ABSTRACT
Conquest and colonization, it is important to point out, were diverse and complex processes that differed and changed through time and place, and involved a number of European empires, their various successor states, and a diverse array of indigenous inhabitants. Spanish efforts focused in South, Central, and in parts of North America. The Portuguese Empire established a foothold in today’s Brazil. The British, French, and Dutch established outposts in North America and the Circum-Caribbean region. The processes of colonization of the Canaries, shaped by violent conquest, the impact of disease, and the extraction of resources, would have some parallels and in several ways set the stage for European conquest and colonization in the Americas. The precolonial patterns and histories that shaped Native American social development also helped, in part, to influence processes of colonization. Native Americans had incorporated technological adaptations and participated in complicated trans-regional economic exchange networks before 1492.
