The Religious Motivations of the Europeans: According to Their Own Rules and Their Own God - Literature review Example

 “I think they can easily be made Christians, for they seem to have no religion. If it pleases Our Lord, I will take six of them to Your Highness when I depart, in order that they may learn our language” (Columbus 1616). These lines were taken from the diary of Christopher Columbus, and in these lines the obviously superiority which Columbus felt towards the unfortunate inhabitants of the island upon which Columbus landed can be plainly seen. For those who were not kidnapped or killed for disobeying orders, death by infection diseases awaited the rest. This is the same attitude that the Spanish conquistadors held as they conquered and destroyed most of the Latin American empires with brutal efficiency. The conquistadors were greedy men who desired the riches of another people, and because they had the ability to take the riches, they did so. The attitudes of the conquerors of empires and those interested in finding converts in a new land held the same basic attitude. They came across a culture different from their own, and they simply assumed that different meant inferior. The Columbus quote mentioned above is a clear indication of this. Naturally, the natives of the Americas did in fact have their own religions, and from today’s perspectives we consider their cultures to be as relevant and of value as any other culture. Different attitudes towards the discovery and conquest of the Americas is apparent in the writings of many of the authors of the time. Not all of them took the superior attitude towards these different cultures, though many in fact did uphold these beliefs. As Spain was responsible for much of the conquest of Latin America, it is worthwhile to get the opinions from two writers from different Western cultures. The essayist Michel de Montaigne celebrates the supposedly savage cultures and questions the logic in the assumption of the superiority of our own cultures in the essays “On Cannibalism” and “On Coaches,” while Sir Walter Raleigh seems to accept the treatment of the natives in The Discovery of Guiana. As Montaigne begins discussing the native cultures encountered in European colonialism, he makes an observation in his essay “On Cannibalism”: “I think there is nothing barbarous and savage in that nation, from what I have been told, except that each man calls barbarism whatever is not his own practice” (1670). In this statement Montaigne is marking a sharp contrast in opinion from the general consensus of his time. His attitude was much more forward thinking; the reason for this can be considered to be the relative exclusion of judging these cultures on a religious basis. It is important to take into consideration the history of Western religion. Before the monotheism of Christianity, the polytheistic pagan religions were widespread. As Western civilization progressed, there was a gradual abandonment of paganism and the embrasure of the monotheistic Christianity. Many of the older religions could be considered to be contradictory; if something bad happened, it was because a God who favored them was pleased, but if something bad happened, it was because a different God was angered by something that had been done. Floods and droughts were attributed to different Gods, and it was difficult to determine exactly how a civilization should act without angering or inciting one of the numerous gods. Monotheism solved this by eliminating all of the other gods; there was one way to please the one God, and if something bad happened, it was because there was a very specific way in which the one and true God had been angered. The Christians viewed this as a simpler and therefore more progressive world view. Since the natives of the Americas still utilised polytheistic religions, the Europeans considered them to be similar to the less advanced ways that their culture used to be and therefore inferior to their culture. Though their still religions utilised polytheism, that was nothing less advanced about their civilisations. In “On Coaches,” Montaigne takes this idea even further and questions the rationalisations behind the assumption that Western cultures were superior in light of the Europeans’ treatment of the natives. Montaigne begins by setting up the basic attitude held by the Europeans at the time: “ Certain Spaniards, coasting the sea in quest of their mines, landed in a fruitful and pleasant and very well peopled country, and there made to the inhabitants their accustomed professions…the belief in one only God, and the truth of our religion, which they advised them to embrace, whereunto they also added some threats. In these statements we can discern Montaigne’s general attitudes towards the Spanish conquerors. The conquistadors were referred to as imposing their “accustomed professions” upon the “inhabitants.” As it is obvious what conquistadors did to the natives, stating that they were accustomed to treating people in this manner implies an inherent flaw in the people who are behaving in this manner. To treat people so poorly and to such an extent as to not even think about it so that it becomes accustomed requires for people to behave in this barbaric manner for long enough to become calloused. Furthermore, the phrases “only one God” and “the truth of our religion” also explains how