Customer Reviews

Rivers of Blood, Rivers of Gold: Europe's Conquest of Indigenous Peoples

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Crocker is a journalist who has previously proven his ability to write thoughtful, well-researched books that sell disappointing numbers. It is hard to blame the man for wanting to sell enough books to make some money. It is somewhat harder to take the amount of gore in Rivers of Blood, but one has to concede that he has the formula down. To sell books one must write about a) bad guys, b) harrowing, boodthirsty murder, c) really simple ideas. Here we have world class bad guys in the Europeans who set out to conquer the world by murdering all the people who lived everywhere else. The fact that these people fought back and sometimes won adds drama. But, hello? What about the role or European diseases, or the role of a European economic system that surely did as much as European weapons to destroy the non-European civilizations. Bloodthirsty conquest is as old as history. If the only thing that happened in the sixteenth century was that a bunch of European guys got on boats and set out to conquer other people, there would be no news to report. Mark Crocker misses most of the really important aspects of the Eurppean conquest of the world. I prefer my history more complex and closer to reality. Try reading Bullough's Pond if you really want to know what the American Indians were up against.

The premise of the book has become so cliched that its fundamental truth has almost become obscured. Cocker uncovers in painstaking detail the results of European colonialism in four areas of the world. Without ever romanticizing the societies (the bloody nature of the Aztecs is particularly stressed) that are conquered, he paints a tragic picture that moved me to the point of tears more than once. A valuable antidote to apologists for European/Western Imperialism.

The book shows in vivid detail how many groups who have developed a superiority of power/technology etc frequently use it in a most base and grasping manner, warping their own morality to justify it. Rather than the simplistic European/American(bad) vs nobel savage (good) conflict that some other reviewers took from it,it demonstrated the all universal human trait of brutality and genocide in the pursuit of plunder and greed. The readyness to which societies on the one hand professed education,morality etc descended to levels of cruelty that begars belief in clear and systematic and recurring patterns used to self justify it makes for an absorbing book.

Ricardo, gimme a break! Amazing as it was, the Aztec empire was not as advanced as Europe. To believe otherwise is to delude yourself into a resentful fantasy that'll only embitter and do you no good. Had Pericles fought the Mexicas two thousand years before Cortés, he would've won just the same because the Aztecs didn't even have the wheel! They didn't know how to forge metals, or plow a field. They didn't know how to travel by sea or sail in a lake. And they weren't any kinder to the peoples they conquered. Any tribe was Chichimeca ("children of dogs") to them, and treated accordingly. That's why Cortés made so many allies overnight.

That's not to say the Aztecs were inferior. Compared with the Navajos, the Sioux, the Apache, and the rest of the Chichimeca, they were a world power in their own right. But compared against Spain they were not, And Spain was on its way out, too! So what? Tough luck! Welcome to History; that's what it's all about!

And sure, the Aztecs DID perform human sacrifices; it's a ritual depicted in most of their códices. Were they any worse than the Europeans? No. Were they "intelectually superior" to them? Nope again. They weren't as developed a society as Europe was, that's all. Live with it!

"What is past is prologue". Don't waste you energy trying to deny the past, work to better the future. And please spare us your spiteful rants; we Mexicans have enough troubles as it is right now to be branded "fascists" as well!

Go elsewhere for a balanced scholarly account, this book is just an attempt to cash in on a false politically-correct warping of history. Not much good for anything.