Why did it take over 100 years for Britain to begin seriously colonising America?

During the revolutionary War 1775 – 1783, a strong presence of Britain was established in Quebec " to protect us from the rebel American fighing for independence." My people do not care but most of us and most of our land belong to the crown.

England’s rulers were embroiled in internal politics whereas in 1492 Spain had just triumphantly and justifiably defeated the last of the Saracen entities in Iberia. They were on a roll.

It took over 100 years after the New World's discovery for other European powers, but particular to this question, Britain, to attempt likewise, by which time many resource-rich regions were already claimed by Spain and Portugal.

Columbus landed in the Bahamas in 1492, and returned to Europe in March, 1493.

Sir Francis Drake claimed New Albion for England in 1579.

On 5 June 1579, the ship briefly made first landfall at what is now South Cove, Cape Arago, just south of Coos Bay, Oregon, and then sailed south while searching for a suitable harbour to repair his ailing ship. On 17 June, Drake and his crew found a protected cove when they landed on the Pacific coast of what is now Northern California. While ashore, he claimed the area for Queen Elizabeth I as Nova Albion or New Albion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Drake#Coast_of_California:Nova_Albion(1579)

Sir Humphrey Gilbert claimed St. John's, Newfoundland, in 1583.

The first colony on Roanoke in North Carolina lasted from 1585-1586. The second Roanoke colony was founded in 1587 but had disappeared by 1590.

So English claims and actual attempts at colonization in the Americas actually began less than a century after 1492/93.

I note that Spain and Portugal claimed all of the Americans between them, and were quite powerful countries during that time. So establishing permanent English, French, Dutch, etc. settlements in the Americas would be creating settlements with locations which would eventually become known to the rightful rulers of those lands and then be in danger of being attacked and destroyed as punishment for such illegal trespassing.

When Spain accidentally found the new world, they did not have just an extensive experience in conquest, strategy and dealing with other cultures they adopted a very radical different approach compared to French and England:

• Spain and Portugal has en extensive experience in fighting, reconquering, evangelizing and dealing with a foreign culture: it took many centuries to push back all of the Moors/Arabs from the Iberian peninsula during the reconquista. Now it is hard to imagine, but back then Spain and Portugal were both the world's strongest superpowers back then. until England and France surpassed them some centuries later.

• After the conquest of a territory, all natives would be evangelized and converted to Christianity, making them subjects to the monarchy and treated as equals at the oversees provinces (see Ley de Indias in Wikipedia)

• Coming from a background the multiracial of Roman Empire and having been invaded several times by Germanic tribes, Arabs etc, they had no issue mixing themselves with other races (see Mestizage in Wikipedia, be aware that the article in English for Miscegenation doesn't honor enough the largest racial mixture ever produced, during the Spanish Empire). As difference the French and English suffered from common Central European ethnocentrism (nowadays would be known as racism), and fought and exterminated natives when they could. A an example of such brutally difference, centuries later Thomas Jefferson sold his own son with a native as slave without any recognition.

This last point became extremely important as conquistadors often married nobility of the natives, normalizing social equality between both groups of people (social differences depended on being a servant or having a royal title rather than race), and American royal societies were invited to take part in Spain's Court and have some power oversees.

That fact alone made Spaniards and much more effective in building a multiracial empire with the help of the own natives who often wanted to defeat other tribes that oppressed them for centuries. For more information read about the conquest of Mexico and how many tribes joined barely 150 Spaniards marching against Tenochtitlan (1 million inhabitants) and how Hernan Cortes sons became the first Mexican and a full right citizen.

If I had to summarize: Spain built a generative Empire, whereas England only tried to build predatory empires, and needed quite a long time to advance socially, military and technologically to achieve that since built its colonies in America, first with Catholic slaves (mostly Irish) and then with African slaves to replace natives, whereas Spain built upon the existing societies.

These points are often missed in Anglo-Saxon countries, since the study of historical empires which is somehow felt as if it was the same "current country", this for sure is felt as part of politics or social identity of societies, and often military and strategical decisions of the past conflict with the present society. There is more information of that phenomenon on the Black legend article at Wikipedia which became a common tale during English Second empire, and after the repeated failures of France in America.

Related topics of interest, can be found in the Wikipedia articles:

• Mexican Nobility
• Direct descendants of Moctezuma currently alive in Spain (some general information here)
• And the same for Atahulpa and other pre-Colombinan societies, remarkably Queen Máxima of the Netherlands descends from Inca royalty, but without any relevance nowadays regarding history or geopolitics.

---- Edit for all the comments accusing me of lying or whatever -----

P.D. Some people on the comments accuse me to lie or something, please, first do not project self identity to historical facts from almost half millennia ago and check the sources by yourselves. Giving civil status to the natives was just a natural consequence of the long reconquista process were it happened already massively and thanks the Catholic mindset, thanks to the Catholic Queen Isabel and later thanks to the Pope who insisted on the fact that natives had soul. Therefore all them should be treated as innocent souls since they never heard the evangelic texts before, so a high paternalist attitude was pushed politically.

Also regarding racial-enslaving laws, that was not the case, check the first black person arriving to America (Juan Garrido) as free man and conquistador, the first black university professor in Europe (in Granada, Spain , XVI century) or the first interracial weddings, Catholic in the Spanish Florida. And still no utopia should be made, like all empires it condemned and restores slavery many times, and it took centuries to migrate from the mindset of ancient times to a more equal rights modern perspective, but that doesn't change the multi racial generative empire, like Romans, Ottomans or Russians. but not English, French or Dutch.

Just check the actual sources, everything Spain did was accurate, the letters from Cortes to the kings are preserved, also journals and reports were exhaustively kept preserving the Roman/Catholic tradition of documenting everything like we still do in the western world (and some other cultures).

With that I will stop editing to reply the comments, these were the reasons why some empires succeeded were others could not until some new advance in technology and military strategies were made. Nothing to do with competition of nowadays nations.