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Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Figures
- List of Original Source Material
- Preface
- Introduction
- Chapter One Beginnings: Europe and the Wider World
- Chapter Two Expansion: The Old World and a New World
- Chapter Three Spain Ascendant: Conquest and Colonization
- Chapter Four Interlopers: Pirates, Traders, Trappers, Missionaries
- Chapter Five Profit and Piety: The English Settlements
- Chapter Six The Sea and the Land: Open Space, Abundance, Frontier
- Index
Chapter One - Beginnings: Europe and the Wider World
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 September 2020
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Figures
- List of Original Source Material
- Preface
- Introduction
- Chapter One Beginnings: Europe and the Wider World
- Chapter Two Expansion: The Old World and a New World
- Chapter Three Spain Ascendant: Conquest and Colonization
- Chapter Four Interlopers: Pirates, Traders, Trappers, Missionaries
- Chapter Five Profit and Piety: The English Settlements
- Chapter Six The Sea and the Land: Open Space, Abundance, Frontier
- Index
Summary
[F]or that up to his time, neither by writings, nor by the memory of man, was known with any certainty the nature of the land beyond that Cape … And because the said Lord Infant wished to know the truth of this, since it seemed to him that if he or some other lord did not endeavor to gain that knowledge, no mariners or merchants would ever dare to attempt it—(for it is clear that none of them ever trouble themselves to sail to a place where there is not a sure and certain hope of profit)—and seeing also that no other prince took any pains in this matter, he sent out his own ships against those parts, to have manifest certainty of them all. And to this he was stirred up by his zeal for the service of God and of the King Edward his Lord and brother…
—Gomes Eannes de Azurara, Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea (c. 1453)Background
Until the end of World War II, anyone looking at the political and economic condition in which the world's peoples found themselves had to note that Europeans were dominant nearly everywhere. In fact, global history in the following generation was largely the story of how native inhabitants of areas that had long been part of the colonial empire of one or another of the European powers finally regained control over their own destinies. Prior to such recent developments, European hegemony had been an established fact of world history for so long that for several centuries many observers simply took it for granted as a sign of divine will or European racial superiority, or both. But, in fact, Europeans had not always been masters; their global dominance was the result of activities that took place as recently as the nineteenth, and no earlier than the sixteenth, century. Before then, Europeans were anything but dominant, not only in a global context but even in parts of Europe itself.
When Europeans began to consider the possibilities of overseas ventures, the existence of North and South America was not known by Europeans nor any culture familiar to Europeans.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Old World, the New World, and the Creation of the Modern World, 1400–1650An Interpretive History, pp. 9 - 28Publisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2013