologies. The intellectual origins
of the idea can be traced back to the work of early social theorists
such as Georg Simmel
who analyzed the effect of modernization and industrial capitalism on
complex patterns of affiliation, organization, production and
experience.
Origins
The term network society was coined by Jan van Dijk in his 1991 Dutch book De Netwerkmaatschappij (The Network Society) and by Manuel Castells in The Rise of the Network Society (1996), the first part of his trilogy The Information Age. In 1978 James Martin used the related term 'The Wired Society' indicating a society that is connected by mass- and telecommunication networks.
Van Dijk defines the network society as a society in which a
combination of social and media networks shapes its prime mode of
organization and most important structures at all levels (individual,
organizational and societal). He compares this type of society to a mass
society that is shaped by groups, organizations and communities
('masses') organized in physical co-presence.
Barry Wellman, Hiltz and Turoff
Wellman studied the network society as a sociologist at the University of Toronto.
His first formal work was in 1973, "The Network City" with a more
comprehensive theoretical statement in 1988. Since his 1979 "The
Community Question", Wellman has argued that societies at any scale are
best seen as networks (and "networks of networks") rather than as
bounded groups in hierarchical structures. More recently, Wellman has contributed to the theory of social network
analysis with an emphasis on individualized networks, also known as
"networked individualism".
In his studies, Wellman focuses on three main points of the network
society: community, work and organizations. He states that with recent
technological advances an individual's community can be socially and
spatially diversified. Organizations can also benefit from the expansion
of networks in that having ties with members of different organizations
can help with specific issues.
In 1978, Roxanne Hiltz and Murray Turoff's The Network Nation
explicitly built on Wellman's community analysis, taking the book's
title from Craven and Wellman's "The Network City". The book argued that
computer supported communication could transform society. It was
remarkably prescient, as it was written well before the advent of the Internet. Turoff and Hiltz were the progenitors of an early computer supported communication system, called EIES.
Manuel Castells
According to Castells, networks constitute the new social morphology of our societies. When interviewed by Harry Kreisler
from the University of California Berkeley, Castells said "...the
definition, if you wish, in concrete terms of a network society is a
society where the key social structures and activities are organized
around electronically processed information networks. So it's not just
about networks or social networks,
because social networks have been very old forms of social
organization. It's about social networks which process and manage
information and are using micro-electronic based technologies."
The diffusion of a networking logic substantially modifies the
operation and outcomes in processes of production, experience, power,
and culture.
For Castells, networks have become the basic units of modern society.
Van Dijk does not go that far; for him these units still are
individuals, groups, organizations and communities, though they may
increasingly be linked by networks.
The network society goes further than the information society
that is often proclaimed. Castells argues that it is not purely the
technology that defines modern societies, but also cultural, economic
and political factors that make up the network society. Influences such
as religion, cultural upbringing, political organizations, and social
status all shape the network society. Societies are shaped by these
factors in many ways. These influences can either raise or hinder these
societies. For van Dijk, information forms the substance of contemporary
society, while networks shape the organizational forms and
infrastructures of this society.
The space of flows
plays a central role in Castells' vision of the network society. It is a
network of communications, defined by hubs where these networks
crisscross. Élites in cities are not attached to a particular locality but to the space of flows.
Castells puts great importance on the networks and argues that
the real power is to be found within the networks rather than confined
in global cities. This contrasts with other theorists who rank cities hierarchically.
Jan van Dijk
Van
Dijk has defined the idea "network society" as a form of society
increasingly organizing its relationships in media networks gradually
replacing or complementing the social networks of face-to-face
communication. Personal and social-network communication is supported by
digital technology. This means that social and media networks are
shaping the prime mode of organization and most important structures of
modern society.
Van Dijk's The Network Society describes what the network
society is and what it might be like in the future. The first
conclusion of this book is that modern society is in a process of
becoming a network society. This means that on the internet
interpersonal, organizational, and mass communication come together.
People become linked to one another and have access to information and
communication with one another constantly. Using the internet brings the
“whole world” into homes and work places. Also, when media like the
internet becomes even more advanced it will gradually appear as “normal
media” in the first decade of the 21st century as it becomes used by
larger sections of the population and by vested interests in the
economy, politics and culture. It asserts that paper means of
communication will become out of date, with newspapers and letters
becoming ancient forms for spreading information.
Interaction with new media
New media
is the concept that new methods of communicating in the digital world
allow smaller groups of people to congregate online and share, sell and
swap goods and information. It also allows more people to have a voice
in their community and in the world in general. The most important
structural characteristic of new media is the integration of
telecommunications technologies. The second structural new media
characteristic of the current communications revolution is the rise of
interactive media. Interactivity is a sequence of action and reaction.
The downloaded link or the supply side of web sites, interactive
television and computer programs is much wider that the uplink or
retrieval made by their users. The third, technical, characteristic of
new media is digital code. The new media are defined by all three
characteristics simultaneously: “they are media which are both
integrated and interactive and also use digital code at the turn of the
20th and 21st centuries.”
The network society is a social structure based on networks
operated by information and communication technologies based on
microelectronics and digital computer networks that generate, process
and distribute information via the nodes of the networks. The network
society can be defined as a social formation with an infrastructure of
social and media networks enabling its prime mode of organization at all
levels (individual, group, organizational and societal). Increasingly,
these networks link all units or parts of this formation. In western
societies, the individual linked by networks is becoming the basic unit
of the network society. In eastern societies, this might still be the
group (family, community, work team) linked by networks. In the
contemporary process of individualisation, the basic unit of the network
society has become the individual who is linked by networks. This is
caused by simultaneous scale extension (nationalisation and
internationalisation) and scale reduction (smaller living and working
environments)
Other kinds of communities arise. Daily living and working environments
are getting smaller and more heterogenous, while the range of the
division of labour, interpersonal communications and mass media extends.
So, the scale of the network society is both extended and reduced as
compared to the mass society. The scope of the network society is both
global and local, sometimes indicated as “glocal”. The organization of
its components (individuals, groups, organizations) is no longer tied to
particular times and places. Aided by information and communication
technology, these coordinates of existence can be transcended to create
virtual times and places and to simultaneously act, perceive and think
in global and local terms.
A network can be defined as a collection of links between
elements of a unit. The elements are called nodes, units are often
called systems. The smallest number of elements is three and the
smallest number of links is two. A single link of two elements is called
relationship. Networks are mode of organization of complex systems in
nature and society. They are relatively complicated ways of organizing
matter and living systems. The characteristic of units and elements,
among them human individuals, and the way they are made up, are not the
focus of attention. So, networks occur both in complicated matter and in
living systems at all levels. Networks are selective according to their
specific programs, because they can simultaneously communicate and
incommunicate, the network society diffuses in the entire world, but
does not include all people. In fact, in this early 21st century, it
excludes most of humankind, although all of humankind is affected by its
logic and by the power relationships that interact in the global
networks of social organization.
Networks are not new. What is new is the microelectronics-based,
networking technologies that provide new capabilities to an old form of
social organization: networks. Networks throughout history had a major
problem vis-a-vis other forms of social organization. Thus, in the
historical record, networks were the domains of the private life.
Digital networking technologies enable networks to overcome their
historical limits. They can, at the same time, be flexible and adaptive
thanks to their capacity to decentralize performance along a network of
autonomous components, while still being able to coordinate all this
decentralized activity on a shared purpose of decision making. Networks
are not determined by the industrial technologies but unthinkable
without these technologies. In the early years of the 21st century, the
network society is not the emerging social structure of the Information
Age: it already configures the nucleus of our societies.
There is an explosion of horizontal networks of communication,
quite independent from media business and governments, that allows the
emergence of what can be called self-directed mass communication. It is
mass communication because it is diffused throughout the Internet, so it
potentially reaches the whole planet. It is self-directed because it is
often initiated by individuals or groups by themselves bypassing the
media system. The explosion of blogs, vlogs, podding, streaming and
other forms of interactive, computer to computer communication set up a
new system of global, horizontal communication Networks that, for the
first time in history, allow people to communicate with each other
without going through the channels set up by the institutions of society
for socialized communication.
The network society constitutes socialized communication beyond
the mass media system that characterized the industrial society. But it
does not represent the world of freedom sung by the libertarian
ideology of Internet prophets. It is made up both of an oligopolistic
business multimedia system controlling an increasingly inclusive
hypertext, and of an explosion of horizontal Networks of autonomous
local/global communication-and, naturally, of the interaction between
the two systems in a complex pattern of connections and disconnections
in different contexts. The network society is also manifested in the
transformation of sociability. Yet, what we observe is not the fading
away of face-to-face interaction or the increasing isolation of people
in front of their computers. We know, from studies in different
societies, that are most instances Internet users are more social have
more friends and contacts and re more socially politically active than
non users. Moreover, the more they use the Internet, the more they also
engage in face to-face interaction in all domains of their lives.
Similarly, new forms of wireless communication, from mobile phone voice
communication to SMSs, WiFi and WiMax, substantially increase
sociability, particularly for the younger groups of the population. The
network society is a hyper social society, not a society of isolation.
People, by and large, do not face their identity in the Internet, except
for some teenagers experimenting with their lives. People fold the
technology into their lives, link up virtual reality and real
virtuality; they live in various technological forms of communication,
articulating them as they need it. However, there is a major change in
sociability, not a consequence of Internet or new communication
technologies but a change that is fully supported by the logic embedded
in the communication networks. This is the emergence of networked
individualism, as social structure and historical evolution induce the
emergence of individualism as the dominant culture of our societies, and
the new communication Technologies perfectly fit into the mode of
building sociability along self-selected communication networks, on or
off depending on the needs and moods of each individual. So, the network
society is a society of networked individuals.
