The Discovery Of America By Jan Van Der Straet

Although “historians no longer use the word “discovery” to describe the European exploration, conquest and colonization of a hemisphere already home to millions of people”, it was one of the greatest and most important discoveries ever in our history that changed the lives of millions of people. (Eric Foner, Give Me Liberty: An American History (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2008), pg 1.) For some the “discovery”of America would mean an opportunity for a better life, for others the “discovery” brought misery and death.

The “new world” that Columbus boasted of to the Spanish monarchs in 1500 was neither an expanse of empty space nor a replica of European culture, tools, textiles, and religion, but a combination of Native, European, and African people living in complex relation to one another. »full text

In their book A Patriot’s History of the United States, Larry Schweikart and Michael Allen seem to generally believe in the superiority of Europeans to the rest of the world. Schweikart and Allen go out of their way to note the superiority of European fighting patterns, the virtuous motivations of Christian explorers, the justification of genocide, and even the selflessness of the Founding Fathers. Though not completely inaccurate, the bias in favor of the colonists leaves many perspectives completely out of the picture.

"The Colonization of North America." In Modern History Sourcebook. April 1999- [cited 17 September 2002] Available from http://www.fordham.edu/halsall.mod/modsbook.html., http://curry.eduschool.virginia.edu.

Convinced of the superiority of Catholicism to all other religions, Spain insisted that the primary goal of colonization was to save the Indians from heathenism and prevent them from falling under the sway of Protestantism. The aim was neither to exterminate nor to remove the Indians, but to transform them into obedient Christian subjects of the crown. To the Spanish colonizers, the large native populations of the Americas were not only souls to be saved but also a labor force to be organized to extract gold and silver that would enrich their mother country. Las Casas’ writings and the abuses they exposed contributed to the spread of the Black Legend-the image of Spain as a uniquely brutal and exploitative colonizer. This would provide of a potent justification for other European powers to challenge Spain’s predominance in the New World.

No written history means much of Native American history is unknown, causing misconceptions and stereotypes about Native Americans to exist. Royal also discusses the name of this group that people label today as “Native Americans.” He questions, “ ‘America’ was a name formed in the wake of another Italian explorer, Amerigo Vespucci. It is difficult to see how being named after an Italian is less Eurocentric than being named after an East Native American” (Royal 46). The discussion about their name shows Europe’s influence on the Americas; it also shows that Native Americans yearn for their own identity without Europe’s input.

The migration of European settlers and culture to North America is an often examined area. One aspect of this, however, is worthy of deeper analysis. The conquest of North America by Europeans and American settlers from the 16th to 19th centuries had a profound effect on the indigenous political landscape by defining a new relationship dynamic between natives and settlers, by upsetting existing native political, economic and military structures, and by establishing a paradigm where the indigenous peoples felt they had to resist the European and American incursions. The engaging and brilliant works of Andres Rensendez and Steve Inskeep, entitled respectively “A Land So Strange” and “Jacksonland”, provide excellent insights and aide to this analysis.

Between 1492-1776, although many people moved to the “New World”, North America lost population due to the amount of Indians dying from war and diseases and the inability of colonists to replace them. John Murrin states, “losers far outnumbered winners” in “ a tragedy of such huge proportions that no one’s imagination can easily encompass it all.” This thought of a decreasing population broadens one’s perspective of history from that of an excluded American tale full of positivity to that of a more unbiased, all-encompassing analysis. The Indians and slaves have recently been noted as a more crucial part of history than previously accredited with.

The world’s history had a turning point in the fifteenth century. The oceans were no longer an obstacle as previously seen to reach beyond. The Europeans felt inferior to the power and wealth of the Islamic world and saw the possibility to claim power and richness by conquering the oceans. During the 15th century and the 16th century Europeans established colonies in the Americas, the so called “New World”. When Europeans arrived in the Americas, most did not even consider that the peoples they encountered had cultural and religious traditions that were different from their own; most believed indigenous communities had no culture or religion at all.

1) The book, 1491, by Charles C. Mann gives readers a deeper insight into the Americas before the age of Columbus, explaining the development and significance of the peoples who came before us. Moreover, Mann’s thesis is such; the civilizations and tribes that developed the Americas prior to the discovery by Europeans arrived much earlier than first presumed, were far greater in number, and were vastly more sophisticated than we had earlier believed. For instance, Mann writes, regarding the loss of Native American culture:

The painting shows five women naked with flat figures, disintegrated planes and faces, inspired by African masks. The compacted space the figures occupy appears to project forward in jagged shards; a fiercely pointed slice of melon in the still life of fruit at the bottom of the composition teeters on an impossibly upturned table top. In this painting, Picasso makes a radical departure from traditional European painting by adaptation of Primitivism and abandonment of perspective in goodwill of a level two-dimensional picture of a plane.

It is a widespread belief that colonization of the Americas started and ended with the English and the 13 colonies, an exclusive and extremely condensed version of history. In American Colonies, Alan Taylor delves deeper into this condensed version of events to offer a more informative and truthful point of view on American history. In this document, Taylor presents the argument that American colonization was the result of the efforts of multiple cultures and races. He continues on to say that many of these groups of people were left out of the story of American history, which led to the English being established as the dominant force of colonization.[ Taylor, American Colonies, 1]

The founding of the New World fascinated many Europeans because of the possibilities of the economic, political, and social growth. Europeans packed their belongings and boarded the boat to new beginnings. Arriving in the Americas was not what they had expected. Already pre-occupied in the land, were the Native Americans. The Native Americans refused the Europeans colonization in the America’s, but not all colonies in the Europe just wanted to colonize with the Natives. The intentions of the Europeans colonies were all different, as the Dutch solely came for business transactions. The Dutch business transactions resulted in the change of economic, political, and social movements, changing the lives of the Native’s.

The long history between Native American and Europeans are a strained and bloody one. For the time of Columbus’s subsequent visits to the new world, native culture has

The late 15th century marked the beginnings of a period of discovery and expansion for Europeans. During these years of discovery, great forces behind drive for expansion existed. The Spanish and Portuguese's main forces included: the lust for the wealth of gold and silver, the acquisition of new lands which brought nobility, and the spread of their Christian based religion. The Spanish and Portuguese conquest of Latin America provides us with insight of these drives in the ultimate search for power. Unfortunately, these motives caused a European-Indigenous syncretism that virtually changed the native peoples way of life. Ultimately, syncretism meant survival for Native Americans in a world where their way of life did not suit the life