A Book for the Ages

Jill Lepore's Book of Ages is a great way to end the semester.  Lepore brings Jane Franklin to life before the reader's very eyes.  Lepore does a fantastic job of looking at Franklin's personal life and the way that she is caught up in a web of forces much larger than herself, such as the growing influence of paper currency.  Lepore doesn't just use Franklin's life as a starting block to jump into another contemporaneous event, but goes to show the way these forces affected the person central to this microhistory's keyhole, Jane Franklin.  One not only learns about the societal customs that affected all aspects of women's life, especially education, but one gets to see these customs at work on the ground level, influencing people in the flesh.  Reading this book has really influenced the way in which I want to take my own paper.  Lepore's style not only brings the Franklins to life, but also entices the reader by portraying the setting in which our characters are found as both exciting and troubling.  One example of Lepore's writing that I intend to use as inspiration for my own project is the way in which she looks at Jane's surroundings and analyzes the role that debt played in the changing economy.  War veterans were being brought to court over debts that they hadn't paid.  Nadezhda Mandelstam, the central figure in my own microhistory, discusses the way that Stalin's decision to enforce collectivization led to dearth when it came to food throughout the Soviet Union.  I hope to be able to look at the relationship between my own central figure and the larger forces at work with at least some small degree of the success that Lepore has put on display.

The Wonderfully Readable Results of Loving Too Much

In 2001, twelve years before she published Book of Ages, Jill Lepore wrote an article for the Journal of American History about “Historians Who Love Too Much.” When we reviewed that article during our first week of class, we talked about the trap Lepore described as a hazard for historians who write biographies and microhistories – getting too close to the subject, losing objectivity, becoming blind to the parts of the story that don’t conform to the ideal. In a 2013 article for The New Yorker called The Prodigal Daughter, Lepore removes any doubt that she loved Jane Franklin Mecom too much. She was writing about Jane at the behest of her own mother, then in her eighties, destined to die before the book was finished.

Book of Ages was the perfect book to wrap up this course. It challenges the expectations of historical writing, whether microhistory, biography, or other conventions. It defies categorization. Lepore herself argued, in discussing her methods, that Jane Franklin Mecom’s life does not fit neatly into any of the standard conventions of historical writing – history, biography, autobiography, or fiction (pg. 270). She wove together elements of all these genres, and more. Is it a microhistory? To some extent, it fits the criteria we have established: Lepore uses Jane’s life to examine the larger historical context of 18^th century America, writing in exceptional narrative prose, illuminating an otherwise unknown side of a well-known story. But Book of Ages is something different. The San Francisco Chronicle called it a “double biography,” telling the stories of both Jane and her famous brother, Benjamin Franklin. But the source material for Jane’s early life is sparse, so Lepore uses unconventional methods to fill in the gaps, borrowing quotes from Jane’s later writings, following tangents to explore the Franklin ancestry back to its earliest records in England, and even incorporating brief biographical sketches of other famous Janes (Jane Grey and Jane Austen), influential authors of the 18^th century, and occasionally people who had little or no direct correlation to the subject of the book. It is not so much a biography or a history as a book about living in Boston and Philadelphia in Franklin’s time, with content drawn equally from records, imagination, and interpolation.

The bottom line is that Jill Lepore has, through her unique methodology, crafted a brilliant book that is informative, imaginative, and a joy to read. It may or may not be a microhistory, and although that question may have some relevance in our current class, the real strength of Lepore’s work is that it proves that a well-written book does not need to fit into any predefined genre.

The Amazing Ben 'n Jen Considered

It seems easy to view Jill Lepore's Book of Ages as a biography, particularly when she calls it a biography (although one that she says "borrows from the conventions of fiction").  (P. 269).  But her tipoff about fiction is only one element that seems to also make the book a microhistory.  Others include, for example, the use of a personal, discreet event (the sibling relationship of Franklin and Mecom) as a lens on a number of larger issues in the 18th century: issues of women, poverty, debtors, lunatics, medicine, politics, fame, the rise from humble origins, and even history.  It also uses letters as its primary source, a microhistory hallmark.  Additionally, it focuses (at least partially) on the life of an "obscure" person.  Perhaps the moral of this book, and our class, is that the definition of a microhistory can cover an extremely broad spectrum of "conventions of different kinds of writing about lives."  (P. 270).

It’s like writing history… Just make it up as you go

The story of Domingos Alvares is a fitting one for this point in our class and our ongoing discussions about microhistory. Not only does it refer back to previous readings, particularly The Diligent and Two Princes of Calabar, but it brings to light several of the themes we have explored in our efforts to define what a microhistory is, and what is permissible in the writing of a narrative history like this.

