This time period, when the Eurasian and African World came in force to the American World, was one of the most important periods in world history. It encompassed the decline of Islamic, Indian and Chinese power and the rise of the European powers as well as the preemption of African industrial development. It included the schism between Catholicism and Protestantism, the scientific revolution, the Enlightenment, the rise of the modern nation state, the idea of nationalism, of modern forms of representative democracy, creation and extension of capitalism, as well as the industrialization and expansion of slavery on a world wide scale. It included the industrial and technological revolutions and was a period of enrichment for Europe and impoverishment for much of the rest of the world - particularly Africa and the native peoples of North and South America. Most significantly, this was the era of the demographic explosion in human population - from a few hundred million to billions world wide. See the animation of human population.

The world was completely transformed in this period. The new world had a profound impact on the old and the old world an even more profound impact on the new. Explore the exchange - sometimes called the Columbian exchange. See Europe on the Eve of Discovery. 

American foods fueled world wide population growth and a revolution in world cuisines. American wealth fueled the expansion of European empires. African labor in the Americas fueled wealth production in Europe and the Americas. Removing Africa's productive labor force preempted development in Africa itself. Without the plantations in the new world, Europeans would never have developed African slavery at the industrialized scale that was achieved or the wealth they derived there from. Everywhere in the New World that isolated peoples met with Eurasians, up to 90%  of the native New World peoples died from diseases. This process lasted a very long time as contact did not happen all at once. As a result of the exchange, whole ecosystems, whole continents, whole peoples and whole economies were completely transformed.

What was North America like on the eve of contact? Where were the major civilizations? What were they like? What do we know and not know about them? For a start, see Native Americans,  Native Origins, the Native American Timeline to 1890, and brief native histories . 

How do modern scholars classify different groups? See the essay on socio-political organization. Also, in the Primary sources, see the Native Americans and the Law to get a sense of the evolving legal status of Native groups as sovereign peoples.

What was Europe like on the eve of contact with the new world? What factors came together to promote the creation and expansion of European sea borne empires? What role did mercantilism play in the expansion of the European empires? See Mercantilism and Sea-Borne Empire

Why was Portugal the first and what lay behind Portugal's drive for expansion and eventual world domination? See Queen Philippa and the Portuguese Empire

In what sense did the Europeans invent America? How did images of the new world and North America in particular change over time? Two incomplete essays treat these issues.

• Oh Brave New World: Invention of America

• Novus Orbis: Images of the New World

The Manifest Destiny/ Exploring  Bibliography provides additional resources on this topic. 

A number of primary documents, most in translation, shed light on this question. Strongly recommended are:

Christopher Columbus, Letter to Luis de Sant’ Angel (1493)

Jefferson's Indian Addresses

Jackson to Congress 1829

The Removal Act 28 May 1830

Cherokee letter protesting the Treaty of New Etocha 1836

Sagoyewatha ("Red Jacket", Chief of the Seneca) to missionary Reverend Cram from the Boston Missionary Society at Buffalo Creek 1805

The Short Histories of Explorers begin to sketch the stories of European understanding of the New World. Very few Native accounts survive from this period. 

Finally, War, the most overt means of conquest, is an area of history with which you ought to be familiar. To aide in keeping the various conflicts straight, most of the links on this site relating to war are definitions and very brief descriptions of the more important conflicts in the Old and New Worlds influencing US History. 

Historians of US history slight Pre Columbian peoples and landscapes, as well as the history of exploration and that of the early contacts between the Old and New worlds. They tend to rush to stories of English colonization perhaps because it was these colonies that eventually broke off to form the US. 

Historical development in areas that eventually became part of the US but which were not part of the original 13 British colonies are largely ignored. Worst of all, the significance of the exchange between old and new world is also largely ignored.

Our text book only devotes one chapter to this very important period and we as a class cannot devote the time to this period that it deserves. I encourage you to think about conquest as an ongoing activity, not just in the transition from Native-dominated to European-dominated landscapes, but also in subsequent periods when the colonies moved aggressively toward native inhabitants and neighbors, against Spain, Mexico, Cuba, and Canada, and finally as a prelude to empire. So please contribute discussion questions and answers on this unit throughout the semester and consider the unit to be our primary focus for the first 3 weeks of class and continue to do so as we treat Indian Removal, the taking of Texas, the Mexican War, filibustering and Westward expansion.