# Why was S. America colonized before US ? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 22, 2017, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-s-america-colonized-before-us/777841 "2017-01-22T18:06:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Jophiel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jophiel/32/66_2.png) [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2017, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-s-america-colonized-before-us/777841/21 "2017-01-23T14:39:15Z")
> [@Bridget\_Burke](#): > > There was no one “British model.” Various groups got permission from the King (or Queen) to set up colonies for various reasons. > > Gentleman adventurers went to Virginia–the first mainland British colony–to become rich. […] > Massachusetts settlers wanted religious liberty–for themselves. […] > The Quakers of Pennsylvania also wanted religious freedom–but not just for themselves. What they didn’t do, however, was subsume existing native settlements and cultures in the same manner that the Spanish did. Which was my point. ---
**Author:** ![Lucas\_Jackson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lucas_jackson/32/303_2.png) [@Lucas\_Jackson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lucas_Jackson)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2017, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-s-america-colonized-before-us/777841/22 "2017-01-23T14:41:57Z")
On a related note, The Last Voyage Of Columbus sheds some light on the motivations: > **[Amazon.com: Last Voyage of Columbus, The: 9780316154567: Dugard, Martin: Books](https://www.amazon.com/Last-Voyage-Columbus-Expedition-Including/dp/0316154563)** > > Amazon.com: Last Voyage of Columbus, The: 9780316154567: Dugard, Martin: Books And it’s a fantastic read. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2017, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-s-america-colonized-before-us/777841/23 "2017-01-23T15:30:54Z")
Also, the Spanish settlements established a plantation agriculture model to sell their products back to Spain. This presumably took advantage of the existing cleared agricultural land. OTOH, when exploring the northern Continent, the various explorers found dense dark hardwood forests. The best agricultural models they found were tribes that engaged in some slash and burn agriculture, then moved on to a new area when the land lost its fertility. So for the Spanish, this meant no opportunity for plantations or feudal farming of the exotic products found further south, and the climate didn’t work either. Since there were plenty of opportunities to collect gold southward instead, not a lot of incentive to settle the US coast. I wonder if there was any great market for producing mundane European crops like wheat? Was that really profitable to ship back to Spain? If not then the lord of that new land would remain relatively poor. Remember, New France (Quebec and eastern Canada) was founded mainly on the promise of the fur trade, with a few feudal seigneuries of no great wealth along the St. Lawrence and in the Maritimes. When France lost that in 1760, they figured their sugar colonies in the Caribbean were more important, and let England keep it. Plus IIRC the 1500s was the tail end of a cold climate cycle so the winters were worse than we see today. ---
**Author:** ![aldiboronti](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9fc348/32.png) [@aldiboronti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aldiboronti)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2017, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-s-america-colonized-before-us/777841/24 "2017-01-23T16:04:19Z")
> [@md2000](#): > > When France lost that in 1760, they figured their sugar colonies in the Caribbean were more important, and let England keep it. Actually they didn’t have much choice. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2017, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-s-america-colonized-before-us/777841/25 "2017-01-23T16:23:42Z")
The dense hardwood forests you talk about didn’t exist in the 1500s. They existed in the late 1600s, when the population along the eastern seaboard had crashed due to the multiple pandemics. The Pilgrims didn’t reach Plymouth Rock and carve out farms from virgin wilderness. They landed on an abandoned Indian farming village, complete with stores of grain ready for the taking. The entire village had been wiped out by disease, with only one survivor, who famously taught the Pilgrims the agricultural methods of his people. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2017, 4:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-s-america-colonized-before-us/777841/26 "2017-01-23T16:25:36Z")
> [@aldiboronti](#): > > Actually they didn’t have much choice. 🙂 From what I recall reading about the negotiations long ago, they did not insist strongly n their return - although they did insist and get return of several other colonies. Remember too that the fur trade was not the most profitable thing going. Plus, the French government was so corrupt that Louis got taken to the cleaners trying to finish Louisbourg fort in Nova Scotia. And New France was famously so short of money internally that they resorted to using playing cards as banknotes. So part of the French motivation in negotiations was probably “take this money pit off my hands, please…” As others pointed out, the British colonies were not motivated by a desire to in Britain to extend its domains, so much as a desire by some of the “undesirables” in Britain to get away from Britain. Hence they were willing to do the work of creating a farm country from deep forest, and were not motivated by get-rich-quick philosophy or a desire to become lords of a new batch of peasants. ---
