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65 of 65 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Hard to put down, but..., July 3, 2000
By A Customer
I've always been interested in basque culture and language, have even tried to learn euskera on my own. That said, I also am very interested in spanish culture (castilian, galician, catalan etc.) as such and have lived in Madrid for a while. I found this book very readable and hard to put down, Kurlansky has a knack for presenting the material in an entertaining and readable fashion without getting stylistically bland. Despite that, I have some gripes with it. Kurlansky is obviously a journalist and writes the book as such, but I for one would have wanted more of a historians account. His choice of not using footnotes or endnotes, but just supplying a general bibliography at the end, is very annoying, because that way he is able to put down statements without backing them up. I even found one wrong statement, that basque ships had been sighted in Iceland in 1412. That's wrong, these ships were english, ushering in what is called the English Age in icelandic history (basques didn't arrive in Iceland until the end of the 16th. century, there are at least no accounts available of earlier encounters). Kurlansky is not the only one guilty of making this mistake, but if he would have dug a bit further he would have found out the truth. So it goes to show, if he trusted is sources so blindly in this case, what else is inaccurate there? Again, the use of footnotes/endnotes would have solved this, as one would have been able to verify each statement. Kurlansky is also quite romantic, and even if he tries to criticize when criticism is due, it's quite obvious that his sympathy lies with the basques. This mix works quite well in the earlies chapters on prehistory, but not as well when he talks about the political situation today. Although I doubt that what he says of the Madrid government is wrong, but he doesn't back it up sufficiently, again, something that would have been solved by using footnotes or endnotes. Furthermore, he doesn't tell much of the deeds of ETA except for the more heroic ones in the 60's and 70's. ETA has of course been guilty of extreme cruelty through the years, which Kurlansky fails to mention. He also fails to describe how ETA has changed through the years, getting more extremist every year as more moderate members leave. He also is guilty of inaccuracies such as stating that "Euskal Herritarrok" is just "Herri Batasuna" with another name, which is not entirely true. He's also not entirely right that the street violence (or "kale barroka") is not favourable to ETA or its supporters, as members of Herri Batasuna have recently shown support publically. He also doesn't mention that there are members within Herri Batasuna that feel that ETA should give up their violent struggle. I don't know why Kurlansky chose not to give a more balanced account, perhaps he found it necessary because the spanish (Madrid) press is usually is very biased against basque nationalism (not just ETA), and that is usually the viewpoint that comes across in the international media. Kurlanskys viewpoint deserves to be heard, though, the spanish government has not been the innocent bystander they like us to believe and it is amazing that accounts have not yet been settled after the Franco years. The authorities just seem to trust that these times will be forgotten in the "New Spain". Anyway, I give the book 3 stars, it's very readable and hard to put down and gives a good overview of the history of the basques, but shouldn't be taken at face value as it is not without bias and also is guilty of some inaccuracies and sometimes a bit careless handling of source material.
