Activity 1

A crucial event in the history of early-modern European expansion was Columbus' voyages across the Atlantic. As you know, Columbus thought that the territories he had discovered were part of India. In fact, he had discovered lands belonging to the western hemisphere. Learn more about the lands that Came To Be Called America. Then read about how Europeans Invented America, that is conceived of and represented it to themselves. What sort of world did the Europeans find in America, and how did that world meet and/or fall short of their expectations? What do maps and other images from this age suggest about how Europeans envisioned America? Although Columbus did initiate the age of modern exploration, he and his followers were not the first Europeans to set foot upon the western hemisphere. Over four-hundred years earlier Norse explorers from Iceland and Greenland visited what came to be called North America and even tried to settle there. Consider some excerpts from the Greenlanders' Saga that tell of the Norse Discovery of North America: read the sections "Thorvald Goes to Wineland" and "Of the Wineland Voyages of Thorfinn and His Companions." When you finish, read the entries for Saturday 13 October and Tuesday 16 October in Columbus' Journal. How do the Norse and Columbus respond to the world they've found and its inhabitants? How do their observations resemble and differ from each other? What type of information does the Norse saga emphasize; what information does Columbus emphasize?

Activity 2

By the end of the seventeenth century England had become the leading power in international commerce. As such, England was the most successful practitioner of mercantilism, the reigning economic doctrine of the period. Read the following excerpt from England's Treasure by Foreign Trade, by Thomas Mun, a director of the British East India Company. What skills, according to Mun, must a merchant possess if he is to succeed in foreign trade? How does the state benefit from trade, and what role should the state play in promoting enterprise? How does Mun's essay represent mercantilist principles? Now consider some of the commodities that helped make England rich. Read about beaver, cod, indigo, and tobacco. Where did merchants obtain these commodities. How did demand for them develop? Why did Europeans value them. How did England enter the market for these commodities, and how did it build its share of the market? Did England come to dominate any of these markets? If so, how?