By 1770, more than 2 million people lived and worked in Great Britain's 13 North American colonies. Estimates of the pre-Columbian population of the Americas vary tremendously. Baptists, German and Swiss Protestants and Anabaptists also flocked to Pennsylvania. These were created to prevent the exploitation of the indigenous peoples by the encomenderos or landowners, by strictly limiting their power and dominion. With a favorable disease environment and plenty of land and food, their numbers grew exponentially to 65,000 by 1760. : Denmark/Norway, England/Scotland, Spain/Netherlands). Other explorers included Giovanni da Verrazzano, sponsored by France in 1524; the Portuguese João Vaz Corte-Real in Newfoundland; João Fernandes Lavrador, Gaspar and Miguel Corte-Real and João Álvares Fagundes, in Newfoundland, Greenland, Labrador, and Nova Scotia (from 1498 to 1502, and in 1520); Jacques Cartier (1491–1557), Henry Hudson (1560s–1611), and Samuel de Champlain (1567–1635), who explored the region of Canada he reestablished as New France. Over the first century and a half after Columbus's voyages, the native population of the Americas plummeted by an estimated 80% (from around 50 million in 1492 to eight million in 1650),[1] mostly by outbreaks of Old World diseases. Eventually, most of the Western Hemisphere came under the control of Western European governments, leading to changes to its landscape, population, and plant and animal life. Other conquistadors, such as Hernando de Soto, Francisco Vázquez de Coronado, and Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, pushed farther north, from Florida, Mexico, and the Caribbean, respectively, in the early 1500s. The first colony was founded at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607. Meanwhile, France also founded colonies in the Americas: in eastern North America, a number of Caribbean islands and small coastal parts of South America. Two years later, Charles V signed the New Laws (which replaced the Laws of Burgos of 1512) prohibiting slavery and the repartimientos, but also claiming as his own all the lands of the Americas and all of the indigenous people as his own subjects. The Age of Exploration was the beginning of territorial expansion for several European countries. Colonization of AmericaThe Colonization of America. Colonization- establishing settlements ... – A free PowerPoint PPT presentation (displayed as a Flash slide show) on PowerShow.com - id: 6f1f7e-Nzc2Z The English Colonization of America started in 1584 when Sir Walter Raleigh's fleet of seven ships with 108 men, under the command of Richard Grenville and Ralph Lane reached Roanoke Island. In England, many people came to question the organization of the Church of England by the end of the 16th century. The American colonies were the British colonies that were established during the 17th and early 18th centuries in what is now a part of the eastern United States. [16] It is also notable for its possible connection with the attempted colony of Vinland, established by Leif Erikson around the same period or, more broadly, with the Norse colonization of the Americas.[17]. Early explorations and conquests were made by the Spanish and the Portuguese immediately following their own final reconquest of Iberia in 1492. In the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas, ratified by the Pope, these two kingdoms divided the entire non-European world into two areas of exploration and colonization, with a north to south boundary that cut through the Atlantic Ocean and the eastern part of present-day Brazil. The Colonization of America - Voyage of Christopher Columbus 1492. [6], The relatively late, British colonization of the Americas started with the unsuccessful settlement attempts in Roanoke and Newfoundland. [39] The cultural and political instability attending these losses appears to have been of substantial aid in the efforts of various colonists in New England and Massachusetts to acquire control over the great wealth in land and resources of which indigenous societies had customarily made use.[40]. Some of these were on Caribbean islands, which had often already been conquered by the Spanish or depopulated by disease, while others were in eastern North America, which had not been colonized by Spain north of Florida.