POLITICAL AND SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 1492-1828 CHAPTER I EUROPEAN BEGINNINGS IN AMERICA SPAIN'S COLONIAL EMPIRE If a visitor had come to the earth from another world five hundred years ago, he would not have found its largest cities and greatest wealth in North America, nor would he have found mature and highly cultured states in Europe. A sparse population of copper-skinned savages roamed the American wilderness, while European nations were in the making, slowly taking form out of the older universal state, and just beginning to recover the literature and art of classical civilization which had been submerged a thousand years before when the Roman empire was overrun by barbarians. Passing by the ruins in Egypt and the Tigris-Euphrates Valley of other dead empires, the visitor would have come at last, in India and China, to the cities, the wealth, the luxury of hoary civilizations where philosophy and letters flourished when the peoples of Europe were skin-clad nomads. The visitor might readily have predicted the spread of culture from these oriental centers to the more backward regions of the earth. But the future was not in the hands of the eastern peoples. They had ceased to be impelled to change by internal forces. Asia and the whole world were to become the sphere of activity for the restless new nations of Europe. Between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries these gained the mastery of the earth. The history of the last five centuries is largely the story of this expansion of Europe and the development of the white man's civilization. Culture has undergone more change during this period than in all the previous ages. The advance of scientific knowledge and the vast enlargement of life on the material side are the distinguishing characteristics of the modern era. No less real, it may be hoped, is the gain in the freedom of the spirit through the progress of religious and political liberty and the increase of educational opportunity. These changes have come with, and in part because of, the expansion of Europe, from the impulses gained in far-flung enterprise and in the building of society in the earth's waste spaces. The widening of the geographical possessions of the European stock has involved also rivalries and wars among the European states, the overthrow of ancient empires, the extermination of weak peoples, and has brought each nation of today face to face with problems affecting the entire human family. The history of America is a part of this larger story. The discovery of the western continents was a first fruit of the awakening of Europe, and their occupation was an early stage of its expansion. For two centuries or more its rival nations contended for the mastery of the New World. Then colonies ripened into independent states, with their own institutions and ideals bearing the impress of the American environment, ready to make their contribution to the world order. Down to the fifteenth century European life centered about the Mediterranean Sea. Even in the best days of Rome, Europeans had little or no contact with Asia beyond a line reaching from the Caspian Sea to Calcutta, although they drew their gems, fine fabrics, and spices from China, India, and islands still more remote which their traders did not themselves visit. During the rude ages which followed the disintegration of Roman power commerce languished and geographical knowledge contracted. Then the Crusades brought the men of Europe once more into western Asia, revived the intercontinental trade, and begot new interest in the lands of the East. Across central Asia and around the eastern and southern coasts to the Persian Gulf and Red Sea and thence by land, goods were now carried to the cities of the Black and Mediterranean seas, where they were received by the merchants of Italian towns who distributed them in Europe or passed them on to other merchants from the countries of the North. It was about the middle of the thirteenth century that Europeans began to penetrate into eastern Asia. Most famous of these travelers was Marco Polo, a merchant of Venice, who just at the close of the century (1298) wrote an account of his wanderings. For two hundred years more the interest in geographical inquiry increased with accelerating pace until the fifteenth century ushered in a veritable golden age of discovery. In this memorable epoch the art of printing began to disseminate knowledge while the compass and astrolabe transformed navigation. Timid, land-hugging seamen gave way to bold mariners who, urged by curiosity, love of adventure, missionary zeal, or desire to expand commerce, explored all seas. Portugal was the pioneer in the new enterprise. She had attained national unity while the other countries of Europe were slowly emerging from feudalism; her location also favored her leadership as the center of action shifted from the Mediterranean Basin to the Atlantic. Her navigators gradually disclosed the contour of the African coast and dispelled the old belief in sea monsters and boiling oceans, and before the end of the century (1498) found an all-water route to India around the Dark Continent.1 Out of the crowd of seamen in Portuguese employ who took part in these explorations emerges one of the few men whose names will live forever. This man was the Italian known to the English-speaking world as Christopher Columbus. Obscurity veils his early life, denying us knowledge of the year of his birth and even of the origin of his great adventure. He is known to have been a diligent student of the scientific writings of his time, and to have shared the concept of the earth as a sphere, which was held by the enlightened men of the fifteenth century. What he sought by sailing westward, however, is not certain. It is possible that he knew of voyages to lands in the Atlantic the record of which has been lost, and that these were the object of his quest. The story of the struggles and triumph of the great discoverer need not be retold. Winning at length the support of Isabella of Castile, late in the summer of 1492 he fared forth upon the untried waters, the first of the pioneers whose dauntless faith and courage were to conquer the New World. Thus was inaugurated the era of expansion in two hemispheres. After the return of Columbus from his first voyage, to prevent conflict between Spain and Portugal the Pope issued the Demarkation Bull of 1493, granting to Spain the lands which she should discover in the West. Soon afterwards the two nations agreed by treaty that the boundary between their claims should be the meridian three hundred and seventy leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands. These adjustments laid the foundation for Spain's claim to nearly the whole of America. It was soon strengthened by exploration. When the successors of Columbus began to suspect that a continent lay between them and the lands of silk and spice, they made prolonged efforts to find a waterway to the "South Sea." Knowledge of the geography of the Atlantic 1 It was long believed that the conquests of the Turks cut off the old lines of communication between Asia and Europe through the eastern Mediterranean, ruining the Italian commercial cities and providing Portugal with the incentive for seeking a new route to India. It is now held that the rise of the Turkish power had little if anything to do with the voyages of the Portuguese. |