Alvares himself embodies much of what we have seen in other protagonists throughout this course. His story, or what there is of it, comes to us through testimony in a court of the 18th century Portuguese Inquisition. We know of his capture in Dahomey, his enslavement in Brazil, and his resourcefulness that enabled him to buy his freedom in Rio. We know that, like the main characters in several of the other books we have read, he found himself on the wrong side of the religious tyranny of the world he had been thrust into. We know that he had a certain amount of knowledge of African vodun practices, and that he was cunning enough to parlay whatever knowledge he had into a practice as a spiritual healer that tended to agitate his white overseers while empowering him with a level of popular power and financial wherewithal that was unusual for someone in his circumstances. His persistent efforts to improve his situation would be his undoing over and over, as such activities were viewed with suspicion and fear by Christian clergy.

Alvares’ greatest power was his ability to improvise and adapt. When traditional African Sakpata healing was called for, he was able to assume that role. When it became clear that the Christians held the power and would not tolerate his pagan ideology, he implemented Christian emblems and phrases in his “cures.” When even that wasn’t enough, he invoked the natural world and claimed that there was no supernatural element of any kind in his healing powers. When opportunities arose to cast himself as a diviner of Moorish gold instead of a spritual healer, he took on that role – being careful to stage his scams so that he provided himself adequate time to get away before he was found out. In short, he was making it up as he went. But he was also smart, and not everything was made up. He incorporated enough knowledge of actual botanical medicine to provide legitimate treatments when possible, although we do not know whether his botanical knowledge came from early tutelage in Africa or from later encounters with practitioners in Brazil or Portugal.

The only problem with this book, and one we have grappled with, argued about, conditionally accepted, and sometimes criticized harshly, is James Sweet’s occasional reliance on conjecture. As we have established, this is often necessary in microhistory, and generally makes the narrative better. But there has to be a basis of fact, and Sweet makes some points that seem to be less factually grounded than the claims we have observed from other authors. For example, on page 24 Sweet explains that it is likely that Alvares’ parents were “more than simple devotees of the vodun; they quite likely were priest,” basing this likelihood primarily on their names. Ok, I can accept this analysis, but then he takes it further and translates this status onto Alvares himself, saying, “What seems likely, though, is that by the time Oyo and Dahomey began their warfare in 1728, Domingos Alvares was already a powerful spiritual and political leader…” What makes that likely? The fact that he later claimed that his parents had the names of spiritual leaders? The fact that, upon landing in Brazil, he was able to convince other slaves that he had spiritual connections? I think it is possible that he was a spiritual leader at some level in Africa, but at the age of 18 I think it would be less likely that he was a powerful priest, and more likely that he was a gifted con artist who had been exposed to enough vodun that he could fake the funk when it benefitted him. We find out later that some of the treatments he was using in Portugal were things that he learned in Brazil, or even in the Algarve. This, coupled with his propensity to add other tricks to his repertoire as he went along, makes it likely that his real vocation was not as a Sakpata priest, but as a skilled con artist and scammer who plied the tricks of his trade in a desperate effort to survive in the most difficult and challenging circumstances imaginable.

Small Revolutions

Sweet's exploration into the relationship between African ideas and European structure are interesting. The subject of Domingo Alvarez is a particularly interesting subject - though the whole 'free man sold back into slavery' is a common trope in the slave narrative, to see a man that is a vodun   healer gives it enough of a twist that keeps it fresh. Looking at his healing as a sort of weapon to undercut Europe's power is an especially interesting twist - a whole new meaning of that tired adage 'stay true to yourself.' Him holding onto his culture, his identity while being kidnapped and forced into slavery in a whole new country and culture is not only admirable, it is remarkable. Most people, when forced into a new situation, have to learn how to adapt, if only for survival. Alvarez holding onto his faith and identity (by keeping his old name, despite respecting his new one) despite being baptized in their faith is a small revolution.

Being a slave, he did have to play the game of obeying his masters and helping them when he could. However, his skills in the arts of healing were advantageous to him - and no doubt to other African slaves - in that he could make a patient better or worse simply based on the fact that he could conceal his knowledge of plants  because they didn't have the information. We spoke about the power of slaves a few weeks ago, and I think that this really correlates with those ideas. Slaves may not have obvious powers, but they can mount these small revolutions.

