Beyond 1492: Encounters in Colonial North America.

Axtell's latest book is a collection of essays, most of which originated as lectures and were then published in historical journals or as part of conference proceedings. There are eleven essays altogether. The first essay serves as a good introduction since it gives Axtell's views on what history should be: imaginative, interpretive, and written in an engaging style.

The other essays are divided into three sections. The first section consists of three essays about early contacts between Indians and Europeans. "Imagining the Other" argues that Indians and Europeans initially saw each other within their own framework of cultural categories until eventually experience with "the other" created new categories. "The Exploration of Norumbega" looks at many of the same issues but with a geographic focus on Norumbega (Maine before it was called "Maine"). And "Native Reactions to the Invasion of America" surveys the varied, but in most cases damaging, effects of European contact on native communities. The three essays in the second section go beyond initial Indian-European contacts to examine how Indians incorporated European trade goods, Indian responses to Jesuit missionization, and "Humor in Ethnohistory" (or what Indians and Europeans thought was funny about the other). The four essays in the last section discuss historiographical issues. One essay assesses how American history textbooks have treated the Age of Discovery; another provides a detailed review of the books, archival collections, film and television projects, and archaeological investigations that have been largely inspired by the Columbus Quincentennial. And finally, two essays deal with the murky issues of perspective, truth, and morality in the telling of history, especially in the telling of the history of Columbus and his Indian, African, and European contemporaries.

Gathered together in book form, these make a surprisingly coherent whole. Although there is some repetition, as one might expect with essays written independently but on related material, the essays successfully build on each other until by the end of the book an Axtellian Worldview has emerged. Two main themes serve to connect the essays. First, either directly or indirectly, all the essays deal with the "Columbian Encounter," and reflect Axtell's involvement with the American Historical Association's Columbus Quincentenary Committee. Second, several of the essays address the weightier issue of why we do history, and when considered in light of the other essays (the essays that actually do history), they point to an intriguing, analogous relationship among Indians, Europeans, historians, and the past. Just as Indians and Europeans imagined "the other," historians imagine "the other" in reconstructing the past. Therefore, Axtell advises us, we must take care to understand the complex, human motivations of people in the past and be wary of falling back on cardboard characterizations.

Two essays in particular, when juxtaposed, show just how difficult it is to achieve this worthy goal. In "Moral Reflections on the Columbian Legacy," Axtell discusses the "moral debate" engendered by the Columbian Quincentennial and suggests that some of the "voices" contributing to the debate--the voices of contemporary Indians, environmental historians, and others--provide too simplistic historical narratives because "it is easier to judge than to understand." Axtell further states that, instead of taking a moral stand on the past, we should "look at the past with all the disinterestedness and human empathy we can muster." In short, he wants to take the politics, and the meaning, out of history.

But is "disinterestedness" really apolitical or is it simply the expression of a different political viewpoint? All the essays that "do" history in this collection seem to struggle to find a moral balance in the intensely political arena of Indian-European relations. However, one essay falls short of Axtell's sincere attempts to write "disinterested" history. "Humor in Ethnohistory," Axtell's 1989 presidential address for the American Society for Ethnohistory, was meant in good faith to be an amusing, but still intellectually satisfying, foray into funny moments in the past. Humor is, of course, risky business, because it is culturally defined but also because it depends on cardboard characterizations of "the other." In this essay, even in the anecdotes spotlighting ridiculous Europeans, Indian men appear only as flatulent buffoons mystified by European technology, and Indian women appear only as scantily-clad nymphomaniacs. In the same way that such seemingly innocuous cultural phenomena as Porky's Revenge and Benny Hill have political meaning and are "voices" in a "moral debate" about social relations, Axtell's ethnohistory cannot be as "disinterested" as he intends.

The question then becomes "Whose interest does it reflect?" This is not just a question one might ask of Axtell, but was, as I read his book, a question I kept asking myself about the history I do and about the history done by professional historians in general. In Beyond 1492, Axtell grapples with the crucial tension we all feel as historians. On the one hand, our devotion to footnotes and our careful scrutiny of historical documents testify to our faith in the Fact as Sacred Truth. On the other hand, we also know that we make it up as we go along; that is, through interpretation and imagination, we create the historical narrative. Although I question whether Axtell's objective of "disinterested" history is fully realizable, Beyond 1492 offers profound and thought-provoking discussion of issues that are central to the historian's craft.

Nancy Shoemaker Texas Christian University