Fall History & Heritage — #5 (week of October 10)

The following Q&Aand commentary come from our Almanac and America studies as indicated:

 Sir Walter Scott — (Almanac, Oct. 4)

The most popular writer of the 19th-century, this Scotsman (1771–1832) revived the pride and patriotism of his native land with near single-handedness?  He wrote novels, historical fiction, histories and biographies, epic poetry and legends:  an outpouring of imaginative creativity seldom equaled.  His Tales of a Scottish Grandfather (1828) surveyed the factual history of Scotland, not as a professional researcher would, but as a father relating the ways of his people to his son.

 James Whistler — (Almanac, Oct. 6)

Anative of industrial Lowell, MA, this portrait painter and etcher (1834–1903) spent much of his career in Europe and proved one of the most innovative artists of all time? His best known portraits include those of his mother, little ballerina Miss Cicely

Alexander, and Scottish scholarThomas Carlyle.  He made generous use of oriental styles and, later in life, turned to interior decoration, observing that “to live in art is a far more biblical notion than to merely pander to the critics and collecting classes.”

 Bartolome de Las Casas — (Bennettʼs America, vol.1, pp. 10-11)

In the 16th-century (1500s), this Spanish Dominican cleric (priest & bishop) became the leading advocate for humane treatment of the aboriginal peoples of the Caribbean?

He campaigned in both Spain and theAmericas against an abusive slave system and an expansive slave trade (though he stopped short of condemning all slavery per se). His writings told the history of Spanish colonial misrule, and his influence shaped legal reforms in the mother country (the “New Laws of the Indies,” 1542).

 Amerigo Vespucci — (America, vol. 1, p. 14)

TheAmericas are named after this early 16th-century Florentine navigator (d. 1512) who seemed to realize, early on, that Columbusʼs voyages had made contact not with Asia, but with a New World?  His accounts of that world (with all their exaggeration, fantasy, and shameless self-promotion) were published by German mapmaker Martin Waldseemuller in 1507.  It was Waldseemuller who attached the Florentineʼs name to the great landmass across the sea (west and south of Europe).

 Francis I — (America, vol.1, pp. 13-16)

When told that PopeAlexander VI had assigned the unexplored regions of the world to Spain and Portugal in his so-called “Line of Demarcation,” this 16th-century king of France asked to seeAdamʼs will “to learn how he had divided up the world!”?  The king saw to it that French claims in NorthAmerica were initiated by seamen Giovanni da Verrazano (1520s) and Jacques Cartier (1530s).  Still, French gains in the New World were meager and disappointing (there was no gold to speak of) till the 1600s.