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BEGINNINGS OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE
BY
CARL LOTUS BECKER
PROFESSOR OF EUROPEAN HISTORY
UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO
The Riverside Press Cambridge
COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY CARL LOTUS BECKER
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
The Riverside Press
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
U.S.A.
THE RIVERSIDE HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION
In the following volumes the authors seek to present a brief account of
the beginnings, development, and final unity of the people of the United
States. There are many histories of the country, many biographies which
are in large measure histories; but these are exhaustive works
traversing minutely certain periods, like Rhodes's _History of the
United States from 1850 to 1877_, or Nicolay and Hay's _Abraham Lincoln:
A History_; or they are shorter "patriotic" accounts which seek to prove
something, or which fail to tell the whole story. Important as these
classes of historical literature are, they hardly suffice for the
teachers of advanced college classes, or for business and professional
men who would like to know how the isolated European plantations or
corporations in North America became in so short a time the great and
wealthy nation of to-day.
To meet these needs, that is, to describe in proper proportion and with
due emphasis, but in the brief space of four short volumes, the forces,
influences, and masterful personalities which have made the country what
it is, has not been an easy task. For, contrary to the view of European
students, American history is not simple. The hostile camps of Puritans
and Church of England men, the Dutch of New Amsterdam and the Catholics
of Maryland, could hardly be expected to merge into a single state
without violent struggle. Nor could the hundreds of thousands of Scotch
Calvinists, militant enemies of England and all her ways, who seized and
held the fertile highlands of the Middle and Southern colonies, submit
quietly to any program not of their own making. And again, in the
thirties and fifties of the nineteenth century, millions of people
speaking a strange tongue sought asylum in the Mississippi Valley--an
isolated region whose early inhabitants, of whatsoever national strain,
were strongly inclined to secession or revolt against the older Eastern
communities. Never was a nation composed of more diverse ethnic groups
and elements.
And the geographical environments of these groups and segments of older
civilizations were quite as dissimilar as those among which the nations
of Europe developed. The cold and bleak hills of New England no more
resemble the rich river bottoms of the South than the sand dunes of
Prussia resemble the fertile plains of Andalusia. Geographical
differences tend to produce economic differences. If to these be added
inherited antagonisms like those of Puritan and Cavalier, one wonders
how the East and the South of the United States ever became integral
parts of one great social unit. Adding to this apparent impossibility
the new antagonism of the West toward the East as a whole, the historian
wonders at the statecraft that could hold the diverse elements together
till certain economic and social factors became powerful enough to
conquer in a long and bloody war. Or was it the influence of new
inventions, railways, and the tightening bonds of commerce that did the
work?
Leaving the reader to answer this question for himself, it remains for
the Editor to set forth in as few words as possible the method, the
emphasis, and the interpretations of the authors of these volumes.
Professor Becker approaches his work, the discovery of the New World,
the rise of the plantations, the slow growth of an American culture, and
finally the Revolution of 1776, from the standpoint of a student of
modern European history. The infant colonies are to him disjected
particles of ancient Europe. Their changes under the new environment,
their tendency to isolation and petty quarrels during the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries, before the days of steam and electricity, and
their defensive alliance against the new, imperialistic England of
George III, are the special themes of his study. But here, as elsewhere
in our coöperative undertaking, the object has been to portray only
those things which seem to have counted in the final make-up of the
Confederacy of 1783, and of the United States of to-day. Moreover, the
daily life of the people, amusements, manners, religious predilections,
and the everyday occupations of men and women have been accorded some of
the space which, from another view-point, might have been devoted to an
account of government and the arguments of jurists.
Thus Professor Becker has presented a true and entertaining picture of
the purposes of European capitalists interested in the plantations, of
the poor people who were packed off to America to serve the ends of
commerce, and of the energetic men of the eighteenth century who slowly
worked out for England the conquest of North America. The reading of
chapters III and V of the _Beginnings of the American People_ can
hardly fail to give one a new view of, and a new interest in, colonial
history.
Nor has Professor Johnson approached his theme, _Union and Democracy_,
in a different spirit. He is neither a champion of the wholesome
nationalism which gave the Federalists their place in history nor a
defender of the radical idealism which Professor Becker has shown to be
the mainspring of the Revolution of 1776, and which Jefferson called to
life again in his struggle to win control of the national machinery,
1796 to 1800. In treating the period 1783 to 1828, Professor Johnson had
the difficult task of tracing the important influences which culminated
in the Constitution of 1789, the Jeffersonian revolt of 1800, the
foreign complications of 1803 to 1815, and the so-called Era of Good
Feelings. Here again the popular prejudices, if one desires so to term
them, land speculations, and sectional likes, and dislikes receive
attention; but the formation of the Constitution, the organization of
the Federal Government, international quarrels about the rights of
neutral commerce, and finally the War of 1812 are naturally the main
topics.
The chapters which treat of the results of the second war with England,
the westward movement, and the national awakening, and especially the
one which analyzes the problems which underlay the great decisions of
Chief Justice Marshall, will probably prove most instructive to the
reader. The author has made his narrative much clearer and the factors
which entered into the political struggles of the time more intelligible
by resort to many black-and-white maps; for example, those which show
the popular attitude toward the Constitution in 1787-89 and the
alignment of parties in the contest of 1800.
From 1829 to 1865 was the stormy period of our national history--a
period in which the nationality planned by the "Fathers" was being
forged from the discordant elements of East, South, and West,--from the
economic interests of cotton and tobacco planters; of the owners of the
industrial plants of the Middle States and the East; and of the
necessities of the isolated West striving always for markets. What made
the process so doubtful and so long drawn out was the unfortunate fact
that the great industrial and agricultural interests coincided so
exactly with the older social and political antagonisms. The leadership
of the times was, therefore, sectional in a very vital way; so much was
this the case that the most popular and captivating of all the public
men of the time, Henry Clay, was defeated again and again for the
Presidency because no common understanding between New England and the
South, or between New England and the West, could be found.