What results from this evolution is that the culture of the
network society is largely shaped by the messages exchanged in the
composite electronic hypertext made by the technologically linked
networks of different communication modes. In the network society,
virtuality is the foundation of reality through the new forms of
socialized communication. Society shapes technology according to the
needs, values and interests of people who use the technology.
Furthermore, information and communication technologies are particularly
sensitive to the effects of social uses on technology itself. The
history of the internet provides ample evidence that the users,
particularly the first thousands of users, were, to a large extent, the
producers of the technology. However, technology is a necessary, albeit
not sufficient condition for the emergence of a new form of social
organization based on networking, that is on the diffusion of networking
in all realms of activity on the basis of digital communication
networks.
Modern Examples
The
concepts described by Jan van Dijk, Barry Wellman, Hiltz and Turoff,
and Manuel Castells are embodied in much digital technology. Social
networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter,
instant messaging and email are prime examples of the Network Society
at work. These web services allow people all over the world to
communicate through digital means without face-to-face contact. This
demonstrates how the ideas of society changing will affect the persons
we communicate over time.
Network society does not have any confinements and has found its way to the global scale.
Network society is developed in modern society that allows for a great
deal of information to be traded to help improve information and
communication technologies.
Having this luxury of easier communication also has consequences. This
allows for globalization to take place. Having more and more people
joining the online society and learning about different techniques with
the world wide web. This benefits users who have access to the internet,
to stay connected at all times with any topic the user wants.
Individuals without internet may be affected because they are not
directly connected into this society. People always have an option to
find public space with computers with internet. This allows a user to
keep up with the ever changing system. Network society is constantly
changing the “cultural production in a hyper-connected world.”
Social Structures revolve around the relationship of the “production/consumption, power, and experience.” These conclusively create a culture, which continues to sustain by getting new information constantly.
Our society system was a mass media system where it was a more general
place for information. Now the system is more individualized and custom
system for users making the internet more personal. This makes messages
to the audience more inclusive sent into society. Ultimately allowing
more sources to be included to better communication.
Network society is seen as a global system that helps with
globalization. This is beneficial to the people who have access to the
internet to get this media. The negative to this is the people without
access do not get this sense of the network society. These networks,
that have now been digitized, are more efficient of connecting people.
Everything we know now can be put into a computer and processed. Users
put messages online for others to read and learn about. This allows
people to gain knowledge faster and more efficiently. Networked society
allows for people to connect to each other quicker and to engage more
actively. This networks go away from having a central theme, but still
has a focus in what it is there to accomplish.
Genocide denial is the attempt to deny or minimize the scale and severity of an instance of genocide. Denial is an integral part of genocide and includes the secret planning of genocide, propaganda while the genocide is going on, and destruction of evidence of mass killings. According to genocide researcher Gregory Stanton, denial "is among the surest indicators of further genocidal massacres".
Some scholars define denial as the final stage of a genocidal process. Richard G. Hovannisian
states, "Complete annihilation of a people requires the banishment of
recollection and suffocation of remembrance. Falsification, deception
and half-truths reduce what was, to what might have been or perhaps what
was not at all."
According to Taner Akçam,
"the practice of "denialism" in regard to mass atrocities is usually
thought of as a simple denial of the facts, but this is not true.
Rather, it is in that nebulous territory between facts and truth where
such denialism germinates."
Denial is the final fortress of
those who commit genocide and other mass crimes. Perpetrators hide the
truth to avoid accountability and protect the political and economic
advantages they sought to gain by mass killings and theft of the
victims' property, and to cement the new reality by manufacturing an
alternative history. Recent studies have established that such denial
not only damages the victims and their destroyed communities, it
promises a future based on lies, sowing the seeds of future conflict,
repression and suffering.
Motives and strategies
Genocide scholar Adam Jones proposes a framework for genocide denial that consists of the following motives and strategies:
"Hardly anybody died." When the genocides lie far in the past, denial is easier.
“It wasn’t intentional.” Disease and famine-causing conditions such
as forced labor, concentration camps and slavery (even though they may
be manufactured by the perpetrator) may be blamed for casualties.
“There weren’t that many people to begin with.” Minimizing the
casualties of the victims, whilst the criminals destroy/hide the
evidence.
"It was self defense." The killing of civilians, especially able
bodied males is rationalized in preemptive attack, as they are accused
of plotting against the perpetrators. The perpetrator may exterminate
witnesses and relatives of the victims.
“There was no central direction.” Perpetrators can use militias,
paramilitaries, mercenaries, or death squads to avoid being seen as
directly participating.
“It wasn’t/isn’t ‘genocide,’ because …” They may enter definitional or rhetorical argumentation.
“We would never do that.” Self-image cannot be questioned: the
perpetrator sees itself as benevolent by definition. Evidence doesn´t
matter.
“We are the real victims.” They deflect attention to their own casualties/losses, without historical context.
By individuals and non-governmental organizations
In his 1984 book The Other Side: The Secret Relationship Between Nazism and Zionism Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas argued that only "a few hundred thousand" Jews were murdered in the Holocaust, the Jews brought the Holocaust upon themselves because of their behavior, and Zionists
had collaborated with the Nazis in an attempt to send more Jews to
Israel. In a 2006 interview, without retracting these specific claims,
he stated: "The Holocaust was a terrible, unforgivable crime against the
Jewish nation, a crime against humanity that cannot be accepted by humankind."
In February 2006 David Irving was imprisoned in Austria for Holocaust denial; he served 13 months in prison before being released on probation.
David Campbell has written of the now defunct British magazine Living Marxism
that "LM's intentions are clear from the way they have sought to
publicize accounts of contemporary atrocities which suggest they were
certainly not genocidal (as in the case of Rwanda), and perhaps did not even occur (as in the case of the murder of nearly 8,000 at Srebrenica)." Chris McGreal writing in The Guardian on 20 March 2000 stated that Fiona Fox writing under a pseudonym had contributed an article to Living Marxism which was part of a campaign by Living Marxism that denied that the event which occurred in Rwanda was a genocide.
Scott Jaschik has stated that Justin McCarthy, is one of two scholars "most active on promoting the view that no Armenian genocide took place". He was one of four scholars who participated in a controversial debate hosted by PBS about the genocide.
Darko Trifunovic is the author of the Report about Case Srebrenica, which was commissioned by the government of the Republika Srpska. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia
(ICTY) reviewed the report and concluded that it "represented one of
the worst examples of revisionism, in relation to the mass executions of
Bosniaks committed in Srebrenica in July 1995".
After the report was published on 3 September 2002, it provoked outrage
and condemnation by a wide variety of Balkans and international
figures, individuals, and organizations.
Patrick Karuretwa stated in the Harvard Law Record that in 2007 the Canadian politician Robin Philpot "attracted intense media attention for repeatedly denying the 1994 genocide of the Tutsis"
On 21 April 2016 a full-page ad appeared in The Wall Street Journal and Chicago Tribune that directed readers to Fact Check Armenia, a genocide denial website sponsored by the Turkish lobby in the US. When confronted about the ad a Wall Street Journal
spokesperson stated, "We accept a wide range of advertisements,
including those with provocative viewpoints. While we review ad copy for
issues of taste, the varied and divergent views expressed belong to the
advertisers."
The government of Pakistan
explicitly denied that there was genocide. By their refusal to
characterise the mass-killings as genocide or to condemn and restrain
the Pakistani government, the US and Chinese governments implied that
they did not consider it so.
The genocide is still too little
known about in the West. It is, moreover, the subject of shocking
degrees of denial among partisan polemicists and manipulative
historians.
Denial of the Srebrenica genocide
takes many forms [in Serbia]. The methods range from the brutal to the
deceitful. Denial is present most strongly in political discourse, in
the media, in the sphere of law, and in the educational system.
The government of the Republic of Turkey has long denied that the Armenian genocide was a genocide.
According to Akçam, "Turkish denialism [of the genocide] is perhaps the
most successful example of how the well-organised, deliberate, and
systematic spreading of falsehoods can play an important role in the
field of public debate" and that "fact-based truths have been
discredited and relegated to the status of mere opinion".
The government of the United States has been accused of denial of the genocide of its indigenous peoples.
Law
The European Commission proposed a European Union–wide
anti-racism law in 2001, which included an offence of genocide denial,
but European Union states failed to agree on the balance between
prohibiting racism and freedom of expression. After six years of
debating, a watered down compromise was reached in 2007 which gave EU
states freedom to implement the legislation as they saw fit.
Effects
Genocide denial has an impact on both victim and perpetrator groups.
Denial of a genocide affects relations between the victim and
perpetrator groups or their respective countries, prevents personal
victims of the genocide from seeking closure, and adversely affects
political decisions on both sides. It can cause fear in the victims to
express their cultural identity, retaliation from both parties, and
hamper the democratic development of societies.
Effects on personal victims of the genocide
While confrontation of the committed atrocities can be a tough
process in which the victim feels humiliated again by reliving the
traumatic past, it still has a benign therapeutic effect, helping both victim and perpetrator groups to come to terms with the past.
From a therapeutic point of view, letting the victim confront the past
atrocity and its related painful memories is one way to reach a closure
and to understand that the harm has occurred in the past.
This also helps the memories to enter the shared narrative of the
society, thereby becoming a common ground on which the society can make
future decisions on, in political and cultural matters.
