Book suggestions to avoid Eurocentrism

[Herman Gigglethorpe]

Just throwing some ideas at the wall here.

The Broken Spears: The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico by Miguel León-Portilla is a history that uses translated Aztec texts.

A famous Uruguayan author on Latin American history was Eduardo Galeano (Open Veins of Latin America and Memory of Fire), though his works are controversial for their leftist political bias.


Chavistas en el Imperio by Venezuelan journalist Casto Ocando is a bestseller about the scandals of the Hugo Chávez administration. Don't know much about it other than a brief skimming.


Even though it's fictional, I recommend reading Mafalda comics by Quino for some cultural perspective on 1960s and early 1970s Argentina. Mafalda Inédita has background information on the time period too. There are English translations available, but they're expensive and have many typos. It's much better in the original Spanish.

EDIT: Breve historia contemporánea de la Argentina by Luis Alberto Romero seems to get quite a few recommendations from websites in Spanish.



https://www.quora.com/If-I-wanted-to-learn-about-India-what-would-be-the-best-books-to-read

-This Quora topic has a list of books about India, both fiction and non-fiction. Quora has a large English-speaking Indian userbase, so I'd recommend looking there for South Asia topics. It's not a region I know much about other than some religious history.


I hope this helps!

 

[Arkenfolm]

Just throwing some ideas at the wall here.

The Broken Spears: The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico by Miguel León-Portilla is a history that uses translated Aztec texts.

A famous Uruguayan author on Latin American history was Eduardo Galeano (Open Veins of Latin America and Memory of Fire), though his works are controversial for their leftist political bias.

I'd definitely second Open Veins of Latin America, even if it feels a bit dated, it's a very good and thoughtful read and I love Galeano's writing style. Broken Spears is good too, although I'm not sure if the portrayal of Moctezuma II is the best.

For North America, Common and Contested Ground by Theodore Binnema deals extensively with the evolution of certain groups of Plains Indians prior to European influence as well as shows how affected they were even from minimal European contact. Preston Holder's The Horse and the Hoe on the Plains is also pretty useful for Plains Indian-related reference, specifically the farming communities of the Plains and their evolution and eventual decline at the hands of groups like the Sioux. Pekka Hämäläinen's The Comanche Empire is also a fun read, although since it's more about the Comanche kicking Spain's ass repeatedly I'm not sure whether it should count, even if it is written from the perspective of the Comanche. Daniel K. Richter, Facing East From Indian Country, is in a similar vein, more stories of the Indians and their contacts with Europeans from the perspective of said Indians and how it affected them.

 

[BBadolato]

I'd recommend the Skulking Way of War myself it helps dispel the notions of Native American's as being entirely outclassed, but, at least in the early New England colonies basically adopted the firearm and began to create the tools to maintain and build their own. There's also the whole part about how the Native American's basically used the firearm like we would use modern guns today, bands of warriors taking cover and shooting at the enemy regardless of appearance.

 

[Revachah]

If you want to avoid Eurocentricism on a given subject why not just search for books of that particular subject? I don't get making a book list of non-European countries and cultures when I google search and some review reading would suffice, right?

 

[Arkhangelsk]

I have a couple of suggestions for Latin America, or Mexico in particular.

A Glorious Defeat: Mexico and Its War with the United States by Timothy J. Henderson. I read this back in college, it's pretty cool because it offers a Mexican perspective on the whole Mexican-American War, which I find is too often lacking in the subject's literature outside of Mexico itself.

La Capital: The Biography of Mexico City by Johnathan Kandell. Mostly focuses on Mexico City of course, but it's a nice big book and delves into great detail on its history from it's founding to the recent past.

Mexico: Biography of Power by Enrique Krauze. I use this book a lot for both my timeline and for homework when I was at uni, I highly recommend this book for studying Mexico. While I don't agree with some of Krauze's own political ideas, I still value his work as a historian, and he's definitely one of the best Mexico's got in this day and age.

I can also vouch for some of the suggestions I've seen on here, like Born in Blood and Fire and The Comanche Empire.

