As long as there have been empires, there have been buzzwords used to support them, and justify their conquests. The Romans, Assyrians, Ottomans, British… you name ‘em, they gave some bs excuse about bringing civilization or some such. Indeed, if you look through the papers left from the colonial powers that established empires in North […]
When it comes to the topic of comparative colonialism, France is a strange case. Up until 1795, it was the most populous country in Europe, with an assumed total of 20 million people living with its borders in the seventeenth-century.1 Yet, their colony of New France would never number more than about 25,000 European inhabitants […]
Today I’d like to start a series of articles based on an idea I’ve had floating around my head since college. I’m not sure how original this thesis truly is, but I find it interesting nonetheless, and thought it could be a fun way to spend a month or so of research. So, in this […]
In today’s post, I want to talk about a ceremony performed by the Native American peoples of what is now southern Ontario. The most well known participants in this ceremony were the Wendat, labeled as the Huron by contemporary Europeans and subsequent historians until rather recently. This ceremony is known as the Feast of the […]
To be honest, this post may be more one sided than I would like, but with my limited resources, there’s only so much I can do. During my stint in graduate school, I studied the intersection of colonialism, imperialism, and religion. So, naturally, I became interested in the Jesuits. My research in grad school was […]
In November 1698, a group of five Scottish ships landed in an eastern bay of Panama. Their mission, code name the Darien Scheme: found a colony that could compete with British trading companies and Spanish hegemony in Central America. They called their colony Caledonia, with the capital New Edinburgh. Ever heard of this colony? ‘Cause […]
Hernan Cortes, his band of merry war criminals, and their Mesoamerican allies completed the conquest of the Aztec Empire in 1521. After taking control of Tenonchtitlan, the Aztec capital, and turning it into Mexico city, the Spanish faced the problem of cementing their control over this vast new territory. Despite their military victories over Montezuma’s […]
Growing up in America, you learn about the story Pocahontas, and how she eventually traveled to London with her English husband John Rolfe. And you’re almost led to believe that her life, and ultimate death, in England was a singular event, that she represented an aberration in historical patterns, and that she was the only […]
I want to dedicate this post to Leif Erikson and his voyage to North America. While the Vikings lived and thrived about half a millennium before my usual topics, they nonetheless embodied all the characteristics of later European colonial powers – sailing prowess, strong military forces, and the desire to conquer and colonize. Indeed, if […]
REV. FATHER BARTH. JACQUINOT: “I also wanted to go, and hear the confession of a Bengalese, who had been wounded, and had sent for me. He is a young man brought from the East Indies, who had been converted to Christianity in France, and has been passing the winter here with us. I saw him, […]