Women Were Oppressed

Among the early recorded observations of Native American culture, made at a time before the presence of Europeans had significant impact on it, are the writings of Jesuit named Juan Nentuig. Born in what was then a part of Germany, and is now a part of Poland, his name is recorded variously as Nentvig, Nentwig, Nentoig, Johann Nentwich, and Jean. These variations are both a result of the flexible concept of orthography which existed at that time, and a result of a career which brought him into contact with many different languages and the need to transliterate his name into those languages. He spent time in Bohemia, and arrived in the New World around 1750.

His accounts of Native American culture reveal that women were treated like animals. Note how women are pursued in the wedding ceremony; such pursuit would have been symbolically even more powerful in a culture which engaged in, and relied on, constant hunting. Clearly, the men were "hunting" the women. Beyond the hunting motif, the behavior toward women in this culture was aggressive and perhaps even violent. The manner in which a boy would capture a young woman after overtaking her in the chase must have been painful. Women in this Native American culture were objectified into passive recipients of aggression and violence; to be grasped by the nipple - instead of any other body part - was to turn the women into a sexual object, was to force her obedience by means of pain, and to identify the women as that body part.

Women in this Native American community are public property - they are forced to dance naked, and the marriages are forcibly consummated in public. These cultural practices are designed - consciously or not - to chip away at the women's sense of personal identity, sense of personal freedom, and ability to make meaningful and consequential decisions in their lives. The Jesuit's account reveals the systematic humiliation of the women:

The ceremonies of their heathenish weddings are not fit to be described in detail. I shall only mention the more decent. They gather together, old and young, and the young men and marriageable women are placed in two files. At a given signal the latter begin to run, and at another signal the former to follow them. When the young men overtake the young women each one must take his mate by the left nipple and the marriage is made and confirmed. After this preliminary ceremony they devote themselves to dancing, and as I remember to have heard, brides as well as bridegrooms dance in the costume of primitive innocence. Then all at once they take mats of palm tree leaves, which are prepared beforehand, and without further ceremony each couple is placed on a mat, and the rest of the people go on rejoicing.

It might be easy to dismiss the Jesuit's narrative as being colored by mere prudery, if it were not clear that there was an absolute imbalance of power. To be sure, the Jesuit was influenced by his European heritage, which caused him to recoil at the scenes described.

By the mid-1700's, European culture had embraced the ideal of a marriage on the basis of mutual consent, a relationship of bilateral respect and affection. Admittedly, Western Civilization sometimes failed to live up to this ideal - although women were no longer bought and sold like cattle, marriages were still sometimes arranged for financial and political reasons; ironically, women in the upper classes were more vulnerable to losing their freedom in choosing a spouse. The landless peasants at the bottom of European society had nothing about them which would cause anyone to want to arrange their marriages: no political or economic influence was at stake. But possibly among the aristocrats, and certainly among the dynasties, some marriages were constructed with an eye to power rather than to affection.

Again, while imperfectly implemented, the European tradition had also at least recognized that violence against women was wrong. Wife-beaters were socially ostracized, and wife-beating was considered a sin. By contrast, the Native American society had institutionalized and ritualized physical abuse.

By the time the Jesuit recorded his observations in the mid-1700's, Europe had already seen Eleanor of Aquitaine, Hildegard of Bingen, and Queen Christina of Sweden: women whose social, political, economic, and culture influence was significant and beyond dispute. Maria-Theresa was the Habsburg Holy Roman Empress and Queen of Austria, Bohemia, and Hungary, and held her own against Frederick the Great of Prussia. (A note on orthography: Queen Christina was 'Kristina Augusta' on the throne of Sweden, and 'Christina Alexandra' afterward, also sometimes spelled 'Christine'; Maria-Theresa's dynasty is sometimes spelled 'Hapsburg'.) It was impossible for Native American women to attain any role of such significance, or even any role of even a fraction of such significance.

Western Civilization still had some way to go: it would not be until 1869 that the Territory of Wyoming would give the vote to women, and female suffrage would not become nearly universal until the early twentieth century. Despite these shortcomings, however, the European tradition had already embarked on the path of recognizing women in way which was inherently impossible for the Native American cultures. Within the framework of European culture, it was at least possible to conceptualize women as fully enfranchised participants in politics, economics, arts, and culture; it was possible to formulate personal relationships in which women expressed their full humanity. It didn't always consistently happen, but it was possible. It was not possible in the Native American societies which were premised upon the axiom that women essentially were objects, treated as property, and subject to an institutionalized humiliation at the hands of men. The humiliation of women was a foundation of Native American society.

Chinese Social and Political Philosophy

The “Spring and Autumn” period of Chinese history is defined as beginning around 770 B.C., when the Zhou dynasty was attacked and not toppled, but suffered a major loss in the influence; instead of being the only power, the Zhou had to content themselves with being the major power alongside other independent, if lesser, kingdoms. During the Spring and Autumn era, the number of kingdoms declined as the more powerful ones annexed the weaker ones; the number of kingdoms sank from a number between 170 and 200 at the beginning of this era to approximately ten at the end of the era, around 479 B.C.

The end of the Spring and Autumn period is the beginning of the “Warring States” period. If the Zhou fell from the being the only power to being the dominant power during the former period, they fell to being merely one of the powers during the latter period. As the name implies, the Warring States period was characterized by warfare, and by advances in warfare. Iron replaced bronze in weaponry. Infantry and cavalry replaced chariot battles. Beyond the advance in technology, this change in warfare affect society. Some Chinese kingdoms adopted conscription – the “draft” – and warfare required the cooperation of the entire population. It was no longer merely an aristocratic contest. By the end of this era, 256 B.C., the Zhou dynasty and its internal sub-groups were pretty much powerless and taken over by the Qin dynasty. The kingdoms which had competed with the Zhou were weakened, having exhausted themselves in warfare, and they would fall around 221 B.C., soon after the end of the Warring States period.

