Why were South & Central America colonized by Europe a century before the USA?

[PastAllReason]

@Alessan

Because they were after short-term earnings. As far as a central government is concerned, seizing a place and taking its gold - or founding a trading post - yielded instant profit, while setting up an agricultural colony was a long-term investment; you wouldn’t expect to see any significant returns for at least several decades. Paying huge amount of money to send people overseas to grow wheat just didn’t seem worth it - they had enough peasants back homje. It was only the existance of tobacco, a cash crop, that allowed Virginia to get off the ground, so to speak.

Besides, who ever thought of colonizing for the sake of colonizing? Greenland and Iceland were over 500 years before. The very concept of expansionism must have been new to them.

Just a minor point, Greenland and Iceland may have been settled 500ish years before, but Iceland remained continuously settled, and Greenland had continuous “European” settlement for several hundred years after their arrival. At the beginning of that settlement period, the Vikings also made it to L’Anse Aux Meadows, in Newfoundland, and apparently remained there for a brief handful of years.