Historia, filosofía-biografia-pensamiento

¿Cuál es el origen geológico del continente americano? Para entender esta fascinante historia, es fundamental conocer la teoría de la deriva continental, formulada por Alfred Wegener en el siglo XX. Esta teoría nos lleva unos 250-300 millones de años atrás, cuando la superficie terrestre estaba unificada en un solo supercontinente conocido como Pangea. Aunque Pangea no fue el único supercontinente en la historia del planeta, sí fue el último en existir antes de que los continentes comenzaran a desplazarse hacia sus ubicaciones actuales. Nos situamos al final del Paleozoico y al comienzo del Mesozoico, una era de cambios dramáticos que transformaría la configuración de los continentes tal como los conocemos hoy. En ese entonces, el territorio que hoy conocemos como América del Norte y América del Sur formaba parte de un enorme bloque de tierra firme. Las masas continentales se tocaban directamente, conectando lo que actualmente son México, Costa Rica y las zonas septentrionales de Colo...

Si uno cree en las sagas de Islandia, el primer europeo en descubrir America, no fue Cristobal Colon ni mucho menos Leif Ericsson. Se trata de Biarni Heriulfson, un comerciante que cruzaba regularmente el mar Atlántico entre Noruega y su casa en Islandia. En el verano del 985 marchó a Noruega a pasar el invierno con su padre; este último había acabado de llegar de Groenlandia, una tierra recién descubierta por Erik el Rojo. Biarni saldría tras él, puesto que no llegaba pero, en el camino se exravió y encontró una tierra nueva, América. No obstante estas nuevas tierras no despertaron en él ningún aliciente y cuando reeencontró el rumbo y halló Groenlandia y a su padre, no volvió a aventurarse.Ahora bien, Groenlandia era todo lo que usted quiera menos verde (Greenland). No obstante un hijo de Erik, Leif Ericsson, compró un buque y marchó hacia estas nuevas tierras y las llamó vinland, viviendo en ellas durante un año antes de regresarse a Groenlandia. Otras expediciones nórdi...

En St.  Brendan  ( San Barandán )  descubre America , veremos las andanzas de este religioso y sus nexos con la tradición sobre el descubrimiento de America. Se encontraba St. Brendan en un monasterio de Irlanda cuando un abad visitante le habló de su viaje a través del océano a la "Tierra prometida de los santos". Brendan decició verla por sí mismo.De esa forma, un día del siglo VI, Brendan y 17 monjes parten en un bote de madera recubierto con pieles de buey. Sus aventuras fueron maravillosas.Por ejemplo llegaron a islas de ovejas blancas gigantes y a otra cubierta por el canto de los pájaros, que abundaban tanto que le impedían caminar (me imagino el estruendo piar de las aves). Otra de las islas era de solo piedras, otra de bosques espesos; otra que denominó isla de las corrientes; una más pletórica de viñas Y muchas otras narraciones fantásticas, que incluían gran variedad de árboles y frutos extraños para sus paladares. Finalmente, después de siete año...

From this time till the American Revolution New York continued a province of the Crown. Royal governor succeeded royal governor, some of them better, some worse. Of the entire line Bellomont was the most worthy official, Cornbury the least so. One of the problems which chiefly worried all of them was how to execute the navigation acts, which, evaded everywhere, were here unscrupulously defied. Another care of the governors, in which they succeeded but very imperfectly, was to establish the English Church in the colony. A third was the disfranchisement of Catholics. This they accomplished, the legislature concurring, and the disability continued during the entire colonial period. Hottest struggle of all occurred over the question of the colony's right of self-taxation. The democracy stood for this with the utmost firmness, and even the higher classes favored rather than opposed. The governors, Cornbury and Lovelace, most frantically, but in vain, expostulated, scolded, threatened,...

The English conquest of New Netherland from the Dutch speedily followed the Stuarts' return to the throne. Cromwell had mooted an attack on Dutch America; Connecticut's charter of 1662 extended that colony to include the Dutch lands. England based her claim to the territory on alleged priority of discovery, but the real motives were the value of the Hudson as an avenue for trade, and the desire to range her colonies along the Atlantic coast in one unbroken line. The victory was not bloody, nor was it offensive to the Dutch themselves, who in the matter of liberties could not lose. King Charles had granted the conquered tract to his brother, the Duke of York, subsequently James II., and it was in his honor christened with its present name of New York. The Duke's government was not popular, especially as it ordered the Dutch land-patents to be renewed--for money, of course; and in 1673, war again existing between England and Holland, the Dutch recovered their old possession...