Having defined the Spring and Autumn period, and the Warring States period, one might ask why so many great philosophers, including Confucius and Mencius, emerged in the Spring and Autumn and Warring States Periods. The answer might be found in the types of philosophy propounded by these philosophers. They were concerned with social questions. The tumult during these eras forced such questions into the consciousness of those living through them. By contrast, other styles of philosophy, concerned with questions about time and space, or with questions about cause and effect, were not flourishing during this time.

In an era of upheaval, of significant changes in government or society, ethical questions naturally make themselves felt in those inclined toward philosophical reflection. In an era of stability, e.g. during the Han or Tang dynasties, moral philosophies might be studied and preserved, but more as a matter of academic tradition, and less as a matter of intellectual insight and creativity in response to social conditions. Greece might offer us a parallel: during its era of social crisis (after the Peloponnesian War), its noted political philosophers arose (Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle); during its era of stability, other philosophers were more prone to explore those areas of philosophy (e.g., the nature of time and space) which did not directly address the issues of human society.

Confucius did most of his work during the late sixth and early fifth centuries. In an interesting parallel, Aristotle, who did most of his work during the fourth century, drew a number of the same conclusions. Both of them analyzed human society into ‘atomic’ or basic units. Aristotle saw society as a complex structure built from three simple relationships: husband to wife, employer to employee, and parent to child. Confucius had already concluded that society was a complex composed of simples, but posited five fundamental relationships. To Aristotle’s three, Confucius added older brother to younger brother, and friend to friend. Historians Patricia Buckley Ebrey, Anne Walthall, and James Palais write that Confucius (born 551 B.C., died 479 B.C.)

was the first and most important of the men of ideas seeking to influence the rulers of the day. As a young man, Confucius served in the court of his home state of Lu without gaining much influence. After leaving Lu, he wandered through neighboring states with a small group of students.

Confucius searched “for a ruler who would follow his advice,” and idealized the early Zhou dynasty “as a perfect society.” By implication, Confucius must have thought that the society of his era was deficient. His description of the Zhou was his prescription for his own time: people should devote “themselves to fulfilling their roles.” Apparently he believed that many people were not so devoting themselves. Confucius gathered a following, meaning that others saw things as he did, or came to do so after hearing him. The competing regional monarchies provided a larger audience, inasmuch as Confucius was addressing himself often to rulers and bureaucrats.

Mencius, like Confucius, “traveled around offering advice to rulers of various states.” Had China been unified under a solid dynasty, his potential customer base would have been much smaller. Because these states were in competition, there would have been some motive to at least review Mencius’s presentations, so that no opportunity to surpass a rival state would be overlooked. Under a monolithic dynasty, not only would the audience be smaller, but the audience would be less motivated to consider input regarding its governing style.

To the extent that Mencius is considered a Confucian, one may treat Mencius and Confucius together. To the extent that Mencius innovated beyond Confucius, one may contrast the two.

Both of them were interested in advising rulers about how to govern well; both were interested in discovering the truths about society which could inform men about how to best structure their communities. Both of them saw that the imperative for ideal behavior rested upon all social classes, and individuals from all classes needed to live properly in order for the kingdom as a whole to enjoy the benefits of wisdom. Mencius identifies empire, state, feudal lord, high official, and common person in one aphorism; empire, state, family, and person in another. He is not describing an exact taxonomy, so that the reader need not see a conflict between the two listings; rather, his point is that all levels of society are necessary if the whole is to flourish. Confucius structured his view of society around five pivotal relationships: father/son, husband/wife, ruler/subject, older brother/younger brother, and friend/friend; he saw each of these roles as important, and all of them need to be fulfilled well in order for a civilization to prosper.

Mencius and Confucius identify loyalty as a key virtue: the former writes that “never has a person given to true goodness abandoned those close to him” and the latter said that a son might even be justified in committing perjury out of filial loyalty. (Mencius is known to us largely from a collection of aphorisms and quotes called The Mencius. This book, of unclear authorship, is available in an edition by Daniel Gardner.)

Both Confucius and Mencius see the gaining of knowledge as a form of self-cultivation which leads to wisdom. The former sees learning as the first step, leading in a chain reaction to true intentions, a right mindset, a cultivated personality, harmonious households, a well-governed state, and finally a tranquil empire; the latter casts himself as an example, writing that one of his strengths is to “understand words” and to be “nurturing” his “vast, flowing qi … partner of righteousness.” Clearly, qi is a central term for Mencius, but it suffices to make the point at hand to note that, whatever it is, Mencius is advocating a form of self-cultivation.

In passing, for the purposes of the present discussion, Mencius and Confucius are very similar. For other purposes, certain divergences are detectable: while Confucius contemplated a variety of social spheres – family, friendship, government – Mencius clearly places more emphasis on government and less on the other two. When Mencius does mention the other two, he is viewing them in terms of their impact on government, and not for their own sakes. On the other hand, when compared with Zhu Xi and the neo-Confucians, Mencius is still very close to the original Confucius.

Another key Confucian concept is ritual. This points to the concreteness of Confucius, as opposed to the abstractness of some later neo-Confucians. ‘Ritual’ is physical for Confucius – he is concerned about the mats on the floor, and the precise circumstances in which one should prostrate one’s self. He is concerned that the funereal and burial rituals for his newly-dead friends be carried out correctly. He is not an other-worldly person.

Humility is important, and more so in a ruler. A ruler who self-corrects not only models humility for his subjects, but inspires them by his earnestness.

