AMERICA - GENERAL HISTORICAL SKETCH The name America was derived from that of Amerigo Vespucci (q.v.). In Waldseemueller's map of 1507 the name is given to a body of land roughly corresponding to the continent of South America. As discovery revealed the existence of another vast do main to the north, the name spread to the whole of the pair of continents,in spite of the protests of the Spaniards, by whom it was not officially used of North America till the i8th century.
Barring any trips which the Norse sea-rovers made, or may have made, to the Western continent, the discovery of America is justly dated, Oct. 12 (N.S.21) 1492, when Christopher Columbus (q.v.), the Genoese, made his landfall on the island of Guanahani, now identified with Watling island in the Bahamas. After many disap pointments Columbus persuaded the catholic sovereigns, Ferdi nand and Isabella of Spain, to furnish him with a squadron of three small vessels. With it he sailed from Palos in Andalusia on Aug. 3, 1492, reached Guanahani on Oct. 12, touched on the coast of Cuba and on Hispaniola, established a small post, and returned to Lisbon on March 4, and thence to Spain.
It was the belief of Columbus and his contemporaries that he had reached the islands described by Marco Polo as forming the eastern extremity of Asia. Hence he spoke of the "Indies," and "las Indias" continued to be the official name given to their Amer ican possessions by the Spaniards for many generations. His feat produced a diplomatic controversy with Portugal which was des tined to have important political consequences. In 1454 Pope Nicholas V. had given the Portuguese the exclusive right of explo ration and conquest on the road to the Indies. His bull contem plated only the use of the route by the coast of Africa to the south and east. After the return of Columbus and his supposed demon stration that the Indies could be reached by sailing west, disputes might obviously arise. The catholic sovereigns applied to Pope Alexander VI., a Spaniard, for a confirmation of their rights. The pope drew a line from north to south 1 oo leagues west of the Azores and Cape Verde islands, and gave the Spaniards the claim to all to the west (May 4, . The Portuguese thought the division unfair to them, and protested. A conference was held between the two powers at Tordesillas in 1494, and by common consent the line was shifted to 37o leagues west of the Cape Verde islands. The boundary line is generally considered as the 5oth degree of longitude west of Greenwich, which strikes the mainland of South America about the mouth of the Amazon. Thencefor ward the Spaniards claimed the right to exclude all other peoples from trade or settlement "beyond the line." Between Sept. 1493 and the time of his last voyage (May 1502 to Nov. 1504), Columbus explored the West Indies, reached the mainland of South America at the mouth of the Orinoco and sailed along the coast of Central America from Cape Honduras to Nom bre de Dios (near Colon). Henry VII. of England allowed the I3ristol merchants to fit out a western voyage under the command of another Genoese, John Cabot (q.v.), in 1497. The history of the venture is very obscure, but Cabot is thought to have reached Newfoundland and the mainland. Between 150o and 1503 a Por tuguese family of the name of Cortereal carried out voyages of exploration on the eastern coast of North America. In 1500 the Portuguese, Pedro Alvarez Cabral, while on his way to the East Indies, sighted the coast of Brazil at Monte Pascoal in the Aim ores, and took formal possession. The belief that the eastern ex tremity of Asia had been reached died slowly, and the great object of exploration in America continued to be the discovery of a passage through to the Spice islands, in order to compete with the Portuguese, who had reached them by the Cape route. The first Spanish settlement in Hispaniola spread to the mainland by the adventure of Alonso de Ojeda and Diego de Nicuesa in Darien in 1509. Cuba was occupied by Diego de Velasquez in 1511. In 1512 (or 1513) Juan Ponce de Leon made the first recorded exploration of the coast of Florida and the Bahama channel. In 1513 Vasco Nunez de Balboa crossed the isthmus of Darien and saw the South Sea (Pacific). The hope that a passage through to the Spice Islands would be found near exist ing Spanish settlements was now given up. One was sought farther south, and in Nov. 1520 Ferdinand Magellan (q.v.) passed through the strait which bears his name and sailed across the Pacific. At last the existence of a continent divided by a vast stretch of ocean from Asia, and mostly lying within the sphere of influence assigned to Spain by the pope, was revealed to the world.