African Knowledge in the Atlantic

James Sweet explores the way African ideas helped shape the Atlantic world in his work detailing the experiences of Domingo Alvarez, a West African vodun healer sold into slavery. Allegedly because of the threat their increasing power and wealth posed to the King of Dahomey, members of the Sakpata priesthood were sold to Portuguese slave traders and brought to Brazil. Here Domingo was baptized after receiving an abbreviated form of the catechism. Sweet speculates how he might have received the new faith, and argues how he must have recognized it having similar traits to his own. We learn of creole languages and cures practiced for headaches.  Episodes of syncretism are contrasted with accounts of resistance including the use of violence. Domingo appears to have used his reputation as a 'fetisher' to inspire fear in his masters. "Since Africans possessed knowledge of plants and other substances that were often unknown to European pharmacists, let alone slave masters, they could easily conceal poisons among plant and animal objects that might be used for benign, everyday purposes," says Sweet. (69) In this way, the story of Domingo opens up questions concerning African systems of knowledge and how they were able to define their interaction in the Atlantic world. This is the key purpose of the work, for Sweet says that all to often, "Africans are almost seamlessly woven into the narrative of Western democratic triumphalism, their political challenges framed as crucial to our understandings of liberty, equality, and freedom," instead of understood through their own culture. (6) As a microhistory this work offers a possible portal into viewing the impact of African culture and ideas upon the European imagination.   

Perhapses, Possibilities, and Assumptions in Domingos Alvares

James Sweet’s Domingos Alvares is a fascinating book that makes a significant historiographical contribution. His argument that Alvares’s healing was a way to contest the “European imperial power” (6). It had never really considered how it is that so many of the African voices find their way into our historical documents, but Sweet makes a great point that the majority of them find their way into the documentation through adopting “European” culture, modes of thought, or its imperial project—or, playing the European game. Sweet shows how Domingos—and many others like him who have avoided detection—contested that game through holding onto their own cultural outlook and practices while adapting them to their new environment. This approach is different than just showing how slaves expressed their own agency, but also shows how they maintained separate intellectual world from their oppressors.

Some of the method Sweet employed, however, discomforted me. I understand he had a dearth of sources for the early stages of Domingos life, but there were times when I thought his conclusions less than supported even taking into account Sweet’s use of terms like perhaps and possibly. In particular, I found Sweet’s discussion of Domingo’s adoption of Christianity or parts of Christianity less than convincing. Domingos becomes a generalization himself as his mentality and approaches is surmised from Vodun theology (47-50). His polytheistic religion, for instance, made him open to new beliefs (48). The hierarchy of belief in Catholicism also would have appealed to Domingos, Sweet tells us, because it was similar to the Vodun hierarchy, and Domingos probably viewed his priest as a peer because he too held esoteric knowledge of his faith (49). And Domingos likely “recognized and respected” his new name (while maintaining his old one) because it was a badge of honor (50). Certainly, all of these are possible, but they are based on generalizations of the Vodun religion and how it found expression in its adherents in theory. In this way, Domingos becomes a sort of caricature of the Vodun healer interacting with Christianity, the outcomes of which are logically surmised. Put another way, the basis of Vodun beliefs are theorized on how they would interact with Christian practice. But what we do know about religions is that they are never just a set of beliefs but also infused with cultural inclinations, practices, and world views that are both temporally and terrestrially dependent.

Preceding the discussion on Christianity, Sweet directs the reader to works by Thornton and himself on Catholicism's influence on slaves from Kongo and Angola in an endnote, but he never uses specific examples from those works that would substantiate his “perhaps” claims better. In other words, establishing his assumptions in other empirical practices rather than logical surmise.

Another example is the walk in Rio de Janeiro that Domingos takes, for which Sweet even provided a map. After multiple readings (text and notes), I remain unsure if it was a real walk or a hypothetical one used simply to describe the area in which Domingos lived (81-88). Many of the citations focus specifically on things Domingos might have seen, but not concretely that such a walk existed. Perhaps, I’m overlooking something, but if the walk never took place, I do not think this is the most judicious way to discuss the environment in which Domingos lived.

To be clear, I’m not uncomfortable with his use of perhaps and likely or probably, but the justifications for it. I do understand why he does it, especially in the earlier parts of the books (of which Sweet forewarns the reader). Indeed, Sweet’s evidentiary basis becomes much stronger has the book goes on.  I would characterize my thoughts on his approach in these earlier chapters as uncomfortably accepting. These criticisms aside, I found Sweet’s book to be fascinating and important especially due to the significance of its overall argument.

