Viceroyalty of New Spain: Did you mean...?

The Dutch Revolt (the Eighty Years' War) was the Dutch war of independence against Spain. For 80 years the Dutch waged war against the Spanish crown. How did the Dutch Revolt start? The Reformation early 1500s caused many people in the Low...

Queen Anne’s War (1702-1713) was the second major colonial conflict in North America, fought between the colonies of England – Great Britain after 1707 – and those of France and Spain, each side aided by their respective Native American allies...

European explorers began to probe the Western Hemisphere in the early 1500s, and they found to their utter amazement not only a huge landmass but also a world filled with several diverse and populous indigenous cultures. Among their most...

The European colonization of the Americas was the process by which European settlers populated the regions of North, Central, South America, and the islands of the Caribbean. It is also recognized as the direct cause for the cultures of the...

Ferdinand Magellan, or Fernão de Magalhães (c. 1480-1521), was a Portuguese mariner whose expedition was the first to circumnavigate the globe in 1519-22 in the service of Spain. Magellan was killed on the voyage in what is today the Philippines...

An audiencia began as a judicial institution in medieval Spain, but in the 16th century, it was applied as the highest form of local government in key cities of the Spanish Empire. An audiencia had a panel of judges made responsible for the...

The establishment of the Middle and Southern English Colonies of North America was encouraged by the earlier English settlements of Jamestown Colony of Virginia in the south (founded 1607) and Plymouth Colony and, especially, Massachusetts...

An image portraying New Amsterdam, centred in the eventual Lower Manhattan, in 1664, the year England under Richard Nicolls took control and renamed it "New York".

Elizabeth I reigned as queen of England from 1558 to 1603. Her 44-year reign was so long and packed with momentous events that the second half of the 16th century is now known as the Elizabethan era and still regarded as a 'Golden Age' for...

A map of New Netherland published by Nicolaes Visscher II (1649–1702) in 1684. This map is partially a copy of the map by Jan Janssonius (1588-1664) from 1651.