The Noguerol Lens

Good Faith and Truthful Ignorance is an interesting approach to microhistory because it represents a change from the books we have read previously in this course. The first four books, Montaillou, Cheese and the Worms, Return of Martin Guerre, and Midwife’s Tale, all had peasants or commoners as their main subjects. Unlike these figures, Francisco Noguerol de Ulloa is a “lesser noble,” enjoying a certain level of wealth and privilege despite facing some hardships along the way. His position and connections were such that he had the audacity to write to Charles V advising him on his policies in Peru. Perhaps because of his status, or just because of his unchecked ambition and selfishness, I found him to be less relatable and admirable than the protagonists in our other histories. Even Arnaud du Tilh, the con artist who passed himself off as Martin Guerre, had some redeeming qualities that left us wondering if he might have had altruistic or laudable motives for his actions. Noguerol, on the other hand, showed few likable qualities. He abandoned Beatriz – a wife for whom he admittedly had no love – but as Chris Lemos pointed out in his blog post, this abandonment left her alone and with no options for having a family of her own. Beatriz was left virtually imprisoned in loneliness by her unfortunate marriage and her own piety. With no regard for the impact on Beatriz, Noguerol sailed for Peru in search of fortune and adventure. He found both, but along the way he vacillated between support of the crown and the rebellious factions, depending on which side seemed better poised to advance his ambitions; he treated the native population as chattel, imploring the king to “give Indians” (as slaves) to the conquistadors in reward for their services; he was granted an encomienda, and extracted exorbitant tribute from the native inhabitants. None of this was unusual, of course. Noguerol was behaving in exactly the same manner as his peers, and it’s important to avoid the “presentist” fallacy of imposing modern values on historical figures, but that does not make his actions any more palatable to the 21^st century reader.

This harsh analysis of Noguerol leads me to relate Good Faith and Truthful Ignorance to last week’s discussion about “historians who love too much.” Like Jill Lapore, writing about the unlikable Noah Webster, Alexandra Parma Cook and Noble David Cook take on Francisco Noguerol’s story as a lens on the human side of 16^th century imperialism. You don’t have to love Noguerol to see the value of his life as a means of understanding his times. This is the root of microhistory – gaining a broader perspective by looking through a smaller lens.