The Reader Travels

With all these stories of cannibals in the Caribbean during colonial times, some of it must be true, right? There are disputes about whether it actually happened, or if the colonists were just afraid of the natives to such an extent that they attributed their worst fears to them.

Well, if it’s Robinson Crusoe telling the story, I’m going with the racism angle. Yes, I admit it. I’m about to judge this historical, fictional character by my own, more modern and slightly more liberal standards.  Yes, I think he deserved to be shipwrecked. After all, he was the guy building his plantation in colonial South America, who decided to go pick up some cheap labor across the ocean in Africa to help himself and his neighbors.

Now, just because he’s buying African slaves, does that means he’s a racist, or just an enterprising opportunist? Well, there’s more evidence that he thinks his kind are better than other people. He’s proud to be a Protestant, and he can’t abide the Papists. He certainly wouldn’t go back to England and grab up a bunch of his own kind and force them to work on his plantation. But the Africans, oh, they’re just not the same. He might enslave some Irish, but they’re not nearly as abundant or easy to spot when they try to run.

Now we turn to the canoe-driving inhabitants of his little island. While he’s busy eating grapes and raisins, he’s hiding out from the savages who eat the flesh of other humans. He describes these gruesome scenes of human mutilation and carnage. He sees it all first hand. But what does he really see? How much does his own fear of these people paint the picture before his eyes?

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 27th, 2010 at 10:33 am and is filed under food travels. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.