Compare And Contrast American Colonization And Spanish Settlement

While the Spanish settlement and the British settlement of the Americas shared some similar characteristics, they were also substantially different and carried out in entirely dissimilar manners. They might have had common goals in mind for themselves but these countries took entirely different routes in settling the Americas because of different motivating incentives that pushed their colonization of the New World. The Spanish were settling at first to mine for gold, and were successful at it, but did not have many plans of truly settling for the land. (Brinkley 10) The British, however, started out thinking about the land as the riches that were being chased after. (Brinkley 19) England also had previous colonization experience with Ireland that had crafted the way they viewed settlement in a way that made belief of separation from the native population vital. (Brinkley
22, 23) I feel that simply the difference in the way they viewed the New World had a large effect on the approach in which the Spanish and the British took at inhabiting the Americas. There was a combination of inducements that pushed England into wanting to colonize the New World.
The prevailing economic theory of mercantilism stressed the need for a nation to accumulate materials. Merchants were building large wealthy companies that chartered out and traded goods, and these companies believed colonization would benefit them by expanding their trade immensely. Martin Luther challenged the basic beliefs of the Roman Catholic Church and started the Protestant Reformation, which sparked religious motivation for colonizing the New World because many people wanted more and more reform of the Church of England along with freedom to worship in their own way. These people formed groups called Puritans who were antagonized by King James I started looking for places of refuge outside of England. As all of this was going on the food supply decreased as the population increased rapidly causing land and food shortages and the land in the New World started becoming even more appealing to the English. All of these events were cause to the beginning of colonization in
America. Mercantilism and other incentives applied to Spain as well, but the Spanish had been occupying the Americas long before the English had decided to actually settle there. Spain and its conquistadores conquered the native nations of southern America through disease and superior weaponry and settled, at first, only to begin to exploit the New World for its gold and silver, and were greatly successful at doing so. Spanish settlers started to flow in to America for different reason before long. Many settlers came with hopes of establishing European civilization and profiting from agriculture; some came to spread their Christian religion to the native populations. (Brinkley 10, 11) The first white settlers in the New World had fairly good ties with the Indians, but as the English began establishing colony after colony and encroaching on the Indian’s space there began to be more hostility between the Indians and the English settlers. As learned from colonization of Ireland, the settlers did not want much interaction with the native population of the new lands and developed hatred towards them believing they were savages and less than human. Settlers tried to prevent the native culture from mixing with the English ways, and did surprisingly well at making sure the natives stayed out of the whites’ lives as much as possible.
These tactics were not complete and would create even more strife for the settlers then if they would have let the two cultures collide and conform together. The Spanish, on the other hand, did the exact opposite of what the English did and when were confronted with problems from degrading the natives let their culture intermingle with the native’s and came out with a totally new social class. The men would even frequently marry native women because of the shortage of women in the New World.