Playing Catch Up.

The semester has barely begun and I seem to already being playing catch up...

Reading Reflection 1: Chapter 1 and 2 of The Americas: A Hemispheric History.

Chapter 1.
There were a couple of things from this chapter that I found particularly interesting and discussion worthy. Although I was not in class on 9/1 for good reason, I wish I could have been in there for the discussion and review. I very much liked this mornings discussion and look forward actively participating in the classes to come.

From the reading, I liked learning about the idea that there was once a "New World", a giant landmass that was known as the America, and that was the only thing known about it. Understanding today the magnitude of the Americas, I completely understand the fear instilled in the Old World. The end of page six and the first paragraph of page seven talks about the enormity of a completely new hemisphere. A quote that helped me grasp this concept was, "The idea that something as big and discrete as the "new world" lurked unseen, waiting to be discovered, seemed implausible to the Old World." This quote makes me appreciate those who were brave enough to set out and explore this seemingly dangerous and incomprehensible space.

"The unity of the hemisphere was imposed by imaginations that could barely suspect how enormous it was, or by the minds anxious to shrink it to manageable proportions, so that it could be easily skirted by merchants bound for the Oriental spiceries. Old World minds seems to resist the truth about American size and complexity. It took a long time for the reality of America to sink it"

I wonder to myself whether I would be able to pioneer to this new, scary place. If there were scientists today that claimed the moon was now inhabitable, how many people would think it was wrong, frightening, exciting or unnatural?

Another idea that I found interesting from this reading was the proposal that " ' America' is a term even elastic enough to extend beyond America, as ordinarily understood, into or across the Atlantic and Pacific". That quote just makes me think any piece of land close to us can be included as "America" and it could just keep growing and growing. It's interesting to think the whole hemisphere was not a part of The United States. The opportunity to expand and become a greater more power country was at hand and we didn't take it. Which Im a little confused about... because if we were moving we and becoming territorial and wanted land and the people that belonged to it, how did it not go further down into what is now South America or into Islands near the U.S? To finish up this entry about chapter 1 I'd like to include the quote that got me to thinking about this last paragraph as a whole.

" But in the Atlantic, what about Greenland and Bermuda? And if they are admitted as American, why not islands further out in the ocean? Some people think of Ireland as 'essentially an American country' that happens to lie on the wrong side of the Atlantic; this is not as daft as it seems at first, since Ireland shares some American historical experiences of British imperialism."