Twice during the period a permanent _modus vivendi_ seemed to have been
agreed upon, in the Jacksonian Democracy of 1828, and in the Pierce
organization of 1852, combinations of South and West which rested on the
big plantation system with slavery underlying, and on the small farmer
vote of the West charged always with the potential revolt which
democracy connotes. While these subjects receive the careful attention
of the author, the "way out," and the national expansion of the Polk
Administration, are none the less carefully studied. But aside from the
sharp and challenging problems of the time, an earnest effort has been
made to describe the cultural life of the people, the pastimes, the
religious revivals, the literary and artistic output of the exuberant
America of 1830 to 1860. The Civil War and its attendant ills are
compressed into relatively small space, though here, too, the effort is
made to include all that is vital.
In like manner Professor Paxson gives much space to the "interests"
which came to dominate the country soon after the cessation of
hostilities in 1865. The business and the greater social tendencies of
the _post-bellum_ period had become evident during the decade just
preceding the war. For this reason, the author reaches back into the
midst of the conflict to take up the thread of his narrative. The
economic conditions and changes of 1861 to 1865 are therefore treated in
connection with the great issues of the seventies and eighties--the
protective tariff and "big business." The money question, railway
regulation, corruption in public affairs, never absent from our national
life, are the chief themes of Professor Paxson's book. But while the
_motif_ of the volume is prosperity, business success, and commercial
expansion, space has been found for sympathetic accounts of the
dominating personalities of the time,--for Blaine and Cleveland; for
Bryan, Roosevelt, and Woodrow Wilson. And as is fitting, the leaders of
the industrial and intellectual interests of the time also receive
attention.
Of closer personal and scholarly interest to Professor Paxson is the
subject of the growth and development of the Rocky Mountain States:
Far-Western railway-building, mining, cattle-raising, and the
establishment of government agencies for the conservation of the
national resources. While the older and dangerous sectionalism seems to
be forever past, the special interests of the Far West, as shown in this
work, still lend color to a new sectionalism which sometimes threatens
the old political party habits; witness the contest of 1908-12 and the
troubles between California and Japan. And here Professor Paxson
challenges attention by his treatment of the results of the
Spanish-American War, the imperialism which brought to the United States
the control of the Philippines, and made the isolated and somewhat
provincial country of Blaine and Cleveland a world-power, with interests
in the Pacific and a potential voice in the final destiny of China.
Such have been the problems and the aims of the writers of these four
short volumes. In order to visualize the main topics discussed, resort
has been made to the making of maps, simple drawings intended to show at
the different crises just where, or how important, were the decisive
factors. This is a feature which, it is thought, will please both lay
and professional readers. Certainly the making of these maps was no
small part of the work of each author, and in most instances they are
entirely original and made from data not hitherto used in this way; for
example, the drawings which show just what sections of the States the
various candidates for the Presidency "carried." The same may be said of
those which treat of the cotton, tobacco, and industrial areas of the
United States.
Although there may be faults and errors in the work, it seems to the
Editor that, on the whole, the story of the beginnings, the growth, and
the present greatness of the country, as set forth in these volumes, is
both interesting and suggestive, that the real forces have been duly
emphasized, and that at many points contributions to historical
knowledge have been made.
WILLIAM E. DODD.
PREFACE
In preparing this sketch of the American colonies, I have had friendly
encouragement and assistance from a number of men whose knowledge of the
subject as a whole, or of certain aspects of it, is far more extensive
and accurate than my own. I am particularly indebted to my colleagues in
the University of Kansas, Professor F.H. Hodder and Professor W.W.
Davis, who have read and criticized the manuscript chapter by chapter.
The editor of the series has not only read the manuscript, but has put
me in the way of much valuable material which I should otherwise have
missed. Professor G.S. Ford and Professor Wallace Notestein, of the
University of Minnesota, and Professor F.J. Turner, of Harvard
University, have read portions of the manuscript. These good friends
have saved me many minor errors and some serious blunders; and their
cautions and suggestions have often enabled me to improve the work in
form and arrangement, and in relative emphasis.
CARL BECKER.
CONTENTS
I. THE DISCOVERY OF THE OLD WORLD AND THE NEW 1
II. THE PARTITION OF THE NEW WORLD 30
III. THE ENGLISH MIGRATION IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 65
IV. ENGLAND AND HER COLONIES IN THE SEVENTEENTH
AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES 125
V. THE AMERICAN PEOPLE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 161
VI. THE WINNING OF INDEPENDENCE 202
GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY 277
INDEX i
MAPS
_Facing_
SCHÖNER'S GLOBE, WITH MAGELLAN'S ROUTE AND
DEMARCATION LINE; DRAWN 1523 28
AREAS SETTLED BY 1660, AND BETWEEN 1660 AND
1700 134
GROWTH OF ENGLISH SETTLEMENTS, 1700-1760 178
AREA OF GERMAN SETTLEMENTS AND FRONTIER
LINE IN 1775 180
AREA OF SETTLEMENT IN 1774; BOUNDARY PROPOSED
BY SPAIN IN 1782; BOUNDARY SECURED
BY TREATY OF 1783; AND SETTLEMENTS WEST
OF ALLEGHANIES IN 1783 272
BEGINNINGS OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE
CHAPTER I
THE DISCOVERY OF THE OLD WORLD AND THE NEW
_We come in search of Christians and spices._ VASCO DA GAMA.
_Gold is excellent; gold is treasure, and he that possesses it does
all that he wishes to in this world, and succeeds in helping souls
into paradise._
CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS.
I
Contact with the Orient has always been an important factor in the
history of Europe. Centers of civilization and of political power have
shifted with every decisive change in the relations of East and West.
Opposition between Greek and barbarian may be regarded as the _motif_ of
Greek history, as it is a persistent refrain in Greek literature. The
plunder of Asia made Rome an empire whose capital was on the Bosphorus
more centuries than it was on the Tiber. Mediæval civilization rose to
its height when the Italian cities wrested from Constantinople the
mastery of the Levantine trade; and in the sixteenth century, when the
main traveled roads to the Far East shifted to the ocean, direction of
European affairs passed from Church and Empire to the rising national
states on the Atlantic. The history of America is inseparable from
these wider relations. The discovery of the New World was the direct
result of European interest in the Far East, an incident in the charting
of new highways for the world's commerce. In the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries Europeans first gained reliable knowledge of Far
Eastern countries, of the routes by which they might be reached, above
all of the hoarded-treasure which lay there awaiting the first comer.
Columbus, endeavoring to establish direct connections with these
countries for trade and exploitation, found America blocking the way.
