Expansion, Diaspora, and Encounter in the Early Modern South Atlantic
In a decade marked off by the quincentenaries of the voyages of Columbus (1492) and that of Vasco da Gama (1498) or perhaps more chronologically and interculturally correctly by the 1502 arrival of three Native Americans at the court of Henry VII of England, it is appropriate to take stock of the field of ‘European expansion’ and to ask if, in fact, such a field exists, or ought to exist, or still means the same thing that it did a generation ago. The celebrations and condemnations that accompanied the quincentenary in 1992 refocused public attention on the question of European expansion and its impact on history of die Americas and of the world. Voices long suppressed and opinions never before expressed found new audiences and joined with scholarly and semi-scholarly works to make Columbus and all that followed in his wake a topic of general public concern. It is dierefore appropriate to take stock once again of what we know about die Era of European Expansion prior to die emergence of modern imperialism in die nineteenth century.