 

[Badshah]

South Asia
History of India by John Keay

Modern South Asia by Sugata Bose and Ayesha Jalal

Sole Spokesman by Ayesha Jalal - this is about Jinnah and his role in the formation of Pakistan

Jinnah and Tilak by A.G. Noorani - similar but different from the above, and handily includes a number of primary documents, including the Cabinet Mission Plan, the Congress and Muslim League reactions to it, and so on and so forth.

His Majesty's Opponent by Sugata Bose- this is about Subhas Chandra Bose

The Mughal State by Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam

India Before Europe by Cynthia Talbot and Catherine Ella Blanshard Asher

Concise History of Modern India

Subaltern Studies by Guha and Spivak (very useful for understanding village level politics and the perspectives of the underclasses)

If you can find this: Lord Wavell's diaries are an amazing resource to understand the mechanics of partition and independence (it's obviously not as clear-cut as people may like to think).

For what's available online on archive.org- Speeches and Documents on Indian Policy- speeches, letters, and documents from Clive to Victoria to 1921.

Many of the above books are a good place to start splashing about before delving in deeper. India Before Europe is dense, and something I would go for after reading, say, a Concise History of Modern India or Modern South Asia. History of India is a great starting point, but it can obviously only take a very cursory look at all the important moments in Indian history- it would be like making a book from Ancient Greece to the European Union in one volume.

One thing to keep in mind is that historical revisionism when it comes to the subcontinent is actually not a bad thing, as older historians tended to look at things through a lens of Hindu, Muslim, Modern, and indeed some try and put a communal lens on history stretching all the way back to antiquity- something Romila Thapar strongly wrote against, and whose book someone else already recommended.

There are many, many great history books on India, Pakistan, and so on. My one rule; don't use a politician's book as a guide to history (like Nehru's Discovery of India), but don't ignore them either, as they show you how people might have thought about things in their times.

If you're trying to learn about, say, the Indian independence movement, to really look for the primary documents, and not just books.

 

[Harald Sigurdson II]

Americas

Check out Mann's 1491 and 1493. Cahokia: America's Ancient City on the Mississippi is worth a read, and the TV series 500 Nations is quite informative.

Also, this probably isn't useful to you, but if you go in depth on Wikipedia you can find quite a bit. I gleamed alot about the Polynesians and Siberian peoples that way.

 

[Kishan]

South Asia
History of India by John Keay

Modern South Asia by Sugata Bose and Ayesha Jalal

Sole Spokesman by Ayesha Jalal - this is about Jinnah and his role in the formation of Pakistan

Jinnah and Tilak by A.G. Noorani - similar but different from the above, and handily includes a number of primary documents, including the Cabinet Mission Plan, the Congress and Muslim League reactions to it, and so on and so forth.

His Majesty's Opponent by Sugata Bose- this is about Subhas Chandra Bose

The Mughal State by Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam

India Before Europe by Cynthia Talbot and Catherine Ella Blanshard Asher

Concise History of Modern India

Subaltern Studies by Guha and Spivak (very useful for understanding village level politics and the perspectives of the underclasses)

If you can find this: Lord Wavell's diaries are an amazing resource to understand the mechanics of partition and independence (it's obviously not as clear-cut as people may like to think).

For what's available online on archive.org- Speeches and Documents on Indian Policy- speeches, letters, and documents from Clive to Victoria to 1921.

Many of the above books are a good place to start splashing about before delving in deeper. India Before Europe is dense, and something I would go for after reading, say, a Concise History of Modern India or Modern South Asia. History of India is a great starting point, but it can obviously only take a very cursory look at all the important moments in Indian history- it would be like making a book from Ancient Greece to the European Union in one volume.

One thing to keep in mind is that historical revisionism when it comes to the subcontinent is actually not a bad thing, as older historians tended to look at things through a lens of Hindu, Muslim, Modern, and indeed some try and put a communal lens on history stretching all the way back to antiquity- something Romila Thapar strongly wrote against, and whose book someone else already recommended.

There are many, many great history books on India, Pakistan, and so on. My one rule; don't use a politician's book as a guide to history (like Nehru's Discovery of India), but don't ignore them either, as they show you how people might have thought about things in their times.

