Ok so I started wanting to know more about how and why the conquest happened in order to fuck it all up in a new story, and I ended with a new special interest.

Whee.

Cliff is an engaging writer with a solid grasp on the pitfalls involved in writing about the Age of Discovery. He starts with several chapters background on Christian-Muslim relations, which I loved to pieces and which reviewers on Amazon thought were irrelevant (which shows that they missed the point, because how are you supposed to understand the importance of da Gama if you don’t understand the Ottoman Empire and its relationship with Europe??)

Anyway.

Most of the time the word “tribe” is used it’s to describe Europeans, which I loved, thank you, and in other ways the writing acknowledges that non-European cultures are, you know, not lesser. Volumes have been filled on the conquest of the Americas, the slave trade, colonialism &etc, and for the most part Cliff avoids confronting the ethics, choosing to lay out who went where when.

He also makes some overarching arguments (Christians vs Muslims) and connections to the present that may not stand up to rebuttal, but that’s not why I’m here and I really loved the book for providing me with a sense of context to the Age of Discovery.