Thanks for the history lesson! Spain and Portugal’s plunder of the New World for precious metals is very interesting. They came here to plunder and convert the natives. The English and Dutch and other North Europeans came here to exploit our vast land and untapped natural resources to further industry and agriculture. One example being forests to cut down to make iron and steel.
But the huge cojones on all these guys to come exploring to the New World and make the first European settlements!!
Not exactly on purpose. The French, English, Dutch, etc. wanted to find huge native empires and massive amounts of gold and silver to plunder. But there weren't any in the areas left available for them.
So they had to drop back to actual settlement, fishing, farming, etc. The irony being that in the long run this created much greater wealth.