Since Columbus had discovered the New World, the Caribbean became a part of the European history, and the pirates helped incorporate the Caribbean into the European sphere of influence with their art of navigation. From the middle of the sixteenth century, other European countries began challenging the Spanish monopoly over the New World, and their pirates followed suit. It was not long before England and other European Protestant countries started using pirates to do damage to Spain, whose Catholicism they were hostile to and whose Caribbean possessions they envied. England licensed its pirates to operate in the Caribbean and financially aided them. Such privateers, then, assailed and sacked the Spanish colonies, and even started smuggling.