Date:         Sun, 31 May 1998 19:36:42 -0400
Reply-To:     Geography <GEOGRAPH@SEGATE.SUNET.SE>
Sender:       Geography <GEOGRAPH@SEGATE.SUNET.SE>
From:         Yaïves Ferland <Yaives.Ferland@SCG.ULAVAL.CA>
Subject:      Re: The American Continent(s) ?
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

Hello Barry,

I respond and comment on your embarrassment about North and South Americas.
The voice comes from the North. For sure, the first geographical concept of
'continent' can't be geological, but rather historical, cultural, political
and even linguistical. Continents as parts of the known world existed far
before geologists identified tectonic plates. Even if North and South
Americas are different plates, grosso modo, there are other ones in America.
Where can you place a clear limit between N. and S. american plates? Are not
the Rockies, the Sierra Madre, and the Andes a same continental 'spine'
along the subduction of the Pacific seafloor? How do you consider the cases
of Greenland, Hawaii, Bering Sea, Antilles and Bahamas in your two-term
classification of America? You cannot just declare: 'those are not
continental parts of America!' Because Japan, the Phillipines, Papuasia,
Tasmania, Sri Lanka, Madagascar, Cyprus, Great Britain, Ireland and Iceland
are all countries being parts of some continent, whatever the geology says.
Despite British continue today to call Europe 'the Continent', at the end of
the chunnel, they try to mean that they are not a part of it! Otherwise, at
the antipode, there is a continent named 'Oceania'. So-so. Perhaps, America
as a whole is not just a continent. Or the word 'continent' is another
ill-defined term, so current disease in geography.

Now, remember which part of America was 'discovered' first, and how it was
named so fifteen years later, by a french cartographer in Lorraine (Vautrin
Lud) like if it was the feminized latin first name of an Italian (Amerigo
Vespucci) travelling for the Spaniards along Venezuela shorelines. At that
time, America occured as the name of what obviously appeared to be a
'continent', a huge mass of land, and not 'just islands'. Right? Everything
there on the opposite side of the Atlantic was 'the America' for every
nations in Europe, and this was true for centuries to come. Particularly
about their own peculiar colonies. It is the only rational reason why the
british but newly independent colonies confiscated the name to designate
themselves, as a very distinctive whole from all other states that were not
united to them. They did this despite there were other british colonies or
provinces (Upper and Lower Canada, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, Jamaica, the
Bahamas) that then refused to join the party, two centuries ago.

Since that epoch, in the Old World, and much more after spanish colonies got
independence, the name of America alone finally signifies the USA only, just
because USA has no proper name (amazing, isn't it?), and 'the Americans'
being the name of only one nation in America! Since 'United States'
qualified America, everything and all the rest needs also to be specified or
qualified: Latin (peoples speaking latin languages, even Chicanos, floridian
Cubanos, Puerto-ricans in the mainland,...), French (used today as a
cultural scheme only), South (as opposite to North, whatever the limits),
Central (i.e. South of the Rio Bravo/Rio Grande political border), Meso-
(all the lands and islands around the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico),...
That is to mean that qualified parts of the whole denote kinds of secundary
or unessential zones of the America, not standing properly by themselves.
Maybe the most successful attempt to qualify a part of the America as an
entity was both cultural and linguistical: the phrase 'Latin America' was
said first by Napoleon III, before invading Mexico, but it didn't concern
french speaking Quebec (Lower Canada), neither today. Otherwise, it made a
clear distinction to secure politically the english speaking North American
governments, at time of Civil War. I perfectly well understand why your
latino students react so vehemently, they cannot accept nor recognize their
homeland has to be put apart by the North, they conveniently believe their
own country is directly concerned by the whole and undisputable America,
since the name was applied to them first. I do think so, too. They knows
that the Monroe doctrine was about all America, as a justification for USA
interventions against any colonial countries in american affairs, meaning
both the affairs of the USA and the affairs of the newly independant
countries in the south and the west (Mexico including Texas and California),
but the british presence in the north (actually in Canada and Oregon) was
still considered correct and indisputable, after the failed invasions in
1812-14. In 1867, Parliament of Westminster created a confederative regime
between four of its colonies, that was called the Dominion of Canada, by the
mean of: 'The British North America Act'.

I was born and I went to school in Quebec and my language is the French; I
always been taught that there are three Americas: North (i.e.
English-speaking America plus us in Quebec, Canada), South at the south of
the Canal of Panama, and Central that is everything between previous ones,
from Trinidad to Mexico. At the same time, there were five parts in the
world : Europe, Asia, Africa, America and Oceania, a sixth one being the
Antarctica. Then, the topic is purely conventional and divisions remain
perpetually problematic: what are the arguments for divisions and
classifications? Mexicans are not Norte-Americanos because they speak
officially Spanish, but the case is changing only since NAFTA. Does Panama
in North or South America, or both, due to the Canal, and who care? Could
you say that Creole cuisine is north-american? Brazilians never accept to be
confused with all other spanish-speaking countries, thus even the Latin
(supposed to be a cultural sphere) or Southern subdivisions of America sound
as very suspect phrases; at that game, why Brazil could not consider itself
as a cultural sub-'continent', barely smaller than Europe and larger than
Australia or the Empire of India (before 1947)?

Thus, as North America & South America were initially the same 'continent'
with unclear limits, the differences emerged for a question of population,
culture, politics, language and history, to support an argument that was for
war, for commerce or for geological prospection. America is one, but
qualified Americas were defined further, for various reasons; they are
rarely mutually exclusive, this is a false 'problem' that, I presume, all
geographers are aware of. It is like discussing wholes and parts, little
boxes in the larger ones, or when somebody considers the western limits of
Asia: Urals? Ural river? Caucasus? Turkey? Middle East? Sinai?... The prime
answer remains always the same: it depends!

I hope these comments (and questions) will help you to make your mind in an
efficient way, and then to reconciliate yourself with your foreign students.
If you or other declare as a truth that there are two Americas, you just say
nothing more than a prejudiced opinion, sorry. But if you unconsequently
propose that there are two continental landmasses in America, you will get
complete approbation around the table just in looking at the map evidence.

Cordially,

Yaïves Ferland,
professional researcher
Land Law Lab
Center for research in Geomatics
Université Laval