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Essay On The Spanish Colonies In The American Colonies

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The Spanish, French, and English all established major settlements in North America in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In each colony, settlement revolved around different types of trade: plantations and mining in New Spain, the fur trade in New France, and tobacco and the family farm in British North America. There were many similarities among these countries’ approaches to settling, but also enormous differences. New Spain The Spanish were the first European country to establish significant colonies in the Americas. By the 1570s, the Spanish had established roughly 200 cities and towns in the New World. They had also built many cathedrals, as well as the first universities in the Americas. New Spain refers to Spanish colonies in North and Central America and the Caribbean. At its height in 1795, New Spain included Mexico, Panama, several Caribbean islands, and most of the United States west of the Mississippi River. In these territories, the Spanish started large projects to get all available resources. Throughout the sixteenth century, the Spanish established sugar plantations in the Americas. The Spanish considered using Native Americans as their labor force but, eventually relied on slavery. Though American Indians were utilized in the Mexican gold mines, European diseases had decimated the American Indian population, and the Spanish considered Native Americans too savage to be good workers. The Spanish set up a bureaucracy to govern the large population of

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