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Alien Encounters:

Europe in the Americas

Alien Encounters:

Europe in the Americas

CONTENTS

■Spanish soldiers, though trapped in a room by Aztec warriors, have the

advantage of metal armor and guns.

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and salted fish) reacted when they first tasted pepper,

cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, cloves, and other spicy foods

from South Asia and the Pacific. Beyond titillating the

palate, spices disguised the taste of spoiled meats in

regions that had little ice. Europeans also prized such

tropical foods as rice, figs, and oranges, as well as per-

fumes (often used as a substitute for soap), silk and cot-

ton, rugs, textiles such as muslin and damask, dyestuffs,

fine steel products, precious stones, and various drugs.

But the cost of transporting such goods from East

Asia and the Pacific was exorbitant. The combined routes

through central Asia were long and complicated—

across strange seas, through deserts, over high moun-

tain passes—with pirates or highwaymen as a constant

threat. If the produce of eastern Asia could be carried

to Europe by sea, the trip would be both cheaper and

more comfortable. Christopher Columbus imagined

that by sailing west, he would find an all-water route

to the spicy riches of India and East Asia. By providing a

cheap means of satisfying the European craving for

spices, he would find a path to fame and fortune. He

was halfright.■

■Columbus’s Great Triumph—

and Error

■Spain’s American Empire

■Extending Spain’s Empire to

the North

■Disease and Population Losses

■Ecological Imperialism

■Spain’s European Rivals

■The Protestant Reformation

■English Beginnings in America

■The Settlement of Virginia

■“Purifying” the Church of

England

■Bradford and Plymouth Colony

■Winthrop and Massachusetts

Bay Colony

■Troublemakers: Roger

Williams and Anne

Hutchinson

■Other New England Colonies

■Pequot War and King

Philip’s War

■Maryland and the Carolinas

■French and Dutch Settlements

■The Middle Colonies

■Cultural Collisions

■Cultural Fusions

■Debating the Past:

How Many Indians Perished

with European Settlement?

■Re-Viewing the Past:

Black Robe

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