The correct use of terminology is central to Confucius, because it helps one both to avoid hypocrisy and to be precise and careful in one’s speaking and thinking. Attention to usages and definitions are the mark both of the scholar and of the honorable ruler. On this question, the most impractical and the most practical converge. The academic philosopher may spend great effort examining the definition of a word like ‘time’ or some other concept. A ruler may be careful in using terms like ‘tax’ and ‘penalty’ and ‘fine’ precisely (as a recent U.S. Supreme Court case has shown!). Both fall under Confucius’s injunction to ‘rectify names.’

In sum, Confucius has a number of points – largely echoed by Mencius – about how a human society should be organized and how it should function. Those points may be gathered under the broad headings of ‘scholarship’ and ‘physicality’ as follows: Confucius was concerned with reading, studying, investigating, and learning (those four verbs occur often in the Analects), and much of his scholarship had as its subject matter texts, people, dynasties, empires, and events from the past. His emphasis upon studying concrete things is expressed in his preference for ‘studying’ over ‘thinking’ and he did not spend time meditating upon abstractions. His preference for ritual carries his concreteness from his study of the past into his actions in the present.

Spain Suffers: Oppression Unleashed

Prior to the year 711 A.D., Spain enjoyed a reasonably prosperous and peaceful era. Under Roman rule, Spain enjoyed, in some ways, perhaps more lenient treatment than the territory in and around the city of Rome itself; as a relatively remote colony, the governors from Rome were happy as long as taxes were paid, as long exports continued to make their way to Rome, and as long as there was no massive civil unrest. The Roman governors were content to allow the inhabitants of Spain to do more or less as they pleased.

Around 409 A.D., the Roman presence in the area began to gradually contract back toward Rome, and after a transitional stage in which various provinces of Spain were substantially independent of each other, the Goths consolidated a sort of monarchy. Important to note is the diversity of the Iberian Peninsula at this point: Christians and Jews lived peaceably in the same towns.

This would end with the invasion of ruthless Muslim armies. In 711 A.D., they landed in Spain and would control, over the next several centuries, varying sections of Spain. They probably never controlled all of the Iberian Peninsula at one time; pockets of resistance often remained in the northwest.

The occupying Islamic armies made life difficult: they destroyed the synagogues of the Jews, and the churches of the Christians, and forbade the construction of any new synagogues or churches. Jews and Christians had to rise in the presence of Muslims, were not allowed to be on horseback in the presence of Muslims, and were required to wear special identifying markings on their clothing. Officially, these oppressions were recorded by the Muslims as the 'Pact of Umar' or the 'Code of Umar' ('Omar' is also a variant transliteration). Unofficially, Islamic troops assigned to occupational duty in Spain plundered and raped.

A bit of sarcastic propaganda circulated by the Muslims, and trustingly adopted by some later historians, was that the Islamic occupational armies ushered in a 'golden era of tolerance' in Spain. Historian William Chester Jordan writes:

Spain, except for a few relatively small Christian principalities in the Pyrenean north, was completely under Muslim domination from 711. The conquerors imposed their rule on a vast population of Christians and a substantial number of Jews. It is sometimes said that under Muslim rule, at least until the wars of Christian reconquest began in earnest, Christians, Jews and Muslims lived in a state of convivencia. Though always a minority throughout the period of their domination of the peninsula, the number of Muslims was steadily increasing from conversion and immigration. Confident of their continued hegemony, the argument goes, they lived amicably with Christians and Jews, even while denying them full rights. Yet all enjoyed freedom of religion, even if the religions of the conquered peoples were considered inferior to Islam. Architecture, poetry and other forms of cultural and intellectual expression in the subject communities borrowed freely from and adapted Arabic and Islamic motifs and tropes.

Thus, according to this cynically produced disinformation, the era was one of peaceful coexistence, religious freedom, and reciprocal artistic inspiration. In reality, the Jews and Christians of Spain were robbed and exploited:

Recently this picture has been criticized as idealized or even as a more or less deliberate distortion imposed on the narrative of pre-Reconquest Spanish history by liberal and anti-clerical scholars writing in the modern period. Hating what Spain was perceived to have become - a priest-ridden, racialist, and economically and politically backward society when elsewhere in Europe 'Enlightenment' came to prevail - many nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholars imagined a time when the Church had little power, pureness of Christian blood or lineage was irrelevant and work and play among people of all faiths made for a prosperous and forward-looking society. But if convivencia of this sort is a myth, it remains true that the

Islamic occupational armies stationed in Spain possessed an ideology which justified violence against Jew and Christians, which sought the eventual extinguishing of "infidel" religion, and which sought the establishment of a permanent caliphate over not only the Iberian Peninsula, but over all of Europe. The Muslim vision was a Europe free of Christians and Jews and under Islamic military government. Having conquered Spain, the Muslims hoped to use it as one base from which to launch the final attacks which would destroy the rest of Europe; Italy and various Mediterranean islands would be other bases for these planned invasions. As historian Will Durant writes:

Having established their position in the Peninsula, the Moslems scaled the Pyrenees and entered Gaul, intent upon making Europe a province of Damascus. Between Tours and Poitiers, a thousand miles north of Gibraltar, they were met by the united forces of Eudes, Duke of Aquintaine, and Charles Duke of Austrasia. After seven days of fighting, the Moslems were defeated in one of the most crucial battles of history (732); again the faith of countless millions was determined by the chances of war. Thenceforth Charles was Carolus Martellus, or Martel, Charles the Hammer. In 735 the Moslems tried again, and captured Aries; in 737 they took Avignon, and ravaged the valley of the Rhone to Lyons. In 759 Pepin the Short finally expelled them from the south of France.

Having failed in their attempt to subjugate all of Europe, the Muslims contented themselves with oppressing Spain.