The first aim of the Spaniards had been trade with the Indies. The Casa de Contratacion, a committee for the regulation of trade, was established at Seville in 1503. European plants and animals were introduced into Hispaniola and Cuba, and sugar plantations were set up. But the main object of the Spaniards was always gold, to be won by slave labour. As the surface gold of the islands was exhausted, and the feeble island races perished before the invaders, the Spaniards were driven farther afield. In 1519 Pedrarius Davila transferred the Darien settle ment to Panama. In that and the following year the coasts of Yucatan and of the Gulf of Mexico were explored successively by Francisco Hernandez Cordova and Juan de Grijalva, who both sailed from Cuba. From Cuba it was that Hernan Cortes (q.v.) sailed on Feb. 10 or 18, 1519, for the conquest of Mexico. Hitherto the Spaniards had met only the weak islanders, or the more robust cannibal Caribs, both alike pure savages. In Mexico they found "pueblo" or town Indians who possessed an organized government and had made progress in civilization. The hegemony of the Aztecs, who dominated the other tribes from the central valley of Mexico, was oppressive. Cortes, the most accomplished and statesmanlike of the Spanish conquerors, raised the subject peoples against them. His conquest was effected by 1521. His example stimulated the settlers at Panama, who had heard of a great people owning vast quantities of gold to the south. Between 1524 and 1535 Francisco Pizarro (q.v.) and Diego de Almagro had completed the conquest of Peru, which was followed, how ever, by a long period of strife among the Spaniards, and of rebellions. From Peru the Spaniards advanced southwards to Chile, which was first unsuccessfully invaded 0535-37) by Diego de Almagro. Their advance to the south was checked by the indomitable opposition of the Araucanians, but from the southern Andes the Spaniards overflowed on to the great plains which now form the interior of the Argentine republic. The first permanent settlement at the mouth of the river Plate at Buenos Aires dates from 1580. In its main lines the Spanish conquest was complete by 155o. What the Spaniards had then overrun from Mexico to Chile is still Spanish America. Brazil, after a period of exploration which began in 151o, was gradually settled by the Portuguese. The vast territories acquired by Spain in this brief period were held to be, by virtue of the pope's bull, the peculiar property of the sovereign. In 1509 the Council of the Indies was established, but it did not take its final form till 1524. It consisted of a president, with a board of advisers, who possessed legislative and administrative powers, and who varied in number at different times. The Casa de Contratacion, another board regulated the trade. In America the Crown was represented by governors. After the preliminary period of conquest the whole of the Spanish possessions were divided into the two "kingdoms" of New Spain—consisting of Venezuela and the Spanish posses sions north of the isthmus—and of New Castile, a title soon changed to Peru, which included the Central American isthmus and all of South America except Venezuela and Brazil. Each was ruled by a viceroy. As the Spanish dominions became more settled, the viceroyalty of Peru was found to be unwieldy. New Granada (which included the present republics of Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador) was created a viceroyalty in 1718 (soon abolished, but re-created in 1740). A fourth viceroyalty for the river Plate was formed in 1778. Other governments known as captain-generalships were cut out of the viceroyalties at different periods.
The government of Spain administered its dominions from the beginning in the strictest spirit of the "colonial The Indies were expected to supply precious metals and raw mate rials, and to take all manufactures from the mother country. In order to facilitate the regulation of the trade by the Casa de Contratacion, it was concentrated first in Seville, and when the Guadalquivir was found to be becoming too shallow for the growing tonnage of ships, at Cadiz. Merchant vessels were re quired for their protection to sail in convoy. The convoys or flotas sailed in October first to Cartagena in South America, and thence to Nombre de Dios or, in later times, Porto Bello. The yearly fairs at these places received the imports from Europe and the colonial trade of the Pacific coast, first collected at Panama and then carried over the isthmus. from Nombre de Dios or Porto Bello the convoys went to La Vera Cruz for the trade of New Spain, and returned home in July by the Florida straits. One-fifth of the produce of the mines belonged to the Crown. The collection of this bullion was at all times a main object with the Spanish government, and more especially so after the discovery of the great silver deposits of Potosi in Bolivia. Forced labour was required to work them and the natives were driven to the toil.
