| ?Europeans Were Less Interested By The New World Than Their Classical Heritage? Essay, Research Paper
The discovery of the Americas in
1492 was a massive challenge to the accepted notions of the world; a world
which was still viewed by many in Ptolemaic terms, and laid claims against the
accepted wisdom concerning geography, theology, history and the very nature of
man. However, despite the momentous
implications of a new land and, more importantly, its heathen peoples, there
was an apparent slowness to take any real notice of the New World from within
the Old World. This lag
cannot be explained either by slow dissemination of the news, nor by a lack of
understanding of the importance of the discovery. Peter Martyr wrote to the Count of Tendilla and the Archbishop of
Grenada in September 1493 to spread the news, opening with the words ?Raise
your spirits? Hear about the new discovery!?
He talked of the gold Columbus found as well as the important news of
the men they found, who were naked yet fought with bows and staves; men who had
kings competing for power and yet worshipped celestial bodies. The excitement of the initial news was
tremendous, and this was reflected in the demand for literature concerning the
new discovery. Columbus?s first letter
concerning his discovery was reprinted 9 times by the end of 1493 and at least
20 times by 1500. Montalboddo?s voyages
went into print 15 times by 1507 and even in the mid sixteenth century,
Ramusi?s voyages were being republished.
Yet the excitement of discovery was not the only reason for the
excitement. The scale of the discovery
was well-recognised. Guicciardini
praises the Spanish and Portuguese for the ?great and unexpected? discovery. Juan Luis Vires wrote that ?the globe has
been opened up to the human race? and in 1539 the Paduan philosopher Buonamico
claimed that the Americas and the printing press were the two great historical
events that ?could be compared not only to antiquity, but to immortality.? With the obvious exceptions of the
Incarnation, the Crucifixion and the Resurrection, Gomara viewed the event as
the greatest ?since the creation of the world.? Although Gomara was writing a half-century after the discovery,
and apparently with great enthusiasm, the fad for Americana soon passed. Although
Guicciardini praised the Spanish and Portuguese for their discovery, he did not
seem aware of Columbus? Italian nationality. When the world?s most famous
sailor died in Vallidolid, the local chronicle did not even mention the
event. Whilst Ramusio and Oviedo
reckoned that his discovery?s conversionary potential would give him almost
saintly status, it was some time before Columbus could even have been sure that
his Christian name would be recorded correctly by writers. Benzoni noted that their classical forebears
would have erected a statue in his honour suggesting a lack of appropriate
monuments to his memory (although Francis Bacon kept a statue of him) and
giving us a hint at a preoccupation with comparing contemporary society to the
classical civilisations. The situation
became so bad that in 1571 his son Hernando was forced to publish a biography
simply in order to keep his name alive for another generation. There was certainly many difficulties for
Europeans wanting to learn about America; difficulties which seem to have
fostered apathy. Difficulties
existed because of the sheer distance between the Americas and Europe and the
time it took to cross the Atlantic, the problems of preconceptions and the
difficulties of language and environment.
These made any information at all difficult to obtain but these were all
overcome simply by exposure to America and by using large fleets to maintain an
American presence, which would explain initial apathy about America. The news of discovery apart, people would
not have been interested by reports with no further developments. Hernando Columbus was fighting a truly
difficult battle, as ?the European reading public displayed no overwhelming
interest in the newly-discovered world of America.[1]?
and it would take generations to overcome such barriers as the problems of
observation, description, dissemination and comprehension. As Humboldt said, ?to see is not to observe;
that is to compare and clarify.?
Unfortunately, the difficulty of comparing and clarifying a land totally
separate in form, ecology, culture and humanity from one?s own in words is
incalculable. The problems of
disseminating new ideas and images until they became the stock-and-trade
furnishings of the mental images of the peoples of Europe concerning the Americas
were enormous. Yet more difficult was
the problem of shifting the mental barriers of both the author, who needed to
try and work to portray a world entirely different from his own, and the
reader, who needed to change their perceptions without seeing the landscapes of
which the author had the benefit when writing. So
great was the problem that most authors chose to wrote of ?experiences? as
opposed to scenery. De Guzman
specifically said in his prologue that he would not try to relate the sights
that he had seen. Some people found themselves able to describe individual
aspects of the American landscape; Verrazeno described the forests of North
America, de Lery described the flora and fauna that he saw whilst Barlowe
described the trees of North America is some detail. However, the greatest problem lay in
describing the peoples of North America. The problem of the weightiness of the
classical ideals often meant that the realities of the New World were hidden,
minimised and concealed by bad comparisons that, instead of relating the
differences and similarities between the Americas and Europe, simply served to
trivialise the fundamental differences between the two zones. For example,
Perez de Oliva?s ?History of the Discovery of the Indies? contains a speech by
an Aztec chieftain with Livian rhetoric in it.
