The European Background.
In the study of the first epoch, certain subdivisions again become clear. First, it is necessary, if the student is to understand the meaning of early American history, that he be made to comprehend the conditions in Europe which led the Spaniard, the Frenchman and the Englishman forth on their voyages of discovery and colonization. Far too many teachers neglect almost entirely what Cheyney calls “The European Background of American History.”
Every one who has studied the history of the first voyage of Columbus knows that this voyage was but the culmination of more than four centuries of European commercial history. Ever since the time of the crusades, and even before, there had gone on in Europe an extensive trade in Asiatic wares; spices and gums, drugs, medicaments and perfumes, diamonds, pearls, rubies and ivories, silk, cotton and woolen fabrics had been imported in ever-increasing quantities by the Italian towns and distributed through them from Seville to Novgorod. Then in the fifteenth century came a time when the eastern trade routes were closed by the conquering Turks and the nations of Western Europe were forced in consequence to seek these luxuries by new and unaccustomed routes. The discovery of America was not an accident, nor was Columbus the only hero of his age—this the student should be made thoroughly to comprehend.
Second, a slight knowledge of the aborigines must be insisted upon. Here, however, the teacher will need to exercise care and judgment lest he waste time on unessential details.
Third in order comes the geography of the new continent. The study of the physiography of the North American continent, if properly handled, will prove to the students a fascinating, an almost inexhaustible subject. If properly led, boys and girls will study their maps with even greater interest than they do their text-books. One lesson at least the teacher should devote to the shore line, the water courses, the gaps and mountain passes, the portages and the wood roads, else the story of the exploration of the continent must ever remain to the students a blind story of purposeless wanderings in a trackless wilderness. (See Farrand “Basis of American History,” Chaps. I to IV.)
When the student has grasped these fundamentals it will be time, and then only, to begin to thread with him the labyrinth of voyages and explorations which mark the first century of American history. Here the teacher will need to exercise great ingenuity and considerable caution. Rather a few facts well co-ordinated, than a multitude of details without any unifying principle is the one infallible rule. The Norsemen, for instance, one is tempted to say, may with profit be entirely neglected. “Nothing is clearer,” say Fiske (“Discovery of America,” I, pp. 235-254), “from a survey of the whole subject, than that these pre-Columbus voyages were quite barren of results of historic importance.... [That they constituted] in any legitimate sense of the phrase, a discovery of America is simply absurd.” Columbus, De Soto, Cortez, Coronado are really the only Spaniards whose names the student need remember. Equally, the voyages of Verrazano, Ribault, Cartier, Champlain, La Salle, Marquette and Joliet tell the whole tale of French activities over a hundred and fifty years.
Throughout this period, the teacher should keep these guiding posts constantly before the eyes of his students: First, that the Spaniards, when once they realized that they had discovered a new continent and had not reached the longed for shores of Cathay, were lured farther and farther into the heart of the continent in search of gold; second, that, owing to the direction of their approach, they occupied the southern and southwestern part of the continent only; third, that their forward movement ended in the end of the sixteenth century because of (a) their loss of naval supremacy (the Armada), (b) their narrow internal national policy (the expulsion of the Moriscos and the Inquisition), (c) their struggle to subdue the revolted Netherlands.