Europeans, Indians, and the Age of Discovery in American History Textbooks

Abstract

IT WOULD BE DIFFICULT TO OVERESTIMATE the role played by textbooks in the teaching of American history. Yet, for some peculiar reason, textbooks are the only products of historical scholarship that do not receive regular critical review by acknowledged experts in the various subfields of American history. Publishers frequently hire pedagogical consultants or teachers from large institutions to critique textbook manuscripts, in order to ensure that the complexity of content and prose style do not overshoot their targeted audiences. But they seldom ask the best scholars to review the books before publication and only occasionally do so for subsequent editions. More to the point, perhaps, the leading historical journals, both general and specialized, do not deign to review textbooks. Only The History Teacher regularly extends itself in this direction; even History: Reviews of New Books overlooks the survey text in favor of the occasional specialized text and the usual monographs. Regrettably, the new face of the Journal of American History will not smile on reviews or even review essays of American history textbooks. It was this state of affairs-and the forthcoming Columbian hoopla, of coursethat prompted the AHA's Columbus Quincentenary Committee to launch this modest, one-person inquiry into what American college students were reading about, not so much Columbus's daring (and ever-controversial) voyages, as important as those were, but the earth-making changes that followed in his wake over the next century and a half. What, if anything, were students learning about the Columbian legacy, the shaping of a new Atlantic (and later global) world that linked the destinies of several continents and myriad peoples? What were they reading about the native peoples of the Americas and Africa who were so suddenly yanked into the European orbit? Were they still being shown the Spanish empire through the distorting lens of the Black Legend? Did they ever see the French and other non-English colonizers arrive in the Americas and, if so, with what result? And, perhaps most important, could they, from what they were reading, understand what motivated Columbus, his European successors, and the natives, and what caused the tangle of events to which Americans are collateral if not direct heirs? With these questions in mind, I have read the first chapter or two of sixteen