”What a renewal that would have been, what a restoration of the fabric of this world, if the first examples of our behaviour which were set before that new world had summoned those peoples to be amazed by our virtue and to imitate it, and had created between them and us a brotherly fellowship and understanding.” Sentiments like these were uncommon in the late renaissance and we now take them for granted.
The opening of the “new world” was a matter of wonder for Europeans, but few challenged the proclaimed cultural superiority inherent in the colonization. For people lauding themselves as the civilized, it is notable that they entered the new lands with savagery that foreshadowed the horror European nations would revisit in later centuries.
We have made some progress towards repairing that fabric of the world. The post World War II period was a time of progress, but it appears to be closing. What will follow is likely to be more nationalistic and mercantilistic. History repeatedly demonstrates that this brings out the worst in the powerful and, in our technological era, it risks bringing unspeakable terrors.