Beasts or Brothers?
J.H. Elliott: When Columbus Met the Natives, 3 July 2008
The Discovery of Mankind: Atlantic Encounters in the Age of Columbus
by David Abulafia.
Yale, 379 pp., £25, April 2008,978 0 300 12582 5 Show More
by David Abulafia.
Yale, 379 pp., £25, April 2008,
Hans Staden’s True History: An Account of Cannibal Captivity in Brazil
edited and translated by Neil Whitehead and Michael Harbsmeier.
Duke, 206 pp., £12.99, September 2008,978 0 8223 4231 1 Show More
edited and translated by Neil Whitehead and Michael Harbsmeier.
Duke, 206 pp., £12.99, September 2008,
“... David Abulafia ends his engaging survey of the first encounters between Europeans and the indigenous peoples of the New World with the words of the prophet Malachi: ‘Have we not all one father? Has not one God created us?’ This question, with its corollary, ‘Why do we deal treacherously, every man against his brother, profaning the covenant of our forefathers?’ looms large in his book, just as it did in the minds of more thoughtful 16th-century Europeans as they became aware that the world was more diverse and more crowded than their forefathers could ever have imagined ... ”
