INTRODUCTION TO
AMERICAN STUDIES I
An Introduction
Historical Dates
 August 6, 1945
 Hiroshima
 Hiroshima Peace Memorial
 Designed by the Czech architect
Jan Letzel in 1915 as the Hiroshima
Prefectural Exhibition
Hall
Santa Margherita di Liguria, Italy
Who’s this?
 Cristoforo Colombo
 Cristóbal Colón
 Christopher Columbus
 c. 1451-1506
 Generally believed to
have been born in
Genoa (now Italy)
 Some evidence for other
possibilities (e.g.
Barcelona)
 Some claim he was
raised in Santa
Margherita
Other statues of Columbus:
L: Bremerhaven, Germany, Ludwig Habich, c. 1900
R: Vienna, Austria, Josef Cesar, 1862
What is the significance of Columbus?
 Was he the first European?
 Norse (Vikings)
 L’Anse aux Meadows
c. 1000 A.D.
 Other claimants?
 Egyptians
 Phoenicians
 Welsh
 Chinese
 Japanese
 Polynesians
The Columbian
Exchange
 Term developed in 1972 by
the environmental historian
Alfred Crosby
 Old World  New World
 Technology
 Iron and other smelted metals
 Gunpowder & firearms
 Plow
 People (16th to 19th centuries)
 Europeans
 Africans
 New World  Old World
 Gold
 Silver
 Animal furs
Old World→New World New World→Old World
domestic
animals
 cattle
 chickens
 goats
 horses/donkeys
 pigs
 sheep
 alpacas
 guinea pigs
 llamas
 turkeys
crops
 banana
 barley
 citrus fruits
 coffee
 melons
 oats
 rice
 sugar cane
 wheat
 avocado
 cacao
 cassava
 maize (corn)
 peanut
 peppers
 pineapple
 potato
 squash
 sunflower
 tobacco
 tomato
 vanilla
diseases
 chicken pox
 common cold
 gonorrhea
 influenza
 malaria
 measles
 mumps
 smallpox
 tuberculosis
 typhus
 whooping cough
 yellow fever
 syphilis (?)
The beginnings of “Globalization”
Christopher Columbus
 October 12, 1492
 Christopher Columbus leading a group of 3
ships – The Niña, Pinta and Santa María –
lands on an island in the Caribbean. He
believes that he is in India…
 He names the island “San Salvador” and
claims the island in the name of the King
and Queen of Spain by the right of
discovery
What is the power of words?
 The island’s residents knew it as “Guanahani”
 What is the power of naming?
 What is the significance of the word “discovery”?
 1 a: to make known or visible: expose
 b archaic: display
 2 a: to obtain sight or knowledge of for the first time:
find
 b: find out
What are Columbus’s words?
 “It appears to me, that the people are ingenious, and would be good
servants and I am of opinion that they would very readily become
Christians, as they appear to have no religion. They very quickly learn such
words as are spoken to them. If it please our Lord, I intend at my return to
carry home six of them to your Highnesses, that they may learn our
language. I saw no beasts in the island, nor any sort of animals except
parrots.”
 12 October 1492, Journal of the First Voyage
 “So that they are good to be ordered about, to work and sow, and do all
that may be necessary, and to build towns, and they should be taught to go
about clothed and to adopt our customs.”
 16 December 1492, Journal of the First Voyage
 “From here one might send, in the name of the Holy Trinity, as many slaves
as could be sold, as well as a quantity of Brazil [timber]. If the information I
have is correct, it appears that we could sell four thousand slaves, who might
be worth twenty millions and more”
 September 1498, Journal of the Third Voyage
Index to Columbus’s account of his journeys:
Gold
Columbus’s 4 voyages and their impact
 Spanish colonize the
Caribbean islands
 They force the indigenous
people into labor
 Gold, silver, agriculture
 Resistance is severely
punished
 Estimates for the Taino
population in 1492 range
from 100,000 to several
million
Excerpts and engravings from A Short Account of the Destruction
of the Indies (1542) by Bartolomé de las Casas
 They [the Spanish]
would erect long
gibbets … and bind
thirteen of the Indians at
one time, in honour and
reverence, they said, of
Our Redeemer and the
twelve Apostles, and put
firewood around it and
burn the Indians alive.
Excerpts and engravings from A Short Account of the Destruction
of the Indies (1542) by Bartolomé de las Casas
 [T]he lord asked the holy
father whether Christians
went to the sky. The priest
replied that they did, but
only those who were good.
And the cacique then said
… that he did not desire
to go to the sky, but rather
down to hell, so that he
would not be where they
were and would not see
such cruel people.
 Christopher Columbus
(1892), Jeronimo
Suñol
 Commissioned by the
New York
Genealogical and
Biographical Society
 Located in Central
Park, New York City
 Defaced on Tuesday,
October 12, 2017
What are the images of “discovery”?
“Columbus, as he
first arrives in
India, is received
by the inhabitants
and honored with
the bestowing of
many gifts”
Grand Voyages,
Americae, Vol. IV
(1594)
Theodor de Bry
b. 1528, Liège
d. 1598,
Frankfurt
What are the images of “discovery”?
America (1598)
“Americus
rediscovers
America”
“He called her but
once and
thenceforth she
was always
awake”
Nova Reperta [New
Discoveries]
Jan van der Staet
(Stradanus)
b. 1523, Flanders
d. 1605, Florence
What are the images of “discovery”?
