Blog #5: International Relations: Final Readings on Columbus

 International Relations: Final Readings on Columbus


In our last class on International Relations, our class was tasked with discussing the book “The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other” by Tzvetan Todorov. The book talks about the conquest and colonization of the native people of the Americas by the Spaniards soon after they found the Americas. The beginning chapters of the book discuss the initial findings of the Spanish when they first came upon the Americas. The Spanish immediately noticed how rich America was with resources, stating that gold and silver were found in abundance. In addition to this, the Spanish noticed the rich and different landscape of the Americas with high mountains and beautiful valleys. Lastly, the Spanish noticed the difference among the native people of the land who had different cultures, features, traditions, and languages. As the book begins to progress, the chapters then begin to get into the psychology and thinking of the Spanish while slowly beginning to establish the thought of settling in the Americas.


I think this book offers a lot of insight for the course of International Relations, and this is a concept that we were able to go into detail about in our group discussion. The purpose of international relations is to seek to understand “encounters of differences across boundaries”. With this being said, the Spanish conquest of the Americas is a good historical event that demonstrates the purpose of the field of international relations. To begin with, we established the fact that the Spanish accidentally came across the Americas, but thought they were in India ( which is part of the reasons Native Americans were reviewed as Indians). There is a misconception that Columbus was the first person to discover the Americas; however, this is not true because the Native Americans already lived and were established in the Americas. Next, the initial writings of the findings offer interesting insights into how the Spanish saw and first interacted with the Native Americans who were considered “the other ''. Through several writings, we see the Spanish not understanding the Native Americans as their own people and therefore coming up with bias to justify their actions of enslaving and taking from the Native Americans. Lastly, moving past the information given to us by the book, Columbus and the Spanish conquest of the Americas had a huge impact on the world. Columbus’ journeys to America established trade between Europe and the Americas and opened the door for other European countries to colonize and exploit resources and the people of the Americas. In this way, I think the book was a good historical example of international relations occurring on a global level and the relevance this holds. 


I think one thing I would have liked to see more of with this book would be a more modern interpretation of Columbus in the specific field of International Relations. How would the world address a nation that is trying to colonize another nation? Would the world interfere and if so what global systems would be utilized to protect a nation from being colonized, especially if they are outside and distanced from more modern European and Westernized ways of dealing with politics, security, and power? I think society set norms, and by doing so establishes an idea of what is right and wrong. With this being said, how has ideas of what is right and wrong changed or stayed the same on a global level?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Blog post 5

Implications of Diplomatic Risk Game  The Diplomatic Risk Game provided valuable insight as to how international political decisions are executed, morevor what leaders place emphasis on when choosing their political strategies. In a fictional game, the chosen leaders and diplomats were not concerned with the true implicit and explicit costs of war, rather, the focus was on total dominance in resources. Similarly, as Russia's invasion of Ukraine continues to progress it can be seen that leaders like Vladimir Putin operate under those same principles.  In principle, war should operate as it did throughout the Risk Game: two nations that cannot reach an agreement go to war and the dominant nation will emerge victorious. The Risk Game allows its players to focus solely on the international dynamics and their corresponding power changes emerging post-war. In order to settle a conflict,  “both the defender and the attacker roll X dice, where X is the amount of units they ...
Read more

POLS 170 Blog Post (1)

          International Relations realism, International Relations Liberalism, and Constructivism were very apparent in the time leading up to World War I and the time period immediately succeeding it. There were many reasons for the outbreak of WWI, however, one of the major reasons was the  European powers’ building up their respective militaries. As each nation saw another improving upon a facet of its military, it began looking for ways to counter it. This was very apparent in both Germany and England engaging in a massive build up of their navies, in order to ensure that in the event of war, they would have control over the oceans. Every nation saw a build up of forces in another as a threat to its own security, thus ultimately leading to the events of WWI. Also importantly during this time period, in terms of IR realism, was the colonization of territory across the world by European powers, significantly in Africa. European nations saw how resour...
Read more

BLOG 4

   Blog #4 Max Gilbert Elon Musk and Twitter: An Unlikely, Yet Sound Partnership      As of recently, and specifically this morning, Elon Musk seems to be on the precipice of buying the social media platform Twitter for roughly 46.5 billion dollars, and taking the company private. In total, Musk is worth more than two hundred and eighty billion dollars, and is most known for electric car company Tesla, and space exploration venture "Space X." Amidst this corporate drama, there remains the question of why does he want to buy twitter, what's in it for Musk? To begin with, he has spoken about the platform's harsh moderation of content, and free-speech, and would most definitely lessen those restrictions if purchased. Furthermore, Twitter as a whole has not capitalized on it's larger than life user base, and is notoriously dysfunctional. Musk would bring a fresh mindset to the table, and provide a more in-touch view, and perspective of younger generations.  ...
Read more