Alonso de Zuazo looked at the Mexicans he met as chivalric barbarians,
whilst Verrazano saw the Indians of Rhode Island as dark-haired, bronzed and
black-eyed, but described their bodies in terms best suited to describing
classical sculptures. The problem was
to be tackled by the employment of painters, but European painters were not
really used to making portraits of people outside of the classical mould. In any case, even when painters gave their
etchers material to use, the poor etching technology often made any
characteristics indistinguishable, and etchers often chose to turn their
subjects into Greek and Roman ideals.
Worse still, some publishers simply used images of Turks that they
happened to have in stock at the time instead of commissioning new
etchings. The
lack of interest in the Americas is thus partly the result of a continuing
determination, right up to the last two or three decades of the sixteenth
century, to describe the world as if it were still the world as known to
Strabo, Ptolemy and Pomponius Mela[2];
a tendency which made America sound like a simple extension of the European
mainland and thus diminished its novelty and interest value. This obsessive
clinging onto the mighty past was driven forward by the printing press, which
had turned to publishing classics almost immediately that it needed secular
matter. The philosophy of Humanism, which predominated above all in Florence
from the time of Petrarch until around 1475, had been originally dedicated
above all else to the promulgation of classical languages and literature, which
they thought to be more rational.
Burckhardt noted that the Florentines made ?antiquarian interests one of
the chief objectives of their lives.?
What they referred to as studia humanitas was strongly centred on
philology and it was this study that first discovered a definitive and
impassable distance between past and present, whereas before, there had been no
awareness of a break. This new awareness
gave rise to a need to define oneself in relation to the past, to build anew on
the past, but differently from the past.
The Romans, it was argued, had built their Republic on foundations of
virtue, whilst their empire was on foundations of tyranny. The philosophy, a
result of Florence?s republican fervour, could have developed in no other
environment, and the defeat of the Visconti tyranny in Milan, was an exhibition
from the most Republican of cities (the city had been founded by Sulla), and of
its self-conscious study of the Roman republican world. Humanism
was the frame into which the news of the discovery was placed; a frame of
devotion to Aristotle, Plato, Cicero, Xenophon and the newly discovered
Tacitus. Bruni?s second dialogue saw
the classical past as something with which the newly disassociated present can
compete and outdo, as opposed an irreplaceably lost golden age. In 1435, the exiled Roman Curia, which
included Bruni, held a debate about whether the vernacular languages of Europe
could ever attain the perfection of Latin or Greek, and concluded that one must
be willing to employ the ancient model as a guide in building a new literature
in a new nation, but that one must do it in a new language. This is indicative of the obsessive
comparisons between the Early-Modern and Classical eras, that the Roman Curia
should compare their languages; this is more bizarre still when one is dealing
in the era after Dante, one of Bruni?s ?Three Crowns of Florence? and a
vernacular poet. Dante was a recognised
talent and he was defended to the hilt by Florentine Humanists even when his
placement of Caesar in purgatory and his assassins in a lower circle of hell
suggested sympathy with tyranny. That
one should consider faulting Dante for his use of Italian and not High Latin
suggests compulsiveness as regards the Classics. With European
arrogance about what defined society (Europe), Bodin declined to use the
information that he had available about the New World in his writings whilst
cosmographers and social philosophers, with so much to take in, just decided to
circumvent the problems caused by America by ignoring the continent. This is perhaps unsurprising given the
responses of Medieval Christendom to Islam, where once again prejudice,
puzzlement and indifference reigned.
The reorganisation of ideas to incorporate the New World meant the
abandonment of many of their inherited founding principles and preconceptions,
so many chose to avoid making the ?agonising? decision[3]
to take on board the new lessons of the New World, especially when arguments
concerning the Old World were so prevalent and complex. New
World culture was never close to being assimilated, and no Eueopean would ever
have considered any assimiliation of anything non-European. In 1528 Hernan Perez de Oiva wrote of giving
?those strange lands the form of our own.?
The Aztec Empire was seen as the background to conversion, as the Roman
Empire had been the background to European conversion. Las Casas? ?Apologetica Historia? assessed Aztecs, Incas, Greeks,
Romans, Gauls, Egyptians and Britons as examples of pre-Christian societies
(and came up very much in favour of the potential of the South Americans) thus
bringing the Indians into sociological parity with the Europeans, and Cicero?s
claim that men are defined by their rationality led many to see the Indians as
equal; a decision made finally with a papal bull authenticating their humanity.
Whilst
theologians and philosophers were debating what makes men into men, Philip III
of Spain used ?Politics? by Aristotle to justify the slave status of the
Americans, whilst even Cortes called them ?Barbarians? in spite of the
condemnation in Corinthians I of the term ?Barbarians?. Cicero?s claim that men are rational also
meant that the Europeans had no qualms about imposing a ?rational? government
onto the Americans, replacing their ?irrational? lifestyles, again despite
Corinthians I. This placement of
Aristotle on a par with St. Paul is perhaps incredible from the grandson of
Charles V, but indicative of the sway held by the classics outside of the
republican sphere. In the decades after the fall of
Constantinople and the establishment of fortress Europe, when the system of Tuerkeglocken
warning bells ran from Vienna to Gibraltar to call the Christians to defend
the east against Turkish intruders, the unbreakable Christian continent, under
the Habsburg marshalship, was coming to be viewed as not just the cradle of
civilisation, but also the divinely appointed centre of humanity. The idea of accepting ideas from the New
World where the inhabitants had not yet even acquired shame about their
nakedness was preposterous to Europeans who knew themselves to be right in
every way. This
idea of divine guidance for the Godly continent was supported by the growth of
the influence of the ?classic? texts.
