European Colonization of America and Its Assessment in the 21st Century

Abstract

The current essay introduces the thematic issue of the journal, which includes articles by A.V. Kalyuta, G.V. Alexandrov, A.V. Grinёv, A.V. Zorin and S.A. Isaev. The paper briefly reviews the content and chronological framework of their articles. In addition, the introductory article analyzes recent trends in the study of European colonization of the New World in American social scholarship with a special emphasis on how political correctness affects the presentation of that theme. This problem has become especially urgent in light of the acute political crisis that gripped the United States after the death of the black repeat offender George Floyd in May 2020 after he was detained by the police. A wave of demonstrations of protest against racial discrimination, police violence, accompanied by acts of vandalism, including against historical monuments, swept across the country. A new wave of demands arose to revise colonial history in the spirit of political correctness, including in relation to the history of Russian America, which was reflected in the debate about the monument to the first ruler of the Russian colonies, Alexander Baranov, in Sitka, Alaska. In recent years, the author of the introductory article has repeatedly had to deal with manifestations of such historical revisionism, and in this article he expounds his view on this problem, using material on the ethnohistory of Russian colonies in the New World.