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Comment by TedDoesntTalk | Hacker News Reader

“History is written by the victors”

The Spanish, French, and Dutch had many more successful and earlier settlements (some non-permanent) than the English. It is only because the English prevailed that we hear more about the pilgrims and Jamestown.

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The English prevailed then, but the New Englanders also prevailed in the wake of the American Civil War, when the public school education model was introduced by people from Massachusetts, and textbooks tended to reflect a Northern view of American history, presenting an unbroken sequence from the Mayflower to the Emancipation Proclamation, eliding many things that did not fit their preferred narrative, such as Jamestown in Virginia, France in Quebec and the Maritimes, the Dutch in New York, Catholics in Maryland, St. Augustine, anything to do with New Spain, etc.

Really? By New Years Day 1600, other than possible Roanoke colonists scattered throughout the winds, how many European settlements existed within the future borders of the United States or Canada? They're all sorta contemporaneous, and it was the bad luck of the French to colonize a place that was cold and was always going to be much more underpopulated than Britain's Atlantic colonies.

I would also say the legacy of the Spanish in the New World is...sorta hard to miss as well.

Ever been to Manhattan Island?

Also French use and control of the maritime regions of what is now Canada began about a century before the Mayflower, resulting in some small permanent colonies by that time.

France still has territory off Newfoundland.

Puerto Rico - 1513

New France - 1534

Little Venice - 1528

Santa Fe - 1610

New Netherlands - 1614

New Sweden - 1638

Norse - 1001 (New Foundland, possibly Maine)

Brazil - sometime in the early 1500s (not explorers but settlements)

São Tomé - 1493

Príncipe - 1500

Guanare - 1591

Nova Scotia (Scottish not French) - 1629

St. Augustine (now Florida) - 1565

Parris (South Carolina) - 1562

Sapelo Island (Georgia) - 1526

Various missions and presidios in California - 1519

Various missionary settlements in Georgia, late 1500s and early 1600s

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I mean, I could go on...

These are some of the ones that we know about. Surely there are others that did not survive historical record.

> They're all sorta contemporaneous

I don't consider a 100+ year difference between 1620 and some of the settlements I listed to be contemporaneous.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Puerto_Rico#Spanish...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_France

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klein-Venedig

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Netherland

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Sweden

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norse_colonization_of_North_Am...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonial_Brazil#Arrival_and_ea...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A3o_Tom%C3%A9_and_Pr%C3%A...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_colonization_of_the_A...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guanare

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Augustine,_Florida

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Fe,_New_Mexico

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parris_Island,_South_Carolina

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapelo_Island#History

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_California_before_1... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_missions_in_Georgia

IIRC, there wasn’t a permanent settlement in New France until Quebec City in 1608.

As I wrote in my OP, I'm including non-permanent settlements, too.

"By the 1580s, French trading companies had been set up, and ships were contracted to bring back furs. Much of what transpired between the indigenous population and their European visitors around that time is not known, for lack of historical records."

"Other attempts at establishing permanent settlements were also failures. In 1598, a French trading post was established on Sable Island, off the coast of Acadia, but was unsuccessful. In 1600, a trading post was established at Tadoussac, but only five settlers survived the winter.[11] In 1604, a settlement was founded at Île-Saint-Croix on Baie François (Bay of Fundy), which was moved to Port-Royal in 1605. It was abandoned in 1607, re-established in 1610, and destroyed in 1613, after which settlers moved to other nearby locations, creating settlements that were collectively known as Acadia, and the settlers as Acadians."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_France#Early_exploration_(...

No Europeans had even seen California in 1519. The Wikipedia page you linked talks about New Spain (i.e. Mexico), but the first spaniard to see CA was Cabrillo in 1542. The first European settlements of any note would settled by the Portolá expedition in 1769.

You might be correct. However, there were settlements in Mexico in the 1500s, not just explorers. They were miners, traders, etc. My point is not undermined -- there were many non-English settlements before the 1620 Pilgrims.

Of note:

"In the late 1560s, however, the able Viceroy Martin Enriquez stepped in to throw the weight of the royal government behind the effort to better (or more actively) defend the Spanish towns, mines, and ranches. In 1569, Enriquez declared all-out war ("war by fire and blood"-- guerra a fuego y sangre) against the Chichimecs and began establishing presidios in the Far North, with the result that by 1590, the presidio was a major frontier institution, a symbol of the King's authority in the Far North."

https://californiamissionsfoundation.org/articles/the-presid...

Unfortunately, it does not explain "Far North", but it is definitely distinct from Alta California (San Diego) if you read further. So I would guess this means the Baja, but I don't really know.

The "far north" is contextual. That part is talking about an area historically known as La Gran Chicimeca [1]. It's only a few hundred miles from Mexico City.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Gran_Chichimeca

Don't forget the Low California (Baja California) already discovered in 1533 and a settlement in 1535 by Hernan Cortes.

I think there's two reasons we hear more about the English settlements. First is the media we have access to being restricted by language. Second is U.S media being in such a dominant position. I think we know more about the American Revolution and Civil War than our own countries major events.

It also helps if you write it too.

The story of Plymouth Colony was well documented.

Yeah that is exactly my point:

“ History is written by the victors” as I wrote top of thread.

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