The growth of printing lent greater authority to the classic texts and
led to a more slavish interpretation of the classics. Authority staked fresh claims against experience as the lessons
of the New World came to be seen as being incredible or at best,
irrelevant. In an era when great,
spiritual, intellectual and political problems[4]
were rending the continent apart, the New World was not perceived as a land of
hope, but as a potential cause of new problems, which may explain the
dedication of those who chose to ignore it.
In the seventh century, as J.H. Elliott notes, the Chinese T?ang
dynasty?s discovery of Nam-Viet had a similar influence, as the mainland
Chinese came to impose their will on the indigenous population, and decided not
to take in the lessons that could be learnt there. The influence of
the classical past is clear in the approach taken to the histories made of the
Americas. Using Pliny?s ?Natural
History? as a guide, Monardes? ?Medicinal Plants of America? and de Acosta?s
?Natural & Moral History of the Indies? were the first books to catalogue
and classify any aspects of the American world. The history was based on recordings of the oral traditions ? a
source that was only credited with anything more than the most dubious of
provenances once Herodotus? usage of the oral tradition was cited as a
precedent.The issue of whether Europeans
were more interested by their heritage or by their own generations? discovery
is easier to answer by geographical region.
Atkinson?s survey of geographical literature shows four times as many
books published in France concerning Africa and Asia as the Americas, although
this may be symptomatic of the exploration of the Africas and Asia by the
Portuguese; a factor that led to geographical information being available for
these regions which was unavailable for the Americas. However, this explanation does not explain an apparent waning in
the rate of publication of books about the Americas throughout the period, before
it finally plummeted in the last decades of the sixteenth century. This would suggest a New World apathy in
France; a country whose role in the discovery and exploration of the continent
was minimal. Meanwhile, in
Poland, 39 16th and 17th centuries volumes contain a
total of 60 American references, all of which imply either the exotic, or the
church triumphant; none implying anything more or anything more important to
Europeans themselves, nor showing a knowledge of the Americas beyond the
Americas as converted area and as a faraway source of gold. Comparative
interest in the New World seems to vary with national involvement with the
discovery and exploration. In Italy,
interest was intense until the 1520s when Italian involvement ended and Italian
sources ceased to be produced. The
number of translations of foreign works did seem to make up this shortfall from
the 1550s and is indicative of a prolonged interest from the Italians. The Italian epic poems of the 1580s and
1590s about the discovery and the 1614 Spanish drama, ?El Nuevo Mundo
descubierto par Cristobal Colon? by de Vega were the exceptions in so far as
that they were focussed works concerning the New World, although it should be
remembered that in these works, the Indians speak in tones more suited to a
debate in a Roman forum than a South American rainforest. Spain?s public
showed little interest in the New World, and Ercilla?s ?Aruacana? was the first
epic about the Indies. This may be
because the conquistadors were not ?epic hero? material, although a large
corpus of professional materials, for use by doctors, philosophers, sailors and
theologians was produced. This may have
depreciated public appreciation for the New World, but the extent of Spanish
interest in Portugal?s great discovery becomes clear when looking at
England. In England, the discovery was
hailed with apathy before the Spanish connection of the 1550s stimulated a
limited degree of interest. Although it is
tempting to see the Atlantic as the binding factor governing interest, the
examples of England, France and Italy, where interest runs counter to this
trend would suggest that the Atlantic?s presence was simply the stimulus to
explore that led to involvement in the New World in the first place. On the issue of the role of the classical
world?s hold on Europe, the rise of Humanism, Platonism and Neoplatonism, meant
that the Old World had just risen to its climax of relevance as the New World
was discovered and was on the wane. The
increase in translations in Italy throughout the 1550s coincides with the end
of the Neoplatonic era, which would suggest a shift in focus at around this
time. The coincidence of the Spanish
connection in the 1550s and the end of Neoplatonism would explain the interest
in England for the New World from this time. The increase in importance of the
New World at the Spanish court grew massively at this time. The Spanish took
just 300 toneladas of silver in 1504, 10,000 toneladas by 1520, 20,000
toneladas by 1545 and 32,355 toneladas by 1554. The coincidence with the death
of Neoplatonism would foster a look westward by the Spanish at this time. This is easiest to spot in the appearance of
poetry, plays and so on, but also in the use of questionnaires in Castile; a
technique honed in the New World. Thus,
greater interest in the New World was reliant on disentrenchment of the
classical ideals that had been made fashionable by the successes in Italy of
humanist Florence. [1] p. 12 JHE [2] p. 14 [3] p. 15 [4] p. 16
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