Colonial Expansion

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A political-economic phenomenon whereby various European nations explored, conquered, settled, and exploited large areas of the world.

When Europeans explored the globe during the "Age of Discovery" and began to colonize the countries they had "discovered", they did so for a number of reasons: to spread Christianity, to reap wealth through trade and exploitation of other countries' peoples and natural resources, to increase geopolitical power over other European countries, and to acquire land.

The expansion of modern humans over the planet is one of the most spectacular events in the course of human evolution. During millions of years, distinctive forms of hominins evolved in parallel and sometimes coexisted in the same regions.

American colonial history belongs to what scholars call the early modern period. As such, it is part of a bridge between markedly different eras in the history of the western world. On its far side lies the long stretch we call the Middle Ages (or the "medieval period"), on its near one the rise of much we connect with modernity.

The start of the European Colonization of the Americas is typically dated to 1492, although there was at least one earlier colonization effort. The first known Europeans to reach the Americas are believed to have been the Vikings ("Norse") during the eleventh century, who established several colonies in Greenland and one short-lived settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows in the area the Norse called Vinland, present day Newfoundland.

The colonial encirclement of the world is an integral component of European history from the Early Modern Period to the phase of decolonisation. Individual national and expansion histories referred to each other in varying degrees at different times but often also reinforced each other.

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European countries began exploring and seeking to dominate the rest of the world during the 15th and 16th centuries.

From the perspective of ancient and medieval Western civilization, the known world extended from northern Europe to the Sahara Desert, from the Atlantic Ocean to India (and, in the hazy distance, China).

While African resistance to European colonialism is often thought of in terms of a white and black/European and African power struggle, this presumption underestimates the complex and strategic thinking that Africans commonly employed to address the challenges of European colonial rule.

The first European colonization wave took place from the early 15th century (Portuguese conquest of Ceuta in 1415) until the early 19th century (French invasion of Algeria in 1830), and primarily involved the European colonization of the Americas, though it also included the creation of European colonies in India and Maritime Southeast Asia.

The causes for the rivalry between France and Britain are the disputes that developed over land in the colonies, control of the fur trade in the colonies and over the balance of power in Europe. These causes led to war. In the end, England became the most powerful nation in the world and the mercantile system was revamped.