The emirs and caliphs of Spain were as cruel as Machiavelli thought necessary to the stability of a government; sometimes they were barbarously and callously cruel, as when Mutadid grew flowers in the skulls of his dead foes, or as when the poetic Mutamid hacked to pieces the lifelong friend who had at last betrayed and insulted him.

The physical violence of the Islamic occupiers was paralleled by intellectual violence;

philosophy was silenced, or professed the most respectable conclusions. Apostasy from Islam was punishable with death.

Despite the official propaganda concerning religious tolerance,

many churches had been destroyed, and new ones were prohibited.

To ensure that any remaining Christians did not raise skepticism toward Islam, and to nudge any remaining Christianity toward extinction, the Muslim invaders reserved for themselves

the right to appoint and depose bishops, even to summon ecclesiastical councils. The emirs sold bishoprics to the highest bidder, thought he might be a skeptic or libertine. Christian priests were liable to abuse by Moslems in the streets. Moslem theologians commented freely on what seemed to them absurdities in Christian theology, but it was dangerous for Christians to reply in kind.

Given the ruthless abuse dished out by the Islamic garrisons, the inhabitants of Spain found that even

a minor incident could lead to a major tragedy. A pretty girl of Cordova, known to us only as Flora, was the child of a mixed marriage. When her Mohammedan father died she resolved to become a Christian. She fled from her brother´s guardianship to a Christian home, was caught and beaten by him, persisted in apostasy, and was turned over to a Moslem court. The qadi, who might have condemned her to death, ordered her flogged. She escaped again to a Christian home, and there met a young priest, Eulogius, who conceived for her a passionate spiritual attachment. While she hid in a convent another priest, Perfectus, achieved martyrdom by telling some Moslems what he thought of Muhammed; they promised not to betray him, but the vigor of his exposition so shocked them that they denounced him to the authorities.

For Flora and for Perfectus, merely stating one's beliefs was enough to cause one to fear for one's life - if those beliefs were Christian. In the case of Perfectus,

the judge remanded him to jail for some months, hoping for a change of mood; none came and Perfectus was condemned to death. He marched to the scaffold cursing the Prophet as "an impostor, an adulterer, a child of hell." The Moslems gloated over his decapitation, the Christians of Cordova buried him with pomp as a saint (850).

During the year 850 A.D., and for several years following, Muslims in Spain executed many Christians, whose only crime was having stated that they were Christians. Amid such intolerance, it follows logically that intellectual life declined further, especially because some types of philosophy and astronomy were associated with Christian Europe.

Science and philosophy, in Moslem Spain, were largely frustrated by the fear that they would damage the people's faith.

The languishing of the intellect in Muslim Spain was part of a broader trend, in which Islam academically crippled itself, and left Europe's Jews and Christians to make major advancements in astronomy, physics, chemistry, mathematics, and philosophy. As Spain continued to endure abuse, Muslims achieved similar invasions onto various Mediterranean islands, and occupied the southern end of the Italian peninsula for several decades in the 800's and 900's. Islamic armies also advanced westward across Asia Minor, obliterating the Byzantine culture and people along the way.

This ongoing pressure - continued military incursions into Europe's southwestern, southern, and southeastern frontiers, lasting through the 700's, 800's, 900's, past the year 1000 A.D. - would finally provoke a backlash from Europe. As historian Harold Lamb writes, "a warlike Berber dynasty," the Muslims of northern Africa, continued to dominate "in Spain, and the Christians there were enduring persecutions." Travelers who left the continent were not safe:

the few pilgrims who had penetrated to Jerusalem in the last years brought back tales of hardship and insult. There also a barbarous race, the Seljuk Turks out of central Asia, had driven

into the areas around Syria and Asia Minor. Europe was attacked, if not on all side, certainly on most of them: "So in the west and the east, Moslems were crossing the once-quiescent frontier." Europe's response to several centuries of threat - centuries in which each decade contained military raids and invasions by Muslims - would be an attempt to stop this nearly ceaseless series of attacks by launching a counteroffensive or counterattack, called the Crusades.

Naming a New Continent

After Christopher Columbus discovered America - yes, we know that Leif Ericson discovered it 500 years earlier, but Columbus's discovery is the one that stuck - the continents of North America and South America, in addition to the islands that surrounded them and isthmus of Central America, quickly attracted attention, explorers, businessmen and settlers. This land, the object of such fascination, was simply called "The New World."

Eventually it would need a name, although some parts of it would continue under such non-names as 'Newfoundland'.

Many history students are familiar with the fact that America was named after Amerigo Vespucci, an Italian explorer, cartographer, navigator, and financier who did much to lead the way toward a more accurate knowledge of American geography. His voyages to the Caribbean Sea, and to the Atlantic coast of South America paved the way for the further exploration of the Americas, and eventually, long afterward, the settling and civilizing of the Americas. The data he collected was important for mapmaking.

But who named America?

America was named after Amerigo Vespucci, but it was named by two German cartographers, Matthias Ringmann and Martin Waldseemüller.

Matthias Ringmann was a poet and grammarian. In addition to writing about the rules of grammar, about ancient authors, and his own original texts, he was a friend of Martin Waldseemüller. Ringmann was something of a cartographer, and credited Amerigo Vespucci with making an important advance, inasmuch as he journeyed further south than the Caribbean region initially explored by Columbus. Waldseemüller and Ringmann together published, in 1507, a new edition of an old book, Ptolemy's geography book, along with newer material written by Ringmann and Waldseemüller. In writing the introduction to that book, Ringmann was the first author to print and publish the word 'America'. He spent much of his life in or near Lorraine (more properly called 'Lothringen').

Martin Waldseemüller did more of the cartography and less composing of text; his maps were the first to use 'America'. He spent much of his life in or near Freiburg.

