John K. Thornton sketches the power struggles at play in the Kingdom of Kongo during the troubled period of the late seventeenth century in order to show us the story of Dona Beatriz. In the wake of nearly several generations of civil war for control of the country, young noble woman Beatriz Kimpa Vita declrares that she was possessed by St. Anthony and used this to assert herself into the political arena at a critical moment. Following the suppression of her Kimpasi societies, a sort of Kongolese naturalistic/monastic order, by Capuchin missionaries she began on her own mission challenging both native customs and the official Christianity professed by the churchmen. Eventually her unorthodox beliefs lead to her being burned at the stake as a witch.
Thornton does a good job at establishing the social and political environment in the first half of the book. We certainly learn much more about the daily life and social structures of the Kongolese from this work than we learned of Peruvian or Iberian peoples from the Cooks. However this raises questions about what exactly this book is about? Dona Beatriz doesn't become the central figure of the narrative until the 5th chapter. I wonder if it might have fit the sources better if the narrative had been told more from the perspective of one of the Monks? But then this presents another problem. If you make someone the central figure of your narrative does that make them the protagonist, and thus also the 'good one' in the story? This seems pretty important from my perspective because of the reservations I had with the Cooks treatment of Francisco, who wasn't the most admirable of characters and yet was clearly the 'hero' of the story. This makes me question how historians should use their sources since these come with their own perspectives, and whether "protagonist creation" is a problem of historians who love too much or those who struggle with framing narratives with limited sources.
No comments:
Post a Comment