The Psychology of Slavery

                James Sweet does something very interesting in his work Domingos Alvares: African Healing, and the Intellectual History of the Atlantic World. While reading, I was quickly reminded of my final last semester for Historiography in which a certain grouping of second wave feminists turned towards psychoanalsis as a means to understand Gender History. Though James Sweet’s analysis of the African slave trade and Domingos doesn’t enter such a realm, the connection in my mind is distinct. In adhering towards his goal of understanding “the ways that Africans and their descendants engaged European institutions and ideas, [and] employing them for their own ends” (4) he makes it clear that he wishes to observe the events surrounding Domingos from a heavily African viewpoint. (41) In doing so, something new arises that I feel we haven’t encountered to such a degree in the works covered thus far. This is the ‘psychology’ of slavery.

                I hear have used the term psychology in a broad sense to mean that he places much emphasis on the minds of the enslaved. Mental health is described and brought up time and time again to such an extent that I find it core to much of Sweet’s analysis. To start with, he engages in an investigation into African identities in relation to their local religions or voduns and its connection with military conquest and the formation of new identities such as Mahi. Sweet correlates the military conquest of Dahomey to one based off of the psyche. He strips the events of their traditional materialistic investigations and applies to it the lens of the psyche.

                Mental health as a concept comes up again and again. He speaks of it during the conquests and the treks to the coast. The capture, enslavement, and transportation of slaves cost a psychological toll as much as it did physical and Sweet makes this well known. He accentuates this even further with the stories of perceived European cannibalism and the treatments of the slaves by the slavers. As these slaves arrive in their new places of work, they already start creating new experiences, new bonds, and new identities that reshape their sense of self. This directly impacts European institutions and ideologies. In a sense, as we have done several times, I would argue that Sweet believes in the power of ideas as the agent of historical change. He never rejects a materialistic understanding, but definitely adheres to the psyche.

                This brings up an interesting debate in historical analysis. As historians we are taught to stay out of the realm of psychology. We can better understand what people mean, intend, report, and portray. But, to delve into a specific individuals psychology is out of the realm of historical methodology for a number of reasons. I find it interesting, however, that more historians don’t utilize psychological approaches to populations and peoples. I mean this insofar as describing the slaves in such terminology as “depressed” and “ptsd”. It is quite evident, to me, that these peoples suffered greatly from such afflictions when put into such dire circumstances. To state that Domingos himself suffered from any of these mental afflictions would be purely conjecture from a historical analysis. This is self-evident, but I still believe these terms to be useful and yet wholly missing in such a dialogue. 

Trickster's Travels

Al-Hasan Al-Wazzan, though only a single man, is actually a fascinating look at the intersection between Muslim and Christian sects in what we now usually think of as the Middle East, and certain parts of the third world. Al-Wazzan, though not the only man to have traveled far and wide, is certainly a fascinating example of what it meant to travel, and what happened when one did, which is an interesting contrast to the idea that most people in history didn't venture further than five miles from where they were born. Al Wazzan's travels actually sound more like an adventure novel, with our protagonist wading his way through many different governments and meeting different people, even being captured and held hostage for periods of time. 

The only difference between Al-Wazzan's travels and any other adventurer is, of course, that he wrote them down. Al-Wazzan actually wrote a book about his travels called, rather uncreatively, "Descriptions of Africa." Though the author herself admits that the account is spotty at best, it does give rather great insight into some of the customs of the period in different parts of the world, and how they might look to an outsider, which gives us a great eye into the customs since someone who had grown up celebrating them would never think to write them down,assuming that they would perpetuate. It's interesting, because unlike some of the others that we have read that have questionably qualified as microhistories, this one almost certainly does. In fact, it's almost like an autobiography that's been curated by a historian, if that makes sense. 

Trickster History

Natalie Zemon Davis’ Trickster Travels is the story of al-Hasan al-Wazzan, an “extreme case” of early 16th century Muslim-Christian interaction and, as the title suggests, travels in the medieval world spanning Africa, the Mediterranean, and Iberia. Al-Wazzan is “extreme,” in other words, unusual, in that his experiences took him into diverse places, cultures, and circumstances, where he encountered some of the most powerful men of his time and used his diplomatic prowess to find his best possible standing while in captivity or “under the thumb” of some master. At least, that’s the premise of the book.

But is that really what it’s about? Davis cites al-Wazzan’s Description of Africa as the foundational document for her investigation into his life, but by her own admission, the contemporary record is full of contradictions, implausibilities, and periods of silence. What we end up with is a vivid and enthralling social history of the period and the region of al-Wazzan, but not the story of al-Wazzan and not his world through the lens of his own life, as we have had with other microhistories. It’s almost as if Davis approached this project determined to write a microhistory, but without actually having a subject that fully supported that endeavor.

