After Columbus

This volume comprises a new collection of essays--four previously unpublished--by James Axtell author of the acclaimed The European and the Indian and The Invasion Within: The Contest of Cultures in Colonial North America and the foremost contemporary authority on Indian-European relations in Colonial North America. Arguing that moral judgements have a legitimate place in the writing of history Axtell scrutinizes the actions of various European invaders--missionaries traders soldiers and ordinary settlers--in the sixteenth century. Focusing on the interactions of Spanish French and English colonists with American Indians over the eastern half of the United States he examines what the history of colonial America might have looked like had the New World truly been a virgin land devoid of Indians.