Sound Bites -- Provocative excerpts from primary and secondary sources (some with audio commentary)
21-30 of 333 Sound Bites. [show all]
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21) I once spoke about Columbus to a workshop of school teachers and one of them suggested that school children were too young to hear of the horrors recounted by Las Casas and others. Other teachers disagreed, said children's stories include plenty of violence, but the perpetrators are witches and monsters and "bad people," not national heroes who have holidays named after them. (Howard Zinn, On History. New York: Seven Stories Press, 2001: 105. )
22) This seemingly inescapable desire for territorial expansion through conquest was also bound by a firm code of aristocratic values which had played a crucial role in the creation of all the earliest overseas empires. For overseas expansion promised to those who engaged in it not only trade and, if they were lucky, precious metals, it also offered the promise of glory, and with glory a kind of social advancement which, before the mid-eighteenth century, could be acquired by almost no other means. (Anthony Pagden, Lords of All the World: Ideologies of Empire in Spain, Britain and France, c. 1500-1800. New Haven: Yale UP, 1995: 63-64. )
23) VII. In order to reestablish peace on solid and durable foundations, and to remove for ever all subject of dispute with regard to the limits of the British and French territories on the continent of America; it is agreed, that, for the future, the confines between the dominions of his Britannick Majesty and those of his Most Christian Majesty, in that part of the world, shall be fixed irrevocably by a line drawn along the middle of the River Mississippi, from its source to the river Iberville, and from thence, by a line drawn along the middle of this river, and the lakes Maurepas and Pontchartrain to the sea; and for this purpose, the Most Christian King cedes in full right, and guaranties to his Britannick Majesty the river and port of the Mobile, and every thing which he possesses, or ought to possess, on the left side of the river Mississippi, except the town of New Orleans and the island in which it is situated, which shall remain to France, provided that the navigation of the river Mississippi shall be equally free, as well to the subjects of Great Britain as to those of France. (Treaty of 1763 )
24) Although we do not mean to engage in the defence of those principles which Europeans have applied to Indian title, they may, we think, find some excuse, if not justification, in the character and habits of the people whose rights have been wrested from them. (John Marshall, Johnson v. M'Intosh, 1823 )
25) In respect to us they are a people poore, and for want of skill and judgement in the knowledge and use of our things, doe esteeme our trifles before things of greater value: Nothwithstanding, in their proper maner (considering the want of such meanes as we have), they seeme to be very ingenious. For although they have no suche tooles, nor any such crafts, Sciences and Artes as wee, yet in those things they doe, they shew excellence of wit. And by how much they upon due consideration shall finde our maner of knowledges and crafts to exceede theirs in perfection, and speede for doing or execution, by so much of the more is it probable that they should desire our friendship and love, and have the greater respect for pleasing and obeying us. Whereby may bee hoped, if meanes of good government be used, that they may in short time bee brought to civilitie, and the imbracing of true Religion. (Thomas Hariot, "A Briefe and True Report of the Newfound Land of Virginia." New American World: A Documentary History of North America to 1612. Ed. David B. Quinn. Vol. 3. New York: Hector Bye, 1979. )
26) Perhaps the commonest element in the promotional literature is the allure of economic plentitude. (Howard Mumford Jones, "The Colonial Impulse: An Analysis of the 'Promotion' Literature of Colonization." Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 90.2 [1946]: 153. )
27) The Lord will be our God, and delight to dwell among us as his own people, and will command a blessing upon us in all our ways, so that we shall see much more of his wisdom, power, goodness, and truth, than formerly we have been acquainted with. We shall find that the God of Israel is among us, when ten of us shall be able to resist a thousand of our enemies; when he shall make us a praise and glory that men shall say of succeeding plantations, "the Lord make it like that of New England." For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are on us, so that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause him to withdraw his present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world. (John Winthrop, "A Model of Christian Charity," 1630. )
28) There was little that was new in and of itself in Hakluyt's Discourse. What was new about Hakluyt's memorandum, however, was the range of national problems which he proposed to solve by means of a brand of colonial adventure that presented itself as virtually risk-free, at least to the crown. (Thomas Scanlan, Colonial Writing and the New World: 1583 – 1671. London, Cambridge UP, 1999: 31. )
29) The justifications which governments most frequently brought forward in the period of exploration and settlement -- papal or royal grant, discovery and possession -- reflect the fact that the principal ethicolegal concern in the period was about the claims of rival European powers, not about the rights of the American Indian. (Wilcomb E. Washburn, "The Moral and Legal Justifications for Dispossessing the Indians." Seventeenth-Century America: Essays in Colonial History. Ed. James Morton Smith. New York: Norton, 1972: 15. )
30) A second, related argument [by Green] was that Europeans, as Christians, had a duty to spread the word of the gospel and a right to engage in trade and to cultivate unoccupied land without interference. Conversely, the peoples of the New World had an obligation to receive the ambassadors of the pope, the trade expeditions and the colonists, and any resistance or hostility to the European presence could be met with force of arms. This right of self-defense authorized the establishment of fortifications and taking such pre-emptive military actions as were necessary to ensure the safety of the Europeans. Alternatively, it was argued that the Christian rules of Europe had a moral and legal obligation to end the cannibalism and human sacrifice practiced by some tribes. (L.C. Green and Olive P. Dickason, The Law of Nations and the New World. Alberta: U of Alberta P, 1989: ix. )
