“Exploring Civilization”: it’s an interesting word, “civilization”, isn’t it? Who gets to decide who is and who isn’t civilized? Are we civilized? What about the Mayan and Aztecs or before them the Olmec, Toltec, and Zapotec? What about the Hopi, Zuni, Navajo, and Pueblo peoples of the Southwest?
Who defines what is “civilized” and what is not? We know that in 1492 began the meeting of two new continents and cultures . . .
One had a high degree of moral sophistication which the other mostly lacked; one culture (or civilization) had learned to make intelligent use of natural resources; one had come to understand the supreme importance of certain virtues such as honesty, integrity, courage and honor. One group was far more civilized than the other, in my opinion; one understood best what was meant by the ideas contained in the phrase “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”.
As to who was civilized and who was not, I am referring to the fact, of course, that Native Americans represented a highly intelligent culture that HAD achieved civilized social and political organization. American indigenous cultures promoted individual integrity and autonomy while the other group, from Europe, represented a savage way of life that was barbaric at best and barely human at worst.
The Vikings made countless raids against England. They commonly attacked and looted monasteries, slaughtered monks, raped women, and enslaved women and children. They attacked other countries in Europe along the coasts and following the rivers, repeating these bloody slaughters time and again.
European nations and principalities themselves were dominated for centuries by kings and princes who were aristocratic, autocratic, and tyrannical. The kings and nobles of one country fought against other king and nobles. They fought with one another constantly, impoverishing their nations and costing the lives of thousands of people.
These wars were frequently a contest for power and wealth, conducted most violently; their conquests were sustained by brute force. Indeed, wars were endemic to the continent of Europe, to say nothing of the violent oppression and civil wars that often raged within each nation’s own boundaries.
Even the names of the wars indicate their longevity and severity, such as the Seven Years War, the Thirty Years War, and, most famously of all, the “One Hundred Years War” between England and France, to name but a few.
The royal court and a relatively small group of aristocrats controlled nearly everything, devoured the wealth of the nation, oppressed the peasants and engaged in one war after another. There was little or no moral restraint when it came to these wars which often led to acts of bloody brutality accompanied by oppression and poverty.
Virtually no freedoms were allowed the masses of men and women, the peasants and serfs. As for liberty of conscience, there was virtually none to speak of, at least not in the way we frame such concepts today. Religious intolerance existed in its most extreme form; individuals could be tortured for not behaving or believing a certain way.
Dissidents and heretics were imprisoned, tortured, and killed for daring to act or think independently for themselves. The Salem Witch Trials in 1692 was not so much an American anomaly as a predictable carry-over from the colonists’ European heritage.
In the modern period, from 1500 onward, Europe would present itself as “civilized” and much of the rest of the world as “uncivilized.” During this period, European nations sailed to Africa and began a history of slave trading on an unimaginable scale as millions of Black people were enslaved. Countless more never survived the Middle Passage.
Nothing seemed to slow down the European nations bent on territorial conquest and the relentless exploitation of resources and subjugated peoples. In Mexico, South America, and North America, Indians were enslaved, maimed and brutalized–often worked to death if not killed in wars or murdered outright, to say nothing of the tens of thousands dying from unfamiliar diseases.
All of this activity amounted to genocide, the very opposite of what the word “civilized” is supposed to convey to us.
Yet if we include knowledge of their environment, material culture, lifestyle and moral values, we would find that many Native Americans tribes and nations were quite civilized at the time of the first contact between the Old and the New World. The Sun Stone of the Aztecs is but one example of the complexity of the skill in stone-carving possessed by the Aztecs, based on their detailed knowledge of astronomy and their own history of migrations dating back thousands of years.
Of course as most of you have guessed, I’m all mixed up and I have it all backwards . . . at least that’s what other professors and history books would say: the Europeans are always the good guys and the Blacks are inferior and the Indians are savages.
I don’t believe this is true but I do recognize how common that viewpoint was, and is.
The author of our textbook, Howard Zinn, does not accept that pro-European viewpoint which we call Euro-centered. His book, A People’s History of the United States, is considered a radical alternative to traditional textbooks. He presents shameful, tragic, and bloody episodes in American history that are often glossed over or ignored.
I truly look forward to the day when one of our history textbooks might begin with a chapter called “Wild Europe” but for now it remains only a dream!
