The close ties within middleman minorities have led some to imagine a wider web of loyalties than has actually existed. Such phrases as “Jews all stick together” confuse intense loyalties within particular subsets of Jews –or other middleman minorities– with a solidarity encompassing the whole population of the group. However, when Eastern European Jews began arriving in the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the predominantly German Jewish community viewed their arrival with alarm. The Jewish press, which was largely controlled by German Jews at the time, characterized the new immigrants as “slovenly in dress, loud in manners, and vulgar in discourse,” speaking “a piggish jargon” –that is, Yiddish.
German Jews were willing to employ Eastern European Jews but living near them was something else … Hungarian Jews had their own enclaves, separate from the enclaves of Russian or Polish Jews. There was a “low intermarriage rate” among these various subgroups of Eastern European Jews and a “mutual incomprehension and intolerance that kept Jews apart.”
Among the Lebanese who settled in Australia, “their regional loyalties seldom extended beyond that of the village” in Lebanon from which they had come. A history of bitter and lethal intergroup violence in Lebanon and Syria, taking thousands of lives at a time, was part of the legacy that Lebanese took to other countries in which they settled. Even in a small country like Sierra Leone, the many internal disputes among various Lebanese factions, which spilled over into courts and involved political authorities, proved too baffling for either Europeans or Africans to understand –much less settle– during the colonial era. Indeed, one of the main tasks of the diplomatic representatives from Lebanon in Sierra Leone after independence was to arbitrate these internal disputes among various Lebanese factions there.
Thomas Sowell, “Are Jews Generic?”, in the book Black Rednecks and White Liberals, pp. 90 – 92
The following paragraph sums up several pages of data:
In short, major social transformations within the black community were having an impact in their economic condition. It would hardly be surprising if it also has an impact on how whites viewed blacks, as had happened [in a previous wave] in the nineteenth century. The civil rights legislation of the 1960s may well have been an effect of the rise of blacks, rather than the sole or predominant cause of that rise, as it has been represented as being, by those leaders — black and white — with incentives to magnify their own role in racial progress.
Thomas Sowell, Black Rednecks and White Liberals, p. 51
If you want to see the reactions of those with incentives to magnify their own role, go find this book on Goodreads and check out the 1-star reviews.
This quote requires some context. A few weeks ago, our home school curriculum had us studying East Africa, so I watched Hotel Rwanda with my kids. (Surprisingly, it is only PG-13, even though it is about a horrific ethnic massacre.)
The hero of the move is Paul Rusesabagina. He is a Hutu (aggressor group), but like many, many Hutus, he is married to a Tutsi (scapegoated group) and has Tutsi friends and neighbors. He is the manager of a Belgian-run hotel, so he moves in the circles of the powerful. One major theme of the movie is that Paul has all these connections among government employees, local businessmen, and even outside the country. He is counting on these connections to help him save his family, but he finds that he’s not always successful when calling in favors.
It is in this context that the following conversation takes place. Paul and his wife, Tasiana, are holed up in the hotel along with hundreds of their Tutsi neighbors, and at this point in the movie they are basically under siege. The two of them have a “romantic” date on the roof of the hotel, drinking some of the wine that Paul still has on hand, to the sound of gunfire in the background. Then Paul has a confession to make.
Paul: I have a confession. Before we got married, I bribed the Minister of Health to have you transferred to [a nursing job in] Kigali.
Tasiana: What for?
Paul: To be close. So I could marry you.
Tasiana: What was the bribe? How much am I worth to you?
Paul: It was substantial.
Tasiana: What was the bribe?
Paul: A car.
Tasiana: What kind of car?
Paul: Why do you need to know that?
Tasiana: I want to know. What kind of car?
Paul: It was a Volkswagon.
Tasiana (laughing): I hope it was a new one.
Hotel Rwanda
This was the biggest laugh-out-loud moment in the movie for me. What could be more romantic than bribing someone with a Volkswagon so you can be with the girl you love, in a context where bribery is a way of life?
Seconds later, Paul is telling Tasiana that if the hotel is breached and he is killed, she should throw herself and their children off the roof to avoid being killed by machete.
We are bringing you good news, telling you to turn from these worthless things to the living God, who made heaven and earth and sea and everything in them. In the past, He let all nations go their own way. Yet He has not left himself without testimony: He has shown kindness by giving you rain from heaven and crops in their seasons; He provides you with plenty of food and fills your hearts with joy.
Paul, speaking to a crowd of pagans in the city of Lystra, Asia Minor, Acts 14:15 – 17
They drove past the grand old Victorian houses just beyond the center of town. There were understated wreaths on their painted doors. There were trimmed pines laced with white fairy lights standing erect on their snowed-over lawns. …
As they got farther from the main road, the houses became more modest. As the houses became more modest, the Christmas displays became more elaborate. Some of the homes were wholly outlined in blinking lights. Outside of one, a life-sized Santa Claus climbed into a sleigh with a full complement of reindeer. “Merry Christmas” flashed boldly in the window of another — as if it were a tavern, [Cameron] Winter thought.
When Christmas Comes, by Andrew Klavan, pp. 67 – 68
I picked this book up from our local library. “Oh, I only know the outlines of this period of history. I need to know more.” Then I let it sit around for several weeks. As a history book, it is probably boring, right?
Wrong.
Honestly, I would not put any of this stuff in a novel, because no one would believe it. In the first few chapters, at least once per chapter there was an “I can’t believe that just happened” moment. In the second half of the book, there is such a moment every one or two pages.