If you're trying to learn about, say, the Indian independence movement, to really look for the primary documents, and not just books.

"The Wonder That Was India" by A.L.Basham is a very informative book on India. "Hinduism" by Nirad.C.Chaudhuri provides much information on Hinduism.

 

[Kerney]

Dido on 1491 by Charles Mann

Anasazi America by David B Stuart-- A good guide to the American SW from about 10,000 bc to present. What's good about is while it focus's on Chaco forward, you can learn a lot about how Neolithic cultures views can evolve over time and the technological aspect of religion.

India; A History by John Keay recommend be roommate.

History of Japan by Richard Mason, dido.

Recommend reading some non classical mythology, whether Japanese, Native American, Norse or Celtic (these last two are ancestral to Western culture but in many ways aren't part of the Western Civilization we know). It helps us understand the mentality of the past people's.

 

[leopard9]

For Africa:

Africa, A Biography of the Continent.

 

[Alon]

1491 has... problems. For one, it advocates very high counts for the pre-Columbian population; it portrays the historical demography community as converging toward high counts, but in reality it remains controversial, and the median estimate is more like 40-50 million for the entire Americas than 100 million.

I'd strongly recommend reading books by historians, historical demographers, economic historians, anthropologists, etc.

 

[Kerney]

1491 has... problems. For one, it advocates very high counts for the pre-Columbian population; it portrays the historical demography community as converging toward high counts, but in reality it remains controversial, and the median estimate is more like 40-50 million for the entire Americas than 100 million.

I'd strongly recommend reading books by historians, historical demographers, economic historians, anthropologists, etc.

Yet Mann is interviewing historians, archeologists, anthropolgists, historical demographers etc while writing for a popular audience. All of them seem to agree that earlier counts were low (10 million etc). He notes that 100 million is the high count and that averages tends toward the higher numbers though not the highest. Though highly debated 70-80 million seems closer to what most scholars think, though I agree there is no consensus per se.

30-40 million is definitely on the low side.

This is what I'm getting from reading archeologists, historians, etc.

 

[snerfuplz]

I have a couple of suggestions for Latin America, or Mexico in particular.

A Glorious Defeat: Mexico and Its War with the United States by Timothy J. Henderson. I read this back in college, it's pretty cool because it offers a Mexican perspective on the whole Mexican-American War, which I find is too often lacking in the subject's literature outside of Mexico itself. .

I second this book. While not a history book The Underdogs by Mariano Azuela based on the author's experience in the Mexican Revolution is another good book

 

[matashowski]

Japan at War: An oral history (Cook). Deals with the Japanese experience during what we call World War 2. It cuts across a huge swath of society, and deals a lot with the impact of the war, rather than focusing on just the soldiers perspective. I can't recall reading something else that has moved me as deeply, or taught me more about human nature.

 

[Green Painting]

Meadows of Gold and Mines of Gems by Al-Masudi

One of the classical works of history that places Europe as one of many civilzations, other than the only one.


Military Orientalism by Patrick Porter

Trying to take away the cultural aura or cultural stigma that often surrounds non-Europeans armies when they confront Europeans. It's a very small but eye-openning book.

 

[Falecius]

I revamp this thread because it's useful.

An on-topic suggestions first:

"The Venture of Islam" by Marshall Hodgson is a very good and detailed historical introduction to the Islamicate world (an expression Hodgson coined) and was considered ground-breaking at the time. It is a bit dated but still useful (and available online).

EDIT: Jim al-Khalili's The Pathfinders also deserves mention as a corrective to Eurocentric views in history of science. Some points may be slightly incorrect, but in general it's a very good book.

I just read the widely advised 1491 and I am now reading Anasazi America. 1491 is a compelling, capturing, interesting work (although it may get shockingly wrong some bits of Eurasian history, like the references to the Carolingian Empire in the tenth century) but it is not the complete overview of the pre-Columbian Americas I had hoped for. I also feel that it is already somewhat behind the current state-of-the-art, esp. regarding Mesoamerica and the Andes (and the Amazon too, I'd suppose. Note that