**Author:** ![MikeS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/919ad9/32.png) [@MikeS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MikeS)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2017, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-s-america-colonized-before-us/777841/27 "2017-01-23T18:32:57Z")
> [@aldiboronti](#): > > Actually they didn’t have much choice. 🙂 > [@md2000](#): > > From what I recall reading about the negotiations long ago, they did not insist strongly [o]n their return - although they did insist and get return of several other colonies. The Treaty of Paris was basically a “prisoner swap” between Great Britain and France/Spain; they had each captured a bunch of each others’ colonies during the war, and the negotiations were basically along the lines of “I’ll give you back Minorca if you give me back Guadeloupe.” The French could probably have negotiated the return of Canada, but it simply wasn’t one of their highest priorities for the reasons stated by **md2000**. The French did, however, hang on to [Saint-Pierre and Miquelon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Pierre_and_Miquelon) in order to retain a base for fisheries off of the Grand Banks. ---
**Author:** ![elbows](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/b3f665/32.png) [@elbows](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elbows)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2017, 7:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-s-america-colonized-before-us/777841/28 "2017-01-23T19:27:36Z")
I really think you’re underestimating the importance of the trade winds. It took a good sailor just to get to where the wind blew. Venturing astray from that easiest path will take many years. As they played the oceans and became better sailors more of the world opened to them. But for a very long time you were lucky to even get to where the wind did blow! It’s hard to profit when you keep losing ships and cargo. Until they mastered the sailing talents required America was kind of out of reach, I should think. S America just made a lot more sense, for that reason alone, for a lot of years. ---
**Author:** ![dougie\_monty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/439d5e/32.png) [@dougie\_monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dougie_monty)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2017, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-s-america-colonized-before-us/777841/29 "2017-01-23T19:40:08Z")
> [@elbows](#): > > […]S America just made a lot more sense, for that reason alone, for a lot of years. More than you think. In the 17th Century two French astronomers began an endeavor to measure the distance to Mars–and from that figured out all the other distances in the solar system. (I personally don’t know how they did _that.)_ They used the distance between Paris and Cayenne (capital of French Guiana) as a starting point for their measurements (trigonometric parallax). To make a long story short, that eventually led to the measuring of the speed of light. _I_ sure wouldn’t sell the presence of French colonies in the New World short! 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2017, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-s-america-colonized-before-us/777841/30 "2017-01-23T22:30:27Z")
Actually, the measurements of the transit of Venus (not Mars) were done by many people from different countries. French efforts to measure the transit were largely a failure. The point was to measure the distance to the Sun, and deduce the other distances from that using triangulation - if you know the distance between two points, you can calculate the distance to a third point that is at a right angle to one of them using Pythagoras’ theorem. ---
**Author:** ![dougie\_monty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/439d5e/32.png) [@dougie\_monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dougie_monty)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2017, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-s-america-colonized-before-us/777841/31 "2017-01-23T23:02:10Z")
And what is Pythagoras’ theorem, please? ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2017, 11:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-s-america-colonized-before-us/777841/32 "2017-01-23T23:13:40Z")
All together now: _the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides._ That is, in a right angle triangle (one where one interior angle is exactly 90 degrees), the square of the long size (hypotenuse) equals the squares of the other two sides added together. So if you know the length of any two sides you can figure out the length of the third. ---
**Author:** ![dougie\_monty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/439d5e/32.png) [@dougie\_monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dougie_monty)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2017, 12:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-s-america-colonized-before-us/777841/33 "2017-01-24T00:00:03Z")
Oh. THAT was his theorem. I knew that when I was a kid–I just never attached anyone’s name to it; and I had heard of Pythagoras. I just never connected one to the other. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2017, 2:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-s-america-colonized-before-us/777841/34 "2017-01-24T02:08:00Z")
> [@Jim\_s\_Son](#): > > ``` > I'm not really sure why England waited so long to colonize North America. > > ``` It’s mostly because Spain was the dominant power from when they started to get New World gold in large quantities until they lost most of their fleet in the Armada. They claimed the entire New World except Brazil and did their best to keep others out. I understand there was an attempt by the French to colonize somewhere in the Chesapeake Bay area during that period. It wasn’t very successful, but eventually the Spanish put an end to it. > [@md2000](#): > > Remember, New France (Quebec and eastern Canada) was founded mainly on the promise of the fur trade, with a few feudal seigneuries of no great wealth along the St. Lawrence and in the Maritimes. When France lost that in 1760, they figured their sugar colonies in the Caribbean were more important, and let England keep it. It arguable (well, I’ve seen an article claim this) that at one point, the Dutch had the choice between Manhattan and some now obscure island in Indonesia and took the East Indian one. Or maybe they traded Manhattan for the other island, I can’t remember which spin the author put on it. The other island was the source of some rare spice, which is why they wanted it. This would have been after one of the Anglo-Dutch Wars, either the second or third, I forget which. I once looked into it to see if I could identify that point, but concluded that the actuality was more complicated than a simple swap or choice. ---
