The desire to supplant the trade moguls, especially the Italians, and fear of the Ottoman Empire forced the Atlantic nations to search for a new route to the East. Moreover, in the latter half of the fifteenth century, war between European states and the Ottoman Empire greatly hampered Europe’s trade with the Orient. The newly unified states of the Atlantic–France, Spain, England and Portugal–and their ambitious monarchs were envious of the merchants and princes who dominated the land routes to the East. These developments included the Protestant Reformation and the subsequent Catholic Counter-Reformation, the Renaissance, the unification of small states into larger ones with centralized political power, the emergence of new technology in navigation and shipbuilding and the establishment of overland trade with the East and the accompanying transformation of the medieval economy. The Reformation, the Renaissance and New Trade Routesīetween 10, a series of interconnected developments occurred in Europe that provided the impetus for the exploration and subsequent colonization of America. Trade continued to revolve around the Mediterranean Sea, as it had for hundreds of years.

Europeans may have been intrigued by the stories of the feared Vikings’ discovery of a “new world,” but they lacked the resources or the will to follow their path of exploration. Europe, however, was made up of many small principalities whose concerns were mainly local. Inexplicably, Vineland was abandoned after only a few years.ĭid you know? Explorer Henry Hudson died when his crew mutinied and left Hudson, his son and seven crewmembers adrift in a small open boat in the Hudson Bay.Īlthough the Vikings never returned to America, other Europeans came to know of their accomplishments. There they established a colony named Vineland (meaning fertile region) and from that base sailed along the coast of North America, observing the flora, fauna and native peoples. when the Vikings sailed from the British Isles to Greenland, established a colony and then moved on to Labrador, the Baffin Islands and finally Newfoundland. The first attempt by Europeans to colonize the New World occurred around 1000 A.D.

The centuries following the European arrivals would see the culmination of this effort, as Americans pushed westward across the continent, enticed by the lure of riches, open land and a desire to fulfill the nation’s manifest destiny. and continued through England’s colonization of the Atlantic coast in the 17th century, which laid the foundation for the United States of America. It began with the Vikings’ brief stint in Newfoundland circa 1000 A.D.

The story of North American exploration spans an entire millennium and involves a wide array of European powers and uniquely American characters.

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