How come Europeans could settle in the tropics of the New World, but not in the Old

[Robertclive]

Like the Spaniards settling in places like Panama and Costa Rica, but having trouble in places like Congo. I know that most major cities in South America are high altitude to begin with, but what about Central America?

[Caligula's_Horse]

Its less to do with terrain, and more to do with the differences between the old world and the new.
Basically, four things allowed Europeans to completely dominate the new world militarily. Gunpowder, horses, steel, and most important, virulent disease (which for the most part, they imported by accident rather then design). Its estimated that as many as 90% of native populations were wiped out upon contact with the Europeans, not through violence, but mostly through contracting some of the nastier old world diseases, like small pox. Much the same thing happened in Australia and across various islands after first contact with the old world.

When the European powers tried to conquer parts of Africa and East Asia, they didn't fare with nearly as much success. The natives had horses, steel and gunpowder, and while their guns and cannons were usually outdated compared to European models, its not quite the same gap as facing Native Americans with stone weapons who weren't even familiar with the concept of a cannon. And when it came to disease, the rest of the old world was just as familiar with small pox and its like as the Europeans; its in fact the Europeans who where often disadvantaged on that front, with tropical illnesses affecting them much more then the locals.
The balance shifted again with the beginning of the industrial revolution, which seemed to compensate well enough for various European empires to conquer most of Africa, including the tropics--the Congo, for example, was owned by Belgium.

Probably worth mentioning that the new world did have its own share of virulent diseases that the locals were resistant to that gave the Europeans a hard time, but nothing in the league of say, small pox. This is most likely due to trade routes in the new world being underdeveloped compared to the old; the nastier plagues tended to burn themselves out rather then continue to spread and continue their existence.
Another factor was there being less domesticated animals in the new world, which greatly reduced the danger of cross species illnesses popping up.

[ArmoredCore]

A big part of it was the development of better medicine and infrastructure. Europeans in the "new world" only got there 500 years ago and began to build infrastructure and develop medicine to the point where the environment did not limit their ability to survive and keep their cold adapted phenotype. But then again, they weren't doing most of the work either. Also, the idea that Europeans couldn't survive prior to this is all based on conjecture about natural selection. Humans are a pretty hardy and adaptable species. If any humans could survive in the tropics then so could Europeans even thought they aren't tropically adapted.. However, it would not have been as easy on them and most likely they would have to undergo natural selection in order to be best 'optimized' for that environment. Unfortunately it is conjecture because Europeans came way to late to the party since the 'new' world had been settled by 'old' humans long ago, most of whom were already tropically adapted. And as the previous poster stated, malaria was a big factor in parts of Africa along with other environmental factors, but even that eventually was overcome by more modern medicines and technology.

[cenkiss]

Africa was already filled. Europeans did not care about repopulating africa much.

[Lord Oda Nobunaga]

A lot of it had to do with South America having a lot more abundance in the resources that were required at the time, at least when compared to say Africa. The other part was availability of things like water and food unlike many parts of Africa.
Africans had also been exposed to Old World diseases which made fighting them a lot harder. Contrast this with the death rate of Natives in America due to diseases alone. Diseases had a large part to do with it actually since Africa had a lot more deadly diseases that the Europeans could not combat against. Disease prevention and quality weapons for settlement and fighting in Africa wouldn't be developed until the 1800's.
For instance the Quinchona plant was first discovered and grown in South America and was used to treat sicknesses like Malaria. In the 1800's it was smuggled out of South America and taken to be grown in South East Asia and India with the intention to mass produce in bottles in order to encourage immigration to those inhospitable parts of the world.

[Aru]

Coastal areas weren't a problem anywhere. The problem is inland, and in Americas Europeans used the knowledge, resources and infrastructure of natives which was more developed than in Africa. Native Americans didn't all suddenly die, it took decades and centuries. Europeans established a new order over the old, dying one. Clear proof of that is that they ruled and settled native cities. Where there was no pre existing developed civilization Europeans didn't build one either, like in Amazon.

[GarretJax]

In all fairness, the Europeans powers of the day also settled in places like India and Senegal in the early 1600s . . . maybe not in as great of numbers, but it wasn't strictly limited to the new world.

[Aru]

Yes, on the coasts where they could be easily resupplied. Nothing compared to central and south America.

[ArmoredCore]

The diseases did a tremendous job of clearing the land in the Americas, not that the Europeans minded one bit as they helped it when they could.
So there was no long term armed struggle on the scale of what happened in Africa.

The Africans had good cavalry and fought much better against European invaders well up to the 1800s when the gatling gun turned the tide.
Up until that point the Europeans generally stayed on the coasts and had to trade with the various chiefs for goods from the interior.
There are many books by European explorers talking of the massive numbers of cavalry they encountered in various kingdoms.
In the East the Portuguese fought multiple times to sack the eastern cities in and around modern Kenya only for them to be rebuilt.

