How did the Protestant Reformation influence exploration and settlemen

How did the Protestant Reformation influence exploration and settlement of North and South America by Europeans?

How did the religious divisions of Europeans and European settlers shape the way they implemented their exploration, trade, and settlement efforts in North and South America?

ANSWER
Answer: An ideal answer will:
1. Discuss how the Protestant Reformation created political and religious divisions in Europe that were reflected in battles between Protestant and Catholic nations and between Protestant and Catholic groups in the Americas during the 1500s.
2. Discuss how the Protestant Reformation fueled the secondary motivation of Catholic and Protestant explorers and settlers to spread a particular form of Christianity and convert those they considered to be heathens in the Americas such as American Indians.
3. Discuss how the wars and fierce religious divisions in Europe led many Europeans to seek asylum and refuge in the Americas, where they hoped the old religious battles would not follow them.
4. Discuss how the religious and political conflict between Catholic Spain and Protestant England fueled the interest in settling and consolidating control of New Mexico, particularly after the successful English exploration up the coast of California by Sir Francis Drake.
5. Discuss the role of the deepening Protestant-Catholic divide in France in sparking a Protestant-led expedition by Gaspard de Coligny to Fort Caroline, Florida in 1562 to create a safe haven for his fellow French Protestants in Florida.
6. Discuss how the French Protestant colony at Fort Caroline prompted the Spanish in 1565 to develop a new colony, St. Augustine, in Florida to meet and defeat the perceived religious, political, and commercial threat supposedly posed by Coligny’s colony of Fort Caroline.
7. Discuss how the Franciscans’ proselytizing in Florida and Georgia, the Spanish construction of churches, and the provision of missionaries in each pueblo of New Mexico combined to convert the American Indians.
8. Discuss and analyze how the bitter imperial rivalry between Protestant England and Catholic Spain (which culminated in the English navy’s defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588) affected North American exploration and settlement.
9. Write a concise and effective conclusion.