Columbus and the Ends of the Earth: Europe's Prophetic Rhetoric as Conquering Ideology

by Djelal Kadir

Overview

Columbus is the first blazing star in a constellation of European adventurers whose right to claim and conquer each land mass they encountered was absolutely unquestioned by their countrymen. How a system of religious beliefs made the taking of the New World possible and laudable is the focus of Kadir's timely review of the founding doctrines of empire.

The language of prophecy and divine predestination fills the pronouncements of those who ventured across the Atlantic. The effects of such language and their implications for current theoretical debates about colonialism and decolonization are legion. Kadir suggests that in this supposedly postcolonial era, richer nations and the privileged still manipulate the rhetoric of conquest to justify and serve their own worldly ends. For colonized peoples who live today at the "ends of the earth," the age of exploitation may be no different from the age of exploration.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520911338
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	09/01/2023
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	276
File size:	5 MB

About the Author

Djelal Kadir has recently been appointed Professor of Humanities and Editor-Director of the international quarterly, World Literature Today at the University of Oklahoma.