Also, the urge to colonize the Americas and create new European territories and settlements was something that started early on.
While Africa being an old and well known entity was not seen as a place for settlement in the same way as the Americas.
Except in the case of South Africa, where there was a whole mythology put in place about Boers being there before it was settled by Africans....
America was seen as a 'promised land' for a 'new age' and 'new atlantis' which spurred all sorts of immigration and settlement.
Not that they didn't try to kill off as many of the natives as they could.

[Latin Knight]

Besides the points raised above, which are sufficient explanations, I'll just point out that the exploration of African interior in particular was only possible after the development of anti-infection medicine.

Malaria and the tse-tse fly's disease ramped up the mortality rates of European explorers (and Africans, I presume) to the point were long term settlement beyond the coastal and non-jungle areas was impracticable.

This, coupled with the point ArmoredCore raised above, that there was a particular urge of settling the Americas and even Australia that was not replicated to Africa until the 19th century (which was seen mostly as "passage" through the Ocean routes to the East), resulted in European colonies only in strategic areas, like the Cape of Good Hope. There were not economic or even social incentives in penetrating the interior of the continent, as coastal colonies were the norm. Then, on the 19th century suddenly we have new medicine against tropical diseases, financial interests at stake for exploring its riches (rubber, coal, oil, minerals, etc.) and even sociocultural and ideological support for the Neocolonialism as a whole (the very concept of "White Man's Burden" was first and foremost applied to Africans, and not amerindians or asian peoples, for example).

India is a different figure: until the British Raj (19th Century) there wasn't any European power keen on conquering the entire peninsula, and specific trade posts such as Goa and Pondicherry was much more profitable enterprises. Even then, survival against tropical diseases was a daily concern. See, for example, the Danish outpost, which in the space of 100 years it remained active, was depopulated due to epidemics in the local garrison, and not even once by external aggression: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tharangambadi

Oceania in general is a similar story: the colonial presence was mainly on the coastlines and only penetrated the interior when there was a significant incentive. This is why the interior of Borneo and Papua New Guinea were only mapped by Europeans in the 20th century, despite both islands having colonial enterprises since the 18th century.

P.S. Here in Rio today we are at 40º C. I wonder how the Portuguese settlers would deal with this damn summer without air conditioner

[Marcus Aemilius Lepidus]

Although the diseases were fatal for permanent controll, the conquistadores had quite some native help. Remember that it were not alone the 177 spanish soldiers that conquered the inca empire. It is often ignored that they had several thousend auxillary warriors from local minorities.

[Condottiere 40K]

Looked at it from that perspective, North America provided an opportunity to establish idealized communities, whereas Latin America, Africa and Asia usually required a serious military commitment.

[Caligula's_Horse]

Although the diseases were fatal for permanent controll, the conquistadores had quite some native help. Remember that it were not alone the 177 spanish soldiers that conquered the inca empire. It is often ignored that they had several thousend auxillary warriors from local minorities.

I believe the number of Spaniards who conquered the Aztecs was overall (including reinforcements over the years) was closer to 1,500, and the locals helping them numbering in the tens of thousands; though the point still stands that there was only a small number or Europeans.

Thing is though, there was really no fundamental difference in recruiting locals to fight for your cause in the old world and the new, other then maybe a trickier language barrier to overcome (at least initially). If anything, colonial powers relied on native troops more heavily in the old world then the new, as they needed them more due to stiffer resistance (mostly due to plagues and higher tech locals as already mentioned).
They often went as far as propping up minority puppet regimes, whose continued existence depended on their colonial overlord's satisfaction with their performance. Given how ravaged the natives were in the new world, the practice wasn't as necessary in the Americas as it was in the likes of Africa and India.

[Dromikaites]

Malaria and trypanosmias (both human and animal) made it hard for the Europeans, horses and cattle to survive in tropical Africa.

In Asia it was a slightly better situation thanks to the absence of trypanosmia. The main challenge there was the distance. As a result it was more difficult to transfer lot of people there than to the Americas.

[Condottiere 40K]

Let's not forget Australia, where only the wildlife seriously wants to kill you.

[Dr. Croccer]

Diseases, native strength and relative lack of interest mainly.

For one, Africa was home to quite a few deadly diseases which were unique to the continent against which the natives had developed at least some form of resistance. A good example is yellow fever, which actually was spread to the Americas because of slavery and became one of the deadliest epidemic viruses in the colonies. That having been said, the tropical Americas were deadly in their own right. They still contained a lot of diseases which killed off Europeans like flies. It took far more colonists to establish a small population in Jamaica than was necessary in, say, New England.