The Portuguese settlement in Brazil was more purely colonial than the Spanish possessions. Until 1534 little was done to regulate the activity of private adventures. In that year the coast was divided into captaincies, which were united under a single governor-general in 1549. Between 1572 and 1576 there were in Brazil the two governments of Rio de Janeiro and Bahia; but its history is of little importance till the occupation of Portugal by Philip II. drew the country into the wars of the Spanish monarchy.
The claim of the peninsula powers to divide the American continent between them, based as it was on an award given in entire ignorance of the facts, would in no case have been re spected. As England was in general alliance with the sovereigns of Spain during the early i 6th century, Englishmen turned their attention at first towards the discovery of a route to the Spice islands round the north of Asia. But the rivalry of Francis I. and Charles V. gave France a strong motive for assailing the Spaniards in the New World. King Francis encouraged the ill-recorded and disputed voyages of the Florentine Giovanni da Verrazano in 1524, and the undoubted explorations of Jacques Cartier. Between 1534 and 1542 this seaman, a native of St. Malo, explored the Strait of Belle Isle and the Gulf of St. Law rence, and visited the Indian village of Hochelaga, now Montreal. The claims of France to the possession of a great part of the northern half of America were based on the voyages of Verrazano and Cartier. The death of King Francis, and the beginning of the wars of religion, suspended colonial enterprise under royal direction. But the Huguenots, under the inspiration of Coligny, made three attempts to found colonies to the south—at Rio de Janeiro (I 5 5 5-6 7) , near the present Beaufort, South Carolina (1562), and in Florida (1565). These ventures were ruined partly by the hostility of the Spaniards and Portuguese, partly by the dissensions of the colonists. Meanwhile, French corsairs from St. Malo and Dieppe had been active in infesting the West Indies and the trade route followed by the Spanish convoys. Af ter the accession of Queen Elizabeth, and the beginning of the breach between England and Spain, they were joined by English sea-rovers. The English claimed the right to trade with all Spanish possessions in or out of Europe by virtue of their treaty of trade and amity made in the reign of Charles V. The Spaniards maintained that there was "no peace beyond the line," i e., Pope Alexander's line as finally fixed by the conference at Tordesillas. The English retaliated by armed smuggling voyages.
It was, however, not till late that they attempted to found permanent settlements. In 1578 Sir Humphrey Gilbert obtained a patent for discovery and settlement. In 1583 he perished in an effort to establish a colony in Newfoundland. His work was taken up by his half-brother, Sir Walter Raleigh, in i 584. Between 1586 and i 603 Sir Walter made successive efforts to settle a colony in the extensive territory called Virginia, in honour of Queen Elizabeth. His colony at Roanoke, in what is now North Carolina, was unsuccessf ui, and after his fall his patent reverted to the Crown, but the new Virginia company carried on his schemes. In 1607 the first lasting settlement was made in Virginia, and after a struggle began to flourish by the cultivation of tobacco.
In 1620 another settlement was made. A small body of religious dissentients, ioi men, women, and children, secured leave from the Virginia company to plant themselves within its bounds. They sailed in a single ship, the "Mayflower," and landed near Cape Cod, where they founded the colony of Plymouth, after wards (162I) obtaining a patent from the council for New England. From these two centres, and from later settlements, arose the "plantations" of the English, which gradually increased to the number of 13 and were destined to become the United States of America.
