Rivers of Blood, Rivers of Gold: Europe's Conquest of Indigenous Peoples

by Mark Cocker

Book Overview

The past five centuries have witnessed a shocking series of confrontations between European nations and millions of indigenous peoples, and these cultural encounters still resonate strongly to this day. Rivers of Blood, Rivers of Gold is an essential book for understanding the true impact of imperialism. Beautifully and passionately written, it provides a judicious and exhaustively researched indictment of European exploitation. Focusing on four collisions...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0802138012
• ISBN13: 9780802138019
• Release Date: May 2001
• Publisher: Grove Press
• Length: 432 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 6.0" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

Excellent,

The book shows in vivid detail how many groups who have developed a superiority of power/technology etc frequently use it in a most base and grasping manner, warping their own morality to justify it. Rather than the simplistic European/American(bad) vs nobel savage (good) conflict that some other reviewers took from it,it demonstrated the all universal human trait of brutality and genocide in the pursuit of plunder and greed. The readyness to which societies on the one hand professed education,morality etc descended to levels of cruelty that begars belief in clear and systematic and recurring patterns used to self justify it makes for an absorbing book.

An Epic Tragedy. One of the Best Books I Have Ever Read.

The premise of the book has become so cliched that its fundamental truth has almost become obscured. Cocker uncovers in painstaking detail the results of European colonialism in four areas of the world. Without ever romanticizing the societies (the bloody nature of the Aztecs is particularly stressed) that are conquered, he paints a tragic picture that moved me to the point of tears more than once. A valuable antidote to apologists for European/Western Imperialism.

simplistic

Crocker is a journalist who has previously proven his ability to write thoughtful, well-researched books that sell disappointing numbers. It is hard to blame the man for wanting to sell enough books to make some money. It is somewhat harder to take the amount of gore in Rivers of Blood, but one has to concede that he has the formula down. To sell books one must write about a) bad guys, b) harrowing, boodthirsty murder, c) really simple ideas. Here we have world class bad guys in the Europeans who set out to conquer the world by murdering all the people who lived everywhere else. The fact that these people fought back and sometimes won adds drama. But, hello? What about the role or European diseases, or the role of a European economic system that surely did as much as European weapons to destroy the non-European civilizations. Bloodthirsty conquest is as old as history. If the only thing that happened in the sixteenth century was that a bunch of European guys got on boats and set out to conquer other people, there would be no news to report. Mark Crocker misses most of the really important aspects of the Eurppean conquest of the world. I prefer my history more complex and closer to reality. Try reading Bullough's Pond if you really want to know what the American Indians were up against.