Answer:
See below.
Explanation:
Europe is a continent in the W part of the landmass lying between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, separated from Asia by the Ural Mountains on the E and the Caucasus Mountains and the Black and Caspian seas on the SE. In British usage, Europe sometimes contrasts with England. About 4,017,000 sq. mi. (10,404,000 sq. km.).
America, or the United States, is a republic in the N Western Hemisphere comprising of 48 conterminous states, the District of Columbia, Alaska in North America, the Hawaii in the N Pacific. Conterminous United States, 3,022,387 sq. mi. (7,827,982 sq. km.); with Alaska and Hawaii, 3, 615, 122 sq. mi. (9,363,166 sq. mi.). Capital: Washington, D.C.
There’s not really one simple explanation. The only two European powers who coordinated their colonial efforts early on were Portugal and Spain, the rest was mostly uncoordinated chaos, looking for new wealth. Initially it was to explore, learn new things about the world, and open trade routes to Asia. European powers had been in trade with China and India along the Silk Road since before Roman times, but after the 1100s, sea travel had improved to the point that European countries were trading with each other faster along sea routes than land routes, and sea traffic was now the quicker and more efficient method. This hid effects all over Europe. More inland, Eastern countries, became poorer than their western and Scandinavian counterparts, who were more likely to be on peninsulas surrounded by ocean with plenty of ports. The Hanseatic League became a real power along the narrow inlets all over Northern Europe, and the Republic of Venice also did, but along the opposite body of water. Getting to East Asia via the sea though around Africa was a very long cumbersome journey, so trade continued through Central Asia and the Middle East into Anatolia, then across the Dardanelles to Constantinople, and then along the Mediterranean. The silk road was disrupted by a combination of the Ottoman Conquest of Constantinople (see Fall of Constantinople), a few decades before Spain commissioned explorers to find a new route to Asia, and the slow collapse of the various Mongol Empires left over from Genghis Khan’s conquests. Afterwards, every bit of trade coming out of Asia into Europe directly paid the Ottoman Empire through taxes, a Muslim power which was conquering Christian kingdoms all over Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean. Trade also became much more expensive, partly due to more taxation along the trade routes, and also due to the collapse of the Feudal system after the Bubonic Plague, and increased demand as a larger and larger proportion of the population could now own land, currency, and buy things. In England, the collapse of feudalism and spike in wages caused prices to spike by so much, that the government tried suppressing the movement of English subjects through the Statute of Laborer's 1351. When Europeans set out in search of a route to Asia, they didn’t even necessarily expect to find land between Europe and Asia, let alone populations of exploitable people with less technology and immunity to disease. Soon after the Spanish and Portuguese discovered the Americas, they began trying to get as much gold back to Europe as possible, justified with orders from the church to convert the locals. This new Spanish and Portuguese gold had the effect of lowering the overall value of gold in Europe, as more supply was introduced. Other European kingdoms were suddenly poorer, or at least, their stores of wealth were not worth as much. The Netherlands circumvented this, and increased their own wealth, by navigating the long route all along Africa and India, all the way through to Indonesia. The Dutch East India Company exploded in value even more than Bitcoin has so far, by reestablishing regular trade with East Asia and bringing back rare commodities. England and France were left out of this at first. They began exploring less-densely populated areas of the Americas, to find their own gold, but France instead wound up bringing fur back to Europe, and England wound up taking land, building up farms, and shipping cotton, lumber, sugar cane, and other resources back to Europe. Russia entered into the fray very late, pursuing fur all the way through Siberia to Alaska. The colonization of the New World, prior to say…. 1750, was almost an arms race for wealth. Trade over land became more difficult and expensive, and commodities from East Asia rarer. The Bubonic Plague wiped out 1/3 of the population, making labor harder to get. The feudal system, which depended on cheap landed labor, collapsed in Western Europe, and a new class of competing free labor participated in the market for the first time in history, driving up the price of everything.
Answer: The opportunity to make money
Explanation: The opportunity to make money was one of the primary motivators for the colonization of the New World. The Virginia Company of London established the Jamestown colony to make a profit for its investors. Europe's period of exploration and colonization was fueled largely by necessity.