The English colonies, though divided by interest or character, were all alike jealous to defend, and eager to extend, their freedom of self-government, based on charters granted by the Crown. The settlers by degrees threw off the control of the proprietors who had received grants from the Crown and had promoted the first settlements. It was a marked characteristic of the English colonists, and a strong element in their prosperity, that they were hospitable in welcoming men of other races— Germans from the Palatinate, and French Huguenots driven out by persecution who brought with them some capital, more intelligence, and enduring hatred of Roman Catholic France. Though the British Government gave, more or less unwillingly, a large measure of self-government to the plantations, it was no less intent than the Spanish Crown on retaining the whole colonial trade in British hands, and on excluding foreigners. Two foreign settlements within the English sphere—the Dutch colony of New Netherland, now New York, and the Swedish settlement on the Delaware—were absorbed by the growing English element. While the English plantations were striking root along the coast, by somewhat prosaic but fruitful industry, and were growing in population with rapid strides, two other movements were in progress. To the south, the English, French, and Dutch, though often in rivalry with one another, combined to break in on the monopoly of the Spaniards. They turned the maxim that "there is no peace beyond the line" against its inventors. They invaded the West Indies, seized one island after another, and formed the freebooting communities known as the brethren of the coast and the buccaneers. After the renewal of the war between Spain and Holland in 1621, the Dutch invaded the Portuguese colony of Brazil and seized Bahia. A long period of struggle followed, but, after the declaration of Portuguese inde pendence in 1640, local opposition, and the support given to the Portuguese by the French, led to the retreat of the Dutch. To the north, to the west, and to the south of the English settlements on the mainland, a most characteristic French colonial policy was being carried out. No sooner were the wars of religion over than the French again set about making good their claim to Canada, and to whatever they could represent as arising naturally out of Canada. In 1599, under the encouragement of Henry IV., speculators began to frequent the St. Lawrence in pursuit of the fur trade. Their settlements were mainly trading posts. Their colonists were not farmers but trappers, wood rangers, coureurs du bois, who married Indian women, and formed a mixed race known as the bois brines. Not a few of the leaders, notably Samuel de Champlain (q.v.), who founded Quebec in 1608, were brave, ingenious men, but the population provided no basis for a lasting colony. It was adventurous, small, scattered, and unstable. The religious impulse which was so strong both in the Spanish and the English colonies was prominent in the French, but in the most fatal form. Pious people were eager to bring about the conversion of the Indians, and were zealously served by missionaries. The Jesuits, whose first appearance in New France dates from 161I, were active and devoted. Their aim was to reduce the fierce Red men to a state of childlike docility to priests. It was true that the most active French colonial element, the trappers, were barbarized by the natives, and that the pursuit of the fur trade and other causes had brought the French into sharp collision with the most formidable of the native races, the confederation known as the Five (later Six) Nations. During the reign of Louis XIV., after 166o, the French government paid great attention to Canada, but not in a way capable of leading to the formation of a colony. The king was as intent as the rulers of Spain had been to keep the American possessions free from all taint of heresy. Therefore he carried on the policy of excluding the Huguenots—the only colonizing element among his subjects—and drove them into the English plantations. A small handful of obedient peasants formed the basis of the colony. On this narrow foundation was raised a vast superstructure, ecclesiastical, administrative, and military. His priests, and his officials civil and military, gave the French king many daring explorers. While the English colonies were slowly digging their way, taking firm hold of the soil, and growing in numbers, from the sea to the Alleghanies, French missionaries and explorers had ranged far and wide. In 1682 Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle, who had already explored the Ohio, sailed down the Mississippi and took possession of the region at the mouth by the name of Louisiana.
The problem which was to be settled by a century of strife .was now posed. On the one hand were the English plantations, populated, cultivated, profitable, stretching along the east coast of North America; on the other were the Canadian settlements, poverty-stricken, empty, over-officialled, a cause of constant ex pense to the home government, and, at a vast distance, those of Louisiana, struggling and bankrupt. The French remedy for an unsuccessful colony had always been to annex more territory, and forestall a possible rival. Therefore the French government strove to unite the beggarly settlements in Canada and Louisiana by setting up posts all along the Ohio and the Mississippi, in order to confine the English between the Alleghanies and the sea.
