Map of the Thirteen Colonies, 1776.

The European colonization of the Americas began in 1492, when a Spanish expedition led by the Italian explorer Christopher Columbus sailed west in search of a new trade route to the Far East but inadvertently landed in what Europeans came to know as the “New World.” Though Columbus was not the first to visit the Americas, his discovery led to the settlement and the establishment of control over the Americas by most of Western Europe’s naval powers.