[1660] The Commonwealth in England went to pieces at the death of Oliver Cromwell, its founder. The Stuart dynasty came back, but, alas! unimproved. Charles II. was a much meaner man than his father, and James II. was more detestable still. The rule of such kings was destined to work sad changes in the hitherto free condition of Massachusetts. This colony had sympathized with the Commonwealth more heartily than any of the others. Hither had fled for refuge Goffe and Whalley, two of the accomplices in the death of Charles I. Congregational church polity was here established by law, to the exclusion of all others, even of episcopacy, for whose sake Charles was harrying poor Covenanters to death on every hillside in Scotland. Nor would his lawyers let the King forget Charles I.'s attack on the Massachusetts charter, begun so early as 1635, or the grounds therefor, such as the unwarranted transfer of it to Boston, or the likelihood that but for the outbreak of the Civil War it would ...

1549. Tendo sido dada aos Donatarios illimitada jurisdição civil e criminal sobre as suas respectivas Capitanias, concedendo-se-lhes até impor a pena de morte, mesmo ás pessoas de mór qualidade; e provindo d'ahi innumeros males porque o abuso dos Senhores Donatarios ia-se tornando intoleravel, a anarchia reinava, os colonos erão opprimidos, os Indios barbaramente perseguidos; indispensavel era que o Brasil fosse governado por huma autoridade superior que servisse de centro commum, á que todos obedecessem. Assim creou El-Rei D. João III, melhor instruido pela propria experiencia, o cargo de Governador Geral do Brasil, que confiou a Thomé de Sousa. A 28 de Março chega este á Bahia, trazendo em sua companhia os primeiros Jezuitas que pizarão no Brasil. Coadjuvado por Caramurú consegue estabelecer-se na Bahia, e funda a cidade de S. Salvador, séde do Governo. 1552. Chega á Bahia o primeiro Bispo do Brasil D. Pedro Fernandes Sardinha; o qual consegue apaziguar por algum tempo as desa...

1638. In 1638 Minuit, who had already figured as governor of New Netherland, having offered his services to Sweden, was intrusted with the leadership of the first Swedish colony to America. After a few days' stay at Jamestown the new-comers finally reached their wished-for destination on the west shore of the Delaware Bay and River. Proceeding up the latter, one of their first acts was to build a fort on a little stream about two miles from its junction with the Delaware, which they named Fort Christina, in honor of the young queen of Sweden. Near this spot stands the present city of Wilmington. The country from Cape Henlopen to the falls at Trenton received the title of New Sweden. 1650. It was in this very year that Kieft came to supersede Van Twiller, who had given just cause for complaint by his eagerness to enrich himself at the expense of the West India Company. During the administration of Kieft occurred the long and doubtful conflict with the natives detailed in the succ...

In 1626 Tienpont's successor, Peter Minuit, a German, born at Wesel, was appointed Director-General of New Netherland. He bought of the Indians, for the sum of twenty-four dollars, the entire island of Manhattan, and a fort called New Amsterdam was built. The State of New York dates its beginning from this transaction. By their usually honest dealing with the natives the Dutch settlers gained the friendship of the Five Nations, whose good-will was partly on this account transferred to the English colonists later. The Dutch were not only friendly to the red men, but tried to open social and commercial relations with the Plymouth colonists as well. Governor Bradford replied, mildly urging the Dutch to "clear their title" to a territory which the English claimed by right of discovery. 1630-1633. The present State of Delaware soon became the scene of attempts at settlement. De Vries began, in 1632, a colony on the banks of the Delaware, but it was quickly laid waste by th...

The year 1614 was distinguished by the marriage of Pocahontas, daughter of the native chief Powhatan, to the English colonist Rolfe. With him she visited England, dying there a few years later. The alliance secured the valuable friendship of Powhatan and his subjects--only till Powhatan's death, however. Thenceforth savage hostilities occurred at frequent intervals. In 1622 they were peculiarly severe, over three hundred settlers losing their lives through them. Another outbreak took place about 1650, this time more quickly suppressed. We shall see in a later chapter how Bacon's Rebellion was occasioned by Indian troubles. As James I. broke with Parliament, a majority of the Virginia shareholders proved Liberals, and they wrought with signal purpose and effect to realize their ideas in their colony. To this political complexion of the Virginia Company not only Virginia itself, but, in a way, all America is indebted for a start toward free institutions. During the governorshi...

