The involvement of European governments in overseas expansion was rendered urgent by a long-standing struggle over power and authority at home, one that the specific character of European expansion helped meet. This European political structure would determine how the Atlantic world developed politically as it was created by European exploration and commerce. The power struggle in question was particularly between the kings of emerging states and the nobility in those same areas, complicated by the role of a powerful and wealthy ecclesiastical establishment with local power and significant international connections.

The crucial element of European political structure that shaped its politics was the struggle between the kings, or other officials who wished to hold supreme sovereign executive authority (titled princes, dukes, or other noble titles, or alternatively emperors), and the nobility. Monarchs wished to centralize power, income, and decision making in their own hands or in the hands of officials who they controlled exclusively; nobles contested this and sought a more decentralized decision-making process, involving one or another sort of deliberative body that could check or instruct the monarch. Control of military power was essential to this balance, and the period of European expansion corresponded to major shifts in the nature of war and, more importantly, of armies.