Introduction to the Precolonial Era (1450–1620)

The precolonial era brought monumental changes to all parts of the world, as the Middle Ages gave way to the Age of Discovery. European nations including England, France, Spain, Portugal, and the Netherlands vied to discover new trade routes and conquer territory around the globe. European settlers—who were most often motivated by financial gain but sometimes in pursuit of religious and social goals—established colonies that brought them into conflict with indigenous civilizations. As in many great cultural shifts, brutality and hope were both widespread.

The earliest European adventurers, using charting and navigational tools developed during the Renaissance, sailed off in search of a trade route to the Far East. The monarchs who financed their voyages hoped that increased trade would add to their wealth and political power. In addition to finding a sea route to the East, explorers also discovered the Americas—an even more attractive territory because it could be claimed and colonized. They heard rumors that “rivers of gold” flowed there, and the explorers—and especially the European monarchs—hoped to tap into them.

The rising interest in global exploration roughly coincided with the development of Protestantism, a religious movement founded by those who had become disillusioned with the Roman Catholic church (which was tied closely to the monarchs who ruled most of Europe) because they found it corrupt and excessively politicized. In the early seventeenth century, this led to the first Atlantic crossings of the English Puritans, who sought a land where they could establish Christian communities far from the authority of the pope or the crown.

The establishment of colonies, as well as the pillaging of riches from new lands, brought the settlers into conflict with the indigenous peoples of the Americas, who had developed their own complex civilizations over thousands of years. The Maya, Inca, and Aztec cultures were destroyed, as were the social structures of the native population of North America. Cruelty was rampant: natives who did not die fighting the invaders were often forced into labor, either mining precious metals or working the huge plantations created to serve the world’s growing demand for such crops as sugar cane and tobacco. If guns and forced labor did not kill the natives, the diseases Europeans brought with them did. Epidemics, especially of smallpox, killed many thousands throughout the Americas.

In search of additional cheap labor to work the plantations, the Europeans turned to Africa, and over the following four hundred years millions of Africans were kidnapped from their homelands, shipped overseas, and forced into slavery. Although slavery had existed in all known human societies, including Africa, it had typically been based on socioeconomic difference, not on race. With the dispersion of Africans throughout the New World, racial inequality became an issue that would linger into the modern age.