1584. These half-piratical attempts against Spain led continually into American waters, till the notion of forming a permanent outpost here as base for such adventures suggested to Sir Humphrey Gilbert the plan, which he failed to realize, of founding an American settlement. Gilbert visited our shores in 1579, and again in 1583, but was lost on his return from the latter voyage. In 1584 Sir Walter Raleigh sent two captains, Amidas and Barlow, to inspect the coast off what is now North Carolina. They reported so favorably that he began, next year, a colony on Roanoke Island. England was now a Protestant land, and no longer heeded Spanish claims to the transatlantic continent, save so far as actual settlements had been made. 1586. Sir Richard Grenville commanded this expedition, but was to return on seeing the one hundred and eight colonists who accompanied him well established. Queen Elizabeth gave the name VIRGINIA to the new country. Drake, tending homeward from one of his raids ...

The subsequent year Cabot made a second voyage, inspecting the American coast northward till icebergs were met, southward to the vicinity of Albemarle Sound. Possibly in his first expedition, probably in the second, John Cabot was accompanied by his more famous son, Sebastian. For many years after the Cabots, England made little effort to explore the New World. Henry VII. was a Catholic. He therefore submitted to the Pope's bull which gave America to Spain. Henry VIII. had married Catherine of Aragon. He allowed Ferdinand, her father, to employ the skill and daring of Sebastian Cabot in behalf of Spain. It was reserved for the splendid reign of Elizabeth to show what English courage and endurance could accomplish in extending England's power. See also: 1506-1513

In 1604 De Monts arrived on the coast of Nova Scotia and erected a fort at the mouth of the St. Croix, New Brunswick. He also made a settlement on the shore of the present harbor of Annapolis, naming it Port Royal, and the country around it Acadia. De Monts is famous largely because under him the Sieur de Champlain, the real father of French colonization in America, began his illustrious career. He had entered the St. Lawrence in 1603. In 1608 he founded Quebec, the first permanent colony of New France. The next year he explored the lake which perpetuates his name. In 1615 he saw Lake Huron, Le Caron, the Franciscan, preceding him in this only by a few days. Fired with ardor for discovery, Champlain joined the Hurons in an attack upon the Iroquois. This led him into what is now New York State, but whether the Indian camp first attacked by him was on Onondaga or on Canandaigua Lake is still in debate. These were but the beginning of Champlain's travels, by which many other Frenchme...

How the French fought for foothold in Florida and were routed by the Spaniards has just been related. So early as 1504, and possibly much earlier, before Cabot or Columbus, French sailors were familiar with the fisheries of Newfoundland. To the Isle of Cape Breton they gave its name in remembrance of their own Brittany. The attention of the French Government was thus early directed toward America, and it at length determined to share in the new discoveries along with the Spanish and the English. In 1524 Verrazano, a Florentine navigator, was sent by Francis I. on a voyage of discovery to the New World. Sighting the shores of America near the present Wilmington, North Carolina, he explored the coast of New Jersey, touched land near New York Bay, and anchored a few days in the harbor of Newport. In this vicinity he came upon an island, which was probably Block Island. Sailing from here along the coast as far north as Newfoundland, he named this vast territory New France. 1540. In 1534...

Moreover, the Spaniards found their first American conquests too easy, and the rewards of these too great. This prevented all thought of developing the country through industry, concentrating expectation solely upon waiting fortunes, to be had from the natives by the sword or through forced labor in mines, Their treatment of the aborigines was nothing short of diabolical. Well has it been said: "The Spaniards had sown desolation, havoc, and misery in and around their track. They had depopulated some of the best peopled of the islands and renewed them with victims deported from others. They had inflicted upon hundreds of thousands of the natives all the forms and agonies of fiendish cruelty, driving them to self-starvation and suicide, as a way of mercy and release from an utterly wretched existence. They had come to be viewed by their victims as fiends of hate, malignity, and all dark and cruel desperation and mercilessness in passion. The hell which they denounced upon their vict...

