Additional resources for this issue of History Now Age of Exploration Columbian Exchange Native Americans Jamestown Magellan New Netherland

General Exploration Resources

Books:

With apologies to Dr. Widmer, I’ll begin by listing some resources, print and virtual, that you may find useful for all of the essays in this issue:

Mancall, Peter C. Mancall, ed. Travel Narratives from the Age of Discovery: An Anthology. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.

Mulford, Carla, et al., eds. Early American Writings. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. A hefty (more than 1000 pages) but very helpful collection of writings by English, Spanish, French, Dutch, Swedes. Germans, and Native Americans on early contact between Europeans and indigenous Americans. Don’t be put off by its size – its contents are well organized and well presented, and it’s well worth the effort of taking it off the shelf.

A good starting point for early English, French, and Spanish settlement in North America is:

Middleton, Richard. Colonial America: A History, 1565-1776. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2002.

General Exploration Resources

Websites:

You’ll find contributions from old friends (like the Library of Congress’s American Memory) and new ones from all over the world well worth cultivating:

The Discoverers Web page, maintained by Andre Engels of the Netherlands, is an excellent basic source for original biographical sketches and links to other websites:

http://www.win.tue.nl/~engels/discovery/

The National Humanities Center's Toolbox Library features primary source documents from different eras of American history, including the Age of Exploration:

http://www.nhc.rtp.nc.us/pds/tblibrary.htm

The Newport News, Virginia Mariners’ Museum will be a great addition to your bookmarks. You may want to begin with their “Age-of Exploration Online Curriculum Guide”:

http://www.mariner.org/edu cationalad/ageofex/

Or the Museum’s “Online Exhibitions” subsection for “Exploration through the Ages” with materials on voyages, explorers, ships, crews, and map making

http://www.mariner.org/exploration/index.php

Finally, look at their “Educational Activities” page – if you’re within visiting distance of this wonderful institution, see what they make available to school-age visitors and their families:

http://www.mariner.org/educationalad/

For a great example of the classroom use of Web materials on the age of discovery, go to the website of the Wasco School District in Oregon. I think you’ll find their “Project Ideas” for “ European Explorers of the New World" in the “Age of Exploration” section are first-rate. Lynn Ewing, the district’s IT specialist adds and removes links to keep the website up to date.

http://www.swasco.net/SubjectGuide/social/explore.html

Television related Websites will serve you and your students here. When using PBS’s “Teachers” search facility for lesson plans, etc., remember that you first go to the search screen for “social studies.

http://www.pbs.org/teachers/socialstudies/

And then choose your grade level. Only then can you scroll down the list of topics to United States history and the period in which you’re interested.

http://www.pbs.org/teachers/socialstudies/inventory/
unitedstateshistory15851763-912.html

History Channel’s “Teachers’ Manuals,” while designed to be used with the channel’s documentaries, have good links and discussion suggestions. For topics covered in this issue, scroll down to the “Conquests” entry and choose your geographical region of interest:

http://www.history.com/classroom/guides/

Fordham’s “Modern History Sourcebook” is useful for additional source materials on the history of the European nations who sent voyages of exploration across the Atlantic:

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/modsbook.html

The “Colonial North America” sections are helpful:

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/
modsbook07.html#Early%20Conquest%20and%20Exploitation

But the section on Latin America is much fuller than the one on North America, Remember, though, that this site is constantly expanding – check back for more entries:

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/modsbook08.html

The “Studying History” page, while aimed at college and graduate students, has an excellent choice of links for high school students (and their teachers) who need to learn more about the evaluation of documents, the field of historiography, and “Other Sources of Information” – a first-rate selection of reference Websites for anyone interested in history, economics, or the other social sciences.

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/modsbook01.html

Finally, you’ll find American Memory’s “Discovery and Exploration” section of their Maps collection for this issue, especially in conjunction with our Interactive maps feature

http://memory.loc.gov /a mmem /gmdhtml/dsxphome.html

Resources for Ted Widmer's Introductory Essay

Books:

This book provides more background on Waldseemüller and his famous map:

Urness, Carol Louise. Waldseemüller's Globe and Planisphere of 1507. Minneapolis: James Ford Bell Library, 1999.

The essay on Jamestown in this issue provides a wide variety of books and Internet resources for this English settlement. I’ll refer you to them rather than repeat any titles.

For the controversy over celebrating Columbus’s “discoveries“ in 1992, see:

Summerhill, Stephen J., and Williams, John Alexander. Sinking Columbus: Contested History, Cultural Politics, and Mythmaking during the Quincentenary. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2000.

While the “Atlantic World” is one of the most popular concepts in the study of European exploration and development of the Western Hemisphere, there aren’t many booklength studies dealing with the topic in a broad way. One exception is:

Elliott, John Huxtable. Empires Of The Atlantic World: Britain And Spain In America, 1492-1830. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006.

There are, however, several fine collections of essays dealing with the subject. You may want to look at these:

Armitage, David Armitage, and Michael J. Braddick, eds. The British Atlantic World, 1500-1800. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002.

Kagan, Richard L., and Parker, Geoffrey, eds. Spain, Europe, and the Atlantic World: Essays in Honour of John H. Elliott. New York: Cambridge, 1995.

Klooster, Wim, and Alfred Padula, eds. The Atlantic World: Essays On Slavery, Migration, And Imagination. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson/Prentice Hall, 2005.

Here are some print editions of translations of Columbus’s “Letter” and journals that you may want to consult:

The Columbus Letter, 1493-1953. Williamstown, MA: Chapin Library, Williams College, 1953.