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53 of 59 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
LET US BE WHAT WE ARE GAREAN GAREANA LEGEZ, January 29, 2001
Kurlansky has written a brilliant introduction to a mysterious people. It is also a timely one, although not universally popular considering its rather lax treatment of ETA violence. Kurlansky does perhaps harbour sympathies for the Basque people and even for the most extreme of their nationalist tendencies, but he does not let this completely cloud his judgment, and it is not entirely clear that Kurlansky "takes sides" or endorses one course of action or another. I can see why it would be easy to become so attached to the Basques and their culture, their language, and the ongoing fight they have pursued in order to keep these fundamentals of who they are intact. People deserve to keep their history, heritage, language, and cuisine, and the Basques have a long, rich, and misunderstood history which deserves the kind of recognition Kurlansky's book brings to their cause, wherever Kurlansky's personal sympathies lie. I felt that Kurlansky presented basically unbiased information, particularly about the history of the Basques in centuries past. The book is filled with revelations about this formidable and fascinating culture, and I feel that these kinds of explorations in Kurlansky's research and writing dominated this work much more so than current political issues or separatist violence. Sure, it is easy enough for me to say this, completely isolated from the violence and the everyday problems these tense relations may create, but I can say that there are groups in the world who are routinely terrorized by other groups without provocation. (Perhaps "terrorized" is not the ideal word choice because I do not see a reign of terror in the making. I do see that some people may perceive the unrest as such depending on their vantage point). I, however, was an interested reader who was wholly ignorant of Basque culture and history and wanted to learn more. I got lucky when I wandered through the Halifax, Nova Scotia airport one afternoon and found this book there. Kurlansky has written a well-organized, clear, and thoughtful introduction to the Basque people... people who are misunderstood, underrepresented, and unknown in some cases (I rarely meet Americans, for example, who know what a Basque is. When I tell them they scoff and wonder why I would care to know). I emphasize that I consider this book to be only an introduction or a stepping stone. Kurlansky has not provided the definitive and comprehensive history of the Basque people. He has merely provided a useful tool for further study. One thing that was a fascinating, albeit seemingly random, addition to his work was the interweaving of Basque culinary information. Although I sincerely enjoyed those tidbits, I found their placement a bit annoying. At the heart of the book is the question that lingers on... "if Euskera is the oldest living language in Europe, are the Basques the oldest European culture?" Euskera has been called an impossible, obscure and incomprehensible language, and for much of history the Euskera speakers were left to themselves, and they developed and explored (as other reviewers point out). They became expert whalers and fishermen, the world's first capitalists, industrialists and the first modern bankers in Spain. Yet there is little more than speculation to corroborate ideas that the Basques were so advanced, particularly in crossing the Atlantic earlier than anyone else. Major turning points for the Basques have included the 1600s, when, as a nationless nationality, they were more or less locked out of the fishing industry. In the 1700s, the abolition of the Basque traditional laws, the Fueros, followed by the abolition of traditionally collectively held land, also seemed to change things. A pivotal character in the history of Basque nationalism was Sabino Arana, who invented words to create a nation, if in language only, for the Euskera speaking people. "In the Basque language, which is called Euskera, there is no word for Basque. The only word to identify a member of their group is Euskaldun-Euskera speaker. Their land is called Euskal Herria-the land of Euskera speakers. It is language that defines a Basque." Arana wanted to change this by making a new word-Euskadi-to give their region a name. This is another key question-what exactly makes a person Basque? Is it parentage, residence in Basqueland, or speaking the language? The definition of a Basque has changed over time, but Kurlansky did a fine job exploring some of the changes in attitude and questions surrounded what makes a person Basque. In recent years, there has been a renaissance of "Basqueness" and trying to discover Basqueness. People in the region have been learning and teaching Basque language and culture, and there has been a more prolific creation of a Basque literature. I felt that these issues were key to the book, or at least I hope they were, because that was the most beautiful idea I could think of. The Basque people have survived centuries of adversity, and I think it is much more useful to look at the everyday people rather than ETA extremism. I feel inspired to travel to the Basque region and also to take up the study of Euskera myself (for anyone interested, the University of Nevada in Reno, USA offers online courses and even a PhD program in Basque!)
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63 of 72 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The first time somebody has written positively about Basques, October 29, 1999
I am a Basque woman living in New York. It is the first time I have read a positive history about my people. Unfortunately, we Basque people have not been good in keeping our written records and most of our history has been written by people who wanted to conquer and dominate us. "The Basque history of the World" is a beautiful informative book about what it is to be Basque in a world that has not been able to understand our way of life. Most countries want to expand, and to create empires. Basques did not and do not want to expand. This different point of view is not well understood by people who believe there is something strange in a group of people who have travelled all over the world, who have been among the first to go and help conquer the new world,but who have never really wanted to broaden their borders. Mark Kurlanski's attempt to try and explain the rationale of Basque people is commandable. I thank him for this pleasure.
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