The discovery of the New World was but the sequel to the discovery of
the Old.
From the ninth to the eleventh century the people of Western Europe had
lived in comparative isolation. With half the heritage of the Roman
Empire in infidel hands, the followers of the Cross and of the Crescent
faced each other, like hostile armies, across the sea. The temporary
expansion of the Frankish Empire ceased with the life of Charlemagne,
and under his successors formidable enemies closed it in on every hand.
Barbarian Slav and Saxon pressed upon the eastern frontier, while the
hated Moslem, from the vantage of Spain and Africa, infested the
Mediterranean and threatened the Holy City. Even the Greek Empire,
natural ally of Christendom, deserted it, going the way of heresy and
schism.
Danger from without was accompanied by disorganization within. In the
tenth century the political edifice so painfully constructed by
Charlemagne was in ruins. The organization of the Roman Empire and the
Gregorian ideal of a Catholic Church, now little more than a lingering
tradition, was replaced by the feudal system. Seigneurs, lay and
ecclesiastic, warring among themselves for the shadow of power, had
neither time nor inclination for the ways of peace or the life of the
spirit. Learning all but disappeared; the useful arts were little
cultivated; cities fell into decay and the roads that bound them
together were left in unrepair; the life of the time, barren alike in
hovel and castle, was supported by the crude labor of a servile class.
To be complete within itself, secure from military attack and
economically self-supporting, were the essential needs which determined
the structure of the great fiefs. The upper classes rarely went far
afield, while the "rural population lived in a sort of chrysalis state,
in immobility and isolation within each seigneury."
But the feudal régime, well suited to a period of confusion, could not
withstand the disintegrating effects of even the small measure of peace
and prosperity which it secured. Increase in population and the
necessities of life liberated those expansive social forces, in politics
and industry, in intellectual life, in religious and emotional
experience, which produced the civilization of the later Middle Ages;
that wonderful thirteenth century which saw the rise of industry and the
towns, the foundation of royal power in alliance with a moneyed class,
the revival of intellectual activity which created the universities and
the scholastic philosophy, the intensification of the religious spirit
manifesting itself in such varied and perfect forms,--in the simple
life of a St. Francis or the solemn splendor of a Gothic cathedral.
Of this new and expanding life, the most striking external expression
was embodied in the Crusades. Strangely compounded of religious
enthusiasm and political ambition, of the redeless spirit of the
knight-errant and the cool calculation of the commercial bandit, these
half-military and half-migratory movements of the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries mark the beginning of that return of the West upon the East
which is so persistent a factor in all modern history. Christendom, so
long isolated, now first broke the barriers that had closed it in, and
once more extended its frontier into western Asia: Norman nobles,
establishing the Kingdom of Jerusalem and the Latin Empire, enabled the
Church to guard the Holy Sepulchre, while Italian cities reaped a rich
harvest from the plunder of Constantinople and the Levantine trade.
The Latin Empire and the Kingdom of Jerusalem did not outlast the
thirteenth century, but the extension of commercial activity was a
permanent result of vital importance for the relations of Orient and
Occident. The swelling volume of Mediterranean trade which accompanied
the crusading movement depended upon the growing demand in the West for
the products of the East. Europe could provide the necessities for a
simple and monotonous life, without adornment or display. But the rise
of a burgher aristocracy, the growth of an elaborate and symbolic
ritualism in religious worship, the desire for that pomp and display
which is half the divinity of kings, created a demand for commodities
which only the East could supply,--spices for flavoring coarse food,
"notemege to putte in ale," fragrant woods and dyes and frankincense,
precious stones for personal adornment or royal regalia or religious
shrines, rich tapestries for bare interiors, "cloths of silk and gold."
All these products, and many more besides, so attractive to the unjaded
mind of Europe, celebrated in chronicle and romance from the thirteenth
to the fifteenth century, were to be found in those cities of the
Levant--in Constantinople, in Antioch or Jaffa or Alexandria--which were
the western termini to long established trade routes to the Far East.
Wares of China and Japan and the spices of the southern Moluccas were
carried in Chinese or Malay junks to Malacca, and thence by Arab or
Indian merchants to Paulicut or Calicut in southern India. To these
ports came also ginger, brazil-wood, sandal-wood, and aloe, above all
the precious stones of India and Persia, diamonds from Golconda, rubies,
topaz, sapphires, and pearls. From India, the direct southern route lay
across the Indian Ocean to Aden and up the Red Sea to Cairo or
Alexandria. The middle route followed the Persian Gulf and the Tigris
River to Bagdad, and thence to the coast cities of Damascus, Jaffa,
Laodicea, and Antioch. And by the overland northern route from Peking,
by painful and dangerous stages through Turkestan to Yarkand, Bokhara,
and Tabriz came the products of China and Persia,--silks and fabrics,
rich tapestries and priceless rugs.
From the twelfth century Italian cities grew rich and powerful on the
carrying trade between western Europe and the Levant. Venice and Genoa,
Marseilles and Barcelona, whose merchants had permanent quarters in
Eastern cities, became the distributing centers for western Europe. Each
year until 1560, a Venetian trading fleet, passing through the Straits
of Gibraltar, touching at Spanish and Portuguese ports, at Southampton
or London, finally reached the Netherlands at Bruges. But the main lines
to the north were the river highways: from Marseilles up the Rhone to
Lyons and down the Seine to Paris and Rouen; from Venice through the
passes of the Alps to the great southern German cities of Augsburg and
Nuremburg, and thence northward along the Elbe to the Hanse towns of
Hamburg or Lubec; or from Milan across the St. Gothard to Basle and
westward into France at Chalons. The main carriers from the North of the
Alps were the merchants of South Germany; while the Hanse merchants,
buying in southern Germany, or in the Netherlands at Bruges and Antwerp,
sold in England and France, in the Baltic cities, and as far east as
Poland and Russia.
II
Before the middle of the thirteenth century no Italian merchant could
have told you anything of the "isles where the spices grow," or of the
countries which produced the rich fabrics in which he trafficked: he
knew only that they came to Alexandria or Damascus from Far Eastern
lands. For from time immemorial the Orient had been the enemy's country,
little known beyond the bounds of Syria, a half-mythical land of alien
races, of curious customs and infidel faiths, a land of interminable
distances, rich and populous, doubtless, certainly dangerous and
inaccessible. But in the thirteenth century the veil which had long
shrouded Asia in mystery was lifted, discovering to European eyes
countries so rich in hoarded treasure and the products of industry that
the gems and spices which found their way to the West were seen to be
but the refuse of their accumulated stores.
