New World
New World is a term originally used by European explorers during the Age of Discovery in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries to describe the territories they encountered across the North Atlantic Ocean, which included parts of Canada, America, and the Caribbean Islands. Initially, explorers like Columbus sought a route to Asia but instead stumbled upon this 'new' land filled with rich natural resources, diverse wildlife, and indigenous populations. Their accounts sparked European interest, leading to further exploration and colonization driven by desires for wealth and power. Over time, the New World became a focal point for various cultural and commercial exchanges, bringing Old World crops and animals to the Americas while introducing New World products like maize and tomatoes to Europe.
The New World also significantly impacted religious dynamics, as missions sought to establish authority and convert native populations, sometimes leading to conflict and oppression. Despite its historical context of exploration and exploitation, the New World is still viewed by many as a land of opportunity, representing hope for freedom and prosperity. The ideals of liberty and self-governance that emerged during this period have continued to influence global movements for reform and change. Today, the legacy of the New World endures, characterized by a commitment to innovation in numerous fields, including science and social progress.
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New World
New World is what European explorers, journalists, and rulers first called the lands discovered across the North Atlantic Ocean. In the Age of Discovery in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Europe was the center of military power, culture, medicine, literature, and the arts. Rulers financed great exploration expeditions to find new lands and resources for advancing their wealth and domination.
Explorers thought they were destined for Asia and India, but the Western sea lanes they forged took them to an all new world. The rich beauty, plethora of natural resources, rich soil for agriculture, forests and plains, fresh water rivers and lakes, wildlife, herds of animals, and the native populations astounded them. Their messages back home intrigued Europeans reading of their exploits. John Cabot called the territories off the Labrador coast "Newfoundland"; its name has remained the same ever since. The most lustful and articulate language to describe what the explorers found was to call it a New World. Eventually, the New World came to include parts of Canada, America, and the Caribbean Islands.
Brief History
One explorer’s saga relates that a thirteenth-century Scandinavian preceded Florentine, Spanish, and English explorers to the New World. Leif Eriksson described the New World full of "wheat fields and vines." Amerigo Vespucci followed Columbus and informed Europe that Columbus did not discover Asia, but a New World, the fourth part of the world, with another great ocean on its western shores. The New World eventually included Caribbean Islands and Bermuda. Its size, majesty, and wealth made it a must for geographers to add the New World to Africa, Europe, and Asia.
Author historian Stephen Greenblatt reports in his book Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World that explorers had the same sense of wonder about the peoples native to the New World. They were curious and different. The wonders of this New World were described by explorer Vespucci in a widely published letter to European readers claiming the continent he found is "full of animals and more populous than our Europe, or Asia, or Africa, and even more temperate and pleasant than any other region known to us."
The New World inspired the imagination of Europeans enhancing their growing interests for exploration and their emotional and intellectual experiences. They wanted to learn much more. Commercial interests realized the potential for commerce and fortunes to be made from the natural resources that could be shipped to European factories for finished goods to then be sold to New World inhabitants.
Old World/New World concepts were not lost over the centuries on scientists and politicians. Archaeologists, anthropologists, botanists, and biologists focused their attentions on Europe and Africa until discovery and settlement of the New World. In the New World, they found species unknown to them, labeling their finds New World monkeys and primates (from Central and South America), in contrast to Old World monkeys and apes. New World vultures are close to, but distinct from, Old World vultures. Old World crops and animals included barley, lentils, oats, cattle, chickens, goats, and more. These were introduced later into the New World. New World items like maize, squash, tomato, peppers, turkey, and others made their way to European kitchens.
New World Today
New World exploration changed the dynamics of the religious world. Financial gain, power, and domination became important factors settling the New World. Distinctive divisions grew between Protestants and Catholics, Lutherans and Calvinists, Dominicans and Franciscans in their quests for dominance and authority in the New World. But the New World also created opportunities for freedom, riches, and independence for hardy individuals. Nevertheless, holy wars were launched against those unwilling to convert.
"New World" continues as a sympathetic and affectionate sobriquet for America despite disasters wrought to the environment, ecology, and native populations. Heavy costs to the land, animals, and people in the New World came with European exploration and exploitation. Explorers opened the box to pestilence and genocide, sexual exploitation, racial hatred, enslavement of indigenous populations and African black women from the earliest days.
Politicians and historians aggrandized the traits of those taming the wild New World. Explorers and settlers were beset by overwhelming determination, rugged individualism, swagger, the pioneering spirit, and the quest for personal freedom, hope, and financial success. These qualities in the DNA of the European-born people arriving on the shores of the New World were transferred into the intellectual and emotional rationales for new indivisible nations in the New World.
Europeans living in the Old World under the yoke of kings and despots, burdened by religious oppression, discriminated against because of creed and national cultural labeling, held down by one’s social class and profession, could imagine freedom for their kind in the New World but not for red, brown, and black people. There was little resistance for European explorers and settlers becoming oppressors.
America is still viewed as the New World by many outsiders—i.e., the land of opportunity. In 2014, a book appeared discussing the tribulations for Latina women balancing Old World and New World, how traditional marriage and home life from the Old World are managed in the New World that encourages building self-esteem, career, and life outside the family structure. America remains that brave New World.
The constitutional freedoms founding fathers expressed in the nascent New World traversed across the North Atlantic Ocean, contributing to the French and Russian revolutions and their flames of liberty and fraternity. The New World established its mission as one of government responsibility for the safety, health, and welfare of the nation. It remains synonymous with reform of the social order and charity.
The New World founded on exploration remains a world leader in the twenty-first century for new ideas and exploration to outer space. It leads in scientific, medical, legal, military, and social science endeavors. The New World was not solely a place of exploration, but also of discovery. It created a legacy of ascendancy and energy, a lasting, decisive, and permanent change for people.
Bibliography
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Cohen, Jonathan. "The Naming of America: Fragments We’ve Shored Against Ourselves." Self-posted essay. 1991. Web. 18 Nov. 2015. <http://www.uhmc.sunysb.edu/surgery/america.html>.
Gerbi, Antonello, and Moyle, Jeremy. Nature in the New World. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2010. Print.
Greenblatt, Stephen. Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003 (reprint). Print.
Herzog, Tamar. Frontiers of Possession: Spain and Portugal in Europe and the Americas. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2015. Print.
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