1 Colliding Worlds

1450–1600

In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, it was common to refer to the Americas as a “new world” or “virgin soil.” Such terms captured the wonder and enthusiasm of European explorers, to whom everything on the continent appeared new and untouched. Those terms also reveal the confidence, or even arrogance, animating many of those explorers, who viewed the continent as a blank slate waiting for them to write the next chapter of Europe’s great unfolding destiny. Their visions of gold and glory ultimately came into conflict with the many thousands of indigenous inhabitants who had for centuries developed thriving societies and sophisticated cultures in the Americas. As European worldviews bumped up against indigenous American cultures and beliefs, another group of unwilling participants added to the collision of civilizations, when Africans captured and sold into slavery began populating American shores in the sixteenth century. In this chapter, we illuminate how the interaction of these three worlds transformed North America and forged the modern world.