dency to judge the Indians according tontheir ideals and beliefs, while condemningnthe Europeans for their individualnactions (European ideals are understoodnto be simple hypocrisy); a nearly infinitencapacity for appreciating the mostnbizarre absurdities of Indian religionnwhile taking snide pokes at the Europeans’n”absolutist” theology of “thenthree gods” and the “creed that regardsnthe quintessential creature of the earthnas evil” (Wright can’t have been payingnany more attention in Bible class thannhe was to lectures on Tudor and Stuartnhistory); and an implicit insistence thatnthe actions of nations and individualsncan and ought to be judged by identicalnmoral strictures. (Reinhold Niebuhrnexplained more than a generation agonwhy this is not the case, but the left asn. usual wasn’t listening.) Finally, there isnsimply too much evidence of native barbarism,nsavagery, cruelty, and ignoranceneliminated from the narrative, too muchnsoft-pedaling of what few examples ofnred mischief are unavoidably included.nThe undeclared enemy of the anti-nColumbian syllabus is Christianityneven more than it is capitalism, imperialism,nethnocentricity, and genocide,nwhich the revisionists assume to benderivative from the Gospels in any case.n(A “serious” work of history forthcomingnfrom a major New York publisher thisnfall answers the question “What kind ofnpeople could have behaved as the Europeansndid in the Americas?” with thensingle word “Christians.”) In 1492 AndnAll That Robert Royal, a RomannCatholic apologist for time and Westernnman, provides the best imaginablenrebuttal to the Zeitgeist. In a book ofn200 pages (Kirkpatrick Sale’s screed runsnto 453), he has simply demolished a burgeoningnbody of fake scholarship—includingnespecially that of KirkpatricknSale.nMr. Royal strikes with vigor and landsnblows on every front. He begins withnChristopher Columbus himself andnshows how unrealistic in both a historicalnand a personal sense the revisionist’sncritique of El Almirante is, arguing thatnthe new Columbus “is merely the productnof various opposite evil traditionsnthat define Europe and Europeans—ofnwhich we are all the heirs, save, ofncourse, the Kirkpatrick Sales who transcendncultural determinism.”nIn subsequent chapters. Royalndemonstrates how contact with thenprimitive peoples of their expanding empirenencouraged the Spaniards to debaten”in remarkably open fashion” the moralnissues raised by conquest overseas. Inn1500 Queen Isabella outlawed the practicenof selling Native Americans fromnthe docks of Spanish ports, and in 1550nCharles V ordered a theological commissionnto be convened in Valladolid fornthe purpose of establishing a morenscrupulous moral basis for the governancenof the Indians. The DominicannOrder developed itself as a kind of unofficialnCatholic Society for the Rightsnof Indigenous Peoples, and the Dominicannfriar and theologian Francisco de Vitorianformulated a system of principlesnrecognizing and protecting the rights ofnthe aborigines as rational beings andnchildren of Cod; his two collections ofnlectures on the subject, De Indis and Denluri Belli, earn him a place with Suareznand Crotius as one of the fathers ofnmodern international law. In his dissectionnof the contemporary fetish ofn”multiculturalism,” Royal observes thatnthe Europeans were for the most partnmuch more receptive to the new andnthe exotic than the Indians themselvesnwere, and that they were in a far betternposition to “understand” these primitivesnthan to be understood by them.n(“Most Indian groups regarded onlynthemselves as full human beings andnmembers of other tribes as inferior inncustoms or understanding.”) The notionnof pluralism, he reminds us, is itselfna distinctively European idea: “Thenwish to contest an allegedly monolithicnEuropean view of history with fresh voicesnand perspectives inescapably belongsnto a very European mode of thought.”n(“The cultural pluralism that we valuenso highly did not exist within anyntribe.”) While acknowledging that thenidea that Columbus “discovered” Americanis anathema to anti-Columbian activists.nRoyal suggests “it would be unfairnto ignore the fact that [Columbus] didnsomething more far-reaching. He maynnot have proved the world was round fornEuropeans, but he did so for NativenAmericans. And in so doing, he inauguratednthe age in which, finally, all thenworld’s people inhabited one world andnknew they inhabited it, though that realizationnwas slow to be accepted in manynnewly discovered lands.” Almost innpassing, Royal takes out the positions ofnassorted stragglers in the train of the anti-Columbianntroops by a series ofnbazooka attacks disproving the notionnnnthat the Indians were feminists, egalitarians,ncommunitarians, and environmentalists.n(After graphically describingnthe Aztec equivalent of open-heartnsurgery he remarks, “This too is harmonynwith nature, but a harmony that depends,nas all such philosophical conceptsndo, on your beliefs about nature and thengods.”) Finally Royal, having criticizednthe double standard on which the wholenanti-Columbiad is based, identifies thencrusade “in its most profound moments”nas “a Western objection to the disappearancenor attenuation of human richesnwithin the West itself,” and concludes:n”Like it or not. Western culturenwith its own particularities and its opennessnto light from the outside is the culturalnmatrix upon which the world hasnbecome, if not unified, then set on anpath of something like universal mutualnintercourse. No other culture in thenworld has—or probably could have—undertakennthat task.”nM92 And All That is a masterfulnbook, brilliantly argued and eloquentlynwritten; one of the very few titles tonwhich the cliched publisher’s claims ofn”Absolutely required reading,” or “A trulynindispensable work” could fairly benapplied. The real question to emergenfrom the Columbus controversy is, ofncourse, “Could history have been otherwise?”nRobert Royal is a wise—perhapsneven a brave—enough man to assure us:nit couldn’t. Perhaps, even, shouldn’t.n”The glory of Rome and the splendornof India, as their own high cultures recognized,nwere rooted—as are all largescalenhuman endeavors—in human loss,ncontradictions, and moral doubt, fornwhich Vergil invented the immortalnphrase lacrimae rerum. . . . Tragedy isnprobably sharpest when the situationndictates that a choice be made betweennincompatible goods leading to the unavoidablenloss of something humanlynvaluable. Even in epic achievements humanncosts inevitably must be paid. Epicnand tragedy do not conceal truth beneathnartificiality but open windows ontona fuller reality.”nThe native societies of the WesternnHemisphere were finally overcome bynHistory, which the left has always refusednto recognize or tolerate in its questnfor a secular and ahistorical paradise onnearth. They were neither its first victimsnnor will they be its last, as in thenend we all may be. If Fate exists, surelynit is because History indeed does havena plan. <0nOCTOBER 1992/31n