What motivated European powers to explore the Americas?

After Europeans realized that Christopher Columbus had discovered a brand new continent (two actually), they were interested in exploring the Americas, and they were motivated by several factors. Let's look at some of these to get you started on this assignment.

Initially, Europeans were just plain curious. This was an all new place with all new people. They wanted to know what was out there, so they explored. However, curiosity was soon eclipsed by other factors. Europeans discovered the wealth of these new-found continents, and they worked hard to develop that for themselves. The Spanish were especially interested in New World gold, for instance.

Trade routes were another factor in exploration. For many years, Europeans sought various routes across North and South America that could take them to the Pacific Ocean. Economics also played a roles in European trade with Native Americans, which expanded with further exploration. Unfortunately, many of those Native Americans ended up enslaved by Europeans, especially in South and Central America, and this, too, became a factor in continuing exploration.

Religion also played a role in exploration. At least some of the explorers wanted to convert the Native Americans to Christianity, some out of a sincere devotion, others for less noble reasons.

Finally, national pride and power was central to exploration. Nations vied with each other to control more and more territory in the New World. Many founded colonies that also began to compete and trade with each other as time went on. Many Europeans believed that they had a right to settle this new land that they had found, that it was their duty even, and that is exactly what they did.

What motivated European powers to explore the Americas and how did this affect Native Americans?

Europeans were motivated to explore the Americas after they realized that their land could provide them with the raw materials and laborers needed to grow their economies and expand their territories. When Columbus sailed West trying to find a way to Asia for trade, he of course bumped into the Americas. More explorers took this western route and started to encounter the indigenous populations. When early European explorers to the continent saw things like gold worn as jewelry, they thought that the Americas must have been an absolute and literal gold mine, full of potentially untapped resources that were ripe for the taking. There are some gold mines in the Americas, but not quite like what the Europeans were expecting.

The initial exchange of goods that followed this was known as the Columbian Exchange, a term coined by Alfred Crosby in his book by the same name. While his book focused on the environmental impacts of the Columbian Exchange on plant biodiversity, thinking critically about this exchange of goods also gives us some insight into the economic effects exploration had on the world. The economic system that followed the exploration of the Americas was mercantilism—"mother" nations (also called Core nations) in Europe set up colonies in the Americas. These colonies were only allowed to trade with their mother countries, ensuring an economic dependency. On the other hand, the Mother Countries would profit immensely off of their colonies. Raw materials were harvested in the colonies and sent to the mother countries to be turned into manufactured goods. Not only could these goods be sold around the world for profit, but colonies could only buy finished goods from their mother country.

To simplify it: European nations profited immensely from the exploitation of American land, raw materials, and labor. There was a clear global economic inequality as a result of European exploration of the Americas.

Exploration and mercantilism had many consequences for the indigenous Americans. One of the biggest short-term consequences was an immediate loss of life, primarily due to disease. Being generally isolated from the world meant that indigenous Americans did not have a built-up immunity to killer viruses like smallpox. As Alfred Crosby writes,

Smallpox was a standard infection in Europe and most of the Old World in 1491. It took hold in areas of the New World in the early part of the next century and killed a lot of American Indians, starting with the Aztecs and the people of Mexico and Peru. One wonders how a few hundred Spaniards managed to conquer these giant Indian empires. You go back and read the records and you discover that the army and, just generally speaking, the people of the Indian empires were just decimated by such diseases as smallpox, malaria, all kinds of infectious diseases.

Some estimates place the death toll at approximately 80-95% of indigenous populations died as a result of infectious disease. That is a staggering figure. This initial "great dying," as it was known, enabled (and empowered) the Europeans to colonize and conquer a world that they saw as theirs, evidenced in their mind by their triumph over the dying indigenous population. In terms of accountability, Europeans were responsible. Contemporary writer Bartolomeo de las Casas, a Spanish historian and priest, writes in 1542:

There was so much disease, death and misery, that innumerable fathers, mothers and children died … Of the multitudes on this island [Hispaniola] in the year 1494, by 1506 it was thought there were but one third of them left.

Another effect we see on the indigenous population is the continued exploitation of indigenous and African workers in Latin America. Because so many indigenous men, women, and children died, European colonizers looking to profit from harvesting raw materials ramped up the Atlantic Slave Trade, forcibly taking around 12.5 million enslaved Africans to the Americas to work on plantations, mines, and other commercial enterprises. The result was European exploitation of American land and labor for economic benefit.