Denying recognition, in contrast, has a negative effect, further victimising
the victim which will feel not only wronged by the perpetrator but also
by being denied recognition of the occurred wrongdoing. Denial also has
a pivotal role in shaping the norms of a society since the omission of
any committed errors, and thereby the lack of condemnation and
punishment of the committed wrongs, risks normalising similar actions,
increasing the society's tolerance for future occurrences of similar
errors.
Societal effects of genocide denial
Bhargava notes that "[m]ost calls to forget disguise the attempt
to prevent victims from publicly remembering in the fear that 'there is a
dragon living on the patio and we better not provoke it.'"
In other words, while societally "forgetting" an atrocity can on the
surface be beneficial to the harmony of society, it further victimises
the target group for fear of future, similar action, and is directly
detrimental to the sociocultural development of the victim group.
On the other hand, there are cases where "forgetting" atrocities
is the most politically expedient or stable option. This is found in
some states which have recently come out of minority rule, where the
perpetrator goup still controls most strategic resources and
institutions, such as South Africa.
This was, among others, one of the main reasons for granting amnesty
in exchange for confessing to committed errors during the transitional
period in South Africa. However, the society at large and the victims in
particular will perceive this kind of trade-offs as "morally suspect," and may question its sustainability. Thus, a common refrain in regard to the Final Report (1998) by South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission was "We've heard the truth. There is even talk about reconciliation. But where's the justice?"
Effects on democratic development
The denial has thereby a direct negative impact on the
development of a society, often by undermining its laws and the issue of
justice, but also the level of democracy itself.
If democracy is meant to be built on the rule of law and justice,
upheld and safeguarded by state institutions, then surely the omission
of legal consequences and justice would potentially undermine the
democracy.
What is more dangerous from a historical point of view is that such a
default would imply the subsequent loss of the meaning of these events
to future generations, a loss which is resembled to "losing a moral
compass." The society becomes susceptible to similar wrongdoings in the absence of proper handling of preceding occasions.
Nonetheless, denial, especially immediately after the committed
wrongdoings, is rather the rule than the exception and naturally almost
exclusively done by the perpetrator to escape responsibility.
Implicit denial of genocide
While some societies or governments openly deny genocide, in some other cases, e.g. in the case of the "Comfort women"
and the role of the Japanese State, the denial is more implicit. This
was evident in how an overwhelmingly majority of the surviving victims
refused to accept a monetary compensation since the Japanese government
still refused to admit its own responsibility (the monetary compensation
was paid through a private fund rather than by the state, a decision
perceived by the victims about state's refusal to assume any direct
responsibility).
This can have the same effects on societies as outright denial. For
example, atrocity denial and self-victimisation in Japanese historical
textbooks has caused much diplomatic tension between Japan and
neighbouring victim states, such as Korea and China, and bolstered
domestic conservative or nationalist forces.
Turkey and Armenian genocide denial
The Turkish state's Armenian genocide denial
has had far-reaching effects on the Turkish society throughout its
history in regard to both ethnic minorities, especially the Kurds, but
political opposition in general.
The denial also affects Turks, in that there is a lack of recognition
of Turks and Ottoman officials who attempted to stop the genocide. This
lack of recognition of the various actors at play in Turkey could
result in a rather homogeneous perception of the nation in question,
thus making Armenians (but also third parties) project the perpetrating
role onto the entire Turkish society and nation, causing further racial
strife and aggravating the prospects of future reconciliation. For example, Armenian terrorist groups (e.g. ASALA and JCAG) committed terrorist acts during 1970's and 1980's as a direct result of the Turkish state denial of the genocide.
The Norse exploration of North America began in the late 10th century, when Norsemen explored areas of the North Atlantic colonizing Greenland and creating a short term settlement near the northern tip of Newfoundland. This is known now as L'Anse aux Meadows where the remains of buildings were found in 1960 dating to approximately 1,000 years ago. This discovery helped reignite archaeological exploration for the Norse in the North Atlantic. This single settlement, located on the island of Newfoundland and not on the North American mainland, was abruptly abandoned.
The Norse settlements on Greenland lasted for almost 500 years.
L'Anse aux Meadows, the only confirmed Norse site in present-day Canada,
was small and did not last as long. Other such Norse voyages are likely
to have occurred for some time, but there is no evidence of any Norse
settlement on mainland North America lasting beyond the 11th century.
The Norse exploration of North America has been subject to numerous controversies concerning the European exploration and settlement of North America.
Pseudoscientific and pseudo-historical theories have emerged since the
public acknowledgment of these Norse expeditions and settlements.
A map of the Eastern Settlement on Greenland, covering approximately the modern municipality of Kujalleq. Eiriksfjord (Erik's fjord) and his farm Brattahlid are shown, as is the location of the bishopric at Gardar.
According to the Sagas of Icelanders, Norsemen from Iceland
first settled Greenland in the 980s. There is no special reason to
doubt the authority of the information that the sagas supply regarding
the very beginning of the settlement, but they cannot be treated as
primary evidence for the history of Norse Greenland because they embody
the literary preoccupations of writers and audiences in medieval Iceland
that are not always reliable.
Erik the Red (Old Norse: Eiríkr rauði), having been banished from Iceland for manslaughter, explored the uninhabited southwestern coast of Greenland during the three years of his banishment.
He made plans to entice settlers to the area, naming it Greenland on
the assumption that "people would be more eager to go there because the
land had a good name". The inner reaches of one long fjord, named Eiriksfjord after him, was where he eventually established his estate Brattahlid. He issued tracts of land to his followers.
Map showing the extent of the Norse world
Norse Greenland consisted of two settlements. The Eastern was at the southwestern tip of Greenland, while the Western Settlement was about 500 km up the west coast, inland from present-day Nuuk. A smaller settlement near the Eastern Settlement is sometimes considered the Middle Settlement. The combined population was around 2,000–3,000. At least 400 farms have been identified by archaeologists. Norse Greenland had a bishopric (at Garðar) and exported walrus ivory, furs, rope, sheep, whale and seal blubber, live animals such as polar bears, supposed "unicorn horns" (in reality narwhal tusks),
and cattle hides. In 1126, the population requested a bishop
(headquartered at Garðar), and in 1261, they accepted the overlordship
of the Norwegian king. They continued to have their own law and became
almost completely politically independent after 1349, the time of the Black Death. In 1380, the Kingdom of Norway entered into a personal union with the Kingdom of Denmark.
Western trade and decline
There is evidence of Norse trade with the natives (called the Skræling by the Norse). The Norse would have encountered both Native Americans (the Beothuk, related to the Algonquin) and the Thule, the ancestors of the Inuit. The Dorset
had withdrawn from Greenland before the Norse settlement of the island.
Items such as comb fragments, pieces of iron cooking utensils and
chisels, chess pieces, ship rivets,
carpenter's planes, and oaken ship fragments used in Inuit boats have
been found far beyond the traditional range of Norse colonization. A
small ivory statue that appears to represent a European has also been found among the ruins of an Inuit community house.
Map showing the expansion of the Thule people (900 to 1500)
The settlements began to decline in the 14th century. The Western
Settlement was abandoned around 1350, and the last bishop at Garðar died
in 1377.
After a marriage was recorded in 1408, no written records mention the
settlers. It is probable that the Eastern Settlement was defunct by the
late 15th century. The most recent radiocarbon date found in Norse settlements as of 2002 was 1430 (±15 years). Several theories have been advanced to explain the decline.
The Little Ice Age
of this period would have made travel between Greenland and Europe, as
well as farming, more difficult; although seal and other hunting
provided a healthy diet, there was more prestige in cattle farming, and
there was increased availability of farms in Scandinavian countries
depopulated by famine and plague epidemics. In addition, Greenlandic ivory may have been supplanted in European markets by cheaper ivory from Africa. Despite the loss of contact with the Greenlanders, the Norwegian-Danish crown continued to consider Greenland a possession.
Not knowing whether the old Norse civilization remained in Greenland or not—and worried that if it did, it would still be Catholic 200 years after the Scandinavian homelands had experienced the Reformation—a joint merchant-clerical expedition led by the Norwegian missionary Hans Egede was sent to Greenland in 1721. Though this expedition found no surviving Europeans, it marked the beginning of Denmark's re-assertion of sovereignty over the island.
Climate and Norse Greenland
Norse
Greenlanders were limited to scattered fjords on the island that
provided a spot for their animals (such as cattle, sheep, goats, dogs,
and cats) to be kept and farms to be established. In these fjords, the farms depended upon stables (byres) to host their livestock in the winter, and routinely culled their herds so that they could survive the season.
The coming warmer seasons meant that livestock were taken from their
byres to pasture, the most fertile being controlled by the most powerful
farms and the church.
What was produced by livestock and farming was supplemented with
subsistence hunting of mainly seal and caribou as well as walrus for
trade. The Norse mainly relied on the Nordrsetur hunt, a communal hunt of migratory harp seals that would take place during spring.
Trade was highly important to the Greenland Norse and they relied
on imports of lumber due to the barrenness of Greenland. In turn they
exported goods such as walrus ivory and hide, live polar bears, and
narwhal tusks.
Ultimately these setups were vulnerable as they relied on migratory
patterns created by climate as well as the viability of the few fjords
on the island. A portion of the time the Greenland settlements existed was during the Little Ice Age and the climate was, overall, becoming cooler and more humid.
As climate began to cool and humidity began to increase, this brought
more storms, longer winters and shorter springs, and affected the
migratory patterns of the harp seal.
Pasture space began to dwindle and fodder yields for the winter became
much smaller. This combined with regular herd culling made it hard to
maintain livestock, especially for the poorest of the Greenland Norse. Closer to the Eastern Settlement, temperatures remained stable but a prolonged drought reduced fodder production. In spring, the voyages to where migratory harp seals could be found became more dangerous due to more frequent storms, and the lower population of harp seals meant that Nordrsetur hunts became less successful, making subsistence hunting extremely difficult.