This book doesn’t pick heroes or villains. It’s a fairly simple, straightforward account of what happened, from Cortez sailing from Cuba, until the fall of Tenochtitlan. Also, perhaps because this book was published in 1965, it does not go in for the excessively dry, boring writing that academic history sometimes strives for. The writing is matter-of-fact, not sensationalist, and moves along quickly.
History is Full of Surprises
I went in to this with certain pre-conceptions. The general impression I had received from my previous exposure to this topic was that Cortez was awful, and the Aztecs were awful, and they deserved each other. I expected to read a story populated by a bunch of scoundrels, and that was what I got. However, as the book progressed I found myself more and more sympathizing with Cortez, because he is the underdog for literally the entire book. (The harsh ruling and enslaving the Indians stuff came later.) In every battle (not just with the Aztecs, but with the Tabascans, and then the Tlaxcalans), he is outnumbered tens of thousands to hundreds. Many of the I can’t believe this moments were caused by How did the Spaniards not die? and by watching Indian lords and generals snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
Here are a few of the things that surprised me, and might surprise you too:
Though the Spaniards had a very early version of a gun (the harquebus), a few light cannon designed for ships, and a handful of horses, these things did not allow them to just roll in and conquer Mexico through overwhelming force of technology. They had only about 16 guns and horses, and about the same number of cannons. The horses were surprising at first to the Indians, but they did lose their shock value. The horses and cannons were difficult to transport through the swamps and mountains, and in every battle, as I said, the Spaniards were outnumbered about 100 to 1. The Mexican armor, which was made of padded and starched cotton, was almost as effective as the Spanish armor, and much lighter and cooler. The Aztecs and the other groups were experienced, hardened warriors.
With literally every people group Cortez encountered (whether they were allied with Montezuma or not), Cortez initially tried to parley and trade, and they insisted on going to battle. This is not to say that Cortez was there only to trade, merely that this, his opening move, never got past the first step. As he progresses through Mexico toward Tenochtitlan, we see him again and again forced into battles. Finally, after he defeats the very persistent Tlaxcalan Indians, they ask him to ally with them against Montezuma.
As per human nature, both sides were internally divided. The Tlaxcalan army, which had been holding out for years against Montezuma, lost to Cortez because their military captains would not co-operate with each other. Cortez, meanwhile, had left on his expedition without the approval of Velasquez, the governor of Cuba. He had some of Velasquez’s relatives in his fighting force, and had to worry about them fomenting mutiny. At one point, he had to leave Tenochtitlan and go fight a battle against an army representing Velasquez that had landed on the coast. With constantly shifting alliances among both the Spaniards and the Indians, this book read like a spy novel.
Cortez did not immediately attack Tenochtitlan, Montezuma’s capital city. He first approached as a visitor, and there was a weird period of several weeks when the Spaniards stayed there as guests? Or prisoners? Montezuma, for his part, was divided in his mind. He was not as confident in his role as priest as he had been in his youth, as a warrior. He wasn’t sure what his gods wanted him to do. Thus, he kept giving Cortez evasive answers, but also ended up giving Cortez much more leeway than he should have. He missed many good opportunities to have the Spaniard killed.
The great city of Tenochtitlan makes an amazingly interesting setting for a battle. It was built out over the middle of a shallow, salt lake (deep enough to drown in, however), and was approached from other lakeside cities by four long causeways, each of which had bridges that could be taken up, leaving wide gaps that were impassable for an attacking or fleeing force. These tiled causeways were also slippery and disorienting for horses, and anyone caught on them could be attacked by war canoes. Inside the city, the sections were divided by canals which could also be used to seal off the different sections of the city. There were high rooftops, leading up to the temple at the top, from which defenders could spot approaching or fleeing attackers, rain down missiles, and sound the alarm with conch shells and drums.
When the Spaniards finally did destroy Tenochtitlan, it was their Tlaxcalan allies who wanted to commit atrocities on the civilians there. “The Spaniards were too few to control their allies” (page 142).
Cortez was accompanied throughout by a young woman whom the Spaniards called Dona Marina. “She was a young, highly intelligent princess who had been sold into slavery by her parents” (page 34) and given to Cortez by the Tabascans after he defeated them. Dona Marina spoke both coastal Mayan and Nahuatl (the Aztec language), and she served as an interpreter. Amazingly, Dona Marina survived the entire conquest.
A True First-Contact Story
For me, the overall impression is that what we have here is the meeting of an Ancient Near Eastern style culture, with city-states, bureaucracies, temples, human sacrifice, and a tyrannical priest-king, with a late medieval/early exploration-age Western European culture. This could not be a purer first contact story if Cortez had gotten hold of a time machine and attempted to loot Babylon.
I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in military history.
We knew about the Olmec and Maya, but their sites were hard to spot and hard to study because of the jungle. Now, we keep learning more and more.
A train project on the Yucatan Peninsula is uncovering hundreds of Mayan settlements, proving that the area was more densely populated than once thought, as archaeologists have been beginning to suspect.
Meanwhile, Lidar technology is able to peer through the jungle and reveal not onlymore and more ceremonial sites stretching over the Olmec and Mayan culture areas, but also common layouts that seem to indicate a broad shared cultural (or at least, architectural) tradition dating back to 3,400 years ago.
It looks to me like what we have here is a Central American version of the Sumerian urban/bureaucratic/temple-based civilization, giving rise to a series of civilizations that followed the same model: Akkadian, then Babylonian, and so on. And, if we believe the 3,400 YA date, the same thing in Central America was happening at almost the same time. It’s almost as if people tend to set up hierarchical city-states with temples wherever they settle, almost as soon as they settle there, whenever circumstances permit. Almost as if they were dispersing, and remembering something.
Out of Babel Books 