Discovery of America

America was not an unknown continent waiting to be discovered. Indigenous peoples had lived across North, Central, and South America for thousands of years, developing diverse societies, languages, economies, and systems of knowledge. Europeans were not the first outsiders to reach the Americas. Norse sailors established a settlement at L’Anse aux Meadows in present-day Newfoundland around the year 1000, providing archaeological evidence of a European presence centuries before Columbus.

In the late 15th century, European kingdoms were seeking new maritime routes to Asia. In 1492, Christopher Columbus, sailing under the Spanish crown, crossed the Atlantic and reached islands in the Caribbean. He believed he had reached parts of Asia, a mistaken idea that influenced the name “Indians” later applied by Europeans to Indigenous peoples. Columbus’s voyages opened a period of sustained contact between Europe and the Americas.

Other European expeditions followed, including those of John Cabot, Pedro Álvares Cabral, and Amerigo Vespucci. Vespucci’s accounts helped Europeans understand that the lands encountered were not simply the eastern edge of Asia, and the name “America” eventually became associated with the continents. European expansion brought exchanges of crops, animals, technologies, and ideas, often called the Columbian Exchange.

It also caused devastating epidemics among Indigenous populations, whose communities had little previous exposure to many Eurasian diseases. Colonisation led to warfare, forced labor, dispossession, and major political and social changes. The history of the “discovery of America” is therefore better understood as a history of encounters between peoples, followed by profound and unequal transformations.