The discovery of Asia in the thirteenth century was the direct result of
the Mongol conquest. Before the death of Jenghis Khan in 1227, the
Tartar rule was established in northern China or Cathay, and in central
Asia from India to the Caspian; while within half a century the
successors of the first emperor were dominant to the Euphrates and the
Dniester on the west, and as far south as Delhi, Burma, and Cochin
China. The earlier conquests were conducted with incredible ferocity;
but the influence of Chinese civilization moderated the temper of the
later Khans, who exhibited a genial and condescending curiosity in the
people of Christendom. Diplomatic relations were established between
Tartar and Christian princes. In the Paris archives may still be seen
letters written from Tabriz to the kings of France bearing official
Chinese seals of the thirteenth century. For the first time Europeans
were welcome beyond the Great Wall. Kublai Khan sent presents to the
Pope and requested Christian missionaries for the instruction of his
people. Traders and travelers were hospitably received, clever
adventurers were taken into favor and loaded with benefits and high
office.
It was in 1271 that two prosperous Italian merchants, Maffeo and Nicolo
Polo, at the invitation of Kublai Khan, left Venice, taking with them
Nicolo's son, the young Marco, destined to be the most famous of
mediæval travelers. Going out by way of the Tigris River to Hormos, they
turned eastward, and after many weary months journeying across Persia
and China arrived at the city of Cambulac, now known as Peking. Here
they remained for twenty years, favored guests or honored servants at
the court of the Grand Khan. Henceforth Maffeo and Nicolo retire into
the background; we catch occasional glimpses of them, shrewd Venetians,
unobtrusively putting money in their purses, while the young Marco
occupies the center of the stage as royal favorite, member of the Privy
Council, or trusted ambassador to every part of the emperor's wide
domains. A happy chance enabled them to return at last; and by a route
no European had yet taken: from Peking to Zaiton; thence by sea through
the famous Malacca Straits to Ceylon and India; up to Hormos and across
to Tabriz and Trebizond; and so, by way of the Bosphorus, home to
Venice, with a tale of experiences rivaling the Arabian Nights, and a
fortune stitched up in the seams of their clothes.
The fortune, in "rubies, sapphires, carbuncles, diamonds, and emeralds,"
was straightway turned out before the admiring gaze of friends; while
the story was told, to friends and enemies alike, many times over, and
presently, in a Genoese prison, set down in French--_The Book of Ser
Marco Polo the Venetian concerning the Kingdoms and Marvels of the
East._ It was only one of many books of that age describing the
countries of the Orient, for Marco Polo was only the most famous of the
travelers of his time. Diplomatic agents, such as Carpini, the legate of
Innocent IV, or William de Rubruquis, the ambassador of St. Louis;
missionaries, such as John de Corvino, Jordanus de Severac, or Friar
Beatus Oderic, laboring to establish the faith in India and China;
merchants, such as Pegalotti and Schiltberger, seeking advantage in the
way of trade:--these, and many more besides, penetrated into every part
of Asia and recorded in letters, in dry and precise merchant hand-books,
in naïve and fascinating narrative accounts, a wealth of information
about this old world now first discovered to Europeans.
For the revelations of the travelers amounted to a discovery of Asia. In
the age before printing news spread from mouth to mouth. Reading had not
yet replaced conversation, and a narrative of events was alike the duty
and the privilege of every chance visitor from far or near. What a
celebrity, then, was the Asiatic voyager, returning home after many
years! It is said of Marco Polo that even in Genoa, where he was held a
prisoner, "when his rare qualities and marvelous travels became known
there, the whole city gathered to see him. At all hours of the day he
was visited by the noblest gentlemen of the city, and was continually
receiving presents of every useful kind. Messer Marco, finding himself
in this position, and witnessing the general eagerness to hear all
about Cathay and the Grand Chan, which indeed compelled him daily to
repeat his story till he was weary, was advised to put the matter in
writing." And certainly those voluble Italians were not men to remain
silent. Thousands, who never read the book of Ser Marco or the charming
narratives of Rubruquis or Friar Oderic, must have heard many of their
wonderful stories as they were carried by the merchants and priests,
students, minstrels, and high diplomatic agents who went up and down the
highways of Europe in the fourteenth century.
And the tale was marvelous, indeed, to the unaccustomed ears of
Europe,--a tale of innumerable populous cities and great rivers, a tale
of industry and thrift and glutted markets, above all a tale of
treasure. What was doubtless heard most eagerly and told again with most
verve were the accounts of cities with "walles of silver and bulwarkes
or towers of golde," palaces "entirely roofed with fine gold," lakes
full of pearls, of Indian princes wearing on their arms "gold and gems
worth a city's ransom." In that country, says Rubruquis, "whoever
wanteth golde, diggeth till he hath found some quantitie." Oderic tells
of a "most brave and sumptuous pallace" in Java, "one stayre being of
silver, and another of golde, throughout the whole building"; the rooms
were "paved all over with silver and gold, and all the wals upon the
inner side sealed over with plates of beaten gold; the roof of the
palace was of pure gold." As for the Grand Khan, he had, according to
Marco Polo, "such a quantity of plate, and of gold and silver in other
shapes, as no one ever before saw or heard tell of, or could believe."
And so freely did the returned traveler discourse of Kublai Khan's
millions of _saggi_ of revenue, that he was ever after known in Italy as
Ser Marco Milioni.
In contrast with this country, how small and inferior is Europe! Such is
the most general impression conveyed by the accounts of the travelers.
Do you think you have some powerful kings here?--they have always the
air of asking--some great rivers, populous and thriving cities? But I
tell you Europe is nothing. "The city of Quinsay," says Oderic, "hath
twelve principall gates; and about the distance of eight miles, on the
highway unto each one of the said gates, standeth a city as big by
estimation as Venice and Padua." And this trade of the Levant,
profitable as you think it, is but a small affair. On a single river in
China, the greatest in the world, "there is more wealth and merchandise
than on all the rivers and all the seas of Christendom put together." Of
that great wealth, very little, indeed, ever comes to the Levant: "for
one ship load of pepper that goes to Alexandria or elsewhere, destined
for Christendom, there come a hundred, aye and more too, to this haven
of Zaiton"; while the diamonds "that are brought to our part of the
world are only the refuse of the finer and larger stones; for the flower
of the diamonds, as well as of the larger pearls, are all carried to the
Grand Khan or other princes of these regions: in truth, they possess all
the great treasures of the world."
