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Period: Jan 1, 1490 to
Period 1 Periodization
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Jan 1, 1491
America Before Columbus
Before the arrival of Europeans, native populations in North America developed a wide variety of social, political, and economic structures based in part on interactions with the environment and each other. The Gilder Lehrman Institute This engraving, by H. B. Hall, is based on an 1846 oil painting by John Vanderlyn, commissioned for the US Capitol. This reconstruction of the Landing of Columbus came to be the prevailing representation in the American imagination of Columbus’s disco -
Jan 1, 1492
Discovery of the New World
Italian explorer Christopher Columbus accidently discovered the New World. Columbus had set out to find a route west to Asia from Europe, and, upon landing in the present-day Bahamas, he at first believed he had reached the Indies. Columbus’s discovery made him a celebrated hero upon his return to Europe. -
Jan 1, 1492
Columbian Exchange
The Columbian Exchange refers to the flow of goods between the Americas, Europe, and Africa that followed Columbus’s widely advertised “discovery” of the New World. People, animals, plants, and disease passed from continent to continent. -
Jan 1, 1525
Rise of Atlantic Slave Trade
The first record of a slave trade voyage direct from Africa to the Americas is for a ship that landed in Santo Domingo, on the island Española (Hispaniola), in 1525. -
Jan 1, 1555
Tobacco arrives in Europe
With tobacco, English settlers finally found a New World commodity that worked well in the mercantile system. Spanish explorers already had great success with gold and silver finds and the French created a vibrant market for furs in Europe. -
Sir Francis Drake’s attack on St. Augustine
Five years after leading the first English circumnavigation of the globe in 1577–1580, Sir Francis Drake led a raid against Spanish settlements in the Caribbean, including Santiago, Santo Domingo, and Cartagena, as well as St. Augustine (in present-day Florida). Historian Peter Mancall notes that “the agreements of the early 1490s made sense in a Europe where the Spanish and the Portuguese were the dominant maritime players. But over the course of the sixteenth century other Europeans also recog -
Deafeat of Spanish Armada
Spain was the main colonial power in the Americas from 1492 until the British came to power. The Armada was defeated by smaller, swifter English ships during the war between England and Spain at the end of the 16th century. With the defeat of Spain's navy, Britain became the strongest naval power in the world, which would continue for the rest of colonial times. -
Jamestown, VA. Established
The Jamestown settlement in the Colony of Virginia was the first permanent English settlement in the Americas. This is truly where the British Empire began it's dominance as the #1 world power. Established by the Virginia Company of London as "James Fort" on May 14, 1607