While the Spaniards and Portuguese were the first wave of explorers in the New World, the German cartographers were known for producing the most detailed and precise maps. And so it was a team of two German mapmakers who named America after an Italian!

What Columbus Brought Home from America

Although one sometimes reads about the devastation caused among the Native Americans ("Indians") by diseases brought to the New World from Europe, it is also true that there were many deadly diseases in America before European explorers arrived here. Syphilis, in particular, was killing mass numbers of Native Americans in waves of infection which rolled from North America to South America and back again.

Given that this disease is spread by behavior forms which are, with rare exceptions, voluntary, certain demographic segments among the Native Americans were safe from the illness. Nonetheless, the death toll was large, preventing some tribes from stabilizing at more advanced levels of civilization, forcing other tribes back to lower levels, and nearly exterminating still other tribes.

Christopher Columbus, of course, knew nothing of this. He did not realize that he was entering into a dangerous area when, in 1492, he first made contact with the Native Americans. Other people in Europe, however, soon realized what the "Indians" had given to Columbus: a deadly disease. At first, scientists disputed whether syphilis, which soon killed large numbers of people in Europe, had actually come from North America. Some thought it came from another part of the world; others thought that it had been in Europe, unrecognized, all along. But in January 2008, Scientific American magazine wrote that

the Italian adventurer and some of his crew contracted the disease during their voyage to the New World — and unwittingly introduced it to the old one circa 1493.

If, in fact, this is true, then we have evidence that Columbus's men, or perhaps even Columbus himself, engaged in the wrong type of activity. Certainly, neither the captain nor his crew were properly married to any of the Native Americans! Not only did they pay the price for their unwise judgment, but others in Europe may have paid the price as well, when the crew returned to the Iberian Peninsula.

Researchers from Emory University in Atlanta report in the online journal PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases that they used phylogenetics — the study of the evolutionary link between organisms — to study 26 geographically scattered strains of a family of bacteria known as Treponemes, which are behind the sexually transmitted disease syphilis as well as related nonvenereal infections such as yaws. They found that the venereal syphilis-causing strains arose relatively recently in humans and are closely related to an ancient infection isolated in South America that gives rise to yaws.

In other words, the strains of syphilis which spread across Europe descended from Native American bacteria.

"That supports the hypothesis that syphilis — or some progenitor — came from the New World," said lead study author Kristin Harper, an Emory molecular genetics researcher.

Although the new evidence is persuasive, suggestive, and convincing, the case is still not entirely closed. It is conceivably possible, although unlikely and unimaginable, that syphilis did not come to Europe from America.

According to the researchers, the origin of syphilis has been hotly debated since the first recorded epidemic of the disease in Europe in 1495. Most of the scientific evidence in recent years had been gleaned from the bones of members of past civilizations in both the Old and New worlds; bones were considered credible markers since chronic syphilis causes skeletal lesions. But skeletal analysis was hobbled by an inability to accurately determine bone age and a lack of supporting epidemiological evidence.

Another piece of evidence is the pattern of narratives among the Native Americans about epidemics which swept through the Americas before any European explorers arrived.

Scientists say the study is significant because of the large number of strains analyzed, including two species of yaws found in isolated inhabitants of Guyana in South America.

We have, then, another example of the - unintended - results of Europe's discovery of America. Along with tobacco, syphilis was part of the wave of death unleashed not only upon Europe, but the rest of the world, as the misery in which the American "Indians" had long lived escaped into the other continents. Disease and tobacco, along with various plants having hallucinogenic and narcotic effects, may explain the otherwise unexplained fall of significant Native American civilizations before the arrival of Europeans. Unknown to the Europe, to Asia, or to Africa, Native Americans had been living for centuries in a nightmare of epidemics, tobacco-related deaths, and the effects of mood-altering addictive plants.

Kidnappers from North Korea

Imagine this - under cover of night, spies from a communist country silently paddle, in a small inflatable boat, to the shore of a nearby nation. Quietly moving among the houses near the beach, they grab a child, holding a cloth over the victim's mouth so that no scream is heard. They take the victim back to the sea, and paddle away.

Many years later, that child - or perhaps another person, surgically altered to look like the kidnapping victim - reappears at home, to the joy of family and friends. What the welcoming parents and neighbors do not know, however, is that returning child, now grown up, is actually a spy for the communists.

This scenario sounds like a movie, but it is fact. The Guardian reports on what eventually happened to some of these kidnapping victims:

Five Japanese citizens who were abducted by North Korean spies at the height of the cold war returned to Japan yesterday to be reunited with relatives they have not seen for almost a quarter of a century.

The five, the only confirmed survivors among 13 Japanese nationals North Korea has admitted abducting in the 1970s and 80s, arrived at Haneda airport in Tokyo yesterday afternoon on a government-chartered plane. They will spend about two weeks in Japan before returning together to North Korea.

For many years, the North Korean government insisted that it had never abducted any Japanese citizens. Continued pressure from the Japanese and other nations, including South Korea and the United States, eventually caused the North Koreans to admit to their crimes. The communists hoped that by doing so, they might gain some diplomatic advantage among the free nations.

after years of denials, the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, told Mr Koizumi during bilateral talks in Pyongyang that his country's special forces had indeed kidnapped Japanese and used them to teach their language to spies.

The exact number of Japanese citizens abducted by the North Koreans remains unclear; likewise, how many of those victims are still alive is not precisely known. The Yale Daily News reports that

With the North Korean government recently admitting to kidnapping Japanese citizens throughout the 1980s, University of Hawaii sociology professor Patricia Steinhoff — who has had direct contact with the kidnappers — offered a personal perspective of the situation at a lecture.

Professor Steinhoff explained, according to Yale reporter Chris Fortson, about the complicated political environment inside Japan at the time of the abductions - there was a significant communist underground group hoping to abolish freedom in Japan, and some Japanese may have willingly defected to North Korea at the time.