The political history of North America till 1763 is mainly the story of the pressure of the English colonies on this paper barrier. As regards Spanish America, England was content to profit by the Asiento treaty, which gave her the monopoly of slave-hunting for the Spanish colonies and an opening for contra band trade. In the River Plate region, where the dissensions of Spaniards and Portuguese afforded another opening, English traders smuggled. The Spaniards, with monstrous fatuity, refused to make use of the superb waterways provided by the Parana and Paraguay, and endeavoured to stifle all trade. England's main struggle was with France. It was prolonged by her entanglement in European disputes and by political causes, by the want of co-operation among the English colonies, and their jealousy of control by the home government. The organization of the French colonies, though industrially ruinous, gave them the command of more available military forces than were at the disposal of the English. Thus the fight dragged on. At last, when under the leadership of the elder Pitt (see CHATHAM, EARL OF) England set to work resolutely to force a final settlement, the end came. The British navy cut off the French from all help from home, and after a gallant struggle, their dominion in Canada was con quered. They surrendered Louisiana to Spain, which had suffered much in an attempt to help them, and their possessions in America were reduced to their islands in the West Indies and French Guiana.
The fall of the French dominion on the continent of North America was practically the beginning of the existence of inde pendent nations of European origin in the New World. The causes which led to the revolt of the colonies, the political and military history of the war of independence, are dealt with under the heading of UNITED STATES (History) and AMERICAN REVOLUTION. The significance of these epoch-making events in the general history of America is that from 1783 onwards there was, in the New World, an autonomous community in entire separation from European control. Such a polity, sur rounded as it was by territory dependent on European sover eigns, could not be without a profound influence on its neighbours. Of deliberate direct action there was not much, nor was it needed. The peoples of the 13 States which had secured emancipa tion from British sovereignty were wisely intent on framing their own Federal Union, and in taking effective possession of the vast territories in the Ohio region and beyond the Mississippi. But their example worked. Their independence tempted, their prosperity stimulated. From the freedom of the United States came the revolt of Spanish America, and the grant by Great Britain to Canada of the amplest rights of self-government.
The effect which the establishment of the great northern republic was bound to have on their own colonies was not un known to the wiser among the rulers of Spain. They took, however, few and weak steps to counteract the visible peril. The wars of the French Revolution and of Napoleon, in which Spain was entangled, interrupted her communications with her colonies, and weakened her hold on them. The defeat, in 18o6 and 1807, of two British expeditions to Buenos Aires and Monte video, resulting in the capitulation of the English force, gave a great impulse to the self-reliance of the colonists, to whom the credit of the victory entirely belonged. When the inter vention of Napoleon in Spain plunged the mother country into anarchy, the colonists began to act for themselves. They were still loyal, but they were no longer passive. The brutality of some Spanish governors on the spot provoked anger. The cortes assembled in Cadiz, being under the influence of the merchants and mob, could make no concessions, and all Spanish America flamed into revolt. For the details of the struggle the reader must refer to the articles ARGENTINA, BOLIVIA, CHILE, COLOMBIA, ECUADOR, PANAMA, PERU, PARAGUAY, URUGUAY, VENEZUELA.
Brazil followed the same course in a milder way and a little later. The struggle of Spanish America for independence lasted from 1810 to 1826.
Meanwhile the United States had taken decisive action. Presi dent Monroe, in his message to Congress on Dec. 2, 1823, laid down the rule that no part of America was any longer res nullius, or open to colonial settlement. Though the vast ultimate con sequences of this sudden appearance of the great western re public in the arena of international politics were not realized even by those in sympathy with Monroe's action, the weight of the United States made any effective protest by the continental powers of Europe impossible. From President Monroe's declara tion has grown up what is now known as the Monroe Doctrine (q.v.) which, in substance, insists that America forms a separate system apart from Europe, wherein still existing European pos sessions may be tolerated, but on the understanding that no extension of them, and no establishment of European control over a nominally independent American state, will be allowed.
