“while robbing the Indian’s territories not as conquerors, but as settlers.”
This is revision lies. I have traced to over 200 of my ancestors who came to New England prior to 1700. They BOUGHT land from the “Indians”. Then later the Indians turned around and slaughtered women and children on the land they had paid for without provocation, as they had been doing against neighboring tribes for thousands of years. If you had any actual history knowledge of how the first Indian war the Pequot war started, you wouldn’t write such nonsense. I have seen the original deeds, wills, and records. I even have a hand written account from an ancestor who was attacked by some “Indians”. You have no clue. Stop reading liberal BS, and read some real history.
I am not surprised that you resort to quoting a barely known modern liberal professor of UCSB with strong Spanish ties, in retort to my quoting renowned historians from 19th century.
You can quote anything you want to tell me about the greatness of Latin America. I just laugh and shake my head. The fact remains the fruit of what Spain did is clearly visible. Please move to Honduras. The fruit of the reformers is plainly visible. America transformed the world toward liberty. If you cant see that, then again I encourage you to move. North Korea is a good option, but not South Korea we freed them, or did you forget that too.
Dear prophet, I don’t know the reason for your pathological fixation with Honduras. I am a proud American by choice, not by accident of birth. But, if you want to go to present times, beware that United States is rapidly following on the steps of Latin America embraced to discredited socialist schemes.
The theme we are debating is about the legacy of Catholic Spain in America during the discovery and evangelization of this hemisphere. Defies rationality to think that the first English colonists who were fleeing from religious persecution in Europe, had the means to buy land from the Indians.
You brought to the dialogue some very important and somewhat disturbing affirmations. The most choking was to affirm that John Calvin books exerted the strongest influence in the Founding Fathers ideology. Hopefully, John Adams opinion of Calvin was not necessarily shared by most of the other Founding Fathers.
I do not see any bragging about the United States Calvinist roots. Another manipulation of History is that when they refer to the Pilgrims they affirm that they came from Europe fleeing religious persecution instead of specifying that were fleeing from Protestant religious persecution leaving in the lector the implication that they were fleeing from the Catholic Inquisition.
Short of valid arguments, dear prophet, you try to put in doubt the scholarship of a respected American historian; but in the article are the chronicles of a first class witness who visited most the hemisphere in the XVIII century, the worldwide known Protestant German naturalist and founder of modern Geography, Alexander Von Humboldt.
By the end of the 18th century Humboldt declared: “The work of the mines” -he pointed out- “is absolutely free in the whole kingdom of New Spain; no Indian, no Mestizo, can be forced to work in the mines. It is absolutely untrue that the Court of Madrid sent convicts to America to make them work in the gold and silver mines...This policy was in striking contrast with that of England in her North American colonies. The transportation of English felons to America was also a practice of the British Government... in some instances felons were not the only involuntary emigrants from England whose labor was appropriated.
Towards the end of the 18th century it became common practice for captains of English and Dutch vessels to entice ignorant peasants from England, Ireland and Germany, by flattering promises of wealth, to accompany them to America, where they had no sooner arrived than they were sold as bondsmen to defray the cost of their passage and entertainment.”
After visiting Mexico in 1803, Humboldt maintained: “No city of the New Continent, not even excepting those of the United States, can display such great and solid scientific establishments as the capital of Mexico. The capital and several other cities have scientific establishments, which will bear a comparison with those of Europe... Instruction is communicated gratis at the Academy of Fine Arts and hundreds of young students without consideration of rank, color, and race, were confounded; we see the Indian and the Mestizo sitting beside the white, and the son of a poor artisan in emulation with the children of the great lords of the country...No European government has sacrificed greater sums to advance the knowledge of the vegetal kingdom than the Spanish government...All these researches have not only enriched science with more than four thousand of new species of plants, but have also contributed to diffuse a taste for natural history among the inhabitants of the country.”
Why don’t you then have an open mind to accept undisputed historical facts? In regard to the importance given to science by the Crown of Spain we must take notice of the fact that “a medical school was opened at the University of Mexico 204 years before Harvard, and began the study of anatomy and surgery, with dissection, eighty six years before William Hunter opened the first school of dissection in England.”
According to American historian Francis C. Kelley Kelley at the end of the Spanish rule “Mexico was so full of schools and colleges for boys and girls, for handicrafts, trades, and arts of all kinds, as to justify a sweeping statement: Up to that day there never had been a country on the face of the earth that in so short a time had done so much in an educational way. When the circumstances of time and conditions surrounding the effort and the obstacles to be overcome, are considered, history presents no finer record of educational achievement and success.”
To recognize the great achievements of the Spanish colonization do not demerits at all the even greater achievements of the American colonies once they were free from British bondage.