1492 and All That: Political Manipulations of History, by Robert Royal (Ethics and Public Policy Center, 203 pp., $18.95)
IN THIS LIVELY and pugnacious argument with those who insist on denigrating Columbus as the representative of an exploitative, colonialist Europe, Robert Royal presses hard to answer the criticisms, but a sarcastic tone complicates his attempt to be persuasive. Thus, he asserts that “Despite the complicity of religious individuals in some atrocities, Christianity in general was not a moral or spiritual pathogen.” Royal deplores the brutality and greed that accompanied the conquest, and cites the at-tempts of the Crown to mitigate these evils. Ineffectual though such efforts were, he concludes that “the appropriate response to such an early expression of good principles should be gratitude and surprise rather than condemnation for the limited effect those principles had in practice.” On a more affirmative note, Royal concludes that “humanity and reason” justified “intervention” against societies, such as the Aztec, that practiced human sacrifice. Rather than in its reinterpretation of history, the real strength of this book lies in its treatment of the current debate over Columbus. Royal’s vigorous defense of Western and Christian values will bring cheer to general readers otherwise overwhelmed by the media’s negative presentation of 1492 (“and all that”). —Wilcomb E. Washburn
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