Nicolas Shump: Time editors practice bad history
[Nicolas Shump is a doctoral student in American studies at The University of Kansas. ]
When I received my copy of the May 7, 2007, issue of Time magazine, I found myself both angered and amused by the cover. It reads, “America at 400: How Jamestown colony made us who we are.”
Doing the quick math, I realized this particular origin myth places the beginning of America at the founding of the Jamestown colony in 1607. Although I doubt this is their intention, the Time editors are continuing to perpetuate a myth many historians, especially Western and Southwestern historians, and Latin American scholars would hotly dispute. At the time these English settlers landed in what is now Virginia, fellow European settlers, primarily Spanish and Portuguese, had been in the “New World” for more than a century. While these hardy immigrants struggled through harsh weather, famine and occasional attacks from the indigenous people whose territory they encroached upon, the Spanish in Mexico, Florida and in what eventually became the American Southwest had been living and thriving in their colonial outposts.
Universities had been established in Mexico and Peru, and these Spanish colonists, with assistance of Franciscan and Jesuit religious orders, had been educating and acculturating the native populations in their colonies.
Time is practicing bad history and attempting to create a shared history, or what the historian Benedict Anderson terms an “imagined community,” metaphorically represented by this Jamestown colony.
The historian Richard Brookhiser opens this cover story with an essay titled “Inventing America.” I don’t believe Brookhiser makes a compelling case for the English “inventing America,” especially when other Europeans had been occupying this continent for nearly a hundred years prior to the arrival of the English to “America.”
Brookhiser and others are perpetuating the notion that this land had no history or sense of identity before the imposition of British culture in colonial Virginia. The historical and cultural argument made by Brookhiser and the other contributors to this issue attempts to erase the historical presence of Pocahontas and other American Indians who lived in these lands thousands of years prior to Columbus’ voyage.
The reality is Brookhiser’s version of America is a regional one limited to the eastern coast of the American continent. As we enter fully into the 21st century and the third century of our national history, we would be well served to remember that “America” is a continent, not merely a country.
As José Martí notes in his famous essay “Our America:” “The present generation is carrying industrious America along the road enriched by their sublime fathers; from Río Grande to the Straits of Magellan, the Great Semí, astride its condor, is spreading the seed of the new America over the romantic nations of the continent and the sorrowful islands of the sea!”
Read entire article at Topeka, KS Capital-Journal blog
When I received my copy of the May 7, 2007, issue of Time magazine, I found myself both angered and amused by the cover. It reads, “America at 400: How Jamestown colony made us who we are.”
Doing the quick math, I realized this particular origin myth places the beginning of America at the founding of the Jamestown colony in 1607. Although I doubt this is their intention, the Time editors are continuing to perpetuate a myth many historians, especially Western and Southwestern historians, and Latin American scholars would hotly dispute. At the time these English settlers landed in what is now Virginia, fellow European settlers, primarily Spanish and Portuguese, had been in the “New World” for more than a century. While these hardy immigrants struggled through harsh weather, famine and occasional attacks from the indigenous people whose territory they encroached upon, the Spanish in Mexico, Florida and in what eventually became the American Southwest had been living and thriving in their colonial outposts.
Universities had been established in Mexico and Peru, and these Spanish colonists, with assistance of Franciscan and Jesuit religious orders, had been educating and acculturating the native populations in their colonies.
Time is practicing bad history and attempting to create a shared history, or what the historian Benedict Anderson terms an “imagined community,” metaphorically represented by this Jamestown colony.
The historian Richard Brookhiser opens this cover story with an essay titled “Inventing America.” I don’t believe Brookhiser makes a compelling case for the English “inventing America,” especially when other Europeans had been occupying this continent for nearly a hundred years prior to the arrival of the English to “America.”
Brookhiser and others are perpetuating the notion that this land had no history or sense of identity before the imposition of British culture in colonial Virginia. The historical and cultural argument made by Brookhiser and the other contributors to this issue attempts to erase the historical presence of Pocahontas and other American Indians who lived in these lands thousands of years prior to Columbus’ voyage.
The reality is Brookhiser’s version of America is a regional one limited to the eastern coast of the American continent. As we enter fully into the 21st century and the third century of our national history, we would be well served to remember that “America” is a continent, not merely a country.
As José Martí notes in his famous essay “Our America:” “The present generation is carrying industrious America along the road enriched by their sublime fathers; from Río Grande to the Straits of Magellan, the Great Semí, astride its condor, is spreading the seed of the new America over the romantic nations of the continent and the sorrowful islands of the sea!”