What a reversal of values for that introspective mind of Christendom,
so long occupied with its own soul! And what an opportunity,--all the
great treasures of the world possessed by people who welcome merchants
but "hate to see soldiers"; being themselves "no soldiers at all, only
accomplished traders and most skillful artisans." Here was the promised
land for Europeans, wretchedly poor, but good soldiers enough. Here was
Eldorado, symbol of all external and objective values which so fired the
imagination in that age of discovery; presenting a concrete and
visualized goal, a _summum bonum_, attainable, not by contemplation, but
by active endeavor; fascinating alike to the merchant dreaming of
profits, to the statesman intent on conquest, to the priest in search of
martyrdom, to the adventurer in, search of gold.
III
And who was not in search of gold? "Gold is excellent; gold is treasure,
and he who possesses it does all that he wishes to in this world, and
succeeds in helping souls into paradise." So thought Columbus,
expressing in a phrase the motto of many men, and conveniently revealing
to us an essential secret of European history. For gold, so abundant in
the East, was scarce in the West. The mines of Europe have never been
adequate to the needs of an expanding industrial civilization.
Importation of expensive Eastern luxuries, normally overbalancing
exports, produces a drain of specie to the Orient, that reservoir to
which the precious metals seem naturally to flow, and from which they do
not readily return; so that to maintain the gold supply and prevent a
fatal appreciation of money value has been a serious problem in both
ancient and modern times. During the Roman Republic the supply of gold
was maintained at Rome by the systematic exploitation of Syria and Asia
Minor. But after Augustus reformed the government of the provinces, the
accumulated treasure of the West began to return to the Orient: the
annual exportation of 200,000,000 sesterces in payment for the silks and
spices of India and Arabia, of Syria and Egypt, was one of the causes of
economic exhaustion and the collapse of imperial power. "So dear," says
Pliny, "do pleasures and women cost us."
During the age of feudal isolation, this ever-recurring problem did not
exist; and in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries it seems not to have
been pressing. Imports from the Orient were nearly balanced by exports
to Syria, for which the crusading movements and the Kingdom of Jerusalem
created an abnormal demand. The rise of trade in the West was
accompanied by an expansion of the credit system centering in the
banking houses of Florence; while the supply of metals was more than
maintained by the plunder of Asiatic cities, paid over by crusaders in
return for supplies and munitions of war, or brought home by returning
princes and nobles, by priests and merchants, by Knights of St. John or
of the Temple. Between 1252 and 1284, the ducat and the florin and the
famous gold crowns of St. Louis made their appearance,--the sure sign of
an increased gold supply, rising prices, and flourishing trade.
But in 1291 the Kingdom of Jerusalem was overthrown; successful
crusading ceased, and the plunder of Syrian cities was at an end. Yet
the volume of Oriental trade was undiminished; normal exports were
insufficient to pay for imports; and from the end of the thirteenth to
the middle of the fifteenth century the drain of precious metals from
Europe was followed by the inevitable appreciation of gold. Prices fell;
many communes were bankrupt; kings, in desperate straits, debased the
coinage and despoiled the Church. It was in 1291 that Edward I forced
his "loan" from the churches; and Philip IV, in 1296 forbidding the
export of gold and silver from France, set about with unparalleled
cunning and cruelty to destroy the Templars in order to appropriate the
wealth which they had accumulated in the Holy Land.
It was in this very fourteenth century, when gold was appreciating and
prices were falling, that the immense wealth of the Orient was first
fully revealed to Europeans. All the commodities which Arab traders sold
at high prices to Venetian merchants in the Levant were now known to be
of little worth in the markets of India. In that country, all the
reports agreed, "they have every necessity of life very cheap"; and
every luxury as well--forty pounds of "excellent fresh ginger for a
Venice groat"; "three pheasants for an asper of silver"; five grains of
silver buying one of gold; three dishes, "so fine that you could not
imagine better," to be had for less than half a shilling. It was the
Arab middlemen that made the difference: the enemies of Christendom,
intrenched in Jerusalem and Egypt, guarded the easy highways to the East
and took rich toll of all its commerce. What a stroke for State and
Church if Europe, uniting with the Ilkhans of Persia, could establish
direct connections with the Orient, eliminate the infidel middlemen, and
divide with Mongol allies the fruits of Indian exploitation!
Such projects, drifting from court to court in the early fourteenth
century, form the aftermath of the great Crusades. In 1307 Marino
Sanuto, Venetian statesman and geographer, presented to Clement V an
elaborate plan for the revival of the old conflict with Islam. But
Sanuto contemplated something more than the recovery of the Holy Land.
Sketching with sure hand the trade routes from India to the Levant, he
demonstrated that the Arabs were enriched at the expense of Christian
Europe. Yet beyond the narrow confines of Syria were the Mongols, well
disposed toward Christians, but enemies of Mohammedan Arab and Turk.
First weaken the Moslem powers, said Sanuto, by an embargo on all
exports of provisions and munitions of war to Syria and Egypt, and then
overthrow them by a combined attack of Christian and Mongol armies. The
great end would thus be attained: a Christian fleet on the Indian Ocean,
subjugating all the coast and island ports from India to Hormos and
Aden, would act as convoy for Italian merchants trading directly with
the Eastern markets by way of Alexandria and the Red Sea, or down the
Tigris River to the Persian Gulf.
The project of Sanuto, anticipating the achievements of England in our
own day, was doubtless as vain as it was splendid. For the times, in
fourteenth-century Europe, were out of joint. Clement V and his
successors at Avignon, scarcely able to hold the Papal States, were
little inclined to attempt the conquest of Syria. The Empire had lost
its commanding position. Italian cities, released from imperial control,
warred perpetually for existence or supremacy. England and France were
preparing for the desolating struggle that exhausted their resources for
a hundred years. "All Christendom is sore decayed and feeblished,
whereby the Empire of Constantinople leeseth, and is like to lese," for
lack of the "Knights and Squires who were wont to adventure themselves,"
but who adventure themselves no more.