The strain on resources made trade difficult, and as time went on,
Greenland exports lost value in the European market due to competing
countries and the lack of interest in what was being traded.
Trade in elephant ivory began competing with the trade in walrus tusks
that provided income to Greenland, and there is evidence that walrus
over-hunting, particularly of the males with larger tusks, led to walrus
population declines.
In addition, it seemed that the Norse were unwilling to integrate with the Thule people
of Greenland, either through marriage or culture. There is evidence of
contact as seen through the Thule archaeological record including ivory
depictions of the Norse as well as bronze and steel artifacts. In the
20th century, there was little evidence for Thule artifacts among Norse
habitations,
however it is now known that Thule artifacts are found among Norse
habitations, indicating both groups acquired material goods from
eachother.
The older research posited that it was not climate change alone that
led to Norse decline, but also their unwillingness to adapt. For example, if the Norse had decided to focus their subsistence hunting on the ringed seal
(which could be hunted year round, though individually), and decided to
reduce or do away with their communal hunts, food would have been much
less scarce during the winter season.
Also, had Norse individuals used skin instead of wool to produce their
clothing, they would have been able to fare better nearer to the coast,
and wouldn't have been as confined to the fjords.
However, more recent research has shown that the Norse did try to
adapt in their own ways. Some of these attempts included increased
subsistence hunting. A significant number of bones of marine animals can
be found at the settlements, suggesting increased hunting with the
absence of farmed food. In addition, pollen records show that the Norse
didn't always devastate the small forests and foliage as previously
thought. Instead the Norse ensured that overgrazed or overused sections
were given time to regrow and moved to other areas. Norse farmers also
attempted to adapt. With the increased need for winter fodder and
smaller pastures, they would self-fertilize their lands in an attempt to
keep up with the new demands caused by the changing climate.
However, even with these attempts, climate change was not the only
thing putting pressure on the Greenland Norse. The economy was changing,
and the exports they relied on were losing value.
Current research suggests that the Norse were unable to maintain their
settlements because of economic and climatic change happening at the
same time.
A 2022 study indicates that gravitational effects from a
readvance of the Southern Greenland Ice Sheet caused a relative sea
level rise of "up to ~3.3 m outside the glaciation zone during Viking
settlement, producing shoreline retreat of hundreds of meters. Sea-level
rise was progressive and encompassed the entire Eastern Settlement.
Moreover, pervasive flooding would have forced abandonment of many
coastal sites. These processes likely contributed to the suite of
vulnerabilities that led to Viking abandonment of Greenland. Sea-level
change thus represents an integral, missing element of the Viking
story."
According to the Icelandic sagas—Saga of Erik the Red, plus chapters of the Hauksbók and the Flatey Book—the
Norse started to explore lands to the west of Greenland only a few
years after the Greenland settlements were established. In 985, while
sailing from Iceland to Greenland with a migration fleet consisting of
400–700 settlers and 25 other ships (14 of which completed the journey), a merchant named Bjarni Herjólfsson
was blown off course, and after three days' sailing he sighted land
west of the fleet. Bjarni was only interested in finding his father's
farm, but he described his findings to Leif Erikson who explored the area in more detail and planted a small settlement fifteen years later.
The sagas describe three separate areas that were explored: Helluland, which means "land of the flat stones"; Markland, "the land of forests", definitely of interest to settlers in Greenland where there were few trees; and Vinland,
"the land of wine", found somewhere south of Markland. It was in
Vinland that the settlement described in the sagas was founded.
Markland was first mentioned in the Mediterranean area in 1345 by the Milanese friar Galvaneus Flamma. He probably derived it from oral sources in Genoa.
Using the routes, landmarks, currents,
rocks, and winds that Bjarni had described to him, Leif sailed from
Greenland westward across the Labrador Sea, with a crew of 35—sailing
the same knarr
Bjarni had used to make the voyage. He described Helluland as "level
and wooded, with broad white beaches wherever they went and a gently
sloping shoreline."
Leif and others had wanted his father, Erik the Red, to lead this
expedition and talked him into it. However, as Erik attempted to join
his son Leif on the voyage towards these new lands, he fell off his
horse as it slipped on the wet rocks near the shore; thus he was injured
and stayed behind.
Sometime around AD 1000, Leif spent the winter, probably near Cape Bauld on the northern tip of Newfoundland, where one day his foster father Tyrker was found drunk, on what the saga describes as "wine-berries." Squashberries, gooseberries, and cranberries all grew wild in the area. There are varying explanations for Leif apparently describing fermented berries as "wine."
Leif spent another winter at "Leifsbudir" without conflict, and sailed back to Brattahlíð in Greenland to assume filial duties to his father.
Thorvald's voyage
A couple years later, Leif's brother Thorvald Eiriksson
sailed with a crew of 30 men to Vinland and spent the following winter
at Leif's camp. In the spring, Thorvald attacked nine of the native
people who were sleeping under three skin-covered canoes.
The ninth victim escaped and soon came back to the Norse camp with a
force. Thorvald was killed by an arrow that succeeded in passing through
the barricade.
Although brief hostilities ensued, the Norse explorers stayed another
winter and left the following spring. Subsequently, another of Leif's
brothers, Thorstein, sailed to the New World to retrieve his dead
brother's body, but he died before leaving Greenland.
Summer in the Greenland coast circa year 1000 by Jens Erik Carl Rasmussen (1841–1893)
Karlsefni's expedition
A few years later, Thorfinn Karlsefni, also known as "Thorfinn the Valiant", supplied three ships
with livestock and 160 men and women (although another source sets the
number of settlers at 250). After a cruel winter, he headed south and
landed at Straumfjörð. He later moved to Straumsöy, possibly because the current was stronger there. A sign of peaceful relations between the indigenous peoples and the Norsemen is noted here. The two sides bartered with furs and gray squirrel skins for milk and red cloth, which the natives tied around their heads as a sort of headdress.
There are conflicting stories but one account states that a bull
belonging to Karlsefni came storming out of the wood, so frightening the
natives that they ran to their skin-boats and rowed away. They
returned three days later, in force. The natives used catapults,
hoisting "a large sphere on a pole; it was dark blue in color" and about "the size of a sheep's stomach", which flew over the heads of the men and "made an ugly din when it struck the ground".
The Norsemen retreated. Leif Erikson's half-sister Freydís Eiríksdóttir
was pregnant and unable to keep up with the retreating Norsemen. She
called out to them to stop fleeing from "such pitiful wretches", adding
that if she had weapons, she could do better than that. Freydís seized
the sword belonging to a man who had been killed by the natives. She
pulled one of her breasts out of her bodice and slapped it with the
sword, frightening the natives, who fled.
For centuries it remained unclear whether the Icelandic stories
represented real voyages by the Norse to North America. Although the
idea of Norse voyages to, and a colony in, North America was discussed
by Swiss scholar Paul Henri Mallet in his book Northern Antiquities (English translation 1770), the sagas first gained widespread attention in 1837 when the Danish antiquarian Carl Christian Rafn revived the idea of a Viking presence in North America. North America, by the name Winland, first appeared in written sources in a work by Adam of Bremen from approximately 1075. The most important works about North America and the early Norse activities there, namely the Sagas of Icelanders, were recorded in the 13th and 14th centuries. In 1420, some Inuit captives and their kayaks were taken to Scandinavia. The Norse sites were depicted in the Skálholt Map,
made by an Icelandic teacher in 1570 and depicting part of northeastern
North America and mentioning Helluland, Markland and Vinland.
A reconstruction of Norse buildings at the UNESCO listed L'Anse aux Meadows
site in Newfoundland, Canada. Archaeological evidence demonstrates that
iron working, carpentry, and boat repair were conducted at the site.
Evidence of the Norse west of Greenland came in the 1960s when archaeologist Anne Stine Ingstad and her husband, outdoorsman and author Helge Ingstad, excavated a Norse site at L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland.
They found a bronze, ring-headed pin like those the Norse used to
fasten their cloaks inside the cooking pit of one of the larger
dwellings. A stone oil lamp and a small spindle whorl,
used as the flywheel of a handheld spindle, were found inside another
building. A fragment of a bone needle believed to have been used for
knitting was discovered in the firepit of a third dwelling. A small,
decorated brass fragment, once gilded, was also discovered. Much slag formed as a by-product from the smelting and working of iron was found on the site along with many iron boat nails or rivets.
In 2012 Canadian researchers identified possible signs of Norse outposts in Nanook at Tanfield Valley on Baffin Island, as well as on Nunguvik, Willows Island, and Avayalik. Unusual fabric cordage found on Baffin Island in the 1980s and stored at the Canadian Museum of Civilization
was identified in 1999 as possibly of Norse manufacture; that discovery
led to more comprehensive exploration of the Tanfield Valley
archaeological site for points of contact between Norse Greenlanders and
the indigenous Dorset people.
In 2021 some wood from L'Anse aux Meadows that was chopped by an axe
was dated to 1021, thus providing for the first time a certain date with
regard to the Norse presence at the site.
Pseudohistory
Purported runestones have been found in North America, most famously the Kensington Runestone. These are generally considered forgeries or misinterpretations of Native American petroglyphs. There are many claims of Norse colonization in New England, none well founded.
Gordon Campbell's book Norse America,
published in 2021, develops his thesis that the "fleeting and
ill-documented" idea that Vikings "discovered America" quickly seduced
Americans of northern European Protestant descent, some of whom went on
to deliberately manufacture evidence to support it.
