The New Global World, 1450–1620
Questions
1. A demographic catastrophe and a brutal conquest of another culture: should we pay
more attention to American history before European settlement? Why or why not?
2. Note that the preceding accounts were all by Europeans and based on
European observations. Do they nonetheless contain reliable information about the
peoples they discuss? How do you judge?
3. Do these authors uniformly assume superiority to their subjects? Or are they
ambivalent about them, in some ways even admiring of them? Explain.
