The Violent and Often Ugly Story of How Portugal Won A Global Empire
In works such as City of Fortune, Empires of the Sea and 1453, historian Roger Crowley focused on the struggles between the Renaissance powers–Christian and Muslim alike–over who would control the Mediterranean and the lucrative trade between East and West. In Conquerors: How Portugal Forged the First Global Empire, Crowley moves his account outside the Mediterranean to follow Portugal’s maritime explorations down the coast of Africa and its gunpowder-fueled entrance into the Indian Ocean.
I have no doubt that you’re familiar with bits of the story: Prince Henry the Navigator, Vasco da Gama, Golden Goa, the Treaty of Tordesillas*. In Conquerors, Crowley expands the familiar stories of the Age of Exploration into an account that is darker and more complicated than the version presented in world history texts. He does not downplay Portugal’s expansion of nautical technology and geographic knowledge or the heroic feats of courage, endurance and seamanship involved in its global expansion. Instead he places that knowledge and heroism within a historical context that explains them both. Poised between the era of the Crusades and the Renaissance, the Portuguese explorations were driven as much by the desire to make league with the mythical Christian king Prester John against the Muslims as by the desire for gold and spices. That crusading instinct and a fundamental lack of knowledge about Asia and the Middle East meant that the Portuguese entered the trading world of the Indian Ocean literally with all guns blazing. The result was a series of misunderstandings and violent encounters that resulted in Portuguese control of the maritime East-West trade–laid out by Crowley in gruesome and fascinating detail.
What can I say? Europe’s expansion into the non-Western world was ugly.
*In which Spain and Portugal divided the earth like an orange without saving a slice for the other kids.
Most of this review previously appeared in Shelf Awareness for Readers.
Looking Forward to Another Year of History
I’m not a big fan of New Years’ Eve. Kissing My Own True Love at midnight is lovely. * But the rest of it? Pffft!
New Years’ Day is another kettle of black-eyed peas altogether.** I like to spend the day writing thank-you notes, clearing out the Christmas clutter, organizing my desk, looking back, and looking ahead. As a working history buff, that means thinking about what historical topics I plan to explore in the coming year. (These plans never quite work out the way I intend. For instance, while I expected to spend some time on the American Civil War in 2015, I had no idea I would write a book on Civil War nurses. Not that I’m complaining.)
Here are some of the topics I’m going to be thinking about in 2015:
- Tough broads, whether armed with swords or only with their wits
- Nationalism (or possibly ethnic chauvinism) in the former Yugoslavia
- World War II aviation (unavoidable if you spend any time with My Own True Love) and the related topic of plane-spotting
- Civil War nurses–a topic I expect to write and speak about over the coming months.***
What historical topics are on your list for 2016?
*Assuming he’s still awake.
**I make mine with mushrooms and Indian spices. Yum!
*** And speaking of speaking, I’m currently setting up speaking gigs related to Civil War nurses (general and specific), the way Civil War nurses used their skills to change the world after the war, and Civil War medicine in general (the ick factor makes it a natural for talking to kids). If you’re interested in knowing when and where I’ll be speaking, I’ll be adding an events page to my web site soon. (www.pameladtoler.com) If you belong to a group that needs speakers (Civil War group? historical society? nursing association? service league?), give me a shout at pdtoler@pameladtoler.com)****
****Sorry for the brief commercial, but if I don’t tell you I’m interested how would you know?
America Dancing
I am at least as passionate about danceas I am about books and history–happy to be either participant or observer.* As a child, I worked hard on my turnout and devoured every book about the history of dance that came my way. Just ask me about Fanny Gessler, Maria Tallchief, or Isadora Duncan–all heroines of books aimed at dance-crazed little girls.
I still love a good book about dance history, though my standards for the history itself are somewhat higher. Megan Pugh’s America Dancing: From the Cakewalk to the Moonwalk more than makes the grade. Pugh uses the history of dance in America as a way to explore larger questions about race, class, and ultimately, American identity.
Dance is a continually evolving hybrid in Pugh’s account. Black slaves borrow from the French quadrille and Irish step dancing to create the cakewalk and tap dancing. White teenagers adopt and adapt dances from black culture in the 1920s and again in the 1950s and 1960s. Agnes de Mille and other choreographers use steps from tap dancing and square dances to transform the ballet into an American form. The borrowing is not always innocent: the blackface of the minstrel show is only the most obvious point at which racism is a driving element in the story. The dance floor becomes an arena in which divergent strands of American culture meet, meld, separate, and meet again—creating a recognizably American dance vocabulary in the process.
Pugh handles dance as an art form and its historical context with equal deftness. She builds her book around the personal stories of some of the biggest names in American dance: Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, the Castles, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, choreographers Agnes De Mille and Paul Taylor, Michael Jackson.** She not only draws the sometimes-unexpected connections between them and places them within her larger story. She also describes their dancing so vividly that readers will want to see the dances themselves—something she anticipates with a detailed list of dance films and videos. (Though I am sad to say that few of them are available on Netflicks or Amazon Prime. I am now on a quest.)
*And I have the torn up knees to prove it.
**Not to mention Henry Ford. Who knew he was a big fan of square dancing?
This review previously appeared in Shelf Awarenesss for Readers.