“Throughout I have had to make use of the conditional—‘would have,’ ‘may have,’ ‘was likely to have’—and the speculative ‘perhaps,’” Davis states in her introduction (pg. 13). She is creating a “plausible” life story, but not necessarily a factual one. The facts are there, of course – she is not making up the history out of whole cloth, but the facts are those of the general history of 16th century North Africa, not of the life of one particular player in that history.

Trickster Travels is a social history of a prototypical 16th century North African man, albeit one with an extraordinary set of experiences. We get few personal details about the protagonist in the story, but we get plenty of details and insights into the environment in which such a man would have existed. Is it a microhistory? I think so, if the exception proves the rule. We can see what it is not: It is not a conventional, thematic, or regional history. It is certainly not a biography. It is not a religious history, a cultural history, or a political history, although there are aspects of all these woven into the narrative. The compelling narrative, and the inability to categorize it as anything else, leads to the conclusion that this is a microhistory, and a good one—and one unlike other works in the genre.

Al-Wazzan the Stepping Stone

     I found Natalie Zemon Davis's Trickster Travels to be absolutely fascinating.  However, while it seems to me that The Return of Martin Guerre could be considered to be in the "elite" tier when it comes to answering the question "What is a microhistory," Trickster Travels is probably a few spots lower.  To be fair, I don't remember Davis  ever using the term "microhistory" in her introduction, so it would be unfair to hold it against her that this is less of a microhistory than Martin Guerre.  She often uses Al-Wazzan as a stepping stone to talk about other aspects of African and European life, rather than using Al-Wazzan's experiences as a lens itself.  For example, in the chapter "Curiosity and Connections," Davis writes, "Once he was free to walk through the streets of Rome, Yuhanna al-Asas would have been quick to see and hear of them as part of the city's public face" (205).  Then, for the next five pages, she talks about what sexuality looked like in Italy at the time.  She doesn't mention anything that Al-Wazzan actually did, just things that he probably would have seen.  The next mention of something that Al-Wazzan actually did himself is on page 210, when she talks about something he mentioned in his Geography of Africa.  Not that there's anything wrong with this-Davis has written an excellent book.  However, it seems that the book uses Al-Wazzan's story as a starting point for going down a number of "rabbit holes," rather than using Al-Wazzan's story itself as a lens.  Nonetheless, the book is incredibly useful for a class on microhistories, since one can see the way Davis expertly fills in "silences," linking a single character to questions about a much larger world, which is a skill that is bound to come up inevitably when writing a microhistory.   
     

Speculative evidence in Trickster Travels

Trickster Travels is a fascinating tale of al-Hasan al-Wazzan, a man who operated in the highest echelons of society both in North Africa and even upon his capture and servitude in Western Europe. Davis depicts a truly cosmopolitan man. His position as a diplomat in North Africa projects him to the Pope’s palace in servitude as his captors recognized his significance gaining him important protectors/masters. He enters himself into the margins of the “elite humanist circles” (74). In many ways this makes sense, as Davis writes later, al-Hasan wrote his book on Africa in a form that would be acceptable to both Europeans and Africans in the vernacular language ever aware of his audience and indeed courting it. Nevertheless, throughout the book Davis has to fill in gaps with speculative language, which she explains is necessary in the beginning. This language sometimes, however, takes on an explanatory power alone. Taking our example above, Davis explains that al-Hasan ran in those margins of the “elite humanist circles” through the combination of assumed conversations between al-Hasan and Paulo Giovio and Valeriano, and the absence of evidence in their writings of the ambassador of Fez as one of their sources is exemplary of his marginal status. The assumption are mutually sustaining of one another. The evidence is al-Hasan’s familiarity with those figures about which Giovio wrote, but there were significant go-betweens in the Mediterranean during this time (of which al-Hasan certain accounts as one) from whom Giovio could gain his insights. I’m not sure if that speculation places him on the margins of humanist elites at the time.

I do not want to be min-understood, Trickster Travels is a fascinating book, and Davis brings to bear a very interesting reading of al-Hasan’s writings along with supplementary material to reconstruct his life. Indeed, it might be said, I’m making a mountain out of a molehill. Certainly, the example above is exceptional, but it is demonstrative of the sort of speculative language Davis must use to fill in the sources where they are lacking with circumstantial evidence. What remains, however, is a figure able to navigate these two separate places and cultures, and who (as Davis indicates in the Epilogue with her comparison with Rabelais) represents a greater similarity in “ways of thinking and writing” despite those differences.

