This system of plantation slavery organized by the Portuguese and patronized by the Spanish for their mines and their sugar fields attracted adventures from all Europe because of the prodigious fortunes made by the Spanish from mining American silver and by the Spanish and Portuguese in the sugar trade.
During the 1520s and 1530s large parts of maritime northwest Europe renounced any allegiance to Rome through the Reformation. Protestantism took hold in the trading communities and seaports of Atlantic France, Low Countries, London, the largest commercial city in Europe, and among the seafaring men of southwest England.
From the earliest years of the 16th century, Breton, Norman, Basque and French fishermen from La Rochelle had been working the rich fishing grounds of the Grand Banks off Newfoundland and Labrador.
Encouraged by their rich hauls and reports of riches on land, in 1534 the French seafarer Jacques Cartier, from St. Malo, went up the St Lawrence River, spend the winter at what he called Stadacona (Quebec) and penetrated as far as Hochelaga (Montreal).
Was back in 1541, looking for the kingdom of Saguenay, reported to be rich in gold and diamonds. The gold turned out to be iron pyrites and the diamonds quartz crystals. The French Protestant leader Gaspar de Coligny, Admiral of France, sent an expedition to colonize an island in the harbor of Rio de Janeiro in 1555. In 1556, 300 reinforcements were dispatched to join them. In 1560 the Portuguese, seeing that the colony was week, attacked and hanged its inhabitants.
The French set up Huguenot colonies at Fort Caroline, in northern Florida, and Charles Fort, near the Savannah River in 1562 and 1564. The Spanish, whose explorer Hernando de Soto had reconnoitered the area in 1539-42, attacked Fort Caroline in 1565 and massacred the colony. In 1566 did the same at Fort Charles and erected their strongholds at St Augustine and St Catherine’s Island.
The discovery by the Spanish of precious metals in the Americas had a profound effect on world trade. Merchants began to operate on an increasing scale. By the turn of the century English and French had semi-permanent fishing settlements off Labrador, Newfoundland and Canada. Sable Island was the 1st French permanent post. Set up another at Tadoussac at the mouth of Sanguenay River. Samuel de Champlain came there in 1603 and his party moved into Acadia, Cape Breton Island and Canada. In 1608 Champlain established Quebec.
