This course surveys the colonial history of the Americas from early contact in 1492 to a period of revolutionary change in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Colonialism will be examined by concentrating on the interactions between indigenous peoples, European settlers, sub-Saharan African slaves, and people of mixed-racial ancestry. Instead of following traditional narratives of discovery and conquest, this course views colonization as a multiethnic conversation, one that was filled with violence and informed by power relations, but one that also saw all ethnic groups participating in the formation of colonial societies and hence in the general shape of imperial rule. The first half concentrates primarily on the early encounter between Europeans and indigenous people through an analysis of the exploration, invasion, settlement, and evangelization of the Americas. The second half looks at the arrival of sub-Saharan Africans and their quest for abolition together with other mid-colonial mixtures and intellectual and political movements in the Atlantic world that led to the creation of independent countries.