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The Greatest Ocean of All April 23, 2025

Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Uncategorized.
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While the British and the French battled for hegemony in the woods of eastern America, another series of adventures and struggles shaped America along its Pacific coast.

Once again, it was more disinformation than information which caused some things to happen.  The Spanish, ever wary of any threat to the jewel of their empire, Mexico heard rumors of Russian settlers coming down the West coast and of British fur traders tramping out of the wilds and they immediately thought of encirclement.

Russia had moved as Far East across the vastness of Asia as the western European powers had moved west across the Atlantic.  They had built the largest empire in the world by conquering one tribe after another until they stood on the shores of the north Pacific.  Then they took the jump across the short Bering Sea and landed in Alaska beginning their own colonization efforts.

It was a cold and barren land with few inhabitants but with a wealth of furs and fish.  They soon established forts and trading posts and began to claim a large section of the northwest corner of the North American continent.  The Russians came primarily seeking furs and built an empire in the north by exploiting the land and brutalizing the inhabitants.  The history of Russian America was one of slow growth and slower assimilation.  The Russians never seemed to befriend the Indians as the French had done, evangelize them like the Spanish or move them out of the way like the British; they merely seemed to impoverish and terrorize them.

North to California

It was in response to the Russian boasts that they would move down the West coast to California that the Spanish after centuries of neglect finally began to colonize Alta California in earnest.  They had claimed the area since the fifteenth century, and they had outposts there almost as long but it was only in the eighteenth century that they began to apply the power needed to make their far-flung claims a reality.

The size and diversity of California is a wonder to behold.  It stretches more than eleven hundred miles and includes more than a hundred million acres.  Its climate ranges from cool and foggy to alpine mountains to broiling desert to the lowest spot on earth.  And before it was forever changed by the arrival of Europeans it had the greatest cultural diversity of any place in the Americas.  Hundreds of distinct language groups and cultures fit into every niche in this vast landscape.

Into this world Spain intruded and proceeded to shape the land and the people to fit their view of what a colony should look like.  The land was parceled out to grand lords who kept slaves and built dynasties.  The mission system was set up and soon the wild diversity of the Indians was dissolving into the Hispanic sameness found throughout the Spanish Empire.

The Last Place on Earth

The Pacific Ocean was the last place on earth that the Europeans took as their own.  It took many years of sailing this broad expanse to find all the many islands that had long been settled but had also long been isolated, including the continent of Australia and New Zealand.  The French and the British were once again rivals as they sent expedition after expedition to find and exploit new lands.  The most famous Pacific explorer was Captain Cook who would eventually give his life in his quest to find and explore these vast expanses of ocean.

The addition of the Europeans in the Pacific basin had the same effect it had in North America, cultures had to adapt to new realities and economies changed as new sources and new technologies were introduced.  The eighteenth century saw Europeans reaching the most isolated islands (Hawaii) and finally learning that there was no Northwest Passage through the North American continent.

The great centuries of discovery came to a close and the world which had been circumnavigated in the fifteenth century was by the eighteenth century being circled on a regular basis by European ships establishing and maintaining European Empires.   And just as the cultures of the indigenous peoples encountered along the way had changed, so too the cultures of Europe had been indelibly changed by their contact with the rest of the world.  The great Columbian Exchange had brought new foods to Europe which remain to this day mainstays of the population to this day.  The gold and silver of the Americas changed the balance of power and fueled wars on land and on the seas for generations.

The colonies were planted by the Europeans, they grew until they were ready to stand on their own, then they did, from sea to shining sea.

Chapter Four: The Spanish Frontier January 7, 2025

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The Spanish explorers and conquistadors launched an almost frantic century of discovery.  In a few short decades they had traveled the length of the Andes and marched north from Mexico to the Rockies.   Founding missions on the ruins of conquered native villages, they actively pursued a policy of replacing all the diverse native cultures with their own.  The exploits of such notables as Cabeza de Vaca, Hernando de Soto and Francisco de Coronado traveled further and saw more than any European since Marco Polo.  They filled books with their stories and established Spain as one of the greatest patrons of discovery of all time. 

Following the explorers and conquistadors came the true colonizers such as Pedor Menendez in Florida and Don Juan de Onate in New Mexico.  These second-generation Spanish colonials spread not only the influence but the power of Spain into areas it would occupy for hundreds of years.  They built viable colonies that came to be the homes to many thousands of Spanish colonials and their Indian wards.  An important part of this effort was the mission system which turned the Indians into Hispanics and the undeveloped land into productive real estate.

These efforts were not without perils.  Many Spaniards lost their lives spreading the empire and capitalizing upon the fact that Spain was the first to arrive in the New World.  Countless Native Americans lost their lives, their lands and their way of life to disease, war and slavery.  The greatest effort made against Spain by the Native Americans to redress the wrongs done to them after the fall of the great empires was the Pueblo revolt.

Disputes between the government officials and the Mission system friars led to a loss of respect and fear on the part of the Native Americans for the Spanish.  Declining populations and constant war with the tribes of the plains combined with several severe droughts led to a precipitous collapse of the food supply.  This in turn led to mass starvation among the Pueblo Indians.  The Spanish were at the same time attempting to destroy what they thought were the last remnants of the native religion by arresting and whipping the shaman priests. 

In 1680 almost the entire population of 17,000 Pueblo Indians rose up and slaughtered every Spaniard they could finds.  Their leader Pope’ told them that they could recover their former health and prosperity by destroying the churches and missions of the Christians.  The initial victory over the Spanish was tempered by the revival of ancient rivalries between the different Pueblo tribes.  The Spanish regrouped in El Paso under Diego de Vargas and in 1691 were able to recapture New Mexico as far north as Santa Fe.  Farther west the Hopi and the Zuni were able to hold out and maintain their independence providing a safety valve for the re-conquered people of the Rio Grande valley.

