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Describes how the Europeans and Native Americans developed separate cultures, and discusses the consequences when the two cultures collided.

Professor Marshall C. Eakin of Vanderbilt University delivers twenty-four lectures examining both the unity and diversity in the early history of the Americas. He discusses how Christopher Columbus's voyage to the Americas in 1492 created a collision between three distinct peoples and cultures, European, African, and Native-American, and gave birth to the distinctive identity of the Americas today.

"The societies of the Americas emerge out of the collsion, convergence, and complex mixture of Native Americans, Europeans, and Africans. This process begin with the conquest of the sixteenth century, and its major features are complete and in place by about 1700. Ths collision and convergence provide all the American colonies (Spanish, Portuguese, English, French and Dutch) with some unity and common patterns of historical developments, as well as...