A True Renaissance Man

The one take away that I got from reading Trickster Travels was that al-Wazzan was a man of many interests. He enjoyed is life as a diplomat which allowed him to travel extensively and learn new things from a variety of teachers. Even his time as a Christian in Rome allowed him to extend his knowledge and to be able to share that knowledge with others. As a man in the Renaissance period in Rome I believe that al-Wazzan was the true Renaissance man even more so than the Italians that have held that title. He was certainly more versed and more well traveled than the majority of Italians and had more to offer as far as experiences in his lifetime.

Al-Wazzan's preoccupation with language allowed him to be tolerant of others who did not share his beliefs which in turn allowed him to have a greater understanding about the world he was living in. The idea that he would collaborate with a Jewish scholar as a Christian who was also a Muslim is a true bringing together of the religions in an effort to understand each other. The work that al-Wazzan and Jacob Mantino did in trying to create an Arabic-Hebrew-Latin dictionary was extraordinary. 

I see al-Wazzan as a man of tolerance which is uncommon in the time period. He seems to value learning and sharing of knowledge above the dogma of religion and strife. This time period was tumultuous, especially between the Christians and the Muslims as they fought for control of the Mediterranean. Al-Wazzan's concern for the many different sects of Islam also to me portrays a man at a crossroads, who is trying to understand his religion, and the politics surrounding that religion. This concern about the different religions and even sects of the same religion point to an enlightened scholar who does not follow blindly along, but instead wishes to understand differing points of view.

Cosmography and Geography of Africa was al-Wazzan's contribution to the understanding of Africa for those who had never experienced it, he walked a tightrope so thin when he was writing so that neither his benefactors in Italy nor his associates in Africa would be offended by his writing. What a difficult thing to pull of in a language you were just learning. In addition, what a find for Davis to be able to bring this gifted man to life for modern readers. She does al-Wazzan justice in helping us to understand him and where he had been and where he was going. Even though Davis may lack some information she is clear when she doesn't have pertinent facts and instead is making assumptions.

Malintzin's Mexico

This was a fascinating perspective to come across. I've said before, throughout this semester, that there aren't nearly enough women in mainstream history, but I think that I've read more in depth about women and people of color in history just over the past few months than I think I ever have in my entire academic career. So, I say (rather repetitively now) how refreshing it truly is. And as we've had some women that are so limited by their environment over the past few weeks, it is interesting to see someone take such advantage of it. Especially being an indigenous slave. That, for me, was the most fascinating part. Her using her agency, and even her position to her advantage, was incredibly impressive.

As we've been saying that microhistories provides a sort of keyhole to the everyday life by looking at someone that is slightly off the beaten path, this is a perfect example. This gives an excellent look into what MesoAmerican women's day to day lives were like, and the lives of the MesoAmerican people in general, as well as the lives of the slaves and the people who oppressed them, to some degree. Giving the perspective of the oppressed is always something that interests me, and Townsend does it so deftly here, which I appreciated. The combination of sources was truly unique, and I was surprised that she had gotten so much out of it.

Once Upon a Time in Malintzin's Mexico

In Malintzin's Choices Camilla Townsend has produced a descriptive and expertly written account of the conquest of Mexico that highlights the agency and point of view of a young meso-American woman who becomes the translator and advisor of Hernan Cortez after being sold into slavery. In many such a way as has been observed in the works of Ginzburg and Sparks she uses knowledge of the context to paint an image of Malintzin. In doing so she seeks to rescue her memory from vilification and place it in the context of her times. This seems to be a recurring theme in microhistory. The small and not-so-servile slave girl was not only useful to her Spanish allies but could also assert her own agency in doing so. Furthermore, Townsend takes pains to understand how the events of the conquest would have been viewed from the perspective of meso-american. This provides us with a glimpse of what Malinche would have been thinking even though she admits there is no way to know for sure.

Townsend's work tells us a great deal about daily life and meso-american women in general. Themes such as gender complementarity and household production are present throughout. In this way it reminded me of Martha Ballard's story only in this case we have an example of a woman choosing to engage in political events rather than shun them. I found it interesting that Townsend asserts that when coming into contact with Malinche her fellow meso-americans would have needed a new word to describe her, for she was in effect inventing a new social category for herself. She is perhaps an example of a Creole trailblazer. The use of written, oral, and visual evidence was refreshing. This must have been a difficult work to put together since she did not have a single source from which to draw information.

This being my second time reading this I felt I gained a better appreciation for it by viewing as a microhistory. The simple change in perspective gives a whole new light on the conquest of Mexico as well as provides insights into the mentality of normal-exceptional meso-american women.   

