Billy Kemper -- Week 3 -- Pagden

At the base of the Pagden readings this week was the unique nature of the Americas and the men responsible for early writings concerning it; they were truly reporting on a “new world.” Europeans were greatly increasing trade and contact with the faraway lands of Africa, China, and India, but nonetheless the existence of these places was at least known about since antiquity. Though misconceptions abounded, there was at least some basis of comparison and understanding that already existed. The New World was seen only through the eyes of its original explorers and historians, whose ideas and reportings were framed in a European mindset. While traveling in these foreign and potentially dangerous lands, “to protect themselves from the ‘shock of the new’, most Europeans carried about with them a cluster of notions, categories, suppositions about what it was that they would encounter out there” (5). Even the native flora and fauna were placed in categories that fit into the European mold. Similarly, Amerindians were put in a spectrum of peoples that had Europeans on a higher or more advanced end. They had to be helped in their struggle toward “civilization.” The idea of categorizing both natural phenomena and people is indicative of the scientific advances and approaches that were becoming common in Europe. However, it’s clear that utilizing such categorization in regards to people was in many ways ultimately catastrophic. If greater contact had been made before such “scientific advances” (i.e. categorization), do you think relations would have been as volatile? Or could this have even been a possibility given that many of these advances led to the possibility of large-scale trans-Atlantic travel?

Pagden continues discussion of categorization in the next chapter, citing numerous examples of European explorers attempting to view the Americas through their home-lens. What explorers chose to name their “discoveries” is a great indication of this, as they, “…had the power to reduce what still remained to be explored, possessed and settled into a single transportable set of phonemes” (27). They were in a sense quantifying lands into a European mold, naming them for recognized lands in an attempt to bring the Americas under a European umbrella. However, the people of these lands looked and acted very differently from Europeans, and there was little attempt to see them as fellow men. Explorers realized, “these were territories inhabited by a variety of strange peoples, not all of whom could easily be accommodated under some existing anthropological category” (23). Why was it that the new physical lands could be so easily equated to European places, yet the people were a different category altogether?

Pagden also highlights the great importance of perspective in the narrative; observers of the American world were solely observers. There was no known past link to the New World, and understanding came from a truly outsider’s perspective. Much was lost in writing and translation, prompting the experienced Oviedo and Las Casas to agree, “that only those who had ‘been there could possibly have any significant understanding of America and its inhabitants” (57). Every account was a unique voice, affected by the biases and worldview of the reporter. How much do you think the average reader or listener at the time took this into account when tales of the New World were regaled? Even if this was acknowledged at an individual level, did anyone extrapolate such concepts to European discovery as a whole, and the collective subjective lens it was seen through?