Example research essay topic: African Americans Native Americans - 1,279 words

NOTE: Free essay sample provided on this page should be used for references or sample purposes only. The sample essay is available to anyone, so any direct quoting without mentioning the source will be considered plagiarism by schools, colleges and universities that use plagiarism detection software. To get a completely brand-new, plagiarism-free essay, please use our essay writing service.
One click instant price quote

Columbus: His Enterprise In Nineteen Sixty-Eight Koning a "foot soldier" of the Movement in the U. S. and an eyewitness to some of the crucial struggles abroad, passes on this spirit and vernacular to his readers. He does this so well that he brings back for those who lived through those days the sense of anger, frustration, rebellion and hope that dominated everyday existence. So effectively does Koning capture the spirit of the times that one can appreciate the consciousness, which had motivated cultural movements. This is a great achievement on Koning's part, one that makes use of all the skills as a novelist and social analyst he displays in his book Columbus, His Enterprise.

While reading Koning's book, the myth about a noble and promising man, Columbus, suddenly expires. Koning writes of men and women burned alive in rows of thirteen "in honor of our Redeemer and his twelve Apostles. " He describes how their chiefs were roasted on slow fires and once, when their cries kept a certain captain awake who ordered the executioner to strangle them, the executioner put wooden slats over their tongues instead, to silence their cries. Columbus had promised "mountains of gold" to his backers and his obsessive need to prove himself right, to squeeze such wealth out of the simple native societies of Hispaniola, caused the deaths of half its population between 1493 and 1500, the seven years that he and his brothers were in charge of the island. The estimated number varies from 125, 000 to half a million. (Las Casas' estimate of the population was too high). Within two generations the island people were wiped out and ships went to the other islands to bring in fresh slave labor. Cuba, Jamaica, and San Juan (as Puerto Rico was then called) became deserts too, and the slavers went as far as the Bahamas, then called "The Useless Islands, " which meant without gold.

There is not one conversion to Christianity of a native islander on record during Columbus' rule (conversion had been one of his selling points at the Court). In those seven years there is not one recorded moment of awe, of joy, of love, of a smile. There is only anger, cruelty, gold, terror, and death. Ten years after Columbus' death, the Dominican provincial Pedro de Cordoba wrote that people so gentle, obedient, and good have been kept at excessive labors, so that in Hispaniola alone more than a million of your vassals have been destroyed. Koning also downplay the significance of disease as a factor in the depopulation of the indigenous peoples of the Americas. They argue, first, that the consciously imported structures of domination of the Europeans played a larger role in destroying native culture and population than the inadvertently imported diseases, and, second, that focusing on disease allows the brutality of conquest to go unexamined.

On the first point, on Hispaniola and a few other places massive deaths from enslavement and brutality significantly preceded new diseases, but in the lands of the Aztecs, Incas, and most of the rest of North and South America diseases of European origins preceded or accompanied European military conquest, and successive waves of disease had a greater impact on indigenous population than battle deaths or brutal labor systems. Moreover, refusal to recognize the full impact of disease leaves us with no credible explanation for the ability of a few Spanish soldiers and colonists to conquer and rule vast numbers of peoples in such sophisticated societies as the Aztecs and the Incas. While the exhibition's analysis of sugar as a "seed of change" was somewhat muddled, the exhibitors made it clear that "exchange" is not always positive. The brief exhibition guide declares that "millions of African slaves paid the price" for the expansion of sugar production that benefited Europeans. Viola, in the book, writes: "sugarcane... was, next to disease, perhaps the most detrimental contribution of the Old World to the New.

Sugarcane merits censure because it harmed both man and the environment. Sidney Mintz's essay in the book, which Bigelow ignores completely, places murderous labor exploitation at the very heart of the sugar production process, and insists that demand for sugar as well as its production is socially constructed rather than "natural" processes. Mintz points out that the problems of sugar production (not to mention consumption) are problems for today as well as for yesterday: "the manual laborers involved in its production, though no longer enslaved, are still poorly paid and badly treated. Koning complains that while the book says African Americans consistently resisted slavery, it is a "clumsy" portrayal that emphasizes entrepreneurialism rather than revolt. Indeed, the exhibition should have included more on direct anti-slavery resistance. But again, Bigelow ignores Mintz's very explicit discussion in the book on revolts, runaways, maroon societies, and the special importance of the Haitian Revolution.

Peter Woods expansion of the definition of resistance - which Bigelow criticizes-is in line with much recent social history by left-leaning historians that transcends the old left-wing portrayals of workers, African Americans, and others as either helpless victims of the system or politically conscious rebels, but little else. The book and the exhibition see the most poignant lessons for today of the "exchange" and "encounter" to be on environmental issues, and in this sense again they state that the consequences of "exchange" can be negative as well as positive. They show that the European world view on the domination of nature, as represented by Columbus, could lead to disaster. Rather than stifle discussion, they ask us to examine our social values today, as well. In fact, many members of the counter-Columbus activist movement raise similar issues, although much more sharply. Turning to the National Council for the Social Studies (the professional organization for social studies teachers), its statement shows all the signs of having been drawn up to satisfy a variety of interests and to try not to offend others.

Its basic thrust is that all groups -- Africans, Native Americans, and Asians, as well as Europeans-were and remain historical actors in the "encounter, " that European society was not superior to the others, and that Europeans and their descendants are not better, more important, or more worthy of in-depth analysis than the others. The NCSS attributes Native American population decline above all to disease, but it does not ignore European-instigated wars and the "genocidal and displacement policies of the colonial and postcolonial governments. " Too many progressive critics of the Conquest would like to wish away such divisions and retroactively impose a Native American solidarity, or Native American and African American solidarity. But let us point out, too, that Native American societies were very varied and often in conflict with one another, and that African Americans and Native Americans would not always transcend their differences. Some Native American groups returned runaway slaves to their white masters, in hopes of keeping the peace with the expansion-minded whites. To focus on it is not "Columbus Bashing" as the New York Times and Newsweek have called it; Columbus has been dead for 496 years and one can wish we could forget him. But the Columbus legacy is not dead, and we must ask a crucial question: why have we kept this record hidden from ourselves and from our children?

There are intense psychological and indeed political reasons for that. The myth of Columbus as the lone hero is interwoven with the lore and the myths of this country, of its innate goodness, and of the superiority of white civilization. That is the basis of our patriotism, which takes the place of ideology and is meant to create the American consensus. Words: 1, 263.

Research essay sample on African Americans Native Americans