But Spain claimed this territory, and Pedro Melendez a Spanish soldier, was in 1565 sent by Philip II. to conquer it from the French, doubly detested as Protestants. He landed in the harbor and at the mouth of the river, to both of which he gave the name Saint Augustine. Melendez lost no time in attacking Fort Carolina, which he surprised, putting the garrison mercilessly to the sword. The destruction of the French colony was soon after avenged by Dominic de Gourgues, who sailed from France to punish the enemies of his country. Having accomplished his purpose by the slaughter of the Spanish garrison he returned home, but the French Protestants made no further effort to colonize Florida. Spain claimed the land by right of discovery, but, although maintaining the feeble settlement at Saint Augustine, did next to nothing after this to explore or civilize this portion of America. The nation that had sent out Columbus was not destined to be permanently the great power of the New World. Th...

1510. Dá á costa na Bahia de Todos os Santos hum navio Portuguez. A maior parte da tripulação e passageiros morreo ou no naufragio ou ás mãos dos Indigenas. Diogo Alvares Corrêa porém consegue a sua salvação e até fazer-se respeitado e amado desses póvos anthropophagos por ter podido salvar comsigo huma arma de fogo, com a qual ajudou-os a debellar e vencer os seus formidaveis inimigos. Denominarão-o por isso o Caramurú, que quer dizer o homem de fogo. 1515. João Dias Solis ao serviço da Hespanha percorre a costa do Brasil desde o Cabo de Santo Agostinho até o Rio da Prata, ao qual deo o seu nome (e, posto que este rio tivesse perdido o nome de Solis para receber o de Prata, comtudo ainda hoje ha o rio de Solis que nelle desagua, e que conserva immortal o nome deste illustre navegante). N'esta viagem descobre elle a Bahia de Nictherohy, depois chamada do Rio de Janeiro. (É grave questão quem tenha sido o descobridor desta Bahia, si Americo Vespucio, si Gonçalo Coelho, si Solis,...

1498. As we have seen, Spain by no means deserves the entire credit of bringing the western continent to men's knowledge. Columbus himself was an Italian. So was Marco Polo, his inspirer, and also Toscanelli, his instructor, by whose chart he sailed his ever-memorable voyage. To Portugal as well Columbus was much indebted, despite his rebuff there. Portugal then led the world in the art of navigation and in enthusiasm for discovery. Nor, probably, would Columbus have asked her aid in vain, had she not previously committed herself to the enterprise of reaching India eastward, a purpose brilliantly fulfilled when, in 1498, Vasco da Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope and sailed to Calicut, on the coast of Malabar. Already before this Spain and Portugal were rivals in the search for new lands, and Pope Alexander VI. had had to be appealed to, to fix their fields. By his bull of May 3, 4, 1493, he ordained as the separating line the meridian passing through a point one hundred leagues...

As Columbus was ignorant of having found a new continent, so was he denied the honor of giving it a name, this falling by accident, design, or carelessness of truth, to Amerigo Vespucci, a native of Florence, whose active years were spent in Spain and Portugal. Vespucci made three voyages into the western seas. In the second, 1501, he visited the coast of Brazil, and pushed farther south than any navigator had yet done, probably so far as the island of South Georgia, in latitude 54 degrees. His account of this voyage found its way into print in 1504, at Augsburg, Germany, the first published narrative of any discovery of the mainland. Although, as above noted, it was not the earliest discovery of the main, it was widely regarded such, and caused Vespucci to be named for many years as the peer, if not the superior of Columbus. The publication ran through many editions. That of Strassburg, 1505, mentioned Vespucci on its title-page as having discovered a new "Southern Land." Th...

There is no end to the accounts of alleged discoveries of America before Columbus . Most of these are fables. It is, indeed, nearly certain that hardy Basque, Breton, and Norman fishermen, adventuring first far north, then west, had sighted Greenland and Labrador and become well acquainted with the rich fishing-grounds about Newfoundland and the Saint Lawrence Gulf. Many early charts of these regions, without dates and hitherto referred to Portuguese navigators of a time so late as 1500, are now thought to be the work of these earlier voyagers. They found the New World, but considered it a part of the Old. Important, too, is the story of supposed Norse sea-rovers hither, derived from certain Icelandic manuscripts of the fourteenth century. It is a pleasing narrative, that of Lief Ericson's sail in 1000-1001 to Helluland, Markland, and at last to Vineland, and of the subsequent tours by Thorwald Ericson in 1002, Thorfinn Karlsefne, 1007-1009, and of Helge and Finnborge in 1011, to...