There is no generally accepted evidence of a Norse presence in North
America except for the far east of Canada, with many so-called
discoveries, mostly in the United States, being deliberately falsified
or historically baseless, with the goal to promote a political agenda.
In late 1898 Swedish immigrant Olof Öhman stated that he found this rune in Kensington, Minnesota, while clearing land he had recently acquired. He stated that the rune was lying face down and tangled in various roots near the crest of a small knoll within an area of wetlands. After Olaus J. Breda (1853–1916), professor of Scandinavian Languages and Literature in the Scandinavian Department at the University of Minnesota analyzed the inscriptions, he declared the rune-stone to be a forgery and published a discrediting article in Symra in 1910. Breda also forwarded copies of the inscription to various contemporary Scandinavian linguists and historians, such as Oluf Rygh, Sophus Bugge, Gustav Storm, Magnus Olsen and Adolf Noreen. They "unanimously pronounced the Kensington inscription a fraud and forgery of recent date".
The nineteenth-century Harvard chemist Eben Norton Horsford connected the Charles River Basin to places described in the Norse sagas and elsewhere, notably Norumbega. He published several books on the topic and had plaques, monuments, and statues erected in honor of the Norse. His work received little support from mainstream historians and archeologists at the time, and even less today.
Other nineteenth-century writers, such as Horsford's friend Thomas Gold Appleton, in his A Sheaf of Papers (1875), and George Perkins Marsh, in his The Goths in New England, seized upon such false notions of Viking expansion history also to promote the superiority of white people (as well as to oppose the Catholic Church). Such misuse of Viking history and imagery reemerged in the twentieth century among some groups promoting white supremacy.
During the mid-1960's Yale University announced the acquisition of a map purportedly drawn around 1440 that showed Vinland and a legend concerning Norse voyages to the region.
However certain experts doubted the authenticity of the map, based on
linguistic and cartographic inconsistencies. Chemical analysis of the
map's ink later shed further doubts on its authenticity. Scientific
debate continued until in 2021 the university finally acknowledged that
the Vinland Map is a forgery.
Misattributed archeological findings
Archeological findings in 2015 at Point Rosee, on the southwest coast of Newfoundland, were originally thought to reveal evidence of a turf wall and the roasting of bog iron ore, and therefore a possible 10th century Norse settlement in Canada.
Findings from the 2016 excavation suggest the turf wall and the roasted
bog iron ore discovered in 2015 were the result of natural processes. The possible settlement was initially discovered through satellite imagery in 2014, and archaeologists excavated the area in 2015 and 2016. Birgitta Linderoth Wallace,
one of the leading experts of Norse archaeology in North America and an
expert on the Norse site at L'Anse aux Meadows, is unsure of the
identification of Point Rosee as a Norse site.
Archaeologist Karen Milek was a member of the 2016 Point Rosee
excavation and is a Norse expert. She also expressed doubt that Point
Rosee was a Norse site as there are no good landing sites for their
boats and there are steep cliffs between the shoreline and the
excavation site. In their 8 November 2017, report Sarah Parcak
and Gregory Mumford, co-directors of the excavation, wrote that they
"found no evidence whatsoever for either a Norse presence or human
activity at Point Rosee prior to the historic period" and that "none of the team members, including the Norse specialists, deemed this area as having any traces of human activity."
Duration of Norse contact
Settlements
in continental North America aimed to exploit natural resources such as
furs and in particular lumber, which was in short supply in Greenland.
It is unclear why the short-term settlements did not become permanent,
though it was likely in part because of hostile relations with the
indigenous peoples, referred to as the Skræling by the Norse.
Nevertheless, it appears that sporadic voyages to Markland for forages,
timber, and trade with the locals could have lasted as long as 400
years.
From 985 to 1410, Greenland was in touch with the world. Then silence. In 1492 the Vatican
noted that no news of that country "at the end of the world" had been
received for 80 years, and the bishopric of the colony was offered to a
certain ecclesiastic if he would go and "restore Christianity" there. He
didn't go.
Genetic legacy
Genetic research has found that Inuit
men in Western Greenland carry 40-60% Northwestern European Y-DNA
haplogroups. This is consistent with admixture from the earlier Norse
settlers of Greenland (1000-1200 AD), as well as more recent
colonization of Greenland by modern Scandinavians in the 18th century. According to several studies, there is no evidence of a European female contribution to the mitochondrial lineages of modern Greenlandic Inuit
people; their maternal lineages are nearly completely shared with other
Inuit populations. This implies that European admixture in Greenlandic
people derives primarily from European male ancestors.
With the signing of the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494, Portugal and Spain agreed to divide the Earth in two, with Portugal having dominion over non-Christian lands in the world's eastern half, and Spain over those in the western half. Spanish claims essentially included all of the Americas; however, the Treaty of Tordesillas granted the eastern tip of South America to Portugal, where it established Brazil in the early 1500s. The city of Santo Domingo, in the current-day Dominican Republic, founded in 1498 by Columbus, is credited as the oldest continuously inhabited European-established settlement in the Americas.
By the 1530s, other Western European powers realized they too could benefit from voyages to the Americas, leading to British and French colonializations in the northeast tip of the Americas, including in the present-day United States. Within a century, the Swedish established New Sweden; the Dutch established New Netherland; and Denmark–Norway along with the Swedish and Dutch established colonization of parts of the Caribbean. By the 1700s, Denmark–Norway revived its former colonies in Greenland, and Russia began to explore and claim the Pacific Coast from Alaska to California.
Violent conflicts arose during the beginning of this period as
indigenous peoples fought to preserve their territorial integrity from
increasing European colonizers and from hostile indigenous neighbors who
were equipped with Eurasian technology. Conflict between the various
European empires and the indigenous peoples was a leading dynamic in the
Americas into the 1800s, although some parts of the continent gained
their independence from Europe by then, including the United States, which was established following the victory of [DJS -- ??]
Other regions, including California, Patagonia, the North Western Territory, and the northern Great Plains,
experienced little to no colonization at all until the 1800s. European
contact and colonization had disastrous effects on the indigenous
peoples of the Americas and their societies.
NorseViking explorers are the first known Europeans to set foot on North America. Norse journeys to Greenland and Canada are supported by historical and archaeological evidence.
The Norsemen established a colony in Greenland in the late tenth
century, and lasted until the mid 15th century, with court and
parliament assemblies (þing) taking place at Brattahlíð and a bishop located at Garðar. The remains of a settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland, Canada, were discovered in 1960 and were dated to around the year 1000 (carbon dating estimate 990–1050). L'Anse aux Meadows is the only site widely accepted as evidence of pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact. It was named a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1978. It is also notable for its possible connection with the attempted colony of Vinland, established by Leif Erikson around the same period or, more broadly, with the Norse colonization of the Americas.
Leif Erikson's brother is said to have had the first contact with the
native population of North America which would come to be known as the skrælings. After capturing and killing eight of the natives, they were attacked at their beached ships, which they defended.
Amerigo Vespucci wakes up "America" in Americae Retectio, engraving by the Flemish artist Jan Galle (circa 1615)
While the Norse established some colonies in the north-eastern part
of North America as early as the tenth century, systematic European
colonization began in 1492. A Spanishexpedition sailed west in order to find a new trade route to the Far East, the source of spices, silks, porcelains, and other rich trade goods. Ottoman control of the Silk Road, the traditional route for trade between Europe and Asia, forced European traders to look for alternative routes. The Genoese mariner Christopher Columbus led an expedition to find a route to East Asia, but instead landed in The Bahamas. Columbus encountered the Lucayan people on the island Guanahani (possibly Cat Island), which they had inhabited since the ninth century. In his reports, Columbus exaggerated the quantity of gold in the East Indies, which he called the "New World".
These claims, along with the slaves he brought back, convinced the
monarchy to fund a second voyage. Word of Columbus's exploits spread
quickly, sparking the Western European exploration, conquest, and
colonization of the Americas
Spanish explorers, conquerors, and settlers sought material wealth, prestige, and the spread of Christianity, often summed up in the phrase "gold, glory, and God". The Spanish justified their claims to the New World based on the ideals of the Christian Reconquista of the Iberian Peninsula from the Muslims, completed in 1492.
In the New World, military conquest to incorporate indigenous peoples
into Christendom was considered the "spiritual conquest." In 1493, Pope Alexander VI, the first Spaniard to become Pope, issued a series of Papal Bulls that confirmed Spanish claims to the newly discovered lands.
After the final Reconquista of Iberia, the Treaty of Tordesillas was ratified by the Pope, the two kingdoms of Castile (in a personal union
with other kingdoms of Spain) and Portugal in 1494. The treaty divided
the entire non-European world into two spheres of exploration and
colonization. The longitudinal
boundary cut through the Atlantic Ocean and the eastern part of
present-day Brazil. The countries declared their rights to the land
despite the fact that Indigenous populations had settled from pole to
pole in the hemisphere and was their homeland.
After European contact, the native population of the Americas
plummeted by an estimated 80% (from around 50 million in 1492 to eight
million in 1650), due in part to Old World diseases carried to the New
World, and the conditions that colonization imposed on Indigenous
populations, such as forced labor and removal from homelands and
traditional medicines. Some scholars have argued that this demographic collapse was the result of the first large-scale act of genocidein the modern era.
The silver mountain of Potosí, in what is now Bolivia. It was the source of vast of amounts of silver that transformed the world economy.
For example, the labor and tribute of inhabitants of Hispaniola were granted in encomienda
to Spaniards, a practice established in Spain for conquered Muslims.
