A NEW LAND

Around the year 1000, a party of Icelandic Vikings under Leif Ericson sailed to the eastern coast of North America. They landed at a place they called Vinland. They failed, however to establish any permanent settlements, and they soon lost contact with the new continent.

Five hundred years later, the need for increased trade and an error in navigation led to another European encounter with America. In late l5th-century Europe, there was a great demand for spices, textiles and dyes from Asia. Christopher Columbus, a mariner from Italy, mistakenly believed that he could reach the Far East by sailing 4,000 miles (6 400 kilometers) west from Europe. In 1492, he persuaded the king and queen of Spain to finance such a voyage. Columbus sailed west, but he did not reach Asia. Instead he landed on one of the Bahama Islands in the Caribbean Sea.

Columbus eventually explored most of the Caribbean area. He never reached the Far East; but he did return home with some gold, and within 40 years treasure-hungry Spanish adventurers had conquered a huge empire in South and Central America. The Spanish also established some of the earliest settlements in North America - St. Augustine in Florida, Santa Fe in New Mexico (1609) and San Diego m Califomia (1769).

The Europeans were initially drawn to the New World in search of wealth. When Columbus and later Spanish explorers returned to Europe with stories of abundant gold in the Americas, each European sovereign hastened to claim as much territory as possible in the New World - along with whatever wealth might be extracted from it.

Enforcing these claims could only be accomplished by establishing settlements of Europeans on the territory. This requirement combined with the zeal of Spanish priests to convert the indigenous inhabitants of the Americas to Christianity, the need of European religious and political dissenters for refuge from persecution in their homelands, and the thirst for adventure of some individuals - fueled the drive for the establishment of colonies.

Date: 2015-01-02; view: 1086