Answer to Question #232244 in History for Tshidi

Question

What difficulties do historians encounter in using Columbus’ journals and 16^th-century European engravings as sources for understanding the encounter between European explorers and indigenous peoples of the New World c. 1492 (The Americas)? How would you advise historians to approach these sources?

Use evidence to support your answer, from the journal extract of Christopher Columbus provided, and from the engravings on pp. 288, 303 and 305 of Stuart Hall, “The West and the Rest”. 

Answer 1

The historians face the challenge of reconstructing the past ideas that past historians and Columbus has stipulated. Historians are challenged by the complexity of the world, and thus seek to use their knowledge of the past to help solve the problems of the present. The questions that can confront the historian are endless, and serious historians thus face the challenge of choosing a viable topic. Intensive research about these facts is required to enable the historians eliminate the prevailing confusion in their information .Colonization ruptured many ecosystems, bringing in new organisms while eliminating others. The Europeans brought many diseases with them that decimated Native American populations. Colonists and Native Americans alike looked to new plants as possible medicinal resources.