In 1386, when this naïve plaint was addressed to Richard II by the
dispossessed King of Armenia, conditions in Asia, even more than those
in Europe, were such as to make the plans of Sanuto forever impossible.
Johan Schiltberger, journeying to the Orient early in the fifteenth
century, encountered dangers and difficulties unknown to Marco Polo a
hundred years earlier. The successors of Kublai Khan no longer ruled in
China; while the Ilkhans of Persia, having long since adopted
Mohammedanism, were now as ill-disposed as formerly they had been
friendly toward Christian states. Eastern and central Asia was indeed
once more closing to Europeans: its rulers no longer sought alliance
with Christian princes; no longer requested the service of papal
missionaries; no longer welcomed traders and travelers. And in the
Levant itself ominous changes were portending: the Ottoman Turks,
pressing upon the Greek Empire from Asia Minor and the Balkan Peninsula,
were already well advanced upon their career of blighting conquest which
was destined to throw Christendom upon the defensive for more than two
centuries. At the opening of the fifteenth century, although the trade
routes had not been closed by the Turks, the _Drang nach Osten_--the
hope of cutting through the Moslem barrier in order to establish direct
connection with India--was at an end. Unless a new way to the East could
be found, the better part of the treasure of the Orient was lost to
Europe.
IV
Long before the fifteenth century many men had thought it possible to
reach India by sailing around Africa. Since classical times geographers
had both asserted and denied the possibility. During the Middle Ages the
Ptolemaic theory was in the ascendant; but the observations of
thirteenth-century travelers gave powerful support to the ideas of
Eratosthenes. Europeans who had sailed from Malacca to Hormos, or had
read the book of Marco Polo or Friar Oderic, knew well that no
impenetrable swamp guarded the southern approaches to Asia; while those
who had seen or heard of Arab ships clearing from Calicut for Aden could
scarcely avoid the inference that a wider sweep to the south might have
brought the same ships to Lisbon or Venice.
This inference, the alert and practical Italian intellect, unhampered
by scientific tradition or ecclesiastical prejudice, had unhesitatingly
drawn. The famous Laurentian _Portolano_, a sailing chart constructed in
1351, was precisely such a map as Marco Polo, had he turned
cartographer, might have drawn: the first map in which Africa appears
familiar to modern eyes; with the point of the continent foreshortened,
and the Atlantic and Indian Oceans joined at last, it held out to all
future explorers the prospect of successful voyages from Venice to
Ceylon. Sixty years earlier, even before Polo returned from China, the
heroic attempt had been made; Tedisio Doria and the Vivaldi, venturous
Genoese seamen, passing the Rock of Gibraltar, pointed their galleys to
the south in order "to go by sea to the ports of India to trade there."
They never returned, nor were ever heard of beyond Cape Non in Barbary,
but the memory of their hapless venture was perpetuated in legends of
the fourteenth century which credited them with sailing "the sea of
Ghinoia to the City of Ethiopia."
To go by sea to the ports of India was an undertaking not to be achieved
by unaided Italian effort, or in a single generation. The skill and
daring of many captains might find the way, but discovery was futile
unless backed by conquest, for which the support of a powerful
government was essential. Not from Italian states, weak and distracted
by inter-city wars, or absorbed in established and profitable Levantine
trade, was such support to come, but from the rising nations of the
Atlantic, which profited least by the established commercial system.
Lying at the extreme end of the old trade routes, the merchants of
France, England, Spain, and Portugal were mulcted of the major profits
of Oriental trade. Here prices were lowest and money most scarce. Yet
the future of these countries, consolidated under centralized monarchies
in alliance with a moneyed class, depended upon a full royal treasury
and thriving industry. "The king," said Cardinal Morton, addressing the
English Commons, "wishes you to arrest the drain of money to foreign
countries. The king wishes to enrich you; you would not wish to make him
poor. Consider that the kingdoms which surround us grow constantly
stronger, and that it cannot be well that the king should find himself
with an empty treasury." To replenish the royal treasury by enriching
the _bourgeois_ class was the basic motive which enlisted the Western
monarchs in maritime exploration and discovery.
Yet not to the greater states of the West was reserved the honor of
first reaching the Indies by sea. The Kingdom of Portugal, first to
venture, was first to reach the goal. Looking out over Africa and the
South Atlantic, effectively consolidated under King John of Good Memory
while its neighbors were still involved in foreign wars or the problems
of internal organization, the little state enjoyed advantages denied to
England before the accession of Henry Tudor, or to Spain before the
conquest of Granada. And to these advantages the fates added another,
and greater. For at an opportune moment it was given to Portugal to
possess one of those great souls, of lofty purpose and enduring
resolution, whose fortune it is to gather the scattered energies of
many men and with patient wisdom direct them to the attainment of noble
ends. To Prince Henry the Navigator, who raised the endeavors of the
nation to the level of an epic achievement, it is chiefly due that
Portugal became, in exploration and discovery, the foremost country of
the age.
In origin, the Portuguese search for India was but the sequel to the
century-old conflict with the Moslem, a more subtly conceived crusade.
Losing their hold on the Spanish Peninsula, the Moors were still
intrenched in Africa; and in 1415 a Portuguese fleet, crossing to the
northern point opposite Gibraltar, took and plundered the fortress and
city of Ceuta. It was on this occasion, and subsequently in 1418, that
Prince Henry gained from Moorish prisoners reliable information of the
rich caravan trade from the Senegal and Gambia Rivers, and from the Gold
and Ivory Coasts on the Gulf of Guinea, to Timbuctoo, and across the
desert to Ceuta and Tunis: information which strengthened, if it did not
inspire, the guiding motive of his life. For enriching Portugal and
undermining the Moorish power in Africa, how much more effective than
the plunder of Ceuta would be the conquest of the Guinea Coast! Once
round the shoulder of Africa and the thing was done! And who could say
what lay beyond the Gulf of Guinea? Prester John, perhaps, or the
shining treasures of India.