One of the more bizarre aspects of this already-strange episode centers around a group of Japanese communists terrorists. Wanting to refine their terrorism skills, they hijacked an airplane in order to fly to Cuba. They hoped to be able to overthrow the Japanese government and create a communist dictatorship. But they never made it to Cuba. The airplane which they had hijacked turned out to be a short-range aircraft. They landed in North Korea, and remained there. The Japanese communist terrorists, known as the Yodogo group, were happy to remain in a communist country, and the North Koreans were happy to have them. To provide the Yodogo terrorists with wives, the North Koreans began kidnapping Japanese women.

Steinhoff ended her lecture by presenting a list of all those she believes were kidnapped. While the North Korean government admitted to kidnapping only 13 Japanese citizens, Steinhoff said she believes there were more than 30 Japanese victims, including the Yodogo wives.

By 2008, although North Korea had admitted the crime and some victims had been returned to Japan, the issue was not yet put to rest. The New York Times reported that

For decades, the North denied responsibility for the disappearance of Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 1980s, despite Japanese news reports that agents had been spotted on Japanese soil.

But during a visit to Pyongyang in 2002 by former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, the North’s leader, Kim Jong-il, admitted that North Korean agents had kidnapped 13 Japanese as part of a program to train Japanese-speaking spies.

The North released five of them along with their children, but said the other eight had died over the years.

Japan has said that it believes that some of them may still be alive and that there may be other abductees in North Korea. The abductions became a highly emotional and politicized issue in Japan, one used by the Japanese right to whip up anger against the North and to argue for Japan’s remilitarization.

Although the conflict resulting from these kidnappings was primarily between Japan and North Korea, it eventually involved other nations. South Korea and Thailand allied themselves with Japan; citizens from both of those countries had been abducted by North Korea. The United States, although not directly involved, engaged on the matter as well; the U.S. hoped to gain leverage in its talks with North Korea about nuclear weapons. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice wrote that, in 2002, America's allies worked to simultaneously normalize relations with North Korea and persuade it to abandon its nuclear weapons program. In the United States, there were competing views. Some felt that we should work to normalize relations with North Korea in order to make progress on the weapons negotiations; others felt that we should focus first on the nuclear arms talks, in order to make progress toward normalization later:

Yet our allies were moving forward with the North. As we were deliberating, Prime Minister Koizumi of Japan visited Pyongyang in an effort to normalize relations between the two adversaries and resolve the crisis over Japan's abducted citizens. In one of the more bizarre revelations in modern international history, the North admitted that it had in fact kidnapped Japanese citizens in the 1970s and '80s to steal their identities and use them to train North Korean spies how to speak Japanese. The issue was deeply emotional for the families of the abducted and for the Japanese people as a whole. Kim's promise to allow the citizens to leave (to this day only partially fulfilled) encouraged Koizumi, though of the thirteen who had been abducted only five were still alive. The Japanese foreign minister, Yoriko Kawaguchi, pressed both Colin and me to send a U.S. delegation to North Korea. Koizumi made the same request of the President a couple of days later in a phone call.

The Japanese request to Condi Rice, Colin Powell, and President Bush was seen as progress by some, and as appeasement by others. In Japan, the issue stood on its own. In America, the abduction issue was almost always seen in the larger contexts of normalization and of negotiations about nuclear weapons. On October 9, 2008, President Bush met with Condoleezza Rice and National Security Adviser Steve Hadley. The discussion centered around North Korea, its current position on the official list of terrorist nations, and a "verification proposal" which was part of the arms negotiations process. Vice President Dick Cheney, who was also present at the meeting and who had been in Japan speaking with the families of the kidnapping vicitms, writes:

The issue of Japan came up. We had known for some time that the Japanese government was very unhappy that we might lift the terrorism designation. They were concerned in particular about Japanese citizens, many of them children, who had been abducted by the North Koreans decades earlier. I had met with some of their families during my trip to Asia in 2007, and the stories of lost children were heartbreaking. Now, the Japanese perceived we might be contemplating removing North Korea from the terrorism list without a resolution of this issue, and their diplomats had been in repeatedly to see my deputy national security advisor, Samantha Ravich, and others on my national security staff. The Japanese were also troubled by our apparent willingness to take the North Koreans at their word, to trust this rogue regime. Secretary Rice denied there was any objection from the Japanese and told the president they had simply asked for a delay of twenty-four hours so they could "handle their political situation." This was inaccurate. Later that day I received a message from our ambassador in Japan, Tom Schieffer, which I would pass on to the president. Schieffer, who had been one of the president's partners when he owned the Texas Rangers, had grown increasingly concerned about our North Korean policy and was now reporting that the Japanese found the "verification proposal" unacceptable as presented. Schieffer also passed along a warning from the prime minister of Japan: Given North Korea's history of duplicity, it was essential to get any agreement with them in writing.

Within the Bush administration, then, there were substantially different views: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice wanted to proceed along the path toward normalization with North Korea, while Vice President Dick Cheney wanted to place more pressure on North Korea so that it would back away from nuclear weapons and back away from kidnapping. In October 2006, Condi Rice had been in Japan, speaking with the Japanese government both about North Korea's nuclear weapons and about the abductions. She writes:

Tokyo wanted North Korea's program stopped, but feared that we might make a deal with Pyongyang before the tragic Japanese abduction cases could be resolved. While Foreign Minister Taro Aso mentioned the issue of the abductions at our joint press conference, I focused on the nuclear issue at hand and the Security Council resolution. I didn't want to get a deal to halt North Korea's nuclear program only to have to resolve the abduction issue fully before it could go into effect. It would be a constant balancing act throughout the next two years.

