While bias is inherent in all works by humans—even raw data can be manipulated to favor a conclusion—1491 appears to be pushing a very specific hypothesis and agenda. Rather than a presentation of facts and subsequent analysis of the potential factors to determine which among them is the most likely, Mann operates in a manner designed to convince the reader of a conclusion rather than push them toward a more balanced and nuanced view. His claim that the natives possessed superior fire power is highly misleading. He makes very broad statements that are simply unverifiable and dismisses the established consensus on the rather serious charge of racism and ethnocentrism. If I were to propose a bias for Mann, I would say he was more concerned with being groundbreaking and consensus-defying than being accurate and scientific in methodology.
Now, it wasn’t all interesting information and preconception busting fun times though. There’s a portion of the book, a probably forty or fifty page chunk in the middle, that is mostly centred completely around academic warfare (who was pushing different agendas and points of view, and why) that I found reaaaaaaaaaaaally hard to get through. I understand why it was there, I do (the author is attempting to explain the fact that this information is still not being taught in highschools, though it’s been a pretty prevalent point of view among academics for like fifty years), but if there’s anything I find less interesting than old stuffy intellectuals getting into a dick measuring contest over academic prestige, I haven’t come across it yet. Still, there was some genuinely neat information still peppered throughout that section, and it wasn’t enough of a slog to really effect my recommendation.
The book 1491, by Charles Mann has forced historians to take another look at long held assumptions about what took place during the European colonization of the New World over 500 years ago. For centuries it had been held that the Native American population that inhabited the Americas was inferior in almost every aspect of life. Mann challenges these assumptions by claiming that the Native American population was advanced well beyond what historians have claimed.
There is no doubt that Mann is persuasive in his argument that Native American civilization was advanced. Cities such as the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan were certainly on par, if not superior, to European cities such as London. His claims that the environment of the Americas was intentionally manipulated by natives in places such as the Amazon, while controversial, are presented in a fair manner.
To completely abolish bias however, is an almost impossible endeavor. At times Mann seems as if he is trying to convince the reader to believe his theories instead of actually proving them. No where is this more apparent than his claim that Europeans did not have superior firepower to the Native Americans. It feels like a bit of stretch to come to this conclusion based on evidence to the contrary.
There are areas where the reader has to take a leap of faith to believe Mann. He has reached the conclusion that Native American populations were thriving the year prior to the arrival of Columbus and paints with a broad brush to convince the reader he is correct. It is no easy task to create a history that is in complete opposition to long held beliefs. Mann, like most men, is no doubt biased to a degree is his assertions presented in the book 1491.
In a 2002 article in the Atlantic Monthly, Charles Mann alludes to his bias in his book 1491.
In that book, Mann makes a fascinating argument. While the early European settlers of the New World, such as the Pilgrims, thought they were entering a pristine or untouched wilderness, Mann argues that in both North and South America, Native Americans had been cultivating and managing the environment for a very long time. The Europeans simply did not understand this because Native land management did not look like the way they cultivated their land—or the Europeans did not want to understand this, because it was more convenient to treat the land as wilderness. Mann points out the large fires the Indians set to clear land as an example of managing the environment. He also argues that the Indians were more advanced than the Europeans in understanding agriculture, which is why the Europeans made Native crops, such as the potato, staples in their own cultures.
Because of this research, Mann is biased against letting land simply return to wilderness, which he says has led to an outcry in some environmental circles. Mann writes, however, that the land must be managed:
Guided by the pristine myth, mainstream environmentalists want to preserve as much of the world’s land as possible in a putatively intact state. But “intact,” if the new research is correct, means “run by human beings for human purposes.” Environmentalists dislike this, because it seems to mean that anything goes. In a sense they are correct. Native Americans managed the continent as they saw fit. Modern nations must do the same.
Charles C. Mann's book 1491 is considered groundbreaking because he looks at American history from an indigenous point of view. The book states that indigenous societies were older than already thought and that they were every bit as strong and diverse as contemporary societies in Africa and Europe. Many academics have praised Mann's work as adding to the historical conversation about Native American tribes, as most of the work done in this field has been based on the natives' relationship to the European.
Mann's work does have some bias, however. He discounts most of the work done over the last two hundred years by previous native historians as being biased towards Europeans and, in many cases, racist. While this is a valid point in many cases, it would be a mistake to throw out all of the work done in this field over the last hundred years. Also, Mann is not an anthropologist by trade, so his arguments would carry more weight if he included some work done by leading anthropologists. Mann's 1491 is most valuable in that this is one of the first mainstream history books that looks at Native American achievements pre-Columbus; hopefully other books will find a way to combine earlier historical studies with Mann's.
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