In 1493 Christopher Columbus led a fleet of 17 ships and more than 1200 men to found a royal trading colony in America. Columbus had high hopes for his settlement; which he named La Isabela after the queen of Spain; but just five years later it was in ruins. It remains important; however; as the first site of European settlement in America and the first place of sustained interaction between Europeans and the indigenous Tainos. Kathleen Deagan and Jose Maria Cruxent tell the story of this historic enterprise. Drawing on their ten-year archaeological investigation of the site of La Isabela; along with research into Columbus-era documents; they contrast Spanish expectations of America with the actual events and living conditions at America's first European town. Deagan and Cruxent argue that La Isabela failed not because Columbus was a poor planner but because his vision of America was grounded in European experience and could not be sustained in the face of the realities of American life. Explaining that the original Spanish economic and social frameworks for colonization had to be altered in America in response to the American landscape and the non-elite Spanish and Taino people who occupied it; they shed light on larger questions of American colonialism and the development of Euro-American cultural identity.
#930388 in Books 1996-09-25Original language:EnglishPDF # 1 8.20 x .50 x 5.45l; .53 #File Name: 0300068727204 pages
Review
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. Two StarsBy Karin KriegExcellent!0 of 3 people found the following review helpful. The Ugliest Frame-up in HistoryBy GioInterrogation by torture is NOT an invention of the CIA. All the elements of the CIA-funded research into brutal interrogation by psychiatrist Ewen Cameron - extreme prolonged isolation and sensory deprivation; depersonalization; recurring torture; threats of death - were well if not scientifically understood in 15th Century Italy. Instead of electric prods and water-boarding; the authorities in the Papal and Hapsburg states used the "strappado." The victim's hands were tied behind his lower back and he was hoisted into the air until his feet dangled. If the pain didn't produce immediate "confession"; the victim might be hoisted higher; dropped suddenly and jerked sharply aloft again. Obviously his shoulders were dislocated. To vary the pain; hot boiled eggs would be put in his armpits. Then; when any bit of submission was yielded; the victim would be isolated again for a few days before a resumption of torture. Such practices were in a sense already illegal - condemned by canon law - but they were wide-spread; and favored by the Holy Office of the Inquisition. Few indeed were the victims of such torture who weren't broken and who didn't "learn" the scripted confession expected of them. Giordano Bruno withstood several years of torture in the dungeons of Rome before he was burned alive; with his jaw nailed shut to prevent him from declaring innocence; in the Campo dei Fiori. His statue is visible from my apartment window in Rome.In the Tirolean city of Trent in 1475; the three Jewish heads of families and their several male dependents accused of the "ritual murder" of a Christian child withstood the strappado to varying degrees; denying guilt anywhere from one session to dozens of sessions. In the end; however; they all agreed to confess... and then essentially had to be instructed under torture as to what precisely they would need to confess before they would be granted the relief of death. The show-trial in Trent was far from the only such horrible charade of justice in the history of European anti-Semitism; and the three-family Jewish community of Trent was not the largest to be exterminated under the leadership of the Franciscans and other Preaching Observants; but the Prince-Bishop of Trent; Johanes Hinderbach; had strong motives for publicizing and justifying his persecution of the ritual murder charges. The outcome was the foundation and dissemination of a cult of miracles performed by the "child martyr" Simon of Trent; a cult which persisted and served its vicious anti-Semitic purpose until 1965; when it was abolished by the Vatican! Actually; the Pope in 1475; the Sixtus whose Vatican chapel we all admire as a triumph of humanism; was more than a little suspicious; both of the Jewish guilt and of the subsequent miracle tales; but he didn't have time or care enough to intervene effectively; though the bishop he commissioned to investigate; Baptista dei Giudici; concluded that the trial was a malevolent sham and the miracles bogus.Simon Unferdorben was a two-and-a-half year-old boy child of a German-speaking peasant in Trent; a semi-autonomous city-state under Hapsburg rule. The boy fell in a ditch and drowned. His body was found after several days in the ditch that drained into the bath of Samuel the Jew. There is a good possibility that it was deliberately dumped there by persons with grudges against the Jews; two such suspects were widely identified at the time.Nothing about the "confessions" extracted by torture from the Jews of Trent is plausible. Their confessions were not at all consistent until they had been fully "instructed" by the torturers. The wounds first observed on the child's body were not consistent with the accounts of the ritual slaying to which the Jews were compelled to confess. Not everyone even in Trent believed the accusation; surrounding communities; especially in the Veneto; were highly critical of the judicial procedures. Nonetheless; the entire male Jewish population of Trent; including mere commercial visitors who happened to be there at the wrong time; were executed by burning or decapitation. The latter was considered merciful. The women were forced to accept Christian baptism; they and their children quickly disappeared from the records.Po-chia Hsia; professor of European history at New York University; tells this whole story with a good deal more circumspection than I have -- and of course with a good deal more supporting evidence - but there is no doubt that he considers the charges of Jewish ritual murder universally false and vicious; as do all reasonable people ever since. This small book is a tight narration; an evening's reading. If you have any reservations about the Christian and specifically Catholic burden of responsibility for crimes of hatred against the Jewish people; you owe your own conscience the task of reading Trent 1475.0 of 1 people found the following review helpful. Brilliant BookBy Darrin AndersonThis tale of a Jewish community in early modern Europe is very brilliant. The book has many interesting facts regarding the tale; and needs to be read to really get to know the brilliance of the book.
