HISTORY

History

History

Discussion and Analysis

Spain began to colonize the larger Antilles in 1493. The rapidity with which she explored and conquered the territories discovered was amazing. Not sixty years after the landing of Columbus, Spanish colonies dotted the continent, from northern Mexico as far south as central and southern Chile. Not only were they along the coast, but in Mexico and Central America they were scattered from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and in South America from the Pacific coast eastward to the crest of the Andes and to the La Plata River. Vast unsettled stretches of land intervened between the colonies in many sections, but these sections could be, and were, transversed from time to time so that intercourse could be kept up. The entire northeastern coast of South America was under Spanish sway, and explorations had been carried on, approximately, as far as lat. 42° north along the Pacific; the interior as far as lat 40° the southern United States had been traversed beyond the Mississippi, and Florida, Alabama, and Georgia taken possession of along the Atlantic shore. The whole Pacific coast, from lat. 42° to the southern extremity of Tierra del Fuego, was already known, settled in places, and frequently visited, and while the Oronoco River had been explored both from its mouth and from the west, expeditions from Venezuela penetrated to the Amazon and explored the whole length of its course from the side of Ecuador. These extraordinary achievements were accomplished by a nation that, in the beginning of the sixteenth century, counted, so far as we can estimate, not ten millions of people (Vickers, 2003).

The methods of English colonization are so widely known, and its literature so extensive, that the matter may be treated with comparative brevity. While in the Southern Atlantic States discoveries and ...