Chapter 1:
In opening this book, Chapter 1 sets the scene for the intermingling of Europeans, Africans, and Native Americans in the New World, what Europeans called North and South America, by examining the backgrounds of the peoples of three continents and glimpsing the changes occurring with each of their many societies as the time for an historic convergence neared. Too often in historical writing, Europeans reaching the Americas are portrayed as the carriers of a superior culture that inevitably vanquished people living in a primitive if not "savage" state. This renders Native American and Africans passive and static people-so much dough to be kneaded by advanced Europeans. But recent historical scholarship tells us that Africans and Native Americans were critically important participants in the making of American history-part of a complex, intercultural birthing of a "new world." By examining the state of the societies of West Africa, North and South America, and Western Europe in the late fifteenth century, we will be better prepared to see how the complex, multicultural shaping of American history took place.
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