And so, returning from Africa in 1418, the Prince retired to the famous
Sacred Promontory in the Province of Algarve, where he gave the best
energies of forty years to the task of African exploration. Backed by
the resources of the state, commanding the best scientific knowledge of
the day, patiently enduring "what every barking tongue could allege
against a Service so unservicable and needlesse," he sent out year after
year the most skillful and daring sailors of Italy and Portugal, and
inspired them anew, as often as they returned baffled and discouraged,
with his own perennial enthusiasm. Between 1435 and 1460, famous
captains in his service--Gil Eannes, Denis Diaz, the Venetian
Cadamosto--made those crucial voyages round the Point of Bojador, past
the desert to Cape Verde, and beyond as far as Sierra Leone. After 1443
the labors of the Navigator were no longer thought to be wasted; for
when the rich traffic in slaves and gold was opened up to Portugal, the
greed of gain was added to scientific interest as a motive for
exploration:--"Gold," says the chronicler, "made a recantation of former
Murmurings, and now Prince Henry was extolled."
When Prince Henry died in 1460 no ship had sailed beyond Sierra Leone;
but the nation had caught the spirit of the master, and in the next
generation the search for India replaced the exploration of the Gulf of
Guinea. Escobar crossed the Equator in 1471, and fourteen years later
Diego Cam sailed a thousand miles beyond the mouth of the Congo River.
It was in 1486 that Bartholomew Diaz, third of that family to forward
African exploration, left Lisbon determined to reach the Indian Ocean.
Having passed the farthest point reached by Diego Cam the year before,
he put out to sea and ran before the strong northern gale for fourteen
days. Turning eastward in search of the coast, and then north, land was
at last sighted to the west. The northerly trend of the coast, as they
pushed on four hundred miles farther, assured Diaz that he was, indeed,
in the Indian Ocean. The valiant captain would have gone on to India,
but the crew forced him to turn back. It was on the return voyage that
he first saw the southernmost point of Africa--object of so many notable
ventures: the Tempestuous Cape, as Diaz would have named it; but no,
replied the king, may it rather prove the Cape of Good Hope.
Among those for whom the voyage of Diaz was of vital importance was an
unknown Italian map-maker, already possessed with the one idea that was
to make him more famous than Diaz, but which as yet had brought him only
poverty and humiliation. Christopher Columbus, son of a Genoese
wool-comber, sailor and trader and student of men and of maps from the
age of fourteen, had come, about the year 1477, from London to Lisbon,
where he married in 1478 Felipe Moñiz de Perestrello, whose father had
been a captain in the service of Prince Henry and first governor of
Porto Santo. Student of cartography and professional map-maker, expert
sailor himself, who had probably been to the Gold Coast, associating
with captains and sailors in this seaport town of Lisbon, Columbus must
have picked up all the common sailors' gossip of the age, and all the
best-known scientific speculation. With the Greek tradition that the
Indies might be reached by sailing west from the Pillars of Hercules, he
was probably familiar, even if he had not read the famous statement of
Aristotle in Roger Bacon's _Opus Majus_, or in the _Imago Mundi_ of
Pierre d'Ailly; familiar also he certainly was with the persistent
mediæval legends of islands in the western Atlantic,--Atlantis, and the
Seven Cities, and Isles of St. Brandan.
Here in Lisbon, poring over old maps, by fortunate miscalculation
underestimating the size of the earth, noting, as expedition after
expedition returned, the indefinite southern extension of the African
coast, Columbus became convinced that the Portuguese had chosen the
longer route to the East, and that "the Indies in the east might in the
Earth's Globositie be as readily found out by the west, following the
sun in his daily journey." To reach the Indies by sailing west, and to
discover, for the king who should authorize him, such new lands as might
fall his way, became henceforth the consuming ambition of his life. It
was a project which he had already, about 1484, laid before the King of
Portugal. Repulsed, and at the same time betrayed, he went to Spain,
where he was encouraged by the Count Medina Celi and the Cardinal
Mendoza, only to have his plan rejected by the Council to which it was
referred. The queen was not unfavorably disposed, but the Moorish wars
occupied her days and depleted her treasury. Weary with following the
court about, it must have been with profound discouragement that
Columbus heard of the success of Diaz in 1488. For the time was short;
Diaz had all but reached the goal, and one more voyage might bring the
Portuguese to India before Columbus could induce the Spanish sovereigns
to try the better plan.
But the Portuguese did not follow up their advantage, and after four
more years of waiting, when the Moorish wars were successfully concluded
by the conquest of Granada, Columbus at last obtained a favorable
hearing from Ferdinand and Isabella. By the King and Queen of Spain
Christopher Columbus was authorized to "discover and acquire certain
islands and mainland in the ocean"; to appropriate for himself a tithe
of the precious metals which might be found there, and to be "Admiral of
the said islands and mainland, and Admiral and Viceroy and Governor
therein." Within three months all was ready, and on Friday, August 3,
1492, the famous expedition, about ninety men in three small ships, with
compass and astrolabe for determining direction and latitude, but no log
for the dead reckoning, left Palos for the Canaries. It was not with
adverse winds or a rough sea that the admiral had to contend, but with a
superstitious crew often moved to mutiny,--terrified by the strange
variation of the needle, questioning whether the steady trade winds that
bore them on would ever permit them to return, certain that the Sargasso
Sea would prove that impenetrable marsh of which they had heard. With
unfailing resourcefulness, with patience and tact, with the compelling
force of a masterful character, the great commander vanquished fear and
superstition, never doubting that since "he had come to go to the Indies
he would keep on till he found them by the help of God."
It was on the 11th day of October, seventy days out from Spain, and none
too soon, that land was sighted; and on the following morning Columbus,
bearing the cross of the Church on the banner of Castile, set foot on
one of the minor Bahamas, the present Watling's Island. For two months
and a half he cruised in these waters, seeking gold and spices, and the
evidence of great cities, "still resolved to go to the mainland and the
City of Quinsay, and to deliver the letters of your Highness to the
Grand Can, requesting a reply and returning with it." He did not find
Quinsay or the Grand Khan, but he discovered Santa Maria, and Hayti,
where the first Spanish colony in the New World was established, and
Cuba, which was taken to be the mainland. Resting in this belief, the
admiral set out for home, reaching Palos February 15, 1493. And it was
straightway reported in Europe that the Genoese captain had "found that
way never before known to the east."
