Word: columbus
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...inconveniently, by many people's lights -- for several reasons. The U.S. population is not what it was during the first decades of the 19th century; it now includes a higher percentage of people, and a number of far more vocal people, who feel they have a historic grievance against Columbus and the European invasion he represented. These include, most prominently, Native Americans, many of whom have joined hands with their coevals in Latin and South America to take a stand against a long- ago uninvited guest; and African Americans, whose forebears were packed into slave ships and sent across...
...same time, what Columbus actually wrought by bringing Europe into the Americas is being assessed with increased historical sophistication. Two worlds collided nearly 500 years ago, and none of the fallout from that impact now seems as simple as it was once portrayed. Textbooks on American history once began with Columbus' arrival, as if nothing that had happened before bore mentioning. Those careful enough to note that the explorer found people already living where he touched down did not go on to say very much about them...
...there is much to say, as archaeologists, anthropologists and ethnographers have known for a long time. The prospect of the Columbus quincentennial not only lent new urgency to scientific research already under way about the land that the Italian encountered, but also suggested an expanded context in which discoveries could be viewed. "The impetus has changed," says archaeologist Jerald Milanich, "from a celebration of Columbus and the triumph of European civilization to a new theme: the people that discovered Columbus. There's a huge amount of research focusing on the impact of native Americans...
...existence and its peoples was an important factor in the explosion of the Renaissance, which involved not only the reappropriation of classical learning but also the heady sense of a future yet to be discovered. In "To His Mistress Going to Bed," written roughly a century after Columbus' landing, the English poet John Donne describes his lover's disrobing until her final article of clothing is cast off and then exclaims, "O my America! my new-found land...
...National Museum of Natural History in Washington. Opening Oct. 12 and running through April 1993, the Smithsonian exhibit sets forth five "natural" elements -- sugar, disease, maize, the potato and the horse -- the exchange of which has profoundly altered both the New and Old Worlds in the 500 years since Columbus' first voyage...