L’Atlantique des Européens avant l’Amérique

This article surveys the contributions made by historiography to the chronology of exploration. It recalls the Mediterranean roots of European expansion. It underlines the influence of Aragonese practices in the realm of navigation, menial work, and the plantation system, transposed onto the Atlantic islands, then the American continent. The influence of the question of the purity of blood was in part responsible for the inferior status assigned to the black population, then to American Indians.