The Columbus Letter Of 1493; A Facsimile Of The Copy In The William L. Clements Library, With A New Translation Into English . Ann Arbor, MI: Clements Library Associates, 1952. Facsimiles and translations of copies of the printed document owned by these two libraries.

Dunn, Oliver, and James E. Kelley, Jr., transl. and eds. The Diario of Christopher Columbus's First Voyage to America, 1492-1493. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1989.

Cohen, J. M. Cohen, transl. and ed. The Four Voyages of Christopher Columbus; Being His Own Log-Book, Letters and Dispatches with Connecting Narrative Drawn from the Life of the Admiral by his Son Hernando Colon and Other Contemporary Historians. Harmondsworth: Penguin. 1969.

Cummins, John, transl. and ed. The Voyage Of Christopher Columbus: Columbus' Own Journal of Discovery / Newly Restored And Translated. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992.

Jane, Cecil, transl. and ed. The Four Voyages of Columbus: A History in Eight Documents, Including Five by Christopher Columbus, in the Original Spanish, with English Translations. New York: Dover Publications, 1988.

You may also want to look at this book, published in conjunction with the WGBH television series:

Dor-Ner, Zvi. Columbus and the Age of Discovery. London: HarperCollins, 1992

Resources for Ted Widmer's Introductory Essay

Websites:

I hope you and your students will want to learn more about the Waldseemüller map, recently purchased by the Library of Congress. This press release gives background on this acquisition:

http://www.loc.gov/today/pr/2001/01-093.html

Images of the twelve panels of the Waldseemüller map are reproduced, not surprisingly, as part of American Memory’s “Maps” unit. I can’t find a quick and easy direct link to save my soul, so I’ll suggest you go to their “Discovery and Exploration” search screen and type in “Walseemuller”:

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/gmdhtml/dsxphome.html

You’ll find plenty of online resources for Jamestown’s 400 th birthday with our essay on that subject. There are already some lively Websites ready for the other North American cities celebrating the 400 th anniversaries of their settlement in the next two years. You might want to start with the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. Even though the Museum in Washington is closed now for renovations, they’ve mounted a traveling exhibition on the 400 th anniversaries of Jamestown, Quebec, and Santa Fe.

http://americanhistory.si.edu/exhibitions/exhibition.cfm?key=38&exkey=997

There’s a very good online exhibition for those of you who can’t visit one of the sites:

http://americanhistory.si.edu/exhibitions/
small_exhibition.cfm?key=1267&exkey=244

For Quebec City’s 2008 celebration, I’d recommend these: 

http://www.myquebec2008.com/en/ 

http://www.ville.queb ec.qc.ca/en/400_anniversaire/index.shtml

Don’t miss this “Virtual Museum of New France,” already up and running at the Canadian Museum of Civilization:

http://www.civilization.ca/vmnf/vmnfe.asp

You can expect comparable Internet sources for Santa Fe as that official celebration approaches. We’ll keep you posted.

You’ll find this website on “Christopher Columbus and the Age of Discovery” at Millersville University a good general resource:

http://muweb.millersville.edu/~columbus/

The Library of Congress mounted an online version of its 1992 exhibition on Columbus’s voyages more than fifteen years ago. It’s very sparse by 21 st century standards, but worth a look:

http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/1492/

WGBH, Boston’s public television channel, broadcast a seven-part series commemorating the Columbian celebrations in 1992. The station also published an Activity Guide (1992) to accompany the documentary. Both the Activity Guide and the VHS tapes are no longer in print or available for sale, but you may be able to borrow it through inter-library loan if your own library doesn’t own them:

Columbus and the Age of Discovery . Princeton, NJ: Films for the Humanities & Sciences, Inc., 1991.

As for the Columbus “letter”, you have a choice of online translations, one at the University of Southern Maine Website, the other, at the University of Virginia:

http://www.usm.maine.edu/~maps/ columbus/translation.html

http://www.uvawise.edu/history/wciv1/civ1ref/colum.htm

The special libraries mentioned in the essay all have Websites. The John Carter Brown Library at Brown University, which Ted Widmer directs, has this page for its electronic resources:

http://www.brown.edu/Facilities/John_Carter_Brown_Library/
pages/fr_electronic.html

Most of the offerings there are a bit advanced for your classroom teaching, although you may find something useful in the “JCB’s” “Archive of Early American Images”:

http://www.brown.edu/Facilities/John_Carter_Brown_Library/
pages/ea_hmpg.html

Be warned, though that it may take time and effort to get into this virtual archive. You will have to download the Insight Browser, available at the above site, to view the library’s impressive image collection.

The Newberry Library in Chicago has its own Website:

http://www.newberry.org/

With a section that will be invaluable in using this issue’s interactive section maps – “Historic Maps in k-12 Classrooms”:

http://www.newberry.org/k12maps/

The Huntington Library’s excellent “Library Lesson Plans” don’t yet include anything relevant to “discovery,” but check back from time to time. Meanwhile, look at this Website for other topics:

http://www.huntington.org/Education/less4lib.html#TAH

A new exhibition at the Huntington, “Legacies and Legends: Images of Indians from Four Centuries” has a good online presence:

http://www.huntington.org/Information/legacylegend.htm

For more information on Pope Benedict’s remarks in Brazil, see this International Herald Tribune article:

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/05/14/america/LA-GEN-Pope-Brazil.php

The Wikipedia entry on the “Atlantic World” is a good basic introduction to this historiographical concept:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_world

And don’t miss the “Resources” page of the Website for the International Seminar on the History of the Atlantic World at Harvard:

http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~atlantic/resrce.htm