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Compare and contrast the colonization of the Americas by the English and the Spanish? What were their motivations? What strategies did they each...

The Spanish and English had some of the same motivations.  They were both motivated by the desire to gain riches.  They were both motivated by the desire to win glory for their countries.  However, there were also differences.  The Spanish appear to have been motivated by religion more than the English were.  The English, on the other hand, were more interested in having an outlet for their excess population.


The other two things that you are asking about are very much connected to one another.  The strategies that they used dictated their relationships with the indigenous people.  The Spanish strategy for colonizing the Americas was essentially to have a few Spanish people control and culturally influence a large number of indigenous people.  By contrast, the English strategy was to flood an area with white settlers and push the natives out.  This, of course, determined their relationships with the indigenous people.  One book from which I teach (Out of Many by John Mack Faragher, et al) calls the Spanish relationship with the natives a “frontier of inclusion” whereas it calls the English relationship with them a “frontier of exclusion.”  What this means is that the Spanish and the natives mixed together culturally and genetically whereas the English did not mix very much at all with them. 


The Spanish and English were rather different in their colonization of the Americas.  They had some of the same motivations, but the ways in which they related with the natives were very different.

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