Photo taken by Christian Haugen on June 10, 2009 in Lima, Peru.
One of the most amazing moments in world history (and no, I’m not trying to be funny) was Pizarro’s invasion of Peru in 1532. With an army of fewer than 200 men, the Spanish explorer cum warlord conquered the Inca civilisation. This wasn’t just another case of a violent pack of invaders killing off a race of peaceful people who couldn’t fight their way out of a debate over whose turn it is the wash the dishes. The Incas were a fierce, warlike race. How did Pizarro and his armies do it?
Well, one theory is that another group of Spanish explorers had already brought the smallpox virus to Central America. See? You thought that I was going to say something silly, didn’t you? No, this is very serious. This original Spanish expedition died from smallpox, but for all its faults – like its horrible and merciless habit of killing people – the virus wasn’t racist. According to this theory, the Incas were all either dead or severely weakened by the time Pizarro got to them. With help from smallpox, he defeated a civilisation that, depending on which historian you ask, might well have been the size of Portugal.
“Now just a doggone, cotton-pickin’ minute!” a few American historians might say at this point (though they probably wouldn’t sound quite so ridiculous). “That’s just a liberal, leftist, bleeding-heart theory to make Americans feel guilty about their heritage. There is no way there were so many people!”
There’s some argument there. Some historians see the Pizarro incident as proof of how damaging the Europeans were to the natives of the New World. Others think that that it wasn’t so bad. Remind you of anything? Yes, it’s the “black armband” view versus the “whitewash” version of history. As you can see, the history of the Americas does have a few things in common with our own glorious-but-occasionally-hideous past.
Nowhere do we have more parallels than with the USA. Now that our politicians are showing a bit more interest in the history curriculum (heaven help us all), they can do worse than following the lead of American history teachers. We all hear those hilarious stories about how dumb American students can’t spot the planet Earth on a map of the world, or tell Iraq apart from Afghanistan (no, really!), but at least they are more well-versed in their history than we are. When prodded, chances are American kids can name at least three of their Founding Fathers, whereas the average Australian kid probably thinks that Alfred Deakin is just the guy after whom the Deakin Veterinary Hospital was named (so presumably he was an animal-lover).
In fact, thanks to Hollywood movies and Childcraft books, Aussie kids could be more familiar with the heroes, villains and major events of American history than with their own. This should make it easier to explain.
- For example, where it says “the Jesse James gang”, change to “the Ned Kelly Gang”. (This is so obvious it’s barely worth mentioning, except that James was a crook and Kelly, of course, was a true-blue Aussie hero.)
- Where it says “Lewis and Clark”, change to “Burke and Wills”. (OK, I didn’t say this would be a pleasant exercise.)
- Where it says “Charles Lindbergh crossing the Atlantic”, change to “Charles Kingsford Smith crossing the Pacific”.
- Where it says “the Battle of the Alamo”, change to “the Gallipoli campaign”. (See? We’re not the only nation that likes to celebrate its military debacles.)
- Where it says “the Kennedy assassination”, change to “the Whitlam dismissal”.
- Where it says “Gloria Steinem”, change to “Germaine Greer”.
- Where it says “signing the Declaration of Independence”, change to “winning the America’s Cup”. (Based on the sheer magnitude of the event, it’s highly appropriate.)
- Where it says “the American Revolution”, change to “the Bodyline tour”. (Ditto.)
- Where it says “the Vietnam conflict”, change to “the underarm bowling incident”.
- Where it says “Martin Luther King’s civil rights march in Alabama 1965”, change to “Cathy Freeman’s gold-medal winning race in Sydney 2000”.
- Where it says “Thomas Jefferson”, change to “Sir Donald Bradman”.
- Where it says “Abraham Lincoln”, change to “Sir Donald Bradman”.
- Where it says “Walt Disney”, change to “Sir Donald Bradman”.
- Where it says “Robert E Lee”, “Ulysses S Grant”, “Susan B Anthony”, “Babe Ruth”, or anyone else who is widely admired, change to “Sir Donald Bradman”.
- Where it says “the Lincoln assassination”, change to “Bradman going out for a duck in his last innings”.
The problem with this exercise, it soon becomes clear, is that it doesn’t really reflect our true greatness. At least, not when compared to America’s gushingly inspiring history (in which, Incas or no Incas, millions of indigenous people were patriotically mowed down). In fact, we’ve had it too easy. If we want our history to be less boring, we need to spend more time killing each other!
(Now that was meant to be a joke. You’re not taking that one seriously, right? Right?)
