When the Spanish empire was at the height of its power in the sixteenth century, the merchants and monarchs of other European seafaring states began looking across the Atlantic for opportunities of their own (see Map 2.4 ). France was first to sponsor expeditions to the New World in the early sixteenth century. The French first attempted to plant settlements on the coasts of Brazil and Florida, but Spanish opposition forced them to concentrate on the North Atlantic. England did not develop its own plans to colonize North America until the second half of the sixteenth century.