Ugh, been working three days on a thesis!?

Question

My nine page essay on the first explorers of America is due Monday. The past three days I haven't been able to write a thing because I'm stuck on a thesis, in my opinion, the hardest part of the essay. I wanted it to be: The determination of the people from around the world set the groundwork for our nation.

How does that sound? I started having trouble proving my thesis. Informing my readers about the explorers and the places they claimed...a cinch. But what am I supposed to write about how they set the groundwork? All they did was discover land and claim it for other countries...no motive to make a great independant nation.

Should I change my thesis yet again?!

Answer 1

That is a great thesis. Although they did "just discover ground" they opened up the doorway to many great things and I think you could use that as "your doorway" to talk about what they made possible. Here's an example:

Henry Hudson, an Englishman, "discovered" Manhattan and the Hudson River for the Dutch (interesting in itself to history geeks like me) but he opened up a new frontier that very shortly brought America's First District Attorney.

Read a little more on this at:

http://colonial-america.suite101.com/article.cfm/the_quiet_dutch_colonial_influence

Other examples:

Amerigo Vespucci - The most unknown namesake of the most well known and influential country in World History.

Juan Ponce de Leon - First to search for the fountain of youth in Florida, unknowingly starts a trend that is still going strong today almost 500 years later. (Florida is one of the most popular destinations for Seniors in America and all over the world, looking for that spark of youth in their later years.)

You can take this and run with it now!

Answer 2

No your thesis is fine. The explorers paved the way for the future settlement and creation of a new nation.
Expand on what areas the different explorers opened up. What countries were interested in the new lands. This all speaks to your thesis and should give you plenty for a nine page paper.

Answer 3

Your thesis is fine. You're thinking to hard. The groundwork that they set doesn't have to be political-philosophical, it can just be the fact that they discovered the lands that would become America. So just talk about who they were and what they discovered. It should be pretty easy, like you said, to come up with enough explorers to fill 9 pages.

Answer 4

Hang on, weren't the first explorers of America the ones who came across the Bering Strait?
They've left little but a minimum of archaelogical evidence and a genetic history, but they were first. (see below)

Unless you slip in The First *European* Explorers of America.
(You know, the ones that were wearing the right sort of clothing, and got their tales in the papers.)
Niagara Falls was known about long before a European ever saw it, but still in slighty casual histories, Etienne Brûlé and Father Louis Hennepin get mentioned, as though the land was empty of humanity before that.

As for their motives : that those varied is fine.
Many a result was not the objective sought.
Columbus was not out to prove the world round, (old exploded myth) but he was after Eastern spice.
The result of seeking the North-West passage was the Hudson's Bay Company?
Making a country may well have come second to making a name, or a fortune, to some.

Answer 5

Look up Pierre La Salle... he discovered the Mississippi river and his life story is told in several BOOKS... you won't find them for FREE on the internet and you may not even find them in most libraries but if you can locate any of the books, you will find he is very interesting.

Also look up Cortez. He was the FIRST European to explore AmeriKa... and he explored all the way from Mexico City to the West Coast of AmeriKa and spent the winter in New Mexico

Look up Fray Santa Maria... the first religious martyr in the new world

Look up Lewis and Clark

Look up the Santa Fe Trail

There is a lot out there if you just LOOK IT UP.