the conquistadors exercised a general lack of respect for any belief system other than their own. To this extent, we can see how Montaigne expresses how religion allowed the Europeans to feel superior to another culture, and we can see how this forced them to act in a way that a supposedly more advanced and superior culture would never act. This indictment of religion in the work of Montaigne just shows us that religion cannot be in any way a measure of the value of a culture. Furthermore, the examples that Montaigne uses to show how the native cultures of the Americas was superior in ways to our and other cultures derives in no way from religion but from their technological accomplishments. For instance, Montaigne brings attention to the road system of the Incas: As to pomp and magnificence, upon the account of which I engaged in this discourse, neither Greece, Rome, nor Egypt, whether for utility, difficulty, or state, can compare any of their works with the highway to be seen in Peru, made by the kings of the country, from the city of Quito to that of Cusco…lined on both sides with fine high walls. Whereas it was a generally agreed upon belief that ancient Greek and Roman cultures and technologies were the pinnacle of the ancient worlds, Montaigne is again sharply contrasting with popular notions of his time by casting the cultures of the Americas in a more positive light. Once again, it should be pointed out that the positive aspects of the Latin American cultures had nothing to do with their religions, though Montaigne did show a basic respect for these religions in their own right: “As to one only God, the proposition had pleased them well; but that they would not change their religion, both because they had so long and happily lived in it.” Finally, Montaigne further goes on to state that the religious motivations of the Europeans weren’t even approved of according to their own rules and their own God. For instance, Montaigne states that: “God meritoriously permitted that all this great plunder should be swallowed up by the sea in transportation, or in the civil wars wherewith they devoured one another; and most of the men themselves were buried in a foreign land without any fruit of their victory.” For all the effort that the Europeans put into plundering the Americas, Montaigne implies that it was an ultimately futile effort because all of the riches were lost or wasted. As stated earlier, the monotheistic Christianity was a simpler religion in respects that it gave people one permitted way in which to act, and acting in any other way would displease the only God of the religion. As such, it is obvious from this statement that Montaigne felt as though the Europeans were not following the tenets of Christianity, and therefore all of the wealth that was accrued from their plundering was lost. Though Montaigne did not judge the Latin American natives one way or another according to their religion, probably because they upheld the tenets of their religion, he did negatively judge the Europeans for not upholding the tenets of their religion. This is the pivotal way in which Montaigne used religion to question which culture was superior. Should we not consider that culture that actually abides by the rules that it devises for itself through its religion to be superior as opposed to the religion that breaks its own rules and uses religion as an excuse to steal, murder, and plunder form another culture that is deemed inferior simply because it is not of the same religion as its own? And how could they expect the natives to embrace their religion when it was obvious that the people of that religion did not abide by the rules that were laid out for it in the first place? In contrast to Montaigne, Walter Raleigh for the most part leaves religion out of his discussion of his experience with the Americas. When he does mention it, the purpose is more to dismiss it as opposed to getting into an in depth discussion of the repercussions of it. Raleigh, in his writings, shows his in depth knowledge of the Spanish exploration of the Americas: “Throughout the whole of this book and others by the same writer Raleigh shows profoundly he had studied the Spanish accounts of America and the Atlantic navigation” (Hume 199). Given his knowledge of the writings and activities of the Spanish, this further goes to show that Raleigh was simply out for his own monetary gain in the matter of the Americas. If he had been intimately aware of the activities of the Spanish, he would have been all the more aware of their actions involved in their attempts to convert the native Latin Americans. Because he shows no regards for religion in his dealings with the Americas, it simply shows that he was simply interested in the wealth of the Americas. This is mostly because Raleigh knew that religion would simply get in the way of what he really was interested in the Americas for, which was the wealth to be found and stolen. In a letter to his mother, Raleigh outlines his relative indifference to religion and attempts at conversion: “But the ridiculous thing is to suppose you improve a man by shoving him from one religion into the other. There is no great difference between them in merit; each has its points in which it is much superior to the other, and personally I prefer the Christian” (61). To Raleigh, his Christianity was simply a matter of preference