N. K. Jemisin (who sometimes posts here via the Angry Black Woman as Nojojojo) discusses her excellent debut epic fantasy novel, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, in the Big Idea feature at John Scalzi’s blog.
his week, in my copious free time, I’m reading Charles C. Mann’s 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus. It’s basically a dissection of the history that most US citizens learned in school, and some of its core fallacies — like the idea that the New World was an undeveloped, sparsely-populated wilderness before Europeans arrived. In reality, Mann explains, the pre-Columbian Americas had a population to match that of Europe — much of it concentrated in sprawling urban-centric empires like those of ancient Rome. And like ancient Rome, these New World civilizations thoroughly engineered the landscape, building aqueducts and roads and planting forests to optimize hunting, fishing, flooding, and commerce. (Did you know there’s a “Great Wall of Peru”? I didn’t.) It’s a fascinating book, though obviously not without controversy, and it seems well-researched and well-written. I’m not done with it yet, but I’m enjoying what I’ve read so far.
Why am I talking about somebody else’s book when I should be talking about mine? Because this is the kind of thing that really gets me going: hidden truths. History is written by the victors, after all — which means that beneath many historical “facts” lie counter-facts and conflicting events, illogical assumptions and unrealized motivations, all of which would shake us to our foundations if we ever found out the truth. Maybe. Because there are always those who have reason to keep the truth alive, often at great personal risk, even if only via whispered tales and half-remembered songs. And yes, via a few lies too, told maliciously or through ignorance. One person’s truth is always someone else’s heresy. This is what I decided to write an epic fantasy about.
Hi there! As a long time lurker and a sorta-kinda fan of 1491, I wanted to jump in with a couple of points about the book:
1. Although I think the author intends his book to support the rights of indigenous people, he uses a really problematic rhetorical strategy: he positions native scholars (Vine DeLoria in particular) as “extremists” in their demands and interpretations and then compares them to white scholars who are set up to look “reasonable”. He also dismisses native scholars in one place, only to repeat and endorse their arguments some place else. He uses the work of native scholars (as you can see from the endnotes) but it’s as if he wants to minimize it in order to get over with white people.
2. He bases some of his indigenous-rights arguments on the imposingness of the big cities and big engineering projects, as though if the continents had been full only of peripatetic tribes then colonization wouldn’t have been such a terrible thing. Again, I think this is a poorly chosen rhetorical strategy rather than a deep-seated belief, but it’s a problem.
The book is also controversial, I believe, because different indigenous groups have political concerns about the use of origin stories–will the emphasis on “native people arrived here from somewhere else” which is a large part of the book, be turned into “oh, native people aren’t any more native than Europeans”?
Bearing those things in mind, it’s a fascinating book which will really shake up your view of the colonization of the Americas (and if you’re like me, make the dimension of the crime absolutely unforgettable). My favorite (and politically the best) part is where he re-writes the story of the defeat of the Aztecs–he debunks the “and the white colonists were few but superior in arms and battle planning!” narrative, talks about how deadly plague had weakened and saddened the society and describes political conflicts within Aztec society. Instead of a static myth about a “primitive” people being (tragically or deservedly) defeated by superior Europeans, he puts indigenous communities right back front and center as real social and political actors.
ETA: I’m really excited to read The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, too. I would read it even if it had gotten just awful reviews because I like the author’s blog a lot, but it’s thrilling to see that it’s getting so much praise!
I just want to say that The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms has been bumped up toward the top of my ever-increasing list of books to read (and buy). And I’m so glad you linked to Scalzi’s Big Idea post, because otherwise I’d have missed it.
Mann explains, the pre-Columbian Americas had a population to match that of Europe
1491 does point out that the idea that the Americas were very sparsely populated with no urban centers is certainly wrong. But I think a statement that he claims this specifically goes too far. IIRC he presents the various methodologies for estimating pre-Columbian populations but is pretty careful to acknowledge that they are estimates with ultimately unknowable error factors.
The book is also controversial, I believe, because different indigenous groups have political concerns about the use of origin stories–will the emphasis on “native people arrived here from somewhere else” which is a large part of the book, be turned into “oh, native people aren’t any more native than Europeans”?
Perhaps so. But the fact that people may use scientific information to further social or political aims that some people may find either desirable or objectionable is no valid reason to suppress development of that science or of acting on the information.
Frowner,
Thanks for those points — I did want to know what kind of criticisms were floating out there about the book. I’d noticed, for example, that Mann keeps talking to his readers as if they’re white — or specifically, as if they’re people who know and care nothing more about US history than whatever they learned in school, and have therefore absorbed nothing but stereotypes and falsehoods about American Indians (and PoC in general, and anything else the schoolbooks got wrong). But I’m not sure anyone that ignorant/unquestioning would read a book like this.
RonF,
I’m not far into it, but Mann does make the point — several times, in the early chapters — that some of the cities of the Americas (too lazy to go find my copy, but I remember him comparing Tenochitotlan at its height to 1492 Paris, and saying the former was bigger [and more sanitary]) were bigger than comparable cities of Europe in 1492. Some of these cities were city-states, so it seemed to me Mann was trying to make a specific comparison between Indian sovereign states and European ones. You’re right in that I haven’t seen a comparison of one continent to the other thus far, but I’m not sure how useful a continent-wide comparison would be anyway; the total square mileage isn’t remotely comparable, and climate/terrain differences matter for stuff like this. Pretty much the only comparison that makes sense (to me, innately speaking, not a statistician here) is city vs. city.
Mann does talk about the cities, but comparing a city-state to a formal European post-Westphalia state is really comparing apples to oranges. More to the point, he also spends time talking about how pre-Columbian estimates of the populations of the Americas has varied from time to time and the problems with trying to claim that you know it precisely.