ABSTRACT
F ive years ago, I maintained that the impact on the Old World ofthe discovery of the New was in many respects both disappoint-ingly muted and slow in materializing. In reaching this conclusion I found that one of my greatest difficulties was that of measurement. How can we assess whether, relatively speaking, Renaissance Europe was quick or slow, receptive or unreceptive, in its cultural and intellectual response to the discovery of a new world and new peoples quite beyond the range of its expectations and experience? What criteria, if any, do we have for measuring the speed and effectiveness of a society's response to the presence of another with totaDy alien ways?