Discovery of the
New World (1621)
Nova Typis
Transacta
Navigatio (Austria)
Wolfgang Kilian
b. 1581, Germany
d. 1662, Germany
The original copper
plate engraving is
in the National
Museum of
American History
What are the images of “discovery”?
The Landing of
Columbus in the
New World
(1803)
National Gallery
of Art,
Washington, D.C.
Frederick
Kemmelmeyer
b. 1788,
Germany
d. 1816,
Maryland
What are the images of “discovery”?
Landing of
Columbus (1847)
Rotunda, U.S.
Capitol building
John Vanderlyn
b. 1775, New
York
d. 1852, New
York
What are the images of “discovery”?
The First Landing
Of Christopher
Columbus (1862)
Museo del
Prado, Madrid,
Spain
Dióscoro Teófilo
Puebla Tolín
b. 1831, Burgos,
Spain
d. 1901,
Madrid, Spain
What are the images of “discovery”?
The Landing of
Columbus (1893)
3 versions
-American
Museum of
Natural History
(destroyed 1960)
-Newark Museum
and City of
Plainfied (New
Jersey)
Albert Bierstadt
b. 1832,
Germany
d. 1902, New
York
What are the images of “discovery”?
Columbus
Taking
Possession of
the New
Country
(1893)
Lithograph by
L. Prang & Co.
What are the images of “discovery”?
Columbus at
San Salvador
(from the
series The
Pageant of a
Nation c.
1895-1912)
Jean Leon
Gerome Ferris
b. 1863,
Philadelphia,
PA
d. 1930
Basic questions for this course
 How similar are Americans and Europeans in terms
of attitudes, outlooks, perspectives, senses of
identity?
 If throughout its history, the majority of the people
of the United States have either been immigrants
from Europe or their descendants, why are the
attitudes, outlooks, perspectives, senses of identity,
etc., of Americans and Europeans so different?
 The search for the answers to this question has been
one that has long employed American and
European scholars, writers and thinkers.
1782
 John Hector St. John De Crevecoeur (1735-1815)
 Born in Caen, Normandy, he immigrated to America in 1755
 In 1782, he published Letters from An American Farmer
 Letter III:
 “What then is the American, this new man?...He is an American,
who, leaving behind him all his ancient prejudices and manners,
receives new ones from the new mode of life he has embraced,
the new government he obeys, and the new rank he holds. He
has become an American by being received in the broad lap of
our great Alma Mater. Here individuals of all races are melted
into a new race of man, whose labors and posterity will one
day cause great changes in the world. Americans are the
western pilgrims.” (emphasis added)
1835: Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859)
 French aristocrat who travelled between 1831-1833 with Gustave
de Beaumont on a charter to examine American prisons.
 Democracy in America: First published in French as De la démocratie en
Amérique in two volumes (Volume 1–1835, Volume 2–1840)
 “Everything is extraordinary in America, the social condition of the inhabitants
as well as the laws; but the soil upon which these institutions are founded is
more extraordinary than all the rest. When the earth was given to men by the
Creator, the earth was inexhaustible; but men were weak and ignorant, and
when they had learned to take advantage of the treasures which it contained,
they already covered its surface and were soon obliged to earn by the sword
an asylum for repose and freedom. Just then North America was discovered,
as if it had been kept in reserve by the Deity and had just risen from
beneath the waters of the Deluge.” (emphasis added) Volume 1, Chapter VIII
Democracy in America, Volume 2, Chapter IX
 “The position of the Americans is therefore quite exceptional, and it
may be believed that no democratic people will ever be placed in
a similar one. Their strictly Puritanical origin, their exclusively
commercial habits, even the country they inhabit, which seems
to divert their minds from the pursuit of science, literature, and
the arts, the proximity of Europe, which allows them to neglect
these pursuits without relapsing into barbarism, a thousand
special causes, of which I have only been able to point out the most
important, have singularly concurred to fix the mind of the
American upon purely practical objects. His passions, his wants, his
education, and everything about him seem to unite in drawing the
native of the United States earthward; his religion alone bids him
turn, from time to time, a transient and distracted glance to
heaven.” (emphasis added)
What are some possible causes?
 “City Upon a Hill”
 American Exceptionalism
 Manifest Destiny
 The Frontier Hypothesis
 The Melting Pot
 Race-based slavery
The history of exploration and
colonization is a complex one
For example, do you know what is the oldest,
continuously inhabited settlement in the U.S.?
 Acoma Pueblo, New Mexico
 Established in c. 700 A.D., it has been continuously occupied
since at least 1075 A.D.
What is the oldest, continuously-occupied Europeanestablished
settlement in the United States?
 St. Augustine, Florida (1565)
 Area first explored in 1513; French establish Fort Caroline nearby in 1564
 The Spanish attack the French fort and in the autumn establish their own settlement
What is the oldest state capital?
 Santa Fe, New Mexico (1607)
 Established by the Spanish and made capital of the
province of Nuevo Mexico in 1610
Regional Histories
 Regional histories and their non-British elements are
important
The Spanish and Mexicans impacts in the West
and Southwest
The French impacts in Louisiana, in the Mississippi
River Valley and Great Lakes region
The Dutch impacts in what is now New York
The German impacts in eastern Pennsylvania and
the Ohio River valley
The Russian impacts in Alaska