Big Chief Elizabeth: How Englands Adventurers Gambled and Won the New World Pdf
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FREE BIG CHIEF ELIZABETH: HOW ENGLANDS ADVENTURERS GAMBLED AND WON THE NEW WORLD PDF Giles Milton | 432 pages | 24 Feb 2001 | Hodder & Stoughton General Division | 9780340748824 | English | London, United Kingdom Wanchese (Native American leader) - Wikipedia This book represents an attempt to bring into one account the story of European expansion in North America down to Text-books written in this country as a rule treat the colonization of the New World as the history, almost solely, of the thirteen English colonies which formed the nucleus of the United States. The authors have essayed to write a book from a different point of view. It has been prepared in response to a clear demand for a text written from the standpoint of North America as a whole, and giving a more adequate treatment of the colonies of nations other than England and of the English colonies other than the thirteen which revolted. This demand is the inevitable result of the growing importance of our American neighbors and of our rapidly growing interest in the affairs of the whole continent, past as well as present. The book is divided into three main parts: I. The Founding of the Colonies; II. The Revolt of the English Colonies. The keynote is expansion. The spread of civilization in America has been presented against a broad European background. Not only colonial beginnings but colonial growth has been traced. This method accounts for the development of all geographical sections, and shows the relation of each section to the history of the continent as a whole. When thus presented the early history of Massachusetts, of Georgia, of Arkansas, of Illinois, or of California is no longer merely local history, but is an integral part of the general story. The colonies of the different nations are treated, in so far as practicable, in the chronological order of their development, the desire being to give a correct view of the time sequence in the development of the different regions. A principal aim of the authors has been to make the book comprehensive. The account of French expansion in North America has been extended beyond the conventional presentation to embrace the West Indies, the founding of Louisiana, and the advance of the French pioneers across the Mississippi and up its tributaries, and up the Saskatchewan to the Rocky Mountains. The story of English expansion embraces not only the thirteen colonies which revolted, but also the Bermudas, the West Indies, Hudson Bay, Canada, and the Floridas. The treatment of the new British possessions between and aims to present in one view the story of the expansion of the whole English frontier, from Florida to Hudson Bay. The Spanish colonies of North America, in particular, have been accorded a more adequate treatment than is usual in textbooks. To writers of United States history the Spaniards have appeared to be mere explorers. Students of American history in a larger sense, however, know that Spain transplanted Spanish civilization and founded vast and populous colonies, represented to-day by some twenty Big Chief Elizabeth: How Englands Adventurers Gambled and Won the New World and many millions of people. The notion, so widely current in this country, that Spain "failed" as a colonizer, arises from a faulty method. In treating Spain's part in the New World it has been customary, after recounting the discovery of America, to proceed at once to territory now within the United States—Florida, New Mexico, Texas—forgetting that these regions were to Spain only northern outposts, and omitting the wonderful story of Spanish achievement farther south. This book being a history of the colonization of North America, Spain's great colonies in South America, now powerful nations, fall beyond our geographical limits. When approached from a new viewpoint many familiar things appear in a new light. Hitherto, for example, the inter-colonial wars in North America have been regarded mainly as a struggle between France and England, and as confined chiefly to the Canadian border. By following the larger story of European expansion, however, it becomes plain that there was an Anglo-Spanish and a Franco-Spanish, as well as a Franco-English struggle for the continent, not to mention the ambitions and efforts of Dutch, Swedes, Russians, and Danes. In nearly all the general inter-colonial wars the Caribbean area and the Carolina-Florida frontier were scenes of frequent conflicts quite as important [Pg vii] as those waged on the Canadian border. Between France Big Chief Elizabeth: How Englands Adventurers Gambled and Won the New World Spain a border contest endured for more than a century and extended all the way from the Lesser Antilles to the Platte River. The Big Chief Elizabeth: How Englands Adventurers Gambled