A while ago I was reading a nineteenth century work on medieval history that was very quaint in style to a modern reader. This was substantially because of its constant moralising; with asides to the reader about the naughty behaviour of many of the people described and mini-sermons on how such wickedness, usually of a sexual nature, should be avoided by all good, right-thinking and pious persons.

This all seems very odd to us, but I wonder if sometime in the future a lot of our current historical writing will seem similarly quaint and moralistic. I began Caroline Dodds Pennock's book after reading interviews with the author and seeing some good reviews. The idea of turning the whole historical narrative of the "discovery of the New World" around and looking at it from the opposite perspective, from the point of view of indigenous people who travelled to Europe, seemed very interesting.

And in most respects this is a very interesting book. There are fascinating characters, interesting and often-ignored sources and plenty of novel perspectives to had from it. The problem, for me, was the way the writer seemed to see her project as an exercise in penitence for the sins of colonialism. After several chapters, the constant reminders that colonism was bad and wrong and that the Europeans who engaged in it were, from our perspective, ignorant, wicked and cruel got wearying.

I should be clear that I definitely DO think colonialism and its attendant consequences was very much a terrible thing and can definitely see this with the benefit of several centuries of hindsight. But when the writer moves beyond assuming the reader understands this to having to reinforce it with almost every sentence, the work begins to feel a lot like that nineteenth century moralism mentioned above.

It is one thing for us to empathise with the fate of an indigenous person who was enslaved and also to find it hard to understand their enslaver. But it's another when the tone and language used to describe these things casts aside any objectivity at all and gets emotionally invested, sometimes to the point of being melodramatic. The chapter on Slavery is heavy with this kind of thing. But it is light on other elements that may have been good to explore. The indigenous traditions of slavery are barely mentioned. How did they differ to European slavery practices? We aren't told. Would they have informed how enslaved indigenous people understood their predicament? This isn't examined. It seems that kind of analysis would get in the way of the strong undertone of "Europeans bad/Indigenous good" that pervades this book.

The chapter on the part played by indigenous people in the "Columbian Exhange" of goods and new plant products and treasure continues this moralising theme. After a long paen to the mystical connection of indigenous people to the land and its bounty, an indigenous academic is quoted cautioning that this sort of thing tends to be silly. As though noting this somehow makes the fact Dodds Pennock has just done the very thing the academic warns against okay. European exploitation of reseouces and the terrible consequences of capitalism and commerce are noted at some length. Yet when the author notes that native peoples engaged in these activities with some enthusiasm, we are suddenly told that this is good and should be admired. No explanation is given as to why this is bad when Europeans did it but good when natives took it up.

I rarely give up on a book without finishing it, even when I'm not enjoying it. I gave up on this one. The hectoring moralism and emotive tone became, after four long chapters, too high a price for the nuggets of genuine insight the book provided. History is not meant to be a sermon. And even when you agree with the faith (as, here, I do), sermons are usually boring. This book got boring. 

An interesting and highly readable look at an aspect of the Columbian exchange that is  not often discussed.

long qu'el daaaawg

Seemed disjointed and repetitive. Favorite paragraph style is to open with 3 questions and then say, “we may never know”. 

A really fascinating way to look at colonization and its lasting impacts. The final chapter gutted me. 
Heavy reading, but an important reminder that indigenous people also traveled to Europe and participated, willingly and unwillingly, in cultural exchange. That there was a flow both ways across the Atlantic. And that just because the stories weren’t recorded doesn’t mean the history didn’t happen.