Explorers

Thèmes abordés

Anglais, explorer, coloniser, Christopher Colombus, discovery of America

Résumé du document

Today, we tend to praise explorers (such as Christopher Colombus, Thomas Cook or Vasco de Gama) for their discoveries and actions, but what do you think of the figure of the "explorer" ? What difference do you make between "explorer" and "coloniser" ? Justify your point of view.

Extraits

[...] For the Natives, the "discovery" of America is the beginning of a harsh, painful story for their people, that led to numerous atrocities and massacres by the European colonisers. Thus, one can ask itself, of where the difference lies between an explorer and a coloniser. Indeed, the myth of the explorer is a very important one in the European mind. The occidental history has been built on discoveries and conquests, since Alexander the Great, who lead his armies from Macedonia to India, to Neil Armstrong, who pushed the border of exploration even further. [...]

[...] Exploration missions are very costly and were usually funded by states who had pragmatic goals behind it. These goals could vary from national prestige to formal colonisation. Christopher Columbus was sent on a mission with economic goals, which were to find a new navigation road to India, but his discovery lead to a race to exploration and colonisation between, the United Kingdom, France, Spain and Portugal. The early stages of the discovery of America were not about colonising these lands, more about exploring them and converting the indigenous people to Christianity, but it eventually led to brutality and predation, with violent explorers such as Cortes, whose exploration of South America ended by burning down the city of Tenochtitlan and putting an end to the Aztec Empire. [...]