On Moral Ambiguity and Colonialism

I have recently finished reading three books on a roughly similar theme: Undaunted Courage, Stephen Ambrose's account of the Lewis & Clark expedition; and Buddy Levy's Conquistador (a biography of Hernan Cortes) and River of Darkness (about the first descent of the Amazon by Francisco Orellana).

This theme is, in essence, the moral ambiguities of imperialism and colonialism. I am fully persuaded by the argument that these are basically Bad Things and that trying to carry out a defence of them (as some have recently done) is probably misguided. And it is very difficult, in reading the accounts I've mentioned (all three of them fabulously written, by the way) to see past the sheer cultural - in many cases genocidal - destruction and environmental degredation that would follow in the wake of the endeavours of men like Cortes and Pizarro. Even genial Meriwether Lewis, who clearly loved the natural world and was fascinated by the people he met in the American West, was the unwitting harbinger of an apocalypse that itself followed on the heels of other European-induced apocalypses of staggering scale. Yes, the Aztecs and Inka were themselves callow and brutal imperialists, and yes, American Indians were no strangers to genocidal violence, and yes, everybody was at it in those days, but the cataclysmic effects of European colonialism are truly without historical parallel and are worth treating separately on that basis alone. As Napolean said, quantity has a quality all of its own, and the fact that the Aztecs and Spaniards, for example, were both imbued with fairly similar sets of motives shouldn't distract us from the sheer vandalism that was unleashed by the latter in their conquest of Mexico. None of this is our fault (only a moral illiterate would suggest that the sins of the great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather should be visited upon the great-great-great-great-great-great grandaughter), but it should nonetheless fill one with horror to contemplate just how much destruction was wrought on the New World and the scale of what was lost.

And yet the mature human mind should be capable of holding within it contradictory emotions without feeling the need to reconcile them or banish one in favour of the other. And it is important also therefore to accept that, for all the bad that resulted from the expeditions of men like Cortes or Merwether Lewis, they were in many respects hugely admirable people. Cortes (Pizarro even more so) was a truly monstrous figure. But he was also, without doubt, one of the bravest and most intelligent men who ever lived - somebody who truly merited being labelled a genius. Think of the sheer courage and resourcefulness that it must have taken to set off on those ships across the Atlantic, let alone to conquer an entire civilisation after arrival on the other side; think of the iron will, the determination, the absolute intolerance of failure that must have imbued every atom of his being. Think of having the balls - I think the use of the word is appropriate in this context - to burn your entire fleet, your only vehicle home, right before the eyes of your men to make it clear to them that the only alternative to victory was death. Think of taking on and defeating a much bigger army of your own countrymen in order to remain at liberty to finish what you have started. Think of what you could achieve if you had a tenth of his gumption and cunning. This was a serious man. 

Lewis and Clark, meanwhile, are much more relatable figures, partly because they seem to inhabit a world much more like our own, and partly because the records they left are so much more personal (and endearingly spelled). But it bears remembering that these two were striking out into a vast continent that was, as far as they knew, peopled entirely by hostile bands of native people who would just as soon shoot them full of arrows as look at them, and possibly roamed by prehistoric megafauna and lost tribes of Israel. And they had no means of contacting home, no means of travel except by boat or on foot, and nothing to live on except the supplies they could carry and whatever they could hunt or catch in the wilderness. Whatever the results of their expedition, these men were giants: 'undaunted courage' barely begins to describe their character. Francisco Orellana, meanwhile, had already seen three quarters of an approximately 4,000-strong expedition die before they had even left the Andean foothills, yet plunged on to get all the way to the mouth of the Amazon with his small band of 50 comrades a year later. Believe me, stumbling around in the dark in an English woodland at night is scary enough. Doing that in the Amazon rainforest can't even be contemplated - and after he had finished he set off to do it all over again. 

A person's personal qualities, that is to say, can in themselves - taken in isolation - be deeply admirable and even inspirational despite the causes in whose name they are deployed and the ultimate consequences which they have. This is unpalatable, perhaps, but inescapable. And it is worth contemplating with reference to D&D, given that many D&D PCs, particularly those in the old school framework, themselves represent mini-Corteses, Pizarros and Orellanas. These rogues whose characters we play often do despicable things for despicable reasons. But that doesn't mean that they can't also display certain qualities that in other contexts would be described as virtuous.