Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center

Europeans came to America not intending to discover a new world but to increase the power and resources of an old one. Some came for political reasons, on behalf of powerful European kings and queens who sought to expand their empires. Many came for economic reasons, to reach the silks and spices of China and India or, failing that, to see what resources this continent had to offer. Still others came primarily for religious reasons, either to escape persecution at home or to convert the Natives to Christianity.

Changing political and economic conditions in Europe propelled these forays across the Atlantic. Newly powerful monarchs had the resources to finance exploration; a growing class of merchants was eager to expand trade; and the Protestant Reformation sent European society into turmoil. Although early European voyagers to North America had diverse motives, they shared one attitude in common: they had little regard for the beliefs and ways of life of the Native people who were already here.

Economic Incentives

The quest for profit was the primary force behind most early European exploration and colonization. The early Europeans who sailed toward North America hoped to find a sea route to China and India, lands rich in profitable trade goods. When they realized they had not reached the Orient, they turned their attention toward exploiting the natural resources of the Americas.

At first, these voyagers searched for gold. Spanish conquistadors in the 16th century reaped huge fortunes in Mexico as well as Central and South America by looting the silver and gold of the Aztecs and Incas. Voyagers to North America’s eastern seaboard, however, were unsuccessful in their hunt for precious metals. Instead, French and English fishermen harvested cod off the coast of Newfoundland and traded with Natives for furs. The Dutch also came to North America to profit from the fur trade in present-day New York and Connecticut.

Tobacco proved to be a profitable export for the colony of Jamestown, Virginia—but not for more than a decade after settlement, and not before the founding company suffered financial losses. The expected profits from lumber, tar, pitch, and iron never materialized.

Interest in trade led to the establishment of colonies in North America. The English founded a number of permanent settlements in the 17th century as commercial ventures that would ostensibly generate profit by continuing to search for gold and silver, exporting raw materials, trading with Natives, and raising crops. These ventures often failed. But investors, who usually remained safely abroad, continued to speculate in this new market.

Political Pressures

European leaders competed for control of new overseas lands and resources as part of a struggle for power at home. The rise of new and powerful monarchs in France, Spain, England, and Portugal provided political incentives for overseas exploration. These kings and queens encouraged activities that would further their power and fill their purses. In an effort to expand trade, for example, they sponsored voyages to search for a sea route to China. When these expeditions reached North and South America, European powers ignored Native claims to land and declared the continents for their own.

Voyagers for Spain arrived first, staking claim to vast amounts of territory in Mexico, Central and South America, and the Caribbean, as well as North America west of the Mississippi River, and from Florida to present-day Virginia. French explorers followed, still searching for a “northwest passage” that would lead them to the Orient, while English monarchs not only sent expeditions, but also encouraged pirates to plunder Spanish ships. By the 17th century, England, France, and the Netherlands claimed territory in northeastern North America. The struggle for supremacy there lasted more than a century.

Rivalries between nations were not the only political forces driving voyages across the Atlantic. Colonization was partly a response to social and political upheaval. England, for example, was suffering from an increase in population and a shortage of farmland. The promise of land in abundance led some people to come to North America.

Religious Convictions

Religious upheaval and discontent in Europe drove Protestants and Catholics alike across the Atlantic Ocean.The earliest European explorers who ventured to America came from a continent that was almost entirely Catholic. That religious unity came to an end as the Protestant Reformation, set in motion by Martin Luther in 1517, challenged some of the practices and beliefs of the Roman Catholic church and introduced new doctrines into the Christian world.

Within a century, much of northern Europe broke away from Catholicism, and fierce rivalries developed along religious lines. The most radical of the Protestant groups, who completely rejected Catholicism, often found themselves at odds with their more moderate Protestant neighbors. A few groups who faced both religious persecution and economic discrimination in Europe sought refuge in new communities in North America. At the same time, some Catholics saw America as a place to proselytize. The Jesuits were particularly zealous, sending missionaries across the Atlantic to convert Natives in South and North America alike.

One belief that united Protestants and Catholics, however, was their view of Native people as “godless heathens” who needed Christianizing. Religious conversion was seen as the first step in the process of “civilizing” Native people in the European fashion—and thus eliminating the threat Natives posed to colonization.