The United States agreed with Japan that both issues were important: the kidnappings and the nuclear weapons. But Japan wanted the abductions resolved before finalizing any agreement about nuclear weapons; the United States - or least some of its diplomats - wanted the weapons issue resolved without necessarily waiting for a final resolution to the kidnapping issue. By late 2007, Secretary of State Rice would note that the Six-Party Talks (Russia, North Korea, South Korea, China, Japan, and the U.S.) were continuing; South Korea, Japan, and Australia - along with the U.S. - represented the spirit of democracy in the Pacific,

but Japan was emerging as a weakening link in that chain. I've mentioned Prime Minister Koizumi's determination to undertake long-delayed, much-needed bureaucratic and economic reforms. When he left office, Japan fell back into consensus politics again, with essentially interchangeable prime ministers who never seemed to move the country forward. It was increasingly depressing to go to Japan, which seemed not only stagnant and aging but hamstrung by old animosities with its neighbors. And I was concerned too about my personal chemistry with the Japanese, who believed I was too interested in resolving the North Korean nuclear issue and unwilling to hold the line on the abductions. It began to feel as if the Japanese wanted the Six-Party Talks to fail lest they lose their leverage with us to help them with the admittedly tragic abduction issue.

Japan's ability to find ways to creatively respond to the abduction issue may have been hindered by internal political dynamics; those dynamics, in turn, may have been partially caused by Japan's demographic crisis: a lack of children. The Japanese had failed to have enough children for several decades. The Japanese economy was crippled by having too few people in the pre-retirement age group. Too few workers and too many retirees make for a non-sustainable funding structure for healthcare and other governmental services; the lack of workers also hurt Japan's businesses. While not directly tied to the issue of North Korean abductions, Japan's child shortage affected both the flexibility of its political leaders and the emotional reaction on the part of Japanese voters. Condi Rice had to work carefully with the Japanese diplomats.

For the remainder of the term, I'd fight to avoid linkage between the two issues. We could only say that we'd press the North Koreans to resolve the questions about the kidnapped Japanese citizens but if we could constrain - even end - Pyongyang's nuclear program, we needed to do that. Maintaining that position was very difficult. Tom Schieffer, the President's good friend and former co-owner of the Texas Rangers, was ambassador to Japan (having already served as ambassador to Australia). Tom was a great guy but sometimes a little too insistent in making Tokyo's case. After one incident in which Tom called the President - not me - about Japan's complaints, we had a discussion about the appropriate chain of command. He hadn't meant to cross the line, and we never had difficulties again. But I know it was hard on Tom because the Japanese were hypersensitive and insecure. Therein lay the problem: we needed a confident Japan as a partner in a changing Asia, and with the end of Junichiro Koizumi's term in office in 2006, those days had seemed to disappear.

A diversity of views continued within the Bush administration. Various approaches were recommended by the State Department, the Department of Defense, and the Vice President. Long discussions analyzed various approaches, seeing the merits and the flaws in each. In contrast to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Vice President Dick Cheney wrote:

America's position in the world is strengthened when we stand with allies. In this instance we failed to do that, instead sidelining two key allies - Japan and the South Koreans - in our bilateral dealings with the North. Accepting a fundamentally flawed "agreement" also meant that we turned our back on an issue of critical importance to the Japanese, one that we had committed to helping them resolve: the return of their lost children.

Discussions inside the Bush administration continued to weigh the idea of removing North Korea from the list of nations known to engage in state-sponsored terrorism. On the one hand, it might yield progress in the nuclear arms talks; on the other hand, it was clear that North Korea had not abstained from state-sponsored terrorism, and still constituted a threat to peace, safety, and dignity in western Pacific. Secretary of State Rice noted:

The Japanese were lobbying hard against the lifting of the designation, though. They worried, as before, that there would not be enough pressure on the North to resolve the abduction issue. We'd tried to help, and indeed, Pyongyang had agreed to some small steps, including a plan to reopen investigations into the abductions issue and answer questions about the fate of the victims.

By October 2008, The New York Times could report

The Bush administration announced Saturday that it had removed North Korea from a list of state sponsors of terrorism in a bid to salvage a fragile nuclear deal that seemed on the verge of collapse.

Beyond this point, one can only speculate about what would have happened if the United States had had a chance to continue to pursue some kind of policy regarding North Korea. The election of November 2008 brought an end to foreign policy, and instead ushered in an era in which the relations between the United States and other countries would be conducted in the service of other goals. There has been no substantive action by the U.S. regarding these issues since late 2008. An American Diplomat, Kurt M. Campbell, who bears the impressive title Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, managed to offend Japanese sensibilities by encouraging their government to ratify an agreement about parental abductions - the 1980 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction - which does not bear on the North Korean kidnappings. Campbell was advocating for an agreement which addressed situations in which divorced parents of a child lived in two different countries, and in which one parent had abducted a child from the other parent, creating a case of international kidnapping. The Japanese found it offensive that they were being urged to take this action against abductions - urged by an American government which had done nothing after 2008 to help them retrieve their own children from the North Korean kidnappers. The Japan Times reported in May 2012:

Relatives of Japanese abducted by North Korea said they were upset by remarks by Kurt Campbell, the top U.S. diplomat on East Asian affairs, in their meeting Monday at which he urged Japan to address the issue of parental child abductions.

If the United States returns, at some future point in time, to formulating foreign policy, there will be a question waiting for them: what, if anything, is to be done about the Japanese children kidnapped by North Korea? Until such time, America will have no clearly articulated foreign policy, and the needs of domestic politics inside the United States will drive the State Department's relations to other nations, including Japan and North Korea.

