Compare And Contrast English And Spanish Colonization

The Spanish and English both colonized North America to strike rich. However, the Spanish were searching for silver while the English focused on growing cash crops. Many English colonists were also Puritans who had little interest in spreading Christianity to the Native Americans, while the Spanish forced Native Americans to convert to Catholicism. The Spaniards also used Native Americans for labor while the English employed the use of indentured servants early on, then African slaves when the English colonists had accumulated enough wealth to do so. Therefore, the patterns and extent of European colonization varied depending on the goals of the Spanish and English. One of Spain’s primary goals of colonization was to fill their coffers via the New World gold and other precious metals, which was recovered by Spanish conquistadores like Francisco Pizarro who defeated the Incas of Peru and contributed to a massive amount of wealth to Spain. The Spaniards also gained large quantities of silver from mines in Mexico and Peru. While early English colonists fruitlessly searched for gold and silver like the Spanish, English colonies generated their wealth off of the cultivation of crops that had high demand in

By attempting to convert Native Americans to Christianity, Spanish colonists were given permission by the government to use Native Americans as slaves, although the Natives were short lived due to disease and poor treatment. Early labor for English colonies meanwhile came in the form of indentured servants, poor colonists who worked to pay off their debt from sailing to the New World. Although indentured servitude were adequate early on, servants were later phased out by imported African slaves to provide more labor with over 250,000 slaves being imported to the West Indies in just fifty