Part One: Before English America Somewhere between thousand years ago, populations from Siberia began to cross the Bering Strait into North America. By 8,000 B.C. these populations had reached the southern tip of South America. The population numbers prior to European contact are hazy (and prone to acrimonious debate), but somewhere around 50 million is often cited (with perhaps 10 million in what is now the United States). While the peoples of the Americas remained largely independent of one another, those of Europe were united almost entirely under the banner of the Roman Empire by the dawn of the Christian era. While the Romans gave to Europe law and infrastructure, as well as preserving and popularizing the accomplishments of the Greeks, ultimately the Empire grew weak and disunited. The division of the Empire into multiple parts by the Emperor Diocletian (though done for good reasons) led to factionalism and infighting, while Barbarian invasions loomed on the frontiers. While the eastern part of the empire enjoyed greater wealth and population, it likewise saw fewer successful barbarian incursions. In 474 A.D. the last western emperor was deposed, though the eastern (popularly known as Byzantine) Empire lived on for the next thousand years. While the emperor Justinian made great efforts to re-conquer the west, his gains were ultimately short-lived. The vacuum left by the passing of a united Rome was soon to be filled however. The unification of the Arab tribes under Mohammed led to the beginning of a century of conquests. The Sassanid Persian and Byzantine empires (both exhausted by decades of war) were unable to oppose these new invasions. The Persians were entirely conquered, and though Byzantium survived, its Levantine and African provinces were lost. With the Arab armies expanding into Spain and threatening Western Europe, and Byzantium focused upon its own defence, the denizens of the former Western Empire had to look to their own defence. While the Arab conquests eventually reached their apex and were confined to Spain, fighting continued for centuries along the frontiers, leading to almost perpetual low-intensity conflict. As the centuries went on Western Europe gradually grew stronger and more cohesive, with larger and more powerful states emerging. It was not until the dawn of the ninth century that a new empire emerged under the rule of the great ruler Charlemagne. While the Carolingian Empire would not last in the long term, it did establish the precedent of powerful, assertive powers in the West, the first since the fall of Rome. While Byzantium enjoyed a golden age in the aftermath of the Arab conquests, in the late eleventh century military disaster overtook the empire, with much of Anatolia lost to Turkic invaders. Appeals for aid to the West, combined with threats to Christian pilgrims in the Middle East and enthusiasm for religion and conquest in Western Europe led to the Crusades, a series of military campaigns that saw Western derived states established on the Levantine coast. Eventually the Crusades degenerated into little more than politically motivated campaigns for honor or loot, and the dawn of the thirteenth century saw Crusaders seize Constantinople. While it would eventually be retaken, the Byzantine Empire had been fatally weakened as a result. Western hostility hobbled Byzantium, and continued Turkic incursions eroded its territory. In 1453 A.D. Constantinople fell once and for all, ending fifteen centuries of the Roman Empire. While Western Europe now faced the Turkish Ottoman Empire alone, they had been shielded by Byzantium for a millennium, and were now strong enough to fend for themselves. While Western Europe successfully fended off Ottoman aggression in the coming centuries, the presence of this new, assertive power threatened traditional trade routes between Europe and Eastern Asia. The sea routes through the Eastern Mediterranean and the land routes through the Ukrainian steppe were now compromised, necessitating new sea routes to the wealthy states of South and East Asia. During the Middle Ages, Viking explorers and adventurers had voyaged west, settling in Iceland, Greenland, and as it later turned out Newfoundland. However these settlements were extremely small and isolated. The economic impetus at the end of the Middle Ages ushered in a far more intense period of exploration. While the Portuguese were some of the earliest and most prolific explorers, it was Spain that had the largest impact on what would soon be known as the New World. Spanish society had been shaped throughout the entirety of the Middle Ages by on all encompassing event: The Reconquista. Since the Islamic conquest of most of the Iberian Peninsula, Christian Spaniards in the north had waged a war of almost eight centuries to re-conquer it, ending in 1492 with the fall of Grenada (the same year as their discovery of the New World). As a result of this, the Spanish had developed a culture exceptionally talented in the military arts, as well as powerfully motivated to spread and protect their Christian religion. The recent unification of Spain likewise served as an impetus to strengthen and expand their empire. In the same year as the fall of Grenada, the united Spanish monarchy funded an expedition under Christopher Columbus. Though the intention was to sail to East Asia, the presence of the Americas interfered with that objective. While it eventually became clear that this new land was not Asia, it nonetheless appealed to the Spaniards as a source of wealth and a land of opportunity. While the Caribbean islands were easy enough to conquer given the enormous technological advantage the Spanish enjoyed (as well as the ravages of disease that were inadvertently introduced), they soon set their eyes on the mainland. In what is now modern Mexico, the powerful Aztec Empire (known to the local peoples as the Triple Alliance) was unequivocally the greatest polity in North America. While they possessed great power, the Spanish were tempted by the great rewards that conquests on the mainland would entail. In 1519 the Spanish under Hernan Cortes landed on the mainland and began their advance inland. Despite setbacks and great difficulties, Cortes led his men as well as the native peoples who had allied with them inland to the capital of the Aztec Empire. While the story of the conquest in a long and riveting one, is short the capital fell in the summer of The conquest of Mesoamerica would drag on for a further sixty years. In South America, the greatest power on the continent was the Inca Empire. Initially scouted by the Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro, by the time he began his conquest in earnest in 1532 the Incas were suffering a civil war, unrest in their outlying territories, and the effects of smallpox. The immense wealth of the Inca was a powerful motivation for the Spaniards, and ultimately it would take decades to complete and consolidate the conquest of the Inca, at great loss to the local peoples. In the decades and centuries following the initial Spanish expeditions to the Americas, virtually all of the American continents were claimed by a handful of European powers. However, while they may have been spoken for, many of these territories were only notionally under European control. Vast swathes of North America remained unsettled well into the nineteenth century, and even today there are areas in both North and South America that have seldom if ever seen an outsider. During the course of the sixteenth century England had grown in power, but found itself stymied by its powerful nemesis Spain. After the defeat of the Spanish Armada (which had attempted to invade and conquer England) in 1588, Spanish power began a long decline, and England was free to pursue a colonial agenda. Here began English America, the precursor to the United States.