Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Figures
- List of Original Source Material
- Preface
- Introduction
- Chapter One Beginnings: Europe and the Wider World
- Chapter Two Expansion: The Old World and a New World
- Chapter Three Spain Ascendant: Conquest and Colonization
- Chapter Four Interlopers: Pirates, Traders, Trappers, Missionaries
- Chapter Five Profit and Piety: The English Settlements
- Chapter Six The Sea and the Land: Open Space, Abundance, Frontier
- Index
Chapter Six - The Sea and the Land: Open Space, Abundance, Frontier
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Figures
- List of Original Source Material
- Preface
- Introduction
- Chapter One Beginnings: Europe and the Wider World
- Chapter Two Expansion: The Old World and a New World
- Chapter Three Spain Ascendant: Conquest and Colonization
- Chapter Four Interlopers: Pirates, Traders, Trappers, Missionaries
- Chapter Five Profit and Piety: The English Settlements
- Chapter Six The Sea and the Land: Open Space, Abundance, Frontier
- Index
Summary
[T]o the frontier, the American intellect owes its striking characteristics. That coarseness and strength combined with acuteness and inquisitiveness, that practical, inventive turn of mind, quick to find expedients, that masterful grasp of material things, lacking in the artistic but powerful to effect great ends, that restless, nervous energy, that dominant individualism, working for good and for evil, and withal that buoyancy and exuberance which comes with freedom …
—Frederick Jackson Turner, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” (1893)1400–1650
In 1400, the world's major civilizations lived apart from each other. They maintained virtually no continuous contact. Indeed, some very advanced cultures were completely unknown to others. Probably the most isolated were the Amerindian civilizations since oceans separated their continent from Europe, Asia and Africa, whose own cultures at least had knowledge that the others existed. Europeans had a “feeling” that there were aspects of the world they did not, but ought to know. For years Christians in Europe had believed that a mythical king, Prester John ruled a powerful Christian nation in the heart of Africa. One of Prince Henry the Navigator's aims had been to join forces with him and launch a telling assault against the power of Islam. Generations of Europeans had considered the “islands of the Atlantic” shown on some of their maps to mean that great cultures and perhaps spectacular treasures existed somewhere beyond the known world. Christian lore described voyages to the north and west by Irish monks, most notably that of St.
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- Information
- The Old World, the New World, and the Creation of the Modern World, 1400–1650An Interpretive History, pp. 183 - 190Publisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2013