and Won the New World contest ended in ; but the Anglo-Spanish conflict, which began in the sixteenth century, endured to the end of the eighteenth and, in the hands of the American offspring of Spain and England, to the middle of the nineteenth century. Some teachers may for special reasons wish to treat the development of the colonies of a single nation as a continuous movement, or in longer periods, less frequently broken by happenings in the colonies of other nations. This can be done conveniently by grouping the chapters in the desired order. By omitting these and Chapter IX a continuous narrative of English expansion is obtained. The fifteenth century witnessed the culmination of the Renaissance, the rise of the Turkish Empire, the shifting of the commercial center from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, the discovery of America and the opening of the Cape route to India. Portugal and Spain started on their careers as great commercial and colonizing nations, the former destined for a time to control the commerce of the Far East, the other to possess more than half of the Americas and to dominate the Pacific. Classical ideas of the world. Greek and Roman scholars had agreed that there were three continents, Europe, Asia, and Africa, encircled by the ocean. Aristotle, Strabo, and others accepted the theory that the earth was a sphere, but they usually underestimated its size. Ptolemy, the greatest of the ancient geographers, made two fundamental errors, which most of the Arab and Christian scholars accepted. Big Chief Elizabeth: How Englands Adventurers Gambled and Won the New World depicted the Indian Ocean as an inland sea, and greatly extended Africa until it filled the entire southern hemisphere, China and Africa being connected. Arab theories and Christian scholars. The center of the earth's surface they called Arim, meaning the cupola of the earth. At the eastern extremity stood [Pg 2] the pillars of Alexander, at the western the pillars of Hercules, while the north and south poles were equally distant from Arim. The Ptolemaic idea of Africa was accepted by most of the Arabs, but many of their later map makers decreased its size, cutting it off in the neighborhood of Cape Bojador on the African coast, and calling the region beyond the "Green Sea of Darkness. The "Green Sea of Darkness" was filled with terrors, whirlpools ready to destroy the adventurous mariner, a sea of mist, fog, and vapor, peopled by monsters. If he escaped these as he ventured southward, he would come to a zone of torrid heat where no man could survive. Roger Bacon, the great Christian scientist, accepted the Arabian theories but supplemented them by a study of the classics. He believed that the habitable world was more than half of the whole circuit, an idea which was repeated in the Imago Mundi of Pierre d'Ailly, a work which may have influenced Columbus. Early Asiatic contact with America. In a Buddhist priest returned from a voyage claiming to have been to a country called Fusang, Big Chief Elizabeth: How Englands Adventurers Gambled and Won the New World far to the east. The location of Fusang has interested numerous students, whose conjectures have been marshalled by Vining to prove that it was Mexico. Some have attributed the remarkable sporadic growth of cypress trees below Monterey, California, to this episode. The trend of opinion accepts ethnographic and linguistic similarities as of greater conclusiveness than recorded Chinese history. Belief in early Japanese Big Chief Elizabeth: How Englands Adventurers Gambled and Won the New World with America rests on a similar basis. The Northmen. The western sea to them had no terrors. Near the close of the eighth century they appeared in England; in they sighted Iceland and in commenced its colonization. Three years later they discovered Greenland, but it was not until that Eric the Red colonized it. In the yearLeif, the son of Eric, went in quest of a land to the west, of which he had [Pg 3] heard report. The Big Chief Elizabeth: How Englands Adventurers Gambled and Won the New World of the voyage was the discovery of Vinland, the exact whereabouts of which has been one of the puzzles of history, some scholars claiming it to have been Nova Scotia, others New England. Wherever it may have been, it probably played no part in the Columbian discovery of America, for though the settlements in Greenland continued until early in the fifteenth century, scientists and mariners remained in almost complete ignorance of the far-off activities of the Northmen. Returning crusaders told of their adventures and of the lands which they had visited. Pilgrims returning from the East increased the store of geographical knowledge and repeated marvelous tales of Russia, China, and India, although none of them had first-hand knowledge. But during the thirteenth century accurate information was obtained.