European Visions of Amerindian Peoples, 1492-1654.
Tutor: Dr Surekha Davies
From the late fifteenth century, European experience had an increasingly global dimension. Explorers,
conquerors, merchants and missionaries attempted to conquer, colonize, convert and trade with the
inhabitants of Africa, Asia, the Americas and Australasia. European knowledge of these peoples was
based on a combination of travellers’ experiences and preconceptions, and circulated in print,
manuscript, visual and oral culture.
This module focuses on European views of Amerindians, from Columbus’s landfall in the Caribbean
to the waning of Dutch influence in Brazil. It explores the ways in which knowledge of other peoples
was acquired, shaped and disseminated in the early modern period. We shall examine cultural
encounters and the texts they generated, as well as the varied historiographical approaches that
scholars have used to understand them. The aim is to develop a critical understanding of the
relationships between cultural encounters, travel writing and European knowledge of Amerindians,
through primary sources and secondary literature. The approach will be comparative, drawing on
aspects of Spanish, Portuguese, French, Dutch, English and German activities in the Caribbean,
Brazil, Mexico, Peru, Florida, Virginia and Guiana.
The classes are arranged thematically. Coverage includes: travel writing as a historical source; beliefs
about monstrous peoples at the edges of the earth; tensions between first-hand experience and
received knowledge; historiographical debates about cannibalism; the theory of natural slavery; visual
culture (including prints, maps, book-illustrations and water-colours). No knowledge of languages
other than English will be expected.
Preliminary Reading
Abulafia, D., The Discovery of Mankind: Atlantic Encounters in the Age of Columbus (New Haven,
CT and London, 2008).
Bethencourt, F. and D. Ramada Curto, eds, Portuguese Oceanic Expansion, 1400-1800 (Cambridge,
2007).
Dickason, O. P., The Myth of the Savage and the Beginnings of French Colonialism in the Americas
(Edmonton, Alberta, 1984).
Elliott, J. H., The Old World and the New, 1492-1650 (Cambridge, 1972).
Grafton, A. et al., New Worlds, Ancient Texts: The Power of Tradition and the Shock of Discovery
(Cambridge, MA etc., 1992).
Hanke, L., Aristotle and the American Indians: A Study in Race Prejudice in the Modern World
(Bloomington, IA and London, 1959).
Hemming, J., The Conquest of the Incas (London, 1993 [first published 1970]).
Honour, H., The New Golden Land: European Images of America from the Discoveries to the Present
Time (London, 1975).
Hulme, P., Colonial Encounters: Europe and the Native Caribbean, 1492-1797 (London, 1992).
Hulme, P. and T. Youngs, eds, The Cambridge Companion to Travel Writing (Cambridge, 2002).
Johnson, Christine R., The German Discovery of the World: Renaissance Encounters with the Strange
and Marvelous (Charlottesville, VA and London, 2008).
Kamen, H., Empire: How Spain Became a World Power, 1492-1763 (London, 2003).
Kupperman, K. O., ed., America in European Consciousness, 1493-1750 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1995).
Mancall, P. C., ed., Travel Narratives from the Age of Discovery: An Anthology (Oxford, 2006).
Pagden, A., The Fall of Natural Man: The American Indian and the Origins of Comparative
Ethnology, reprinted with corrections and additions (Cambridge, 1986).
———, European Encounters with the New World: From Renaissance to Romanticism (New Haven,
CT, 1993).
Parry, J. H., The Age of Reconnaissance: Discovery, Exploration, and Settlement, 1450-1650
(London, 1982 [first published 1963]).
Schmidt, B., Innocence Abroad: The Dutch Imagination and the New World, 1570-1670 (Cambridge,
2001).
Schwartz, . B., ed., Implicit Understandings: Observing, Reporting, and Reflecting on the Encounters
between Europeans and Other Peoples in the Early Modern Era (Cambridge, 1994).
Sloan, K. et al., A New World: England's First View of America (London, 2007).
Thomas, H., The Conquest of Mexico (London, 1993).