From America Volume One: Colonial History

Chapter Two: The Colonizers December 25, 2024

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Several factors converged to create the climate for European dominance after the Fifteenth Century. 

The growing populations and limited resources provided a social impetus for expansion.  The accumulation of wealth and a mercantilist economic policy which sought to make every country self-sufficient drove the Europeans to seek both raw materials and markets which could be appropriated as possessions.  The development of technology in the spheres of ocean-going ships and weapons provided the transport too far off places and the ability to overcome the primitive weapons of what were almost always the superior numbers of the indigenous peoples. A tradition of crusades especially the Iberian Reconquista and a feeling of cultural superiority combined with a religion based on evangelism provided a philosophical rationale for overseas conquest.  In addition, organizational skills and techniques in government, military and business provided the means to mobilize the forces necessary to confront and overcome much larger populations and the ability to impose their various colonial establishments. 

A geo-political motive also had a significant interplay in the European drive for exploration.  The Islamic powers controlled the trade routes between sub-Saharan Africa and East Asia.  The leaders of Europe saw their wealth being drained away to pay for the trade goods desired by their populations.  It was the desire to find alternative trade routes that provided the initial impetus for exploration of the Atlantic Sea routes.

The Iberian Peninsula which had been under Islamic domination for hundreds of years fought a century’s long series of wars to dislodge the invaders.  Finally in 1492 the combined might of the kingdoms of Aragon, Castile and Portugal finally triumphed and expelled the Moors.  They immediately confronted a new problem, what to do with the thousands of unemployed crusaders.  These hardened troops were used to nothing but war.  They were skilled in nothing but fighting.  Suddenly instead of being the most necessary of citizens they became a burden upon the treasury and an impediment to the growth of civil society.

With a coast and ports facing the West and South both Spain and Portugal took the lead in exploring the Atlantic.  They established colonies in the Canary Islands, Maderias, and the Azores which became convenient jumping off points for ever further ventures into the unknown.  Once new lands were found the Kingdoms poured in legions of veteran troops to subdue and take possession.

At first the Iberians led by Portugal sought for a way around Africa.  Incrementally, year after year they went further and further south.  Once they had established their outposts in the Canary Islands, they soon began the more intense project of colonization.  The native populations were overwhelmed and replaced.  Then as the riches in fish and forest products flowed to the homelands the safe harbors provided bases for the continued probes along the African coast.

Finally in 1487 the Portuguese mariner Bartolomeu Dias rounded the southern tip of Africa and in 1498 Vasco De Gama followed Dias’ trail and crossed the Indian Ocean completing the European’s long search of an alternative route to the riches of the East.  This put Portugal in the forefront as a colonizing and trading power.  But this success and concentration on their now lucrative trade route to the south and east also diverted their attention from heading west.  Seeing the riches and prestige that Portugal was gaining from their new empire Spain, excluded from the way south by Portugal’s success and power turned west.

The way west was not new.  For hundreds of years the people of the North, Norway, Denmark and Sweden had traveled to the Faroes, Iceland, and Greenland.  In approximately the year 1000 the Norse moved on from Greenland to reach the northeastern edge of North America making landfalls on Baffin Island, Labrador and Newfoundland.  In a place they called Vinland they established the first European colony in North America.  This colony lasted no more than a generation before succumbing to a lack of support and hostility with the Native Americans.

Columbus, an Italian, was an experienced mariner who had trained under the Portuguese.  He had lived and worked for the Portuguese for many years but when they refused to finance his quest for a route to the East across the Atlantic, he turned to Spain.

Although it is a well-accepted legend that everyone thought the world was flat and that Columbus had to battle against the ignorance of the Spanish leaders to get financing this is not true.  It was a generally accepted fact among the European intellectuals of the day that the world was round.  This knowledge had been discovered by the ancient Greeks.  The leaders of Spain didn’t fear sending ships to fall off the end of the earth they simply believed that the distance was so far no one could carry enough supplies to make the voyage.  Their miscalculation was not in the shape of the planet or the size of the ocean instead their problem was that they didn’t imagine that other continents might bar the way.

The reason for Columbus’ belief that he could successfully sail from Europe to the East was that he miscalculated the distance.  His mistake gave him the confidence to head west to arrive in the East.  This confidence eventually led the monarchs of Spain to invest a small fleet of 3 ships in what would prove to be one of the best investments of all time.

When Columbus arrived in the Caribbean, he encountered the Taino people who were technologically and organizationally primitive compared to the Spanish.  Immediately Columbus began to replicate the colonization and subjugation process which had proven so effective in the Canary Islands.  And then another new European invention made as big an impact on the Americas as the firearms and ships.  The printing press quickly spread the word of the discovery and soon every European country began preparing to join the drive to the west in any way they could.

The Spanish were eager to expand and exploit their discovery.  In less than a year Columbus returned with 17 ships and more than 1,000 men.  The first farmers and artisans began remaking the islands into a colonial environment which was to become all too familiar.  The introduction of slavery and disease soon decimated the native populations as the Spanish transformed the New World into an approximation of the Old while the increase in the European food supply spurred by the introduction of American crops such as corn and potatoes increased the supply of potential colonists.  When we combine all this with the detrimental impacts of the Columbian Exchange such as the introduction of pigs which soon became voracious wild animals destroying native crops the New World as an Eden ended as the Old World invaded.