North America from Earliest Discovery to First Settlements: The Norse Voyages to 1612

The New American Nation Series

by David Beers Quinn

A detailed account of European discoveries, explorations, and settlement attempts in North America from the Viking voyages to the first successful colonies, discussing the Indian societies encountered by the Europeans and the newcomers' economic exploitation of North America

Genres: History, American History

621 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1977

About the author

David Beers Quinn was an Irish historian who wrote extensively on the voyages of discovery and colonisation of America. Born in Dublin, Ireland, he graduated from Queen's University, Belfast in 1931. He then completed a PhD on the early Tudor administration in Ireland at King's College London. He subsequently spent five years as lecturer at University College, Southampton (now Southampton University). Returning Belfast in 1939 he taught Irish history.

Reviews

[Miles · Rating 4 out of 5]

Harper & Row's New American Nation series, which consists of more than thirty volumes covering all of American history through the mid-20th century based as scholarly introductions largely covering secondary scholarship, must have been a pretty big undertaking when it was first published. While some volumes (The Impending Crisis: America Before the Civil War, 1848-1861, Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution 1863-1877) have become classics in American historiography, most of the volumes have either been surpassed in fifty-plus years of new scholarship and/or fallen into obscurity. David B. Quinn's volume on the discovery and exploration of the new United States (and Canada) belongs to the latter category, which is highly unfortunate, as this is a terrific synthesis for readers unfamiliar to the topic (like myself).

Quinn's book is not fast-moving - it's nearly 600 pages of small text and small spacing - but does a good job threading the line between being overly academic and so accessible as to forget to be a history book. Since this is a book covering a long period of time and many different sub-topics, Quinn centers the chapters thematically (and with useful titles that explain exactly what the chapter is about!) but with an understandable chronological tilt to the book's flow. The title is, however, misleading - aside from a brief discussion of Columbus' first visit, this book only focuses on the modern-day U.S. and Canada, excluding any discussion of the Caribbean and Mexico.

Where this volume shines is in Quinn's discussion of the voyages and explorations made by European explorers, largely French and Spanish but with some Englishmen tagging along later as well. Names such as Cartier, Narvaez, Soto, Roberval, and Coronado give us an insight into the early landscapes and indigenous cultures of both eastern and western north America. Quinn also gives vivid descriptions of the natives living in America at that time. They were not a monolith, with some (mainly along the St. Lawrence) being very open to trade and cohabitation with Europeans (see The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650 - 1815) while others (many in the modern south and southwest) were more hostile, with many of the tribes in modern Florida even attempting to enlist prospective settlers in their internecine conflicts against other tribes.

His general thesis, however, is that European discovery of the Americas was done for, and thrived on, exploitation of the American continent - consisting of both the native population and the land and resources. Some of these discussions are interesting (such as the way trade developed between natives and settlers) and some are not (extreme minutiae on the Newfoundland fisheries and the development of the fish trade). Put simply, from a contemporaneous view, exploration was high-risk and generally low-reward, and thus needed lucrative economic benefits to make the dangers of settlement valuable enough. Particularly interesting is the discussion of early Spanish settlements in Florida, which had many issues and were nearly abandoned before European conflicts led the Spanish to recognize the value of having an eastern settlement for defensive purposes. By the end of this volume's time period, each of the French, British, and Spanish had eastern settlements, but all were still tenuous and far from guaranteed successes.

In sum, this is an interesting book on a period difficult for researchers (many conclusions Quinn draws are largely the result of educated guesses) but extremely valuable to our understanding of the foundation of America. I would recommend this book for beginners on the topic, as I was before reading. I look forward to diving into the more specialized volumes in the series (Spain in America, France In America, The Indian in America) in the future.