The Invasion of Italy

The swinging scimitars of Islam raced, in less than a century, westward from Arabia, devouring Egypt, northern Africa, and Spain. In 732 A.D., exactly a century after Muhammad's death, Muslims attempted a mass military invasion of France, but were turned back by the armies of Charles "the Hammer" Martel. To the east, they had already conquered Persia and Syria; they were partway through Turkey - still known as 'Asia Minor' or Anatolia at the time. As historian Harold Lamb wrote:

Two obstacles checked the rush of the Muhammadans upon Europe. A certain Charles the Hammer, king of the Franks, withstood them in the west. And in the east they were flung back from the walls of Byzantium. But the real reason for the ebbing of the tide was that the Muhammadans had split up into different factions, each holding to its portion of the conquered lands.

The stated goal of Muhammad's immediate successors, the "righteously guided" caliphs, was to establish a single caliphate, dominating Europe, Africa, and Asia. This caliphate would eliminate all other religions, and establish Islam as the only faith for the world. This goal was frustrated, not only by resistance with which Charles Martel and the Byzantines defended themselves, but also by internal divisions and power-struggles. Nonetheless, the amazing military strength of Islam had captured a huge amount of territory, and their occupying armies kept local populations subjugated:

Their conquests brought them face to fact with the barbarians who had quartered themselves on the ruins of the Roman Empire and had become Christians. Europe became the neighbor of near-Asia. The front line of Christendom could look across at the advanced posts of Islam. No-man's land had disappeared.

It seemed as if a stalemate might occur: Islam might content itself with northern Africa, southwestern Asia, Spain, and Turkey. Europe might content itself with what remained to it. But the Spanish were not content to remain subject to a foreign occupying army.

In the west, where Spain was the battleground, the Christian Franks retook the passes of the Pyrenees and gained ground steadily. In the east the Muhammadans gradually edged across Asia Minor.

During the next phase - the second century of Islam - Muslims would organize a sustained invasion and occupation of Italy, or more precisely, the southern half of the Italian peninsula. This objective would require naval power; troops would leave northern Africa from points near Carthage, capture islands along the way, and storm Italy.

It was in the center that the Muhammadans held the upper hand - in the sea itself. The Arabs took kindly to sea. They built ships and changed slowly from warriors to warrior-merchants. They made themselves at home on the islands, especially Sicily, and they sailed up the Tiber almost to the walls of Rome.

In fact, the residents of Italy would suffer greatly at the hands of the Muslims. Italy was in no way prepared to defend itself against an invasion from the sea. Historian Will Durant wrote that

Having conquered Syria and Egypt, the Moslem leaders realized that they could not hold the coast without a fleet. Soon their men-of-war seized Cyprus and Rhodes, and defeated the Byzantine navy (652, 655). Corsica was occupied in 809, Sardinia in 810, Crete in 823, Malta in 870. In 827 the old struggle between Greece and Carthage for Sicily was resumed; the Aghlabid caliphs of Qairwan sent expedition after expedition, and the conquest proceeded with leisurely bloodshed and rapine. Palermo fell in 831, Messina in 843, Syracuse in 878, Taormina in 902. When the Fatimid caliphs suceeded to the Aghlabid power (909) they inherited Sicily as part of their domain. When the Fatimids removed their seat to Cairo their governor of Sicily, Husein al-Kalbi, made himself emir with nearly sovereign authority, and established that Kalbite dynasty under which Moslem

occupational armies in Sicily achieved maximum strength. The Islamic domination over Mediterranean islands was a long and bloody process. The island of Corsica, for example, was first attacked by Muslims from northern Africa in 713 A.D.; Byzantines, Lombards, and Franks were able to defend effectively until 806, when Muslims from Spain - a subgroup of the Islamic armies occupying the Iberian peninsula - also began to attack Corsica. Caught in a pincers movement, Corsica was continually attacked by Moorish Muslims from Spain on the one side, and Muslims from northern Africa on the other side. Islamic troops occupied parts of the island, sometimes for several years, but the Franks continued to defend. Until 930 A.D., frequent Muslim attacks continued.

Starting in 705 A.D., the Muslims of northern African began attacking the island of Sardinia. Due to the savagery of the assaults, the town of Tharros - which had been continuously inhabited for centuries - was permanently abandoned. Other towns, like Caralis and Porto Torres, were evacuated and left empty for several years, but later repopulated when the area became safe again. Such permanent safety would appear after intense fighting in the years 1015 and 1016, when forces from the Italian mainland aided the Sardinians in defending themselves.

The long years of Islamic onslaughts against Crete, Malta, and Sicily were even more vicious. But islands were only an means to an end: the Muslims wanted to invade and hold more territory on the European continent itself. French coastal cities were besieged, like Narbonne, which was occupied by Islamic armies until it was freed by Pepin the Short in 759.

All of this was a prelude to the invasion of Italy. Italian coastal cities had long been subjected to raids by Muslims: a hit-and-run tactic in which one or more ships approached, soldiers from those ships would enter the town, grab anything of value they could take, kill men, rape women, and set the town on fire on their way out. After years of such raiding, a large-scale invasion took place in 841 A.D., in Bari, a port city in southeastern Italy.

Spreading throughout the peninsula, Islamic armies would occupy the southern parts of Italy for several decades. Although they did not permanently hold Rome, it was raided and sacked in 846.

The Italy strategy was conceived by the Muslims as part of a broader approach to Europe - Spain in the southwest, Byzantium in the southeast, and Italy - together with the southern coast of France and various Mediterranean islands - in the central south. This strategy was designed to keep European defenses spread thin; it succeeded to the extent that Spain was held for centuries, and to the extent that the Byzantine territory continually shrank over the centuries.

Whether Europe survived because of its defenses, such as they were, or whether it survived because internal factional competition prevented the harmony needed to coordinate the hoped-for worldwide caliphate, remains unclear. But in any case, the invasion of Italy was a central part of the unfolding events.