**Author:** ![jjakucyk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/3d9bf3/32.png) [@jjakucyk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjakucyk)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2017, 2:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-s-america-colonized-before-us/777841/35 "2017-01-24T02:41:25Z")
> [@Jim\_s\_Son](#): > > I’m not really sure why England waited so long to colonize North America. Another point is that they didn’t really start colonizing _anywhere_ until about 1600. The British Empire was in its infancy when they started sending ships to America, the Caribbean, and Africa. Spain and Portugal had been known quantities for centuries and England was still a nobody on the world stage at that point. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2017, 2:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-s-america-colonized-before-us/777841/36 "2017-01-24T02:55:16Z")
Both the Dutch and the English were colonizing the area of what is now New York and what is now Suriname. After various armed takeovers they agreed the English would get New Amsterdam/York, and the Dutch would get Suriname in South America. ---
**Author:** ![california\_jobcase](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9d8465/32.png) [@california\_jobcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/california_jobcase)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2017, 3:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-s-america-colonized-before-us/777841/37 "2017-01-24T03:48:58Z")
> [@aceplace57](#): > > The Aztec Empire and Maya had more wealth to plunder. > > The region had a lot of trade goods like coffee, chocolate, yams, rubber that could be cultivated and sold in Europe. Nitpick: Yams are not native to the western hemisphere. Sweet potatoes are, but sweet potatoes are not yams, regardless of what the vile things are called in the southeastern U.S. Yams are grown in the western hemisphere, but they were imported from Africa. ---
**Author:** ![Isilder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/cc9497/32.png) [@Isilder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Isilder)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2017, 5:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-s-america-colonized-before-us/777841/38 "2017-01-24T05:11:32Z")
> [@rbroome](#): > > From my reading of 1492 by Charles Mann the advanced culture in Central America, with regard to intrusion by Europeans, was a bug not a feature. > > The existence of the Aztec civilization in Mexico and the Inca in Peru meant in effect that there was a single point of failure for the American culture. Once the Spaniards defeated that one group, it was downhill from there. I don’t understand how having a strong part makes you weaker than not having the strong part ??? Suppose that that the advanced culture did start getting worried about invasian from the oceans… what were they going to do ? Move their populations out to the borders so as to protect greater territory , and have earlier notice to push the invaders back from the beach into the water ??? Seriously… what option is there ? Everywhere had their towns in from the ocean… this was a thing since many a harbour was ransacked by boat… even back to fall of the Hittites, the demise starts when their cities are ranscacked from the Med or Black Sea. I think the only places that have civilisation all around their perimeter are tropic islands. or British isles/Ireland. Not for defense but London is strategically distant from the sea. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2017, 6:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-s-america-colonized-before-us/777841/39 "2017-01-24T06:29:20Z")
When Cortez went on a hunt for gold in Mexico, he started from the coat toward Mexico city where the people he met - who were frequently at war with the Aztecs - assured him there were mountains of gold. He accumulated enemies of the Aztecs and oppressed tribes along the way, and marched into Mexico city, defeated the Aztec empire and became ruler of central mexico in one swell foop. Contrast that with wandering tribes in New York or Virginia. Defeating one village gave no advantage over the village down the path or creek. Each one had to be defeated (or infected) in turn, and the remaining ones were still hostile. Cortez and Pissarro don’t appear to have had this issue - take out the supreme ruler and huge tracts of land are in your hands. I’m not sure I buy the “no hardwood forests” story. the actual population of North America pre-Columbus would be a matter of debate. The decimation of the mound builders (who were central Mississippi valley, not Massachusetts or Virginia) has also been attributed to other causes and could pre-date European contact. Plenty of room for debate. Plus, the natives had only stone tools, so clearing land every decade or so could not have been easy… ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2017, 6:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-s-america-colonized-before-us/777841/40 "2017-01-24T06:57:17Z")
Note this discussion of the pre-Mayflower settlement in Massachusetts - > [@](#): > > The Plymouth Company under the guidance of Sir Ferdinando Gorges covered the more northern area, including present-day New England, and established the Sagadahoc Colony in 1607 in present-day Maine.[8] The experience proved exceptionally difficult for the 120 settlers, however, and the surviving colonists abandoned the colony after only one year.[9] Gorges noted that “there was no more speech of settling plantations in those parts” for a number of years.[10] English ships continued to come to the New England area for fishing and trade with the Indians So someone in London expected to create plantations in New England and Get Rich Quick. and failed… The Carolinas, for example, were part of claimed by Spain as part of Florida. French settlers who tried to settle there in 1562 were driven out by the Spaniards. thus, more southerly American settlements were probably discouraged by questionable title. I also wonder if the north Atlantic weather, storms and temperature, made travel much more difficult than in the more southerly areas, until ship building became more sophisticated in the 1600’s. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-s-america-colonized-before-us/777841.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-s-america-colonized-before-us/777841.md?page=3)