ABSTRACT
America, as a self-contained national entity, was first conceived by immigrants. But the understanding that early immigrants had of America, as well as the images and possibilities that they foresaw, were the outgrowth of a long process of historical invention that began in the fifteenth century. That understanding was shaped not by the “discovery” of America by Christopher Columbus in 1492, but rather by the realization that what Columbus had come across was, to Europeans, a huge, unexpected, and unknown landmass in the middle of the ocean somewhere between Spain and the east coast of Asia. The initial problem with discovering America as a separate and unique continent, as a “new world,” was that it challenged the Catholic Church’s view of the geographic limits of the known world.
