Lois ’s Reviews > The Other 1492: Ferdinand, Isabella, and the Making of an Empire > Status Update

This historian really likes Cortez. He describes him as cunning, resilient, inventiveness, etc.
He was an opportunistic monster.
Spare me racist recasting of him as a romantic hero on an impossible quest.
The unnatural cruelty in which he took part.
This isn't a 2 sided issue, The Castilians were wrong and are horrible human rights violators.
I don't believe their tales of cannibalism.
Chattel slavery is cannibalism

Interesting that the 'conquest' or rape of North & South America isn't possible without the conquest of the Islands.
I hadn't realized that without that base they could not have terrorized the Indigenous peoples on the mainland.
If only.

I do like that he points out that immediately the humanity or lack thereof is applied to Indigenous peoples of the Americas. In this case specifically the Arawak/Taino but this view will color all interactions.
He perpetuates the Carib cannibalism myth
He won't call what happens to the Arawak/Taino genocide even though he does correctly tie the oppression to rape and sexual exploitation of the indigenous population

I dislike that he describes the Arawak/Taino Peoples as not having an advanced civilization.
The grew whole forests full of food. The tailored their environment rather than oppress people to work the land for the betterment of the few.
We can't manage that. So who is more civilized and advanced here? Europeans always claim nudity reflects lack of civilization but ignore that their lack of bathing caused plagues

The idea that 'Europeans thought the earth was flat is a myth perpetuated in US High Schools'
Lol the shade.
I love it

Bartolomeu Dias is the real reason Isabel is so keen to send Columbus to the Americas.
Interesting but not surprising.
Castile and Aragon had long been on competition with Portugal.

The Portuguese begin the atlantic slave trade by copying Arabic patterns of chattel slavery.
I often hear this but never any evidence provided for this, just a bold statement.

'If you want to know the importance of spices looking further than England'
Lol I think this historian is throwing shade at bland as British food.
🤣😂😭💀

Interesting.
The historian/author postulates that Jewish folks are treated harsher than Mulims in old Iberia. Or that Jewish people were perceived more as threat because the Muslims had been limited to a largely peasant farming caste.
Well being limited to peasantry is oppression.
I think the difference is the bullshit 'jesus was killed by Jews' antisemitic narrative.
Muslims are just passively wrong.

I had not realized or understood that from this period in Iberia great Jewish scholars exist and this is a period of great cultural growth.
Many Jewush writings exist in Arabic from this period. Great artists and philosophers.
What an amazing place AlAndalus must've been.