over other religions. This can hardly be said to be the statement of a man of religious convictions. It sounds more like a man who simply was raised in a religious atmosphere but found no real purpose for it in his day to day life. It was simply to continue on with what he had been raised with as opposed to embracing another religion or even rejecting the one he was accustomed to. Also, it is obvious that he has no intentions of improving anything in any regards for the natives; he’s simply uninterested in religion. While some people went to the America under the pretense or even the deep-seated belief that they really did want to help the natives by converting them, Raleigh makes it rather clear what his intentions with the Americas had been: “Many years since I had knowledge, by relation, of that mighty, rich, and beautiful empire of Guiana, and of that great and golden city, which the Spaniards call El Dorado, and the naturals Manoa, which city was conquered, re-edified, and enlarged by a younger son of Guayna-capac, Emperor of Peru.” By discussing the wealth on Peru early on in his Discovery of Guiana, Raleigh makes it clear that he is simply in it for the money. Though he is more respectful in regards to religion because he found no purpose in forcing people to accept another’s religion, this does not necessarily cast him in a better light than the Europeans who came before him who had absolutely no regard for the fact that the natives practised their own religion and should be respected for having their own beliefs. The reason for this is simply that he was more forthright in his intentions to exploit Americas for its wealth. There would be no other reason for his over-exaggeration of the wealth that he found and the furthering of the myth of what the Spanish referred to as El Dorado. Because he was not successful in discovering the wealth that he set out to find, he needed to perpetuate this myth to make it seem as though his ventures had been more successful than they had been. If religion had been an important aspect of what Raleigh had set out to accomplish, he could have concentrated on discussing what he had accomplished in the name of religion as opposed to making up more stories about the Americas. Many accounts of the natives survive, and it is obvious from these accounts that they were in no way simple, unintelligent, or not deserving of basic human decency. In telling of their battles with the Spanish, the stories of the natives is as heart-breaking as any other story of a civilisation that is in the process of being destroyed for no good reason: “Nothing can compare with the horrors of that siege and the agonies of the starving. We were so weakened by hunger that, little by little, the enemy forced us to retreat. Little by little they forced us to the wall” (Garibay 2126). Also, as the Spanish were unable to speak their language, and as the general attitude expressed by the Europeans was that the natives should learn European languages, such as what Columbus stated, it is obvious that the Europeans were simply unaware of the many facets of their culture and religion. As an example, a translation of a typical prayer from the culture of the natives sounds remarkably similar to typical Christian prayer except for the fact that the deities are multiple as opposed to singular: “Our lords, esteemed lords. We welcome you to our lands and cities. We who are so unworthy are reluctant to look on the faces of such valiant person” (Johnson 2130). This attitude carried forward for many centuries, as many of the same justifications used in Latin America were used in the colonisation of Africa, Middle Eastern countries, and India. While from a modern stand-point we can look back and realise the mistakes of previous generations, we cannot do anything about the cultures that were simply completely destroyed. The two contrasting attitudes found in the works of Montaigne and Raleigh exemplify the struggles between two different viewpoints that unfortunately took centuries to resolve. While we can look back and learn much through a comparative analysis of two different attitudes held by two different writers that were dealing with the same subject, are left with much less to learn from the cultures that they were examining. Fragmented writing and ruins of once powerful civilisations are all that remain. Works Cited Columbus, Christopher, “Diario.” Western Literature in a World Context. NewYork, St. Martin’s Press, 1995. Garibay, Angel Maria; Kemp, Lysander; Johnson, David, trans. “The Conquest of Mexico.” Western Literature in a World Context. NewYork, St. Martin’s Press, 1995. Johnson, David; Jimarez, Armando, trans. “A Defense of Aztec Religion.” Western Literature in a World Context. NewYork, St. Martin’s Press, 1995. Montaigne, Michel de, “On Cannibalism.” Western Literature in a World Context. NewYork, St. Martin’s Press, 1995. Montaigne, Michel de. “Of coaches.” Trans. Charles Cotton. 1588. Quotidiana. Ed. Patrick Madden. 26 Dec 2006. 07 Jan 2009 http://essays.quotidiana.org/montaigne/coaches/. Hume, Martin Andrew, Spanish Influence on English Literature. Haskell House Publishers, 1982. Raleigh, Sir Walter, The Letters of Sir Walter Raleigh 1879 to 1922. Kessinger Publishing, 2005. Raleigh, Sir Walter, The Discovery of Guiana. Available from http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/2272. Read More