Portugal began to colonize the eastern coast of South America in 1531, in order to maintain its claim to what is now Brazil against the Spanish, who were locating everywhere else on the new continent. A few settlements along the coast, however, were all that resulted until early in the eighteenth century, when the Portuguese tried to develop the country as a substitute for the East Indian possessions which the English and Dutch bad taken from them. There was little European impress upon the country, however, before 1808, when the Portuguese court emigrated to Rio de Janeiro, which became for a while a pseudo-European capital. In 1821 King John VI. went hack to Portugal, but he left his eldest son, Dom Pedro, as emperor. Extensive Brazilian estates were granted to his European retainers. and foreign capital began to he intro duced. The country was developed for invest ment rather than colonization. There was no extensive taking up of the land by Europeans until the second half of the nineteenth century, when Italians, Germans, and Poles turned their attention to this region of South America.
The French colonization of North America began with De Monts' settlement on the Bay of Fundy in 1604. The English (see the article AnuALL) effectually stopped all efforts to extend these settlements along the Maine coast, and so Champlain undertook to open up the interior by way of the St. Lawrence River. Quebec was settled in 1608, and Montreal in 1642; but these towns grew rapidly as trading and shipping places rather than as centres for colonization. A few other towns were started along the lines of communication with the trapping and hunting regions around the great lakes, as headquarters for trade with the Indians. As the competition with England for the possession of the country south of the lakes became keen, military posts, of which Fort Duquesne is the best known, were established on the Ohio and the Mississippi, to emphasize and protect the French claims. No where was there much actual possession of the soil. When, in 1763, Digland secured the whole of French North America east of the Missis sippi, the greatest part of it was open for settle ment by her own people.
The English, like the other European nations, began by establishing outposts, first for the fish ermen on Newfoundland before 1570, and in 1585 on the Carolina coast for the purpose of extend ing the search for gold and treasures inland. Religious and political conditions, however, changed the character of the English emigration to America soon after 1600. In 1620 and 1630 the Pilgrims and Puritans established themselves along Massachusetts Bay, with the deliberate purpose of becoming permanent inhabitants of the country. A few years earlier, in 1607, a Church of England colony had been attempted at Sagadahoc, now Popham Beach, on the Maine coast; but it made no permanent impression on New England. The same year a settlement was
started at Jamestown, in Virginia, a successor to Raleigh's "lost colony" of 1587; and after many vicissitudes this gradually acquired a per manent character. The English Roman Catholics had held themselves ready to emigrate if neces sary throughout the reign of Elizabeth; but it was not until 1634 that they prepared a place for themselves in Lord Baltimore's grant of Mary land. The development of New England, begin ning with the "great immigration" of 1630, was very rapid. In 1635 the "Bay Colony" was able to spare a large body of people, who, disagreeing with the majority in sonic minor matters of doc trine, preferred to live by themselves along the Connecticut River. A year later, others who differed from the Boston elders in opinions re garding more vital points of dogma formed the Providence Plantations as a refuge those desired religious liberty. The Southern colonies were settled more slowly, the formal organiza tion of colonial governments (the Carolinas in 1663 and Georgia in 1733) being brought about partly by the necessity of counteracting the ex tension of the Spanish settlements north and west from St. Augustine (founded in 1565).
The Dutch promptly organized trading posts along the river explored by Hudson in 1609, and sent over a large body of colonists during the next ten years to hold the country. Rivalry with the English on the east, and with the Swedes, who settled on the Delaware in 1638, prepared the way for the absorption of the lat ter by the Dutch in 1655, and in turn for the occupation of the Dutch territory by the English in 1664.
French trappers and frontiersmen wandered up and down the :Mississippi and along its western tributaries in steadily increasing numbers from the time of La Salle's voyage down the river in lt183. By 1803, the year of the Louisiana pur chase, these men and their descendants were scattered widely over the western plains, draw ing their supplies from the large village at St. Louis or the small town of New Orleans. There was no real occupation of the country, however, until the signs of the exhaustion of the farming lands in the east, combined with political con siderations. led to an investigation of the oppor tunities for profitable existence beyond the Mis sissippi. Polities was largel:- responsible for the annexation, in 1845. of Texas. and the same force. acting in advance of economic or agricultural reasons, led to the organization of the emigrant aid societies in 1854 to hasten the settlement of Kansas and Nebraska. The discovery of gold in California in 1848, in Nevada a decade later. and in the Klondike in 1S97. resulted in opening up those regions, and in the sudden extension of the limits of permanent occupation. For further information on America, see special articles tin der the political divisions of the continent.