I. Reaction Paper Assignment Comparing and contrasting views of Christopher Columbus, European Explorers and Native Americans. o Columbus, the Indians and Human Progress. Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States (2003), Chapter 1. o The Age of European Discovery. Schweikart and Allen, A Patriot’s History of the United States (2004), Chapter 1 What do you know about Columbus? Odds are, your ideas may not reflect the latest in historical research, or may be incomplete. (With thanks to Professor McKay.) In any discussion of the value of history, it's important to include this important objective: "to build that bridge that links past and present history together." History informs the present, helps us to put order into the chaos going on around us, and to recognize that people who have come before us experienced and overcame many of the same challenges we are experiencing today. Today we have a particularly pressing need to understand war. Before 9/11, few students had an interest in war. But now there seems to be a pervasive need to understand what causes war, what effects war has on society, what can be done to avoid war, or what can be used to justify our current foreign policy. That students are interested in this topic shows that our present needs determine, in fact dictate, what we consider to be important in the past. And the needs of society at a given time play an important role in how historians interpret the past. During the 1950's, when the Cold War was just beginning, we as a society had the need to prove how superior our democratic institutions were to the Soviet's. Because historians are part of society, they too had this need, and found themselves writing "consensus history," i.e., they focused on what united Americans, rather than what separated them. But in the 1960's, as the focus changed to civil rights, women's rights, and multiculturalism, we had the need to reveal the injustices of the past and the conflicts that shaped American history. So historians found themselves writing the "new social history," sometimes known as "revisionist" history, i.e., they focused on what divided Americans. Now you may say "That's crazy. The past is the past. What happened, happened. We can't have two different interpretations of it. One of them has got to be wrong." No, not necessarily. Each interpretation may just be telling part of the story. After all, there are things that unite Americans. But there are also things that divide us. So if we accept both interpretations, we get the total picture. Neither of them is wrong, they just didn't "tell it all," and were giving society what it needed at the time to interpret the past in a way that would help them to deal with the present. F:\SOUTHSIDE FILES\2015 2016 APUSH\SUMMER ASSIGNMENT\FINAL SUMMER Assignment\2015 2016 Columbus Zinn Schwiekart Reaction Paper.docx Assignment: Read the Zinn and Schwiekart articles & reaction essay RUBRIC – REACTION Paper. Prompt/Task: Compare and contrast the competing views of European explorers and Native Americans as presented in the two papers. To what extent is there validity (truth) in both views? I. Reaction Paper Student Name: Criteria Point Value Total Cover page included all required elements 55 Your First and Last Name, APUSH, Mr. Radulski, date Essay length is 500-600 words. Size 11-12 pitch text and Times New 510 Roman used. That would be about 2 pages typed, doublespaced. Introductory paragraph. (1 paragraph) 10 20 Contrast Zinn’s thesis (main argument) with Schwiekart & Allen’s (S&A) Thesis (main idea) Main Body Paragraphs: (1 paragraph each) 30 50 *Use the arguments of both Zinn and S&A for each subtopic, contrasting their views *Ensure you have a topic sentence for each paragraph, and provide evidence/arguments to support your paragraphs. *incorporate short quotes from the reading (of no more than 5-7 words) to support your reading. Use only 2-3 per paragraph. 1. How does Zinn portray the villainy of the Spaniards, and Columbus as setting a precedent for following conquistadores? 2. How does S&A’s portrait of Columbus and following explorers contradict ZInn’s portrayal? 3. What is the legacy of 1492? [How should 1492 be remembered? What were both the immediate effects and the long-term effects of the contact between Europe and the Americas?] Consider: *Compare contrast Columbus/Spanish explorers (zinn v. S&A) *Compare contrast portrayal of Indians(zinn v. S&A) *Is the legacy of Columbus a positive or negative one? *How it could be both? Concluding Paragraph (1 paragraph) 10 60 1. Your personal response to the readings. (As, or after, you read these, what was your personal reaction to what the author’s had to say? How did you feel about this information?) 2. Should Columbus Day be kept as a national holiday? 60 Points Total F:\SOUTHSIDE FILES\2015 2016 APUSH\SUMMER ASSIGNMENT\FINAL SUMMER Assignment\2015 2016 Columbus Zinn Schwiekart Reaction Paper.docx From: Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States (2003), Chapter 1. Arawak [Taino] men and women, naked, tawny, and full of wonder, emerged from their villages onto the island's beaches and swam out to get a closer look at the strange big boat. When Columbus and his sailors came ashore, carrying swords, speaking oddly, the Arawaks ran to greet them, brought them food, water, gifts. He later wrote of this in his log: They ... brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears and many other things, which they exchanged for the glass beads and hawks' bells. They willingly traded everything they owned... They were well-built, with good bodies and handsome features.... They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron. Their spears are made of cane... They would make fine servants.... With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want. These Arawaks of the Bahama Islands were much like Indians on the mainland, who were remarkable (European observers were to say again and again) for their hospitality, their belief in sharing. These traits did not stand out in the Europe of the Renaissance, dominated as it was by the religion of popes, the government of kings, the frenzy for money that marked Western civilization and its first messenger to the Americas, Christopher Columbus. Columbus wrote: As soon as I arrived in the Indies, on the first Island which I found, I took some of the natives by force in order that they might learn and might give me information of whatever there is in these parts. The information that Columbus wanted most was: Where is the gold? He had persuaded the king and queen of Spain to finance an expedition to the lands, the wealth, he expected would be on the other side of the Atlantic-the Indies and Asia, gold and spices. For, like other informed people of his time, he knew the world was round and he could sail west in order to get to the Far East. Spain was recently unified, one of the new modern nation-states, like France, England, and Portugal. Its population, mostly poor peasants, worked for the nobility, who were 2 percent of the population and owned 95 percent of the land. Spain had tied itself to the Catholic Church, expelled all the Jews, driven out the Moors. Like other states of the modern world, Spain sought gold, which was becoming the new mark of wealth, more useful than land because it could buy anything…. There was gold in Asia, it was thought, and certainly silks and spices, for Marco Polo and others had brought back marvelous things from their overland expeditions centuries before. Now that the Turks had conquered Constantinople and the eastern Mediterranean, and controlled the land routes to Asia, a sea route was needed. Portuguese sailors were working their way around the southern tip of Africa. Spain decided to gamble on a long sail across an unknown ocean. In return for bringing back gold and spices, they promised Columbus 10 percent of the profits, governorship over new-found lands, and the fame that would go with a new tide: Admiral of the Ocean Sea. He was a merchant's clerk from the Italian city of Genoa, part-time weaver (the son of a skilled weaver), and expert sailor. He set out with three sailing ships, the largest of which was the Santa Maria, perhaps 100 feet long, and thirty-nine crew members. Columbus would never have made it to Asia, which was thousands of miles farther away than he had calculated, imagining a smaller world. He would have been doomed by that great expanse of sea. But he was lucky. One-fourth of the way there he came upon an unknown, uncharted land that lay between Europe and Asia-the Americas. It was early October 1492, and thirty-three days since he and his crew had left the Canary Islands, off the Atlantic coast of Africa. Now they saw branches and sticks floating in the water. They saw flocks of birds. F:\SOUTHSIDE FILES\2015 2016 APUSH\SUMMER ASSIGNMENT\FINAL SUMMER Assignment\2015 2016 Columbus Zinn Schwiekart Reaction Paper.docx These were signs of land. Then, on October 12, a sailor called Rodrigo saw the early morning moon shining on white sands, and cried out. It was an island in the Bahamas, in the Caribbean sea.