Who Tried To Colonize North America Essay

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It has always been an enigma as to why the various European Empires of England, France and others tried to colonize North America. The distance between North America and Europe was quite vast, and there were abundant resources in South America. In addition, the first attempts by these European Empires to colonize North America ended in failure as the North American winters were too harsh, resulting in many settlers not surviving their first winters there. However, it was very important that these colonial powers did not abandon the idea of colonizing North America. You have to speculate, and ponder for what reason did European Empires not give up trying to colonize North America and instead focus their efforts further south where the resources …show more content…

Another factor that pushed European colonies such as Great Britain or France to colonize areas in North America was the huge amount of fish that was located in the Atlantic Ocean, just off the cost of what is now Eastern Canada. In fact, “France’s first venture into the North Atlantic was to the fishing grounds off Newfoundland in 1504… fishermen from Portugal, England and Spain soon joined the French in Newfoundland, but it was the ships from France that were predominant.” The fact that this area of the North Atlantic was so abundant in fish was a very important since Europe was becoming more and more overpopulated the fish that were found in the seas around Europe were becoming more scarce. Fish was a very important staple in the European diet because “at that time Europe was predominantly Catholic and the church required people to abstain from eating meat [not including fish] during lent and on fast days.” This resulted in the need to find new fishing grounds to provide the supply of fish needed in Europe. The finding of the abundance of fish in the North Atlantic was an extremely important discovery during this time. Although the discovery of these fish was significant, it did not force nations such as Great Britain and the French to start their colonization of North America, as ships could be sent to fish and then return back home. However, it did greatly increase the traffic of ships between Europe and North