Malinzin's choices versus position

Reading Malintzin's Choices I was able to understand a story that I knew in a different light. I had some basic understanding of Cortes's march towards Tenochtitlan and his ultimate conquering of the Mexica area and I was aware of Marina who acted as a translator for the invading Spaniards. What Townsend contributed to my understanding of Marina/Malintzin is that she had more agency, and by association power, than other histories might portray.

Malintzin did have power according to Townsend, in fact she occupied a position of respect with regard to the Spaniards. She asserts that the Spaniards knew that the position she occupied made their actions possible, and that she contributed towards their end goals. As much as she was respected by the Spaniards, she was also respected by the people that they were coming in contact with who saw her not as one of them but possibly above them. So it seems that she actually occupies a position in what is a "no woman's land", that she really didn't belong within any group she was in contact with.

Townsend's close reading of her sources gives her the opportunity to portray Malintzin as a strong woman who contributed to the Spanish conquest. At the same time she provides Malintzin with agency she also makes it clear that she had very little agency in the beginning of her journey to leave the Spanish and return to her home. Townsend also provides us with some interesting questions that she strives to answer, such as the possibility that Malintzin actually enjoyed her elevated position, and the idea of returning to her home and slavery was not something that she wished to do. The result of her return would have been a significant reduction in status, which was not a choice that she would have readily accepted.

While Townsend must make many assumptions from the lack of documentation I believe that she manages it well. She is clear about when she is speculating about what happened which I feel provides a feeling of honesty. She also makes clear the lack of documentation or in fact, the Europeanization of the available resources makes close reading very important. Overall, I accept the story she has written about Malintzin at face value and feel that it is the best that we can hope for with what there is to work with.

Malintzin and A New Approach to Microhistory

Malintzin’s Choices is a fascinating book, true to form for the books in this course, but it takes a very different approach to microhistory from anything we have read previously. With no written first-person accounts to establish the framework for Townsend’s history, she had to get to the subject of her history – Malintzin – in a different way. As she said in her introduction, this is really a book about context. Rather than taking the reader inside the life of the subject and looking outward to explore and learn about the contextual world around her, Townsend builds the contextual world first and then uses the available details within that known context to construct the unknown details of Malintzin’s life. This is a difficult microhistorical methodology, requiring substantial knowledge of the historical context in order to identify the necessary details to inductively develop the subject.

The idea of creating a detailed sketch of a person’s life by examining everything the world in which that person lived is a little like a sculptor carving an equine statue by taking a block of marble and chipping away everything that doesn’t look like a horse. If you’re really good, as Townsend is, you’ll end up with something beautiful. If, on the other hand, you are not incredibly knowledgeable about the world in which your subject lived, you are more likely to end up with a statue of a five-legged llama, or maybe just a nondescript blob. There is an art to writing the way Townsend does in Malintzin’s Choices, and neophyte students of the art probably should not attempt it.

Having said that, it is important to recognize that Townsend proved herself to be remarkably gifted at this form of art. She took a long misunderstood, even maligned, historical figure and crafted an entirely new narrative with virtually no direct evidence to support it, but a narrative that is nonetheless compelling and arguably quite accurate given the voluminous circumstantial evidence on which she relied. Has Townsend exonerated Malintzin? I think so, or at the very least, she provided an alternate and believable narrative that makes her actions and decisions understandable. Townsend showed that Malintzin lived in an unimaginably complicated, difficult world, faced impossible choices, and did the best she could – probably the best anyone could be expected to do – given her situation.

Filling in the Gaps-A Whole New Level

We have talked a few times over the course of the semester about the ways in which authors either do or don’t fill in the gaps about questions readers might have.  For example, Cook and Cook don’t go into the story of Dona Beatriz in Good Faith and Truthful Ignorance.  Perhaps this was because they didn’t have any sources that could prove useful in such a task.  As we have mentioned, Natalie Zemon Davis, on the other hand, fills in the gaps by looking at what might have been typical for someone living in a certain time period.  Camilla Townsend is certainly willing to attempt to fill in the holes of her narrative where a dearth of information has provided challenges.  One example is the way in which Malintzin goes into detail about what the childbirth process could have been like for Malintzin.  Even if one might feel as though Townsend goes a little over the top in this part of the book, one can’t help but appreciate Townsend’s style.  Part of what makes Malintzin’s Choices such a great book is the way that Townsend brings Malintzin to life and convey to the reader the way in which Malintzin had a certain degree of agency.  Even though it is impossible to write a typical biography of Malintzin since she left no written documents, Townsend is able to effectively examine what we do know about the situations in which Malintzin found herself and explore the different possibilities that Malintzin faced.