The Monroe Doctrine is indeed the recognition, rather than the cause, of undeniable fact. Europe is still possessed of some measure of sovereign power in the New World, in Canada, in Guiana, and in the West Indian islands. But Canada is bound only by a voluntary allegiance, Guiana is unimportant, and in the West Indian islands, where the independence of Haiti and the loss of Cuba and Porto Rico by Spain have diminished the Euro pean sphere, European dominion is only a survival of the colonial epoch. America, North and South, does form a separate system. Within that system power is divided as it has not been in Europe since the fall of the Roman empire. On the one hand are the United States and Canada. On the other are all the States formed out of the colonial empires of Spain and Portugal. The states of the American Union, as also Canada, are non-tropical, adapted to the development of European races, not mixed with Indian blood, and possessed by long inheritance of the machinery needed for the successful conduct of self-government. They grew during the i gth century in population and wealth at a rate that placed them far ahead of the Spanish and Portuguese states, which in the beginning were the richer and the more populous. The Spanish and Portuguese states of America are largely tropical, and therefore less adapted to the health of a white race. Their population is divided between a white, an Indian and a coloured portion, the latter two sometimes docile and industrious, some times almost savage. They inherited no machinery of self-govern ment. Townships governed by close corporations, and all em bedded in the despotic power of the Crown, presented few of the elements out of which a stable commonwealth could be formed. It was inevitable that in the early stages of their history, the so-called Latin communities should fall under the control of "the single person," and no less inevitable that he should be a soldier. The sword and military discipline long supplied the only effective instruments of government. It would have been a miracle if the first generation of Mexican and South American history had not been anarchical. It was not until the last quarter of the i oth century that the greater portion of Spanish and Portuguese America settled down and established permanent and peaceful governments.
In the first quarter of the loth century this tendency toward political stability was increasingly pronounced. The Spanish American War, which swept away the last vestiges of Spanish rule in the New World, resulted in certain changes of importance. Following the defeat of Spain, Porto Rico, and later by purchase the Virgin islands, became dependencies of the United States, and Cuba, Haiti, and Santo Domingo came under the influence of the United States. This influence was further strengthened by the acquirement of the Panama Canal Zone and the construction and control of the interoceanic canal, which facilitated American trade and gave the United States overwhelming preponderance in the Caribbean. Moreover, the relations of the United States in co-operation with South American countries in the World War further established the prestige of the North American republic. Increasing commercial interpenetration fostered economic de velopment and with it a better social and political order. Pan American conferences, such as that held at Havana in 1928, have in some degree contributed to this result. In this latest period there have been serious lapses on the part of some of the Latin nations. In Mexico the overthrow in 1911 of the efficient govern ment long maintained by Diaz was followed by more than a decade of revolutionary turbulence with repeated usurpations by military leaders. In Brazil the formidable revolt of 1924 seriously disrupted trade in the chief exporting district of the country. Between Chile and Peru the long unsettled Tacna-Arica con troversy was revived in 1921 and, despite all efforts to secure arbitration, unsettled for several years the relations of the two countries.
On the whole, however, the Latin nations of America reached during the early decades of the loth century the highest general level of economic and political stability that they had as yet attained. In this connection it is significant that the strictly Latin peoples in these lands, now that all fear of Spanish political domination has been removed, look to the Latin nations of Europe—to France, Spain, and Italy—for their social, artistic and political ideals and for the basic inspirations of their culture.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.-Separate bibliographies will be found under the Bibliography.-Separate bibliographies will be found under the headings of the separate States. Amid the plethora of books, the reader cannot do better than consult the Narrative and Critical His tory of America, Justin Winsor (1886-89), in eight large octavo volumes, in which all the chapters are supplied with copious and care fully compiled bibliographies. (X.)