The battle over America's origin story : legends, amateurs, and professional historiographers / Brian Regal.
Regal, Brian, author.
2022
E110
Available Online

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Title The battle over America's origin story : legends, amateurs, and professional historiographers / Brian Regal.
Author Regal, Brian, author.
ISBN 9783030995386 (electronic bk.)
3030995380 (electronic bk.)
9783030995379 (print)
3030995372
DOI https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99538-6
Published Cham : Palgrave Macmillan, 2022.
Language English
Description 1 online resource (ix, 325 pages)
Item Number 10.1007/978-3-030-99538-6 doi
Call Number E110
Dewey Decimal Classification 970.01
Summary This book examines the legends of who 'really' discovered America. It argues that histories of America's origins were always based less on empirical evidence and more on social, political, and cultural wish fulfillment. Influenced by a complex interplay of Nativist hatred of immigrants and Aboriginal people, as well as distrust of academic scholarship, these legends ebbed and flowed with changing conditions in wider American society. The book focuses on the actions of a collection of quirky, obsessed amateur investigators who spent their lives trying to prove their various theories by promoting Welsh princes, Vikings, Chinese admirals, Neo-lithic Europeans, African explorers, and others who they say arrived centuries before Columbus. These myths acted as mitigating agencies for those who embraced them. Along with recent scholarship, this book makes extensive use of archival materials -- some of which have never been employed before. It covers the period from the sixteenth century to the present. It brings together separate historiographic ideas to create a unified history rather than focusing on one particular legend as most books on the subject do. It shows how questions of who discovered America helped create the field of historical scholarship in this country. This book does not attempt to prove who discovered America, rather it tells the story of those who think they did. Brian Regal is Associate Professor of history at Kean University, USA.
Bibliography, etc. Note Includes bibliographical references and index.
Access Note Access limited to authorized users.
Source of Description Online resource; title from PDF title page (SpringerLink, viewed May 12, 2022).
Available in Other Form Print version: 9783030995379
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1. Introduction
2. Unforseen and Unforseeable
3. The Legend of Columbus
4. The Mound Builders
5. Saints Preserve Us
6. The Viking Theory
7. Norumbega
8. The Asia and Africa Theory
9. Stone Temple Pilots
10. The Native American Response
11. Nellie Horsford's Last Stand
12. Conclusion.

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