In this vividly written book; prize-winning author Karen Ordahl Kupperman refocuses our understanding of encounters between English venturers and Algonquians all along the East Coast of North America in the early years of contact and settlement. All parties in these dramas were uncertain―hopeful and fearful―about the opportunity and challenge presented by new realities. Indians and English both believed they could control the developing relationship. Each group was curious about the other; and interpreted through their own standards and traditions. At the same time both came from societies in the process of unsettling change and hoped to derive important lessons by studying a profoundly different culture.These meetings and early relationships are recorded in a wide variety of sources. Native people maintained oral traditions about the encounters; and these were written down by English recorders at the time of contact and since; many are maintained to this day. English venturers; desperate to make readers at home understand how difficult and potentially rewarding their enterprise was; wrote constantly of their own experiences and observations and transmitted native lore. Kupperman analyzes all these sources in order to understand the true nature of these early years; when English venturers were so fearful and dependent on native aid and the shape of the future was uncertain.Building on the research in her highly regarded book Settling with the Indians; Kupperman argues convincingly that we must see both Indians and English as active participants in this unfolding drama.
#905720 in Books Cornell University Press 2006-04-27Original language:EnglishPDF # 1 7.50 x .20 x 4.50l; .37 #File Name: 0801473160192 pages
Review
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. Useful overview of a key area of historical analysisBy MurrayhillA fine account of a crucial development in historical thinking after WWII. Important reading for anyone interested in changing attitudes about testimony in law and the humanities.1 of 1 people found the following review helpful. Holocaust Historiography. Why Jewish Children Exterminated. Holocaust-Survival Accounts are Not Automatically CredibleBy Jan PeczkisThis French author; a Holocaust historian; surveys the history of Shoah-related memorial writing; beginning during WWII. This includes Jewish diarists and chroniclers. She then surveys the early postwar attempts of Jews to write down the events of the Shoah. From then; she moves on to the Eichmann trial; and numerous other events related to the publicizing of the Holocaust.Author Wieviorka includes fascinating statistics in her book. For instance; in 1949; one third of Israel's population consisted of Holocaust survivors--350;000 of them. (pp. 72-73). The HOLOCAUST series; televised in 1978; reached an audience of 120 million television viewers. (p. 98).WHY JEWISH CHILDREN WERE ALSO SYSTEMATICALLY MURDEREDThe Holocaust came about when Hitler took collective revenge on Europe's Jews for "international Jewry starting another war". Wieviorka cites a German-language source that quotes Heinrich Himmler (spoken October 6; 1943) for an additional reason that Jewish women and children were targeted for destruction; (quote) "I did not feel I had the right to exterminate the men--that is; to kill them or have them killed--while allowing their children to grow up and take revenge upon our children and grandchildren. The difficult decision had to be taken of making this nation vanish from the face of the earth..." (unquote).(p. 2).SHOULD HOLOCAUST-SURVIVOR TESTIMONIES BE PRIVILEGED?Annette Wieviorka; the author; treats Holocaust-survivor accounts with some skepticism; (quote) Lucy Dawidowicz expressed an opinion shared by most of her colleagues: "The transcribed testimonies I have examined have been full of errors in dates; names of participants; and places; and there are evident misunderstandings of the events themselves." Thus; for Dawidowicz; nothing can be salvaged from testimony; which is seen as incapable of reporting facts in a pure positivist mode and; above all; incapable of generating a historically accurate narrative. (unquote). (pp. xiii-xiv). [To see the original quote from Dawidowicz; and in more detail; please click on The Holocaust and the Historians; and read the detailed Peczkis review.]Evidently; the assessment of survivor testimonies by Dawidowicz; and even more that of Wieviorka; is diametrically opposite of that of neo-Stalinist authors such as Jan T. Gross and Jan Grabowski. The latter two seriously state that Jewish Holocaust survivor testimonies should automatically be accepted as factual; as they are the voice of victims. [As if this fact automatically conferred reliability; or as if Poles under the Nazi occupation were not also victims.] Clearly; historic objectivity requires that no one group's testimonies should be privileged; or otherwise exempt from the normal processes of historical scrutiny.
