At the bottom of Mexican and Peruvian colonial societies were the indigenous peoples, known to Europeans as “Indians.”
It is shocking to me that even this long ago that Indians were seen as people in the bottom class, especially considering that they largely remained in the bottom even after the United States became a country.
But it also reminds us that human activity — the importation of deadly diseases to the Americas, in this case — also helped shape the climate, and that this has been true long before our current climate crisis.
It will be interesting to see how the future is impacted by the changes in the climate that is currently obviously a problem but has not yet had massive impacts like other climate issues in the past.
European innovations in mapmaking, navigation, sailing techniques, and ship design — building on earlier models from the Mediterranean, Indian Ocean, and Chinese regions — likewise enabled Europeans to penetrate the Atlantic Ocean.
One of the earliest themes that I have discovered early on in this course is the power behind mapmakers and how important mapmaking was throughout history.
Indeed, empire building has been largely discredited during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and “imperialist” has become a term of insult rather than a source of pride.
I have always found it interesting that historians tend to praise some leaders of the older empires such as Alexander the Great or Julius Cesar, but don't feel nearly as fond about recent leaders who have attempted to create an empire such as Hirohito or others who have attempted to do so.