Sailing the Ocean Blue
He may have had three ships and sailed from Spain, as the poem goes, but there's an awful lot of agreement Columbus wasn't the first European, or even the first from other shores to arrive in what is now the Western Hemisphere. He just came along at an opportune time, had great PR, and gave his already bellicose sponsors (Spain, who had just finished kicking the Moors out of Granada, was busy shooing the Sephardim out of the country, and had already experimented with colonial endeavors in the Canary Islands) an excuse to become a world powerhouse-- for a while, anyway, at least until 1588 (and some couple centuries thereafter), when England kicked Spain's butt and established its naval bonafides.
No, it's not October 12 yet; not for a few more months anyway, but I just saw this article in the San Francisco Chronicle that posits that Polynesians may have come to California ages before any Europeans thought to go beyond Iceland. While this theory has yet to be proven, it's a welcome change from the Euro-centric tone anthropologists, linguists, and historians have taken in the past regarding the "discovery" of and contact with the Americas.
In a lot of the history classes I've sat in, the textbooks and professors often start their U.S. narrative with the English exploration and settlement along the Eastern seaboard. Occasionally, a text or an individual professor will veer into Spanish territory, but summarily dismiss this tack as part and parcel of the history of South America. I've respectfully disagreed with this. For one thing, the French and Spanish poked around these shores a lot earlier than John Smith and the Pilgrims did (and even starting with these two, that ignores the lost colony of Roanoke, for one thing). In 1565, the Spanish established a fort at what is now St. Augustine, Florida, the first permanent European settlement on the shores of what is now the United States. The city of Santa Fe, New Mexico, was founded in 1610, ten years before the Mayflower. If you count the history of the continent as part of the history of the United States (and considering the increasing immigration from our southern borders, I think this is a very good idea), it would be wrong to discount the history of Mexico; Cortes invaded Mexican shores in 1519, just thirteen years after Columbus died, and just over a generation since the first voyage arrived at San Salvador that October of 1492.
While I think history as a discipline needs to look at the story as a whole and not necessarily break down into a million sub-categories of various groups discriminated by ethnicity, gender, race, and a host of other specifications, I still agree that there needs to be awareness and flexibility towards incorporating the cultural, linguistic, scientific, and political aspects of societies that are non-European in determining the actual history of the Americas. That's where this article I've linked to comes in. For too long, historians, archaeologists, and anthropologists have dismissed the folkways and oral histories of native or non-European populations. Sometimes it was inadvertent; for example, the Spanish destroyed most of the records of the Incas and the Aztecs in the years following the conquests by Cortes and Pizarro, and then attempted to reconstruct these histories and slant them towards a vaguely pro-Spanish narrative. But other times, it's more deliberate, such as the dismissal of potential contacts between Polynesian and American societies. This study takes a small step towards rectifying that.
While the European influence on the Americas is undeniable, it's sometimes fascinating to wonder at the possibility of things having been wholly different. I just got the July 2005 issue of National Geographic, and it contains an article about the Great Fleet of China under Zheng He and its travels throughout the shores of Asia and Africa. If the Chinese Emperor hadn't suddenly curtailed naval exploration, who knows what might have happened? While his book lacks concrete evidence, Gavin Menzies' recent book, 1421: The Year the Chinese Discovered the World argues that Zheng He actually reached the shores of the present-day American West. Although there's nothing to suggest this actually happened, it's part and parcel of the shift taking place in the perception among scholars towards non-European contacts in the pre-Columbian era.
I don't know if I'll ever get back to teaching, but if I do, I intend to take a more global and comprehensive approach than the U.S. history textbooks of the past have permitted.
No, it's not October 12 yet; not for a few more months anyway, but I just saw this article in the San Francisco Chronicle that posits that Polynesians may have come to California ages before any Europeans thought to go beyond Iceland. While this theory has yet to be proven, it's a welcome change from the Euro-centric tone anthropologists, linguists, and historians have taken in the past regarding the "discovery" of and contact with the Americas.
In a lot of the history classes I've sat in, the textbooks and professors often start their U.S. narrative with the English exploration and settlement along the Eastern seaboard. Occasionally, a text or an individual professor will veer into Spanish territory, but summarily dismiss this tack as part and parcel of the history of South America. I've respectfully disagreed with this. For one thing, the French and Spanish poked around these shores a lot earlier than John Smith and the Pilgrims did (and even starting with these two, that ignores the lost colony of Roanoke, for one thing). In 1565, the Spanish established a fort at what is now St. Augustine, Florida, the first permanent European settlement on the shores of what is now the United States. The city of Santa Fe, New Mexico, was founded in 1610, ten years before the Mayflower. If you count the history of the continent as part of the history of the United States (and considering the increasing immigration from our southern borders, I think this is a very good idea), it would be wrong to discount the history of Mexico; Cortes invaded Mexican shores in 1519, just thirteen years after Columbus died, and just over a generation since the first voyage arrived at San Salvador that October of 1492.
While I think history as a discipline needs to look at the story as a whole and not necessarily break down into a million sub-categories of various groups discriminated by ethnicity, gender, race, and a host of other specifications, I still agree that there needs to be awareness and flexibility towards incorporating the cultural, linguistic, scientific, and political aspects of societies that are non-European in determining the actual history of the Americas. That's where this article I've linked to comes in. For too long, historians, archaeologists, and anthropologists have dismissed the folkways and oral histories of native or non-European populations. Sometimes it was inadvertent; for example, the Spanish destroyed most of the records of the Incas and the Aztecs in the years following the conquests by Cortes and Pizarro, and then attempted to reconstruct these histories and slant them towards a vaguely pro-Spanish narrative. But other times, it's more deliberate, such as the dismissal of potential contacts between Polynesian and American societies. This study takes a small step towards rectifying that.
While the European influence on the Americas is undeniable, it's sometimes fascinating to wonder at the possibility of things having been wholly different. I just got the July 2005 issue of National Geographic, and it contains an article about the Great Fleet of China under Zheng He and its travels throughout the shores of Asia and Africa. If the Chinese Emperor hadn't suddenly curtailed naval exploration, who knows what might have happened? While his book lacks concrete evidence, Gavin Menzies' recent book, 1421: The Year the Chinese Discovered the World argues that Zheng He actually reached the shores of the present-day American West. Although there's nothing to suggest this actually happened, it's part and parcel of the shift taking place in the perception among scholars towards non-European contacts in the pre-Columbian era.
I don't know if I'll ever get back to teaching, but if I do, I intend to take a more global and comprehensive approach than the U.S. history textbooks of the past have permitted.
posted by Mr. Sandman | 8:17 PM
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