Although not technically slavery, it was coerced labor for the benefit
of the Spanish grantees, called encomenderos. Spain had a legal tradition and devised a proclamation known as The Requerimento
to be read to indigenous populations in Spanish, often far from the
field of battle, stating that the indigenous were now subjects of the
Spanish Crown and would be punished if they resisted. When the news of this situation and of the abuse of the institution reached Spain, the New Laws
were passed to regulate and gradually abolish the system in the
Americas, as well as to reiterate the prohibition of enslaving Native
Americans. By the time the new laws were passed, 1542, the Spanish crown
had acknowledged their inability to control and properly ensure
compliance of traditional laws overseas, so they granted to Native
Americans specific protections not even Spaniards had, such as the
prohibition of enslaving them even in the case of crime or war. These
extra protections were an attempt to avoid the proliferation of
irregular claims to slavery. However, as historian Andrés Reséndez
has noted, "this categorical prohibition did not stop generations of
determined conquistadors and colonists from taking Native slaves on a
planetary scale, ... The fact that this other slavery had to be carried
out clandestinely made it even more insidious. It is a tale of good
intentions gone badly astray."
A major event in early Spanish colonization, which had so far yielded paltry returns, was the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire (1519–1521). It was led by Hernán Cortés
and made possible by securing indigenous alliances with the Aztecs'
enemies, mobilizing thousands of warriors against the Aztecs for their
own political reasons. The Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan, became Mexico City, the chief city of the "New Spain". More than an estimated 240,000 Aztecs died during the siege of Tenochtitlan, 100,000 in combat, while 500–1,000 of the Spaniards engaged in the conquest died. The other great conquest was of the Inca Empire (1531–35), led by Francisco Pizarro.
Spanish historical and territorial presence in North America.
During the early period of exploration, conquest, and settlement, c.
1492–1550, the overseas possessions claimed by Spain were only loosely
controlled by the crown. With the conquests of the Aztecs and the Incas,
the New World now commanded the crown's attention. Both Mexico and Peru
had dense, hierarchically organized indigenous populations that could
be incorporated and ruled. Even more importantly, both Mexico and Peru
had large deposits of silver, which became the economic motor of the
Spanish empire and transformed the world economy. In Peru, the singular,
hugely rich silver mine of Potosí was worked by traditional forced indigenous labor drafts, known as the mit'a. In Mexico, silver was found outside the zone of dense indigenous settlement, so that free laborers migrated to the mines in Guanajuato and Zacatecas. The crown established the Council of the Indies in 1524, based in Seville, and issued laws of the Indies to assert its power against the early conquerors. The crown created the viceroyalty of New Spain and the viceroyalty of Peru to tightened crown control over these rich prizes of conquest.
Over this same time frame as Spain, Portugal claimed lands in North America (Canada) and colonized much of eastern South America naming it Santa Cruz and Brazil. On behalf of both the Portuguese and Spanish crowns, cartographer Americo Vespuscio explored the South American east coast, and published his new book Mundus Novus (New World)
in 1502–1503 which disproved the belief that the Americas were the
easternmost part of Asia and confirmed that Columbus had reached a set
of continents previously unheard of to any Europeans. Cartographers still use a Latinized version of his first name, America, for the two continents. In April 1500, Portuguese noble Pedro Álvares Cabral claimed the region of Brazil to Portugal; the effective colonization of Brazil began three decades later with the founding of São Vicente in 1532 and the establishment of the system of captaincies in 1534, which was later replaced by other systems. Others tried to colonize the eastern coasts of present-day Canada and the River Plate in South America. These explorers include João Vaz Corte-Real in Newfoundland; João Fernandes Lavrador, Gaspar and Miguel Corte-Real and João Álvares Fagundes, in Newfoundland, Greenland, Labrador, and Nova Scotia (from 1498 to 1502, and in 1520).
During this time, the Portuguese gradually switched from an initial plan of establishing trading posts to extensive colonization
of what is now Brazil. They imported millions of slaves to run their
plantations. The Portuguese and Spanish royal governments expected to
rule these settlements and collect at least 20% of all treasure found
(the quinto real collected by the Casa de Contratación), in addition to collecting all the taxes they could. By the late 16th century silver from the Americas accounted for one-fifth of the combined total budget of Portugal and Spain. In the 16th century perhaps 240,000 Europeans entered ports in the Americas.
Map of North America (1656–1750). France in blue, Great Britain in pink and purple, and Spain in orange.
France founded colonies in the Americas: in eastern North America (which had not been colonized by Spain north of Florida),
a number of Caribbean islands (which had often already been conquered
by the Spanish or depopulated by disease), and small coastal parts of
South America. French explorers included Giovanni da Verrazzano in 1524; Jacques Cartier (1491–1557), and Samuel de Champlain (1567–1635), who explored the region of Canada he reestablished as New France.
In the French colonial regions, the focus of economy was on sugar plantations in the French West Indies. In Canada the fur trade
with the natives was important. About 16,000 French men and women
became colonizers. The great majority became subsistence farmers along
the St. Lawrence River.
With a favorable disease environment and plenty of land and food, their
numbers grew exponentially to 65,000 by 1760. Their colony was taken
over by Britain in 1760, but social, religious, legal, cultural and
economic changes were few in a society that clung tightly to its
recently formed traditions.
British colonization began with North America almost a century after
Spain. The relatively late arrival meant that the British could use the
other European colonization powers as models for their endeavors. Inspired by the Spanish riches from colonies founded upon the conquest of the Aztecs, Incas, and other large Native American populations in the 16th century, their first attempt at colonization occurred in Roanoke and Newfoundland, although unsuccessful. In 1606, King James I granted a charter with the purpose of discovering the riches at their first permanent settlement in Jamestown, Virginia in 1607. They were sponsored by common stock companies such as the chartered Virginia Company financed by wealthy Englishmen who exaggerated the economic potential of the land.
The Reformation of the 16th century broke the unity of Western Christendom
and led to the formation of numerous new religious sects, which often
faced persecution by governmental authorities. In England, many people
came to question the organization of the Church of England by the end of the 16th century. One of the primary manifestations of this was the Puritan
movement, which sought to purify the existing Church of England of its
residual Catholic rites. The first of these people, known as the Pilgrims, landed on Plymouth Rock in November 1620. Continuous waves of repression led to the migration of about 20,000 Puritans to New England between 1629 and 1642, where they founded multiple colonies. Later in the century, the new Province of Pennsylvania was given to William Penn
in settlement of a debt the king owed his father. Its government was
established by William Penn in about 1682 to become primarily a refuge
for persecuted English Quakers; but others were welcomed. Baptists, German and Swiss Protestants, and Anabaptists
also flocked to Pennsylvania. The lure of cheap land, religious freedom
and the right to improve themselves with their own hand was very
attractive.
Mainly due to discrimination, there was often a separation between
English colonial communities and indigenous communities. The Europeans
viewed the natives as savages who were not worthy of participating in
what they considered civilized society. The native people of North America did not die out nearly as rapidly nor as greatly as those in Central and South America
due in part to their exclusion from British society. The indigenous
people continued to be stripped of their native lands and were pushed
further out west. The English eventually went on to control much of Eastern North America, the Caribbean, and parts of South America. They also gained Florida and Quebec in the French and Indian War.
John Smith
convinced the colonists of Jamestown that searching for gold was not
taking care of their immediate needs for food and shelter. The lack of food security
leading to extremely high mortality rate was quite distressing and
cause for despair among the colonists. To support the colony, numerous supply missions were organized. Tobacco later became a cash crop, with the work of John Rolfe and others, for export and the sustaining economic driver of Virginia and the neighboring colony of Maryland. Plantation agriculture was a primary aspect of the economies of the Southern Colonies and in the British West Indies. They heavily relied on African slave labor to sustain their economic pursuits.
From the beginning of Virginia's settlements in 1587 until the
1680s, the main source of labor and a large portion of the immigrants
were indentured servants looking for new life in the overseas colonies. During the 17th century, indentured servants constituted three-quarters of all European immigrants to the Chesapeake Colonies.
Most of the indentured servants were teenagers from England with poor
economic prospects at home. Their fathers signed the papers that gave
them free passage to America and an unpaid job until they became of age.
They were given food, clothing, housing and taught farming or household
skills. American landowners were in need of laborers and were willing
to pay for a laborer's passage to America if they served them for
several years. By selling passage for five to seven years worth of work,
they could then start on their own in America. Many of the migrants from England died in the first few years.
Economic advantage also prompted the Darien Scheme, an ill-fated venture by the Kingdom of Scotland to settle the Isthmus of Panama
in the late 1690s. The Darien Scheme aimed to control trade through
that part of the world and thereby promote Scotland into a world trading
power. However, it was doomed by poor planning, short provisions, weak
leadership, lack of demand for trade goods, and devastating disease. The failure of the Darien Scheme was one of the factors that led the Kingdom of Scotland into the Act of Union 1707 with the Kingdom of England creating the united Kingdom of Great Britain and giving Scotland commercial access to English, now British, colonies.
New Amsterdam on lower Manhattan island, was captured by the English in 1665, becoming New York.
