American History Essay Question (Essay Sample)

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American History Essay Question
Spanish imperial enterprises in the Americas began long before the 18th century with the first voyage of Columbus in the year 1492. History books associate instantaneous goals of the Spanish to the three Gs namely “God, Gold, and Glory.” Unlike the British colonialists who landed to the East Coast of North American with families, the Spanish colonial efforts was the work of notable figures of men who led the People like Cortes and Pizzaro, were the first conquistadores who came to America seeking gold but in due course enslaved the indigenous communities to work on the agricultural estates and plantations (Hackel 32). Many of these soldiers of fortune took wives from the local populations thereby forming a distinctly new social class in the Americas.
God was also another goal why the Spanish came to America. There were many Spanish kings that proclaimed themselves as staunch Catholicism defenders and therefore when they got into power, they dispatched missionary priests to travel from Spain and convert native populations throughout Central America, Texas, California and New Mexico among other places. This is the basis of why all of Central and South America was predominantly Roman Catholic until 20th Century. The first permanent English colony as was with the Spain colony settled at Jamestown with a profit motive (Hackel 39). The Virginia Colony was controlled initially by a joint stock company because it was not funded by the royal patronage in Britain. Like the Spaniards, most early Virginia English settlers were young indentured male servants seeking greener pastures in a land apparently referred as the land limitless opportunity. This was not so in other English colonies, e.g. In New England, because here, families were featured as the norm in the local communities.
Other English colonies in America were founded by religious groups that sought refuge in America to flee from harassment or the continental wars in England. Pilgrims, Quakers, Puritans and Huguenots established communities, mainly after establishing treaties with local Native American peoples. One difference of the British religious settlers in America is that unlike their Spanish counterpart, they never endeavored to convert the native peoples with the Moravians missionaries among the Cherokee and Shawnee as the only notable exception. English colonists unlike the Spaniards found no gold or silver but rather established profitable enterprises in tobacco and rice the cultivation, lumber and ship building , and what is referred as New England fishing (Hackel 42). It can therefore be argued that, these diversified structures generated a greater and long-term profits for British colonists unlike the Spanish, at least until 1783.
The Spanish and English colonial patterns exhibit that significant differences existed although the two colonial patterns also demonstrates some notable similarities. The similarities as illustrated in the textbook show that both Spanish and British nations used New World colonies including America to further their commercial goals. Both of the nations also in the process of exploitation invaded native populations, thereby creating a long course of social and cultural disruption to the ravaged communities. By the late 18th and early 19th Centuries, independent communities emerged that were to make both Spanish and British nations to lose their primary new world colonies (...