by Strong Americas | Aug 5, 2026
Spanish exploration of the Honduran coast began in 1502, during Christopher Columbus’s fourth voyage, and colonization followed two decades later when Hernán Cortés dispatched an expedition under Cristóbal de Olid. By 1539, the territory had been absorbed into...
by Strong Americas | Aug 5, 2026
Spain claimed the island of Hispaniola following Columbus’s arrival in 1492, but by the seventeenth century French buccaneers and settlers had established a foothold on its western third. Spain formally ceded this territory to France under the Treaty of Ryswick...
by Strong Americas | Aug 5, 2026
The Dutch were the first Europeans to establish a lasting presence in what is now Guyana, founding the trading post of Fort Kyk-over-Al on the Essequibo River in 1616. The Dutch West India Company went on to found the separate colonies of Berbice in 1627 and Demerara...
by Strong Americas | Aug 5, 2026
Spanish forces led by Pedro de Alvarado conquered the Maya kingdoms of highland Guatemala beginning in 1524, extending Spanish control southward from the recently subdued Aztec Empire. In 1527 the Crown established the Captaincy General of Guatemala, an administrative...
by Strong Americas | Aug 5, 2026
France established the first permanent European settlement on Grenada in 1649, when an expedition from Martinique under Jacques Dyel du Parquet purchased land from the island’s Kalinago inhabitants and founded a colony near what is now St. George’s....
