From “An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States” by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
The first population forcibly organized under the profit motive – whose labor was exploited well before overseas exploitation was possible – was the European peasantry. Once forced off their land, they had nothing to eat and nothing to sell but their labor. In addition, entire nations, such as Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Bohemia, the Basque Country, and Catalonia, were colonized and forced under the rule of various monarchies. The Moorish Nation and the Sephardic Jewish minority were conquered and physically deported by the Castilian/Aragon monarchy from the Iberian Peninsula – a long-term project culminating in group expulsions beginning in 1492, the year Columbus sailed to America.
The institutions of colonialism and methods for relocation, deportation, and expropriation of land had already been practiced, if not perfected, by the end of the fifteenth century. The rise of the modern state in western Europe was based on the accumulation of wealth by means of exploiting human labor and displacing millions of subsistence producers from their lands. The armies that did this work benefited from technological innovations that allowed the development of more effective weapons of death and destruction. When these states expanded overseas to obtain even more resources, land, and labor, they were not starting anew. The peoples of West Africa, the Caribbean, Mesoamerica, and the Andes were the first overseas victims. South Africa, North America, and the rest of South America followed. Then came all of Africa, the Pacific, and Asia.