The Netherlands had been part of the Spanish Empire, due to the inheritance of Charles V of Spain. Many Dutch people converted to Protestantism
and sought their political independence from Spain. They were a
seafaring nation and built a global empire in regions where the
Portuguese had originally explored. In the Dutch Golden Age, it sought colonies. In the Americas, the Dutch conquered the northeast of Brazil in 1630, where the Portuguese had built sugar cane plantations worked by black slave labor from Africa. Prince Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen
became the administrator of the colony (1637–43), building a capital
city and royal palace, fully expecting the Dutch to retain control of
this rich area. As the Dutch had in Europe, it tolerated the presence of
Jews and other religious groups in the colony. After Maurits departed
in 1643, the Dutch West India Company took over the colony, until it was lost to the Portuguese in 1654. The Dutch retained some territory in Dutch Guiana, now Suriname. The Dutch also seized islands in the Caribbean that Spain had originally claimed but had largely abandoned, including Sint Maarten in 1618, Bonaire in 1634, Curaçao in 1634, Sint Eustatius in 1636, Aruba in 1637, some of which remain in Dutch hands and retain Dutch cultural traditions.
On the east coast of North America, the Dutch planted the colony of New Netherland on the lower end of the island of Manhattan, at New Amsterdam starting in 1624. The Dutch sought to protect their investments and purchased the Manhattan from a band of Canarse from Brooklyn who occupied the bottom quarter of Manhattan, known then as the Manhattoes, for 60 guilders'
worth of trade goods. Minuit conducted the transaction with the Canarse
chief Seyseys, who accepted valuable merchandise in exchange for an
island that was actually mostly controlled by another indigenous group,
the Weckquaesgeeks. Dutch fur traders set up a network upstream on the Hudson River.
There were Jewish settlers from 1654 onward, and they remained
following the English capture of New Amsterdam in 1664. The naval
capture was despite both nations being at peace with the other.
New Archangel (present-day Sitka, Alaska), the capital of Russian America, in 1837
Russia came to colonization late compared to Spain or Portugal, or even England. Siberia was added to the Russian Empire and Cossack explorers along rivers sought valuable furs of ermine, sable, and fox. Cossacks enlisted the aid of indigenous Siberians,
who sought protection from nomadic peoples, and those peoples paid
tribute in fur to the czar. Thus, prior to the eighteenth century
Russian expansion that pushed beyond the Bering Strait
dividing Eurasia from North America, Russia had experience with
northern indigenous peoples and accumulated wealth from the hunting of
fur bearing animals. Siberia had already attracted a core group of
scientists, who sought to map and catalogue the flora, fauna, and other
aspects of the natural world.
A major Russian expedition for exploration was mounted in 1742,
contemporaneous with other eighteenth-century European state-sponsored
ventures. It was not clear at the time whether Eurasia and North America
were completely separate continents. The first voyages were made by Vitus Bering and Aleksei Chirikov,
with settlement beginning after 1743. By the 1790s the first permanent
settlements were established. Explorations continued down the Pacific coast of North America, and Russia established a settlement in the early nineteenth century at what is now called Fort Ross, California. Russian fur traders forced indigenous Aleut men into seasonal labor. Never very profitable, Russia sold its North American holdings to the United States in 1867, called at the time "Seward's Folly."
Duke Ferdinand I de Medici made the only Italian attempt to create colonies in America. For this purpose the Grand Duke organized in 1608 an expedition to the north of Brazil, under the command of the English captain Robert Thornton.
Thornton, on his return from the preparatory trip in 1609 (he had been to the Amazon), found Ferdinand I dead and all projects were canceled by his successor Cosimo II.
Franciscan Alonso de Molina's 1565 Nahuatl (Aztec) dictionary, conceived for friars to communicate with the indigenous peoples in central Mexico in their own language.
During the Age of Discovery and the following centuries, the Spanish and Portuguese colonial empires were the most active in attempting to convert the Indigenous peoples of the Americas to the Christian religion. Pope Alexander VI issued the Inter caetera bull in May 1493 that confirmed the lands claimed by the Kingdom of Spain, and mandated in exchange that the Indigenous peoples be converted to Catholic Christianity. During Columbus's second voyage, Benedictine friars accompanied him, along with twelve other priests. With the Spanish conquest of the Aztec empire, evangelization of the dense Indigenous populations was undertaken in what was called the "spiritual conquest." Several mendicant orders were involved in the early campaign to convert the Indigenous peoples. Franciscans and Dominicans learned Indigenous languages of the Americas, such as Nahuatl, Mixtec, and Zapotec. One of the first schools for Indigenous peoples in Mexico was founded by Pedro de Gante
in 1523. The friars aimed at converting Indigenous leaders, with the
hope and expectation that their communities would follow suit.
In densely populated regions, friars mobilized Indigenous communities
to build churches, making the religious change visible; these churches
and chapels were often in the same places as old temples, often using
the same stones. "Native peoples exhibited a range of responses, from
outright hostility to active embrace of the new religion."
In central and southern Mexico where there was an existing Indigenous
tradition of creating written texts, the friars taught Indigenous
scribes to write their own languages in Latin letters.
There is significant body of texts in Indigenous languages created by
and for Indigenous peoples in their own communities for their own
purposes. In frontier areas where there were no settled Indigenous
populations, friars and Jesuits often created missions,
bringing together dispersed Indigenous populations in communities
supervised by the friars in order to more easily preach the gospel and
ensure their adherence to the faith. These missions were established
throughout Spanish America which extended from the southwestern portions of current-day United States through Mexico and to Argentina and Chile.
As slavery
was prohibited between Christians and could only be imposed upon
non-Christian prisoners of war and/or men already sold as slaves, the
debate on Christianization was particularly acute during the early 16th
century, when Spanish conquerors and settlers sought to mobilize
Indigenous labor. Later, two Dominican friars, Bartolomé de Las Casas and the philosopherJuan Ginés de Sepúlveda, held the Valladolid debate, with the former arguing that Native Americans were endowed with souls like all other human beings, while the latter argued to the contrary to justify their enslavement. In 1537, the papal bull Sublimis Deus
definitively recognized that Native Americans possessed souls, thus
prohibiting their enslavement, without putting an end to the debate.
Some claimed that a native who had rebelled and then been captured could
be enslaved nonetheless.
When the first Franciscans arrived in Mexico in 1524, they burned the sacred places dedicated to the Indigenous peoples' native religions. However, in Pre-Columbian Mexico, burning the temple of a conquered group was standard practice, shown in Indigenous manuscripts, such as Codex Mendoza.
Conquered Indigenous groups expected to take on the gods of their new
overlords, adding them to the existing pantheon. They likely were
unaware that their conversion to Christianity entailed the complete and irrevocable renunciation of their ancestral religious beliefs and practices. In 1539, Mexican bishop Juan de Zumárraga oversaw the trial and execution of the Indigenous nobleman Carlos of Texcoco for apostasy from Christianity. Following that, the Catholic Church removed Indigenous converts from the jurisdiction of the Inquisition,
since it had a chilling effect on evangelization. In creating a
protected group of Christians, Indigenous men no longer could aspire to
be ordained Christian priests.
Throughout the Americas, the Jesuits were active in attempting to convert the Indigenous peoples to Christianity. They had considerable success on the frontiers in New France and Portuguese Brazil, most famously with Antonio de Vieira, S.J; and in Paraguay, almost an autonomous state within a state.
Religion and migration
Catholic cathedral in Mexico CityThe Kahal Zur Israel Synagogue
in Mauritsstad (Recife) is the oldest synagogue in the Americas. An
estimated number of 700 Jews lived in Dutch Brazil, about 4.7% of the
total population.
Roman Catholics
were the first major religious group to immigrate to the New World, as
settlers in the Spanish and Portuguese colonies of Portugal and Spain,
and later, France in New France.
No other religion was tolerated and there was a concerted effort to
convert indigenous peoples and black slaves to Catholicism. The Catholic Church established three offices of the Spanish Inquisition, in Mexico City; Lima, Peru; and Cartagena de Indias in Colombia to maintain religious orthodoxy and practice. The Portuguese did not establish a permanent office of the Portuguese Inquisition in Brazil, but did send visitations of inquistors in the seventeenth century.
Drawing accompanying text in Book XII of the 16th-century Florentine Codex (compiled 1540–1585) -- Nahua suffering from smallpox
The European lifestyle included a long history of sharing close
quarters with domesticated animals such as cows, pigs, sheep, goats,
horses, dogs and various domesticated fowl,
from which many diseases originally stemmed. In contrast to the
indigenous people, the Europeans had developed a richer endowment of
antibodies. The large-scale contact with Europeans after 1492 introduced Eurasian germs to the indigenous people of the Americas.
Epidemics of smallpox (1518, 1521, 1525, 1558, 1589), typhus (1546), influenza (1558), diphtheria (1614) and measles (1618) swept the Americas subsequent to European contact,killing between 10 million and 100 million people, up to 95% of the indigenous population of the Americas.
The cultural and political instability attending these losses appears
to have been of substantial aid in the efforts of various colonists in
New England and Massachusetts to acquire control over the great wealth
in land and resources of which indigenous societies had customarily made
use.
Such diseases yielded human mortality of an unquestionably
enormous gravity and scale – and this has profoundly confused efforts to
determine its full extent with any true precision. Estimates of the pre-Columbian population of the Americas vary tremendously.
Others have argued that significant variations in population size
over pre-Columbian history are reason to view higher-end estimates with
caution. Such estimates may reflect historical population maxima, while
indigenous populations may have been at a level somewhat below these
maxima or in a moment of decline in the period just prior to contact
with Europeans. Indigenous populations hit their ultimate lows in most
areas of the Americas in the early 20th century; in a number of cases,
growth has returned.
According to scientists from University College London, the colonization of the Americas by Europeans killed so much of the indigenous population that it resulted in climate change and global cooling.
Some contemporary scholars also attribute significant indigenous
population losses in the Caribbean to the widespread practice of slavery
and deadly forced labor in gold and silver mines.