Sources Moving beyond a Spanish-Indigenous Dichotomy

Malintzin’s Choices is a fascinating and creative into the life and surrounding world of the translator of Cortés. I was especially struck by the way Camilla Townsend used her sources to illuminate the multi-faceted world that Malintzin and the other indigenous peoples inhabited during the period of the Spanish conquest of the Mexica. In doing so, she questions the credibility of some of the long-standing ideas surrounding the conquest that generally caricature the various indigenous peoples as naive and unsophisticated. She demonstrates that the idea the Nahua thought the Spanish were Gods is more likely an invented tradition. Instead, the Nahua meant something along the lines of “sorcerer” when using the word “teotl” (49-50). Here, Townsend used her understanding of the Nahua world, Spanish sources, the Nahuatl language as well as the contexts behind the production of Nahuatl sources to come to this conclusion. In a strange but convincing irony, she disputes the Nahuatl sources produced under the aegis of a Franciscan priest, and brings to bear a close reading of sources from Cortés and Charles V that make possibility that they perceived the word teotl to mean God sound ridiculous (46-51). Her knowledge of the Nahuatl language here is incredibly important.

Taking into account the contexts of the production of her sources is one of the greatest strengths of Townsend’s analysis.  This is clear in her discussion of the importance of translators in the Spanish conquest, and the significance of Manlintzin in particular. Instead of reading the Nahuatl sources in combination and drawing a single picture of how they viewed interpreters/Malintzin, she reads them linearly. This method allows her to demonstrate that the first generation focused on the importance of translators and Malintzin  in their pictoral representations of the events. It was only in later generations (those that came after Malintzin had died) that her status was reduced as a result of the general reduction in the need for translators during their period (72-76).

Townsend does a great job capturing the multiplicity of the indigenous experience during the Spanish conquest. She makes clear that there was no single experience demographically or temporally. The close reading of all the available sources and the Nahuatl sources in particular that Townsend employs makes these arguments possible. In addition, it returns agency to both Malintzin and the other indigenous groups that separates the period of the Spanish conquest from the Spanish-Indigenous dichotomy. In its place, a world of a multiplicity of competing autonomous and semi-autonomous interests between various Mexica and Nahua peoples as well as the Spanish develops, in which Malintzin and others like her are competent actors and shaping the outcome along with the Spanish conquerors. 

Biographical Microhistory?

Before last semester, I must admit I didn't know the name Malintzin, nor the importance of the name in history.  Since reading Camilla Townsend's Malintzin's Choices again, I better understand the whole extent of the story of Malintzin, as before I had not realized the impact of her important contribution, nor had I imagined the possibilities of the choices she would have had to have made.  Before reading Malintzin’s Choices again, I revisited William Prescott’s account of Malintzin, who he mentioned more than a few times, in the History of the Conquest of Mexico, where Prescott portrayed her as "Marina" - a useful interpreter and concubine to Cortes.  Prescott even mentioned her son by Cortes - Don Martin Cortes, although not really her daughter Maria (by Jaramillo), and all of this of course written from the Euro-centric point of view.   I believe Townsend is writing this book about the experience of native peoples, specifically women and that Malintzin is the lens.  In Townsend's interpretation, we realize the critical role of language as not only a (practical) mechanism to relate opposing sides to one another, but also language as a way to create a unique existence for Malintzin - a way for her to exercise agency is a very rare way for any woman of her era, let alone a slave turned translator - an invaluable asset to Cortes an the Spanish.  While Townsend's work certainly isn't a typical biography, it does seem biographical to some extent, or at least it has biographical elements.  But at the same time it does feel to me a lot like a micro-history, using the life experience of Malintzin as a lens to look at indigenous peoples in Mexico in the 16th century.  Maybe it’s a biographical microhistory?  In her review of the book, Louise M. Burkhart points out that there is a certain risk inherent in writing about Marintzin and "what would she have felt?"  This is understandable, and Thompson acknowledges "the woman left us no diaries or letters, not a single page." But what I believe what we have in Malintzin's Choices is a powerful study in context based history (perhaps micro-history) in which we can look at and interpret the situations in which Malintzin was involved and surmise how she must have made certain decisions.  Thompson points to ethnographic evidence of both the Nahuas and the Spaniards as key to interpreting Malintzin and the "kinds of thoughts she might have entertained."  I really found the chapters on both of her children quite compelling, as a testament to the power Malintzin had not only to perpetuate herself, but to put her children forth into the world as people who "won places for themselves in the world of conquerors" as their mother had done before them.  One can imagine that Malintzin, like a lot of parents since time began, wanted a good life for her children - it seems the exercise of her agency was a gift she sought to bequeath to her children.