European colonization of the Americas - Topics

What was Bartolomé de las Casas really arguing for? How did horses and cattle transform Native economies after contact? How did the Atlantic slave trade become part of colonizing the Americas? Why did English settlers want land rather than Native labor? Why could the Spanish crown never fully control its own conquistadors? What happened to the native population of the Caribbean within a century? How did smallpox kill more Native Americans than any army? Did Native Americans really have no concept of owning land? Why do colonial mission churches still shape Latin American towns? Is settler colonialism a different thing from extractive colonialism? How did French and Dutch colonies differ from Spanish ones? What happened to the Taíno and the other Caribbean peoples? What was the encomienda system and how did it work in practice? How did mestizo societies take shape in colonial Latin America? How did the Columbian Exchange change what everyone ate? What was the Columbian Exchange and why did it kill so many people? Why did the Spanish destroy so much Aztec and Inca record keeping? What did Columbus think he had found when he landed?