Historian Andrés Reséndez, supports this claim and argues that
indigenous populations were smaller previous estimations and "a nexus of
slavery, overwork and famine killed more Indians in the Caribbean than
smallpox, influenza and malaria."
Depiction of Spanish treatment of the indigenous populations in the Caribbean by Theodore de Bry, illustrating Spanish Dominican friar Bartolomé de Las Casas's indictment of early Spanish cruelty, known as the Black legend, and indigenous barbarity, including human cannibalism, in an attempt to justify their enslavement.Triangular trade between Europe, Africa, and the AmericasAfrican slaves 17th-century in a tobacco plantation, Virginia, 1670.
Indigenous population loss following European contact directly led to
Spanish explorations beyond the Caribbean islands they initially
claimed and settled in the 1490s, since they required a labor force to
both produce food and to mine gold. Slavery was not unknown in
Indigenous societies.[citation needed]
With the arrival of European colonists, enslavement of Indigenous
peoples "became commodified, expanded in unexpected ways, and came to
resemble the kinds of human trafficking that are recognizable to us
today".
While disease was the main killer of indigenous peoples, the practice of
slavery and forced labor was also significant contributor to the
indigenous death toll.
With the arrival of Europeans other than Spanish, enslavement of native
populations increased since there were no prohibitions against slavery
until decades later. It is estimated that from Columbus's arrival to the
end of the 19th century between 2.5 and 5 million Native Americans were
forced into slavery. Indigenous men, women, and children were often
forced into labor in sparsely populated frontier settings, in the
household, or in the toxic gold and silver mines. This practice was known as the encomienda system and granted free native labor to the Spaniards. Based upon the practice of exacting tribute from Muslims and Jews during the Reconquista, the Spanish Crown granted a number of native laborers to an encomendero,
who was usually a conquistador or other prominent Spanish male. Under
the grant, they were theoretically bound to both protecting the natives
and converting them to Christianity. In exchange for their forced conversion to Christianity, the natives paid tributes in the form of gold, agricultural products, and labor. The Spanish Crown tried to terminate the system through the Laws of Burgos (1512–13) and the New Laws
of the Indies (1542). However, the encomenderos refused to comply with
the new measures and the indigenous people continued to be exploited.
Eventually, the encomienda system was replaced by the repartimiento system which was not abolished until the late 18th century.
In the Caribbean, deposits of gold were quickly exhausted and the
precipitous drop in the indigenous population meant a severe labor
shortage. Spaniards sought a high value, low bulk export product to make
their fortunes. Cane sugar
was the answer. It had been cultivated on the Iberian Atlantic islands.
It was a highly desirable, expensive foodstuff. The problem of a labor
force was solved by the importation of African slaves, initiating the
creation of sugar plantations worked by chattel slaves. Plantations required a significant work force to be purchased, housed, and fed; capital investment in building sugar mills
on-site, since once cane was cut, the sugar content rapidly declined.
Plantation owners were linked to creditors and a network of merchants to
sell processed sugar in Europe. The whole system was predicated on a
huge enslaved population. The Portuguese controlled the African slave
trade, since the division of spheres with Spain in the Treaty of Tordesillas, they controlled the African coasts. Black slavery dominated the labor force in tropical zones,
particularly where sugar was cultivated, in Portuguese Brazil, the
English, French, and Dutch Caribbean islands. On the mainland of North
America, the English southern colonies imported black slaves, starting in Virginia in 1619, to cultivate other tropical or semi-tropical crops such as tobacco, rice, and cotton.
Although black slavery is most associated with agricultural production, in Spanish America enslaved and free blacks and mulattoes
were found in numbers in cities, working as artisans. Most newly
transported African slaves were not Christians, but their conversion was
a priority. For the Catholic Church, black slavery was not incompatible
with Christianity. The Jesuits
created hugely profitable agricultural enterprises and held a
significant black slave labor force. European whites often justified the
practice through the belts of latitude theory, supported by Aristotle and Ptolemy.
In this perspective, belts of latitude wrapped around the Earth and
corresponded with specific human traits. The peoples from the "cold
zone" in Northern Europe were "of lesser prudence", while those of the "hot zone" in sub-Sahara Africa were intelligent but "weaker and less spirited". According to the theory, those of the "temperate zone"
across the Mediterranean reflected an ideal balance of strength and
prudence. Such ideas about latitude and character justified a natural
human hierarchy.
Africans slaves were a highly valuable commodity, enriching those
involved in the trade. Africans were transported to slave ships to the
Americas, were primarily obtained from their African homelands by
coastal tribes who captured and sold them. Europeans traded for slaves
with the local native African tribes who captured them elsewhere in
exchange for rum, guns, gunpowder, and other manufactures. The total slave trade
to islands in the Caribbean, Brazil, the Portuguese, Spanish, French,
Dutch, and British Empires is estimated to have involved 12 million
Africans.
The vast majority of these slaves went to sugar colonies in the
Caribbean and to Brazil, where life expectancy was short and the numbers
had to be continually replenished. At most about 600,000 African slaves
were imported into the United States, or 5% of the 12 million slaves
brought across from Africa.
Throughout the South American hemisphere, there were three large
regional sources of populations: Native Americans, arriving Europeans,
and forcibly transported Africans. The mixture of these cultures
impacted the ethnic makeup that predominates in the hemisphere's largely
independent states today. The term to describe someone of mixed
European and indigenous ancestry is mestizo while the term to describe someone of mixed European and African ancestry is mulatto.
The mestizo and mulatto population are specific to Iberian-influenced
current-day Latin America because the conquistadors had (often forced)
sexual relations with the indigenous and African women.
The social interaction of these three groups of people inspired the
creation of a caste system based on skin tone. The hierarchy centered
around those with the lightest skin tone and ordered from highest to
lowest was the Peninsulares, Criollos, mestizos, indigenous, mulatto, then African.
Unlike the Iberians, the British men came with families with whom they planned to permanently live in what is now North America.
They kept the natives on the margins of colonial society.
Because the British colonizers' wives were present, the British men
rarely had sexual relations with the native women. While the mestizo and
mulatto population make up the majority of people in Latin America today, there is only a small mestizo population in present-day North America (excluding Central America).
Colonization and gender
By
the early to mid 16th century, even the Iberian men began to carry
their wives and families to the Americas. Some women even carried out
the voyage alone. Later, more studies of the role of women and female migration from Europe to the Americas have been made.
Impact of colonial land ownership on long-term development
Eventually,
most of the Western Hemisphere came under the control of Western
European governments, leading to changes to its landscape, population,
and plant and animal life. In the 19th century over 50 million people
left Western Europe for the Americas. The post-1492 era is known as the period of the Columbian exchange, a dramatically widespread exchange of animals, plants, culture, human populations (including slaves), ideas, and communicable disease between the American and Afro-Eurasian hemispheres following Columbus's voyages to the Americas.
Most scholars writing at the end of the 19th century estimated that the pre-Columbian
population was as low as 10 million; by the end of the 20th century
most scholars gravitated to a middle estimate of around 50 million, with
some historians arguing for an estimate of 100 million or more. A recent estimate is that there were about 60.5 million people living in the Americas immediately before depopulation, of which 90 per cent, mostly in Central and South America, perished from wave after wave of disease, along with war and slavery playing their part.
Geographic differences between the colonies played a large
determinant in the types of political and economic systems that later
developed. In their paper on institutions and long-run growth,
economists Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James A. Robinson
argue that certain natural endowments gave rise to distinct colonial
policies promoting either smallholder or coerced labor production.
Densely settled populations, for example, were more easily exploitable
and profitable as slave labor. In these regions, landowning elites were
economically incentivized to develop forced labor arrangements such as
the Peru mit'a system or Argentinian latifundias without regard for democratic norms. French and British colonial leaders, conversely, were incentivized to develop capitalist markets, property rights, and democratic institutions in response to natural environments that supported smallholder production over forced labor.
James Mahoney proposes that colonial policy choices made at critical junctures regarding land ownership in coffee-rich Central America fostered enduring path dependent institutions. Coffee economies in Guatemala and El Salvador,
for example, were centralized around large plantations that operated
under coercive labor systems. By the 19th century, their political
structures were largely authoritarian and militarized. In Colombia and Costa Rica, conversely, liberal reforms were enacted at critical junctures to expand commercial agriculture, and they ultimately raised the bargaining power
of the middle class. Both nations eventually developed more democratic
and egalitarian institutions than their highly concentrated landowning
counterparts.
List of European colonies in the Americas
Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic. Founded in 1502, the city is the oldest continuously inhabited European settlement in the New World.Cumaná, Venezuela. Founded in 1510, it is the oldest continuously inhabited European city in the continental Americas.
There were at least a dozen European countries involved in the
colonization of the Americas. The following list indicates those
countries and the Western Hemisphere territories they worked to control.
Mayflower, the ship that carried a colony of English Puritans to North America.
In 2007, the Smithsonian InstitutionNational Museum of American History and the Virginia Historical Society
(VHS) co-organized a traveling exhibition to recount the strategic
alliances and violent conflict between European empires (English,
Spanish, French) and the Native people living in North America. The
exhibition was presented in three languages and with multiple
perspectives. Artifacts on display included rare surviving Native and
European artifacts, maps, documents, and ceremonial objects from museums
and royal collections on both sides of the Atlantic. The exhibition
opened in Richmond, Virginia on March 17, 2007, and closed at the Smithsonian International Gallery on October 31, 2009.
The related online exhibition explores the international origins
of the societies of Canada and the United States and commemorates the
400th anniversary of three lasting settlements in Jamestown (1607), Quebec City (1608), and Santa Fe (1609). The site is accessible in three languages.
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