EUROPEAN MIGRATION

European Migration

Abstract

Colonizing North America was a risky business. Most of the early expeditions consisted of soldiers who fought with the natives and did not know how to farm. Lured by the promise of new land and possible treasure, however, European adventurers never stopped trying. When Captain John Smith landed at Jamestown on June 14, 1607, Spain, France, and England had already attempted to place fourteen colonies in North America.

Table of Contents

Abstractii

Introduction1

Discussion1

Europeans Exploring the New World1

Columbian Exchange2

Conclusion5

References6

European Migration

Introduction

Migration is a fundamental activity of human kind, allowing any member of the species to seek out the world they inhabit. European hegemony is the first truest sense of the word that we see imposed throughout human history falling back to the Voyages of Columbus and others, earlier and later, during the Age of Discovery.

However, everywhere Europeans went, there were groups of other peoples already settled into the unknown regions of the world. Europeans flaunted and demanded their own superiority, disregarding the legitimacy of other societies and civilizations to exist. Many Europeans cited the Glory of God, religion, global superiority, ego, and their own existences living in societies further in technology and academia as reasons to justify global superiority. Scholars argue as to the exact reason why Europeans felt this way, but we do know that with very rare exceptions, the cultures many European voyagers stumbled upon were subjugated to their military might and advancements in science and technology.

Discussion

Europeans Exploring the New World

Europeans sailing in the wake of Admiral Christopher Columbus, explorers and conquerors like De Vaca, constructed a narrative of superiority that survived long after they passed from the scene. The standard narrative recounted first in Europe and then in the United States depicted heroic adventurers, missionaries, and soldiers sharing Western civilization with the peoples of the New World and opening a vast virgin land to economic development. This familiar tale celebrated material progress, the inevitable spread of European values, and the taming of frontiers. It was a history crafted by the victors and their descendants to explain how they had come to inherit the land. This narrative of events no longer provides an adequate explanation for European conquest and settlement. It is not so much wrong as partisan, incomplete, even offensive.

History recounted from the perspective of the victors inevitably silences the voices of the victims, the peoples who, in the victors' view, foolishly resisted economic and technological progress. Heroic tales of the advance of Western values only deflect modern attention away from the rich cultural and racial diversity that characterized North American societies for a very long time. While the New World often witnessed tragic violence and systematic betrayal, it allowed ordinary people of three different races and many different ethnic identities opportunities to shape their own lives as best they could within diverse, often hostile environments. Neither the Native Americans nor the Africans were passive victims of European exploitation. Within their own families and communities, they made choices, sometimes rebelling, sometimes accommodating, but always trying to ...