Why did european countries want to explore the americas?
he wanted to get glory and wealth . the main reason that he wanted to go was to be famous for finding a new trade route. wanting glory, gold, and fame, he set off, begging the queen and king of spain to send him off. Columbus was actually looking for America. He was looking for a shorter route to the far east. There he would find valuable silks and spices. and isnt that what we all want? he just got luckyyy . lmao
Why were Spain and England so good at colonization, in comparison to the other European countries?
Three reasons.The first, and most important, is that they had the world's most developed and advanced navies at the time when Europe was first aware of the existence of the Americas. England and Spain had the resources to not only build lots of ships, but comparatively large ones as well. Other countries with well-developed commercial navies (I'm thinking of Holland and Italy specifically), either had pre-existing relationships with profitable trading partners (thus little reason to invest in exploration) or the wrong type of ship, ones that couldn't stand up for potentially stormy Atlantic crossings.The second factor was location. Both countries had unrestricted access to the wide open sea (unlike, say Italy, which was pretty much limited to the Mediterranean, or the Netherlands and Germany, which had to sail around the British Isles), so their ships could freely come and go with comparatively little interference.Finally, both England and Spain had the drive to colonize. At first, it was trying to outdo each other, but pretty soon they realized it could be commercially profitable. Spain also had the added religious zeal that brought the Catholic Church (an extremely important element in their society) to the colonies.I would also like to point out that Portugal was also a considerable presence in South America, especially in what is now Brazil, and that France had considerable holdings in the Caribbean. England and Spain, though were the more dominant political presence in Europe at the time, and had more territory in terms of land mass.