One was to emphasize the importance of the interactions, often violent, that occurred between the societies of the Americas, Africa, and Europe. Second, was to complicate the idea of a "new world". The Americas were not a new world to indigenous American civilizations. However, the colonial societies that became the independent nations of today did produce a civilization in the Americas that was neither American, European, nor African but a combination of all three. Should a narrative of colliding civilizations that includes violence, plunder, forced assimilation, etc. be how we think about the founding of the colonies that eventually became the United States? Why or why not?

Christopher Columbus came to America seeking the riches of the East Indies and ended up causing one of the greatest massacres in history. Epidemics, wars and famines followed the landing of the Spanish expedition in 1492. This process of colonization was undoubtedly a constant struggle of civilizations where the Europos clearly won the battle, The fact that the natives had descended from 65 to 5 million in the century and a half is scandalous and constitutes one of the insufficiently clarified enigmas in the History of America. We can classify it as ethnocide, comparing it to other great massacres of peoples in history. The conquest was the only stage in which the Spanish intentionally killed the Indians, but it is difficult to think that the conquerors, eight or ten thousand Spaniards and twenty or Thirty thousand Indians allied to them, would kill more than a million Indians, which would only represent 1.5% of the then existing Aboriginal population. The psychological impact of domination could have produced more deaths than the conquest, the psychological impact produced by domination, livestock expansion, compulsory indigenous work, epidemics, and miscegenation.