The Spaniards and Portuguese opened maritime routes to the East Indies and colonized the Americas, later joined by the English, French, and Dutch.
Notes on verification
Multiple independent educational and historical sources corroborate all elements of the claim. The sequence of events (Portuguese/Spanish first, followed by English/French/Dutch) is consistently verified across diverse sources including academic platforms (OER Commons, Lumen Learning), reference materials (CliffsNotes), and specialized historical databases (The Map as History, Norton). The timeline and geographical scope are accurate.
Sources
- Age of Discovery (wikipedia)