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Chapter 2 |
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The four voyages of Christopher Columbus from 1492 to 1504, conducted on the eve of religious conflict and reformation in Europe, brought together people from three previously unconnected continents. Together, they made a new world, their lives intersecting, their cultural attributes interacting. Here was the beginning of creating an Americas-wide cultural mosaic. In this chapter, we follow the epoch-making voyages of Columbus, the arrival of Spanish conquistadors, their remarkable conquest of vast territories in Mesoamerica and the southern regions of North America, and the momentous effect of plants, animals, and germs as they traveled westward and eastward across the Atlantic.
We will also see how the phenomenal exploits of Hernán Cortés and Francisco Pizarro, and the discovery of immense quantities of silver, attracted the attention of other Europeans-first the French, then the Dutch and English. Latecomers in the race to exploit the treasures of the Americas while providing a place for the downtrodden and opportunity-blocked settlers of Europe, the English, as we will see, finally appeared on the scene in the Americas a century after the Columbian voyages. Their presence, while escalating the rivalries among emerging European nation-states as they jumped across the Atlantic, planted the seeds of an English-dominated American nation.
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