The East, yet not the desired part of it,--not Cipango, or the city of
Quinsay, nor yet the rich Moluccas. These, however, Columbus never
doubted, would be easily found. Others were less sanguine. The Spanish
sovereigns seemed scarcely convinced that the islands of Columbus were
parts of Marco Polo's Indies; while King John suspected that they were
really within the southern Guinea waters belonging to Portugal.
Therefore the Portuguese King hastened to secure, by papal bulls and
the Treaty of Tordesillas with Spain in 1494, the famous Demarcation
Line which reserved to Portugal, for exploration and discovery, the
regions lying east, and to Spain the regions lying west, of a meridian
three hundred and seventy leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands. And
five years later, when Vasco da Gama at last reached Calicut by the
eastern route, no one could longer maintain, so it seemed to the
Portuguese King, that the Spanish explorers were in Indian waters. In
July, 1499, the news of Da Gama's success reached Lisbon; and Emanuel,
with pleasant malice, hastened to inform the Spanish sovereigns that the
real Indies had been visited "by a nobleman of our household," and that
he had found there, what every one expected to find, what Columbus had
nevertheless not found, "large cities, and great populations"; as
evidence of which he had brought home "cinnamon, cloves, ginger, nutmeg,
pepper, also many fine stones of all sorts; so that henceforth all
Christendom in this part of Europe shall be able, in large measure, to
provide itself with these spices and precious stones."
The conclusion which the Portuguese King so eagerly accepted was
meanwhile confirmed by every western voyage. Beyond the islands which
Columbus had discovered, an interminable barrier everywhere blocked the
way. In 1498, the admiral himself had touched the mainland near
Trinidad, and in 1502 he explored the Bay of Honduras. Hojeda and
Pinzon, in 1499 and 1500, sailed along nearly the whole northern coast
of South America, while in 1501 Americus Vespucci followed the eastern
coast from the point of Brazil as far as 35° south latitude. It could no
longer be doubted, by those at least who had seen the great mouths of
the Amazon and the Plate Rivers, that behind this long stretch of coast
lay an immense continent; a projection of Asia, doubtless, separated
from it by some narrow strait, perhaps, or possibly by an unknown sea:
at any rate, a "boundless land to the south," as Columbus reported; and
which "may be called a new world, since our ancestors had no knowledge
of it," as Vespucci thought; "a fourth part of the world," said
Waldseemüller in his _Introduction to Cosmography_, published in 1507,
"which since Americus discovered it may be called Amerige--i.e.,
Americ's land or America." In 1506 Bartholomew Columbus prepared the
earliest extant map showing this _Mondo Novo_, represented as a
projection of southern Asia and extending three fourths of the distance
to the shoulder of Africa.
This new world of America, a seemingly impenetrable barrier, lay
between Spain and the Indies--the real Indies from which the
Portuguese were yearly bringing home a rich freightage of gems and
spices. In 1509 their ships first reached Malacca; two years later
that "golden Chersonese" was taken by Albuquerque; and in 1512 D'Abreu
returned with the first cargo of cloves from Amboina and Banda, the
very "isles where the spices grow." To find a passage through the
_Mondo Novo_, which Columbus had discovered, became therefore the aim
of future Spanish exploration--inspiring the second voyage of Pinzon
in 1508, the expedition of Balboa across the Isthmus in 1513, the
fatal last cruise of Solis to the mouth of the Plate River, and the
final triumphant venture of Ferdinand Magellan.
For the world was not so large but that the spice islands, three
thousand miles east of Calicut, must be in Spanish waters. Firm in this
belief, the Portuguese Fernam Magalhaes, who had been with Albuquerque
at Malacca, offered to King Charles of Spain his services in search of
the western passage. It was in 1519 that this man, "small in stature,
who did not appear in himself to be much," yet withal a "man of courage
and valiant in his thoughts," set out in five worn-out ships, manned by
Spanish officers and a treacherous crew, to achieve the greatest feat of
navigation ever recorded in the world's annals. Undaunted by an almost
fatal mutiny or the terrors of an Antarctic winter, he pushed on through
the dangerous straits which bear his name, north and west over that sea
which, pacific as it was found to be, he would scarcely have attempted
had he known its vast extent. Sailing on month after month, the crew
depleted by sickness and death, living at last on rats and biscuit worms
and roasted soaked leather thongs, the little expedition finally reached
the Philippine Islands. Here the heroic commander lost his life; and but
few of those who left Spain ever returned. One ship only out of five,
the Victoria, crossed the Indian Ocean and at last, September 7, 1522,
three years out from Spain, sailed with eighteen survivors into the port
of St. Lucar.
[Illustration: SCHÖNER'S GLOBE with Magellan's Route and Demarcation Line
DRAWN 1523. From Bourne's _Spain in America_, p. 117. Harper and Brothers.]
For the first time a single ship had circled the round earth. And
through all the vicissitudes of that notable voyage, the object which
during fifty years had inspired so many fruitless ventures was not
forgotten. The little Victoria had shipped at Moluccas, and now
deposited at St. Lucar, twenty-six tons of cloves. Yet few ships would
ever again, in the way of trade, sail west from Spain for the spice
islands; for between the Indies of Columbus and the Indies which he had
hoped to find lay an uncharted and boundless ocean which reduced the
Atlantic to the measure of familiar inland waters; and between the two
seas, dimly perceived as yet, stretched the continent which was indeed a
_Mondo Novo_--the New World of America.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
An excellent brief account of the discovery of America is in Channing's
_History of the United States_, I, chs. I-II. For the relations of
Europe and Asia, and the Portuguese explorations, see Cheyney's
_European Background of American History_, chs. I, II, IV. An excellent
brief sketch of the life of Columbus is in _Ency. Brit._, 11th ed. Marco
Polo is most conveniently found in _Everyman's Library_ (Dutton). The
standard edition is that of Henry Yule, 2 vols., London, 1903. Azurara's
_Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea_ is printed by the
Hakluyt Society, 2 vols., London, 1896. Chapter VII gives five reasons
for Prince Henry's interest in African exploration. In recent years
Henry Vignaud has maintained with much learning and critical ability
that the famous Toscanelli letter is a forgery, and that Columbus's
first voyage to the west was for the purpose of discovering new
countries, but that he had no intention of reaching the Indies. The
first point he has probably established, but as much cannot be said for
the second. See Vignaud, _Toscanelli and Columbus_. Dutton, New York,
1902.