The Colonial Americas

The Colonial Americas (c. 1492–1820s) encompass the period when European powers — Spain, Portugal, England, France, and the Netherlands — established colonial rule across the Western Hemisphere, transforming indigenous societies, creating new mixed cultures, and building economies based on plantation agriculture and enslaved labor.

Spanish and Portuguese colonialism came first and went furthest. Spain's colonial system — built on the encomienda (forced indigenous labor), the hacienda (large landed estates), and Catholic missions — created a hierarchical society organized around race (the sistema de castas). Portuguese Brazil became the world's largest slave society, importing more enslaved Africans than any other colony. The silver mines of Potosí and the sugar plantations of Brazil generated enormous wealth that flowed to Europe.

Northern European colonialism followed different patterns. English colonies in North America developed more diverse economies and, in some cases, greater degrees of self-governance (the Virginia House of Burgesses, New England town meetings). But all European colonial systems depended fundamentally on the dispossession of indigenous peoples and, increasingly, on the labor of enslaved Africans. The colonial era created the racial, economic, and cultural patterns that shape the Americas to this day — and produced the revolutionary movements that would eventually overthrow European rule.