Secondly, the European obsession with the Americas being the Indies and later 'el Dorado' and the New World, coupled with the massive mortality of the natives due to disease which opened up vast swathes of the region (especially in the Carribbean) meant colonisation was considerably easier, despite the fact that mortality was high. The point is that despite the death rate, the Carribbean was incredibly valuable because it had a lot of potential to produce luxury goods like sugar en masse. That having been said, one of the main reasons why the Atlantic slave trade came into being was because white labourers died in huge numbers and Africans were generally more resistant to the climate. Which became a self-fullfilling prophecy, as the slaves took other deadly disease with them as we've seen, which only made it more lethal for whites.

And thirdly, because the native cultures in Africa didn't die with a 90% rate, they continued to be relatively formidable forces. This also meant that their economies were still in tact as well, which had largely been geared towards export since Classical times. These factors meant that active colonisation of Africa wasn't only extremely difficult, but undesirable as well. Why invest so much money and time in conquering a region when you could just place a few forts and get everything you want via trade? That having been said, Europeans did manage to conquer quite some regions on the African coast by using internal political disputes to their advantage. The Portuguese were able to establish a firm hold over modern Angola by playing the Kongo and Ndongo kingdoms against eachother. But it could easily backfire as well, when they tried the same in what is now the inland of Zimbabwe the native population revolted and neighbouring kingdoms invaded, forcing them to retreat back to the coast as it simply wasn't worth the effort. Destabilizing and establishing a takeover of a native kingdom is one thing, but consolidating their rule over a vast region with a large, hostile population which was now subject to a power vacuum which competing tribes were eager to abuse is another. The same thing would've happened in Mexico and Peru (and on occasions, almost did) if it weren't for the fact that European diseases completely dismantled the entire native population and any real threat to large-scale European colonisation.

[Ludicus]

And thirdly, because the native cultures in Africa didn't die with a 90% rate, they continued to be relatively formidable forces... The Portuguese were able to establish a firm hold over modern Angola by playing the Kongo and Ndongo kingdoms against eachother.

Additionally,
"In the mid-17th, troops from Brazil-acclimatized to the tropical environments and battle-hardened in warfare against the Indians, Dutch, and runways slaves who built their own fortified communities known as quilombos-were dispatched to Angola to help the Portuguese settlers there to overcome African resistance and broaden the slave trade.
At least ten military expeditions recruited and equipped in Brazil crossed the South Atlantic to Luanda and Benguela up to the 18th century. Periodic ships of horses and individual soldiers from Brazil also strengthened Portuguese power in Central Africa"
Source, The Economic Network of Portuguese's Atlantic World, Luis Felipe de Alencastro.

-----
ArmoredCore

The diseases did a tremendous job of clearing the land in the Americas

The tempo /intensity/diffusion of the Old World diseases was not the same in the Spanish and Portuguese America.There are some factors that explain the absence of in Brazil of reports of mortality of the natives on the scale of those in antilles and Central America soon after the Spaniards arrived.

-----
Roberclive

Like the Spaniards settling in places like Panama and Costa Rica, but having trouble in places like Congo

The Spaniards? they never had any trouble in Congo.

[Cyclops]

Let's not forget Australia, where only the wildlife seriously wants to kill you.

Nonsense, we may have the eleven most venomous land snakes (http://www.avru.org/general/general_mostvenom.html), but only three of the ten most venomous spiders (according to some dodgy website, I forget). Plus Great White sharks don't live in Australia at all, they merely swarm in the waters around our beaches. Also we share the super-venomous sea snake with most of SE Asia, so you can't say its exclusively Australian.

In all seriousness you have to be wildly unlucky (or stupid?) to be killed by an animal in Australia. I remember finding a blue ring octopus in a coke can at the beach once, it started crawling out and luckily I was not stung. That would've been the end of 6 year old Cyclops, but that's still not a reason to be scared of Australian wildlife.

We have no man eating predators aside from great whites, bull sharks and salt water crocs (OK 2 kids in the last 50 years have been killed by dingoes, that's it). The rest have defensive venom or horns like the introduced Cape Buffalo, feral in every sense of the word and will not go for you unless provoked. OK the brown snake can get aggressive in mating season, but that's it.

Oh and apparently we now have recluse spiders, some bright spark introduced them from the US. But its really safe here.

[Ludicus]

P.S. Here in Rio today we are at 40º C. I wonder how the Portuguese settlers would deal with this damn summer without air conditioner

Copacabana "princesinha do mar..."

[Maklodes]

It seems, though, that the more polar parts of the New World (e.g., the current USA/Canada, Argentina, Chile) tended to have much more European-descended settlement (at least as a fraction of total population) than more tropical parts (e.g., the Andes, Central America, Brazil), with perhaps a few exceptions like Costa Rica or Alaska. Although it varied whether the non-European part in more tropical areas was more descended from American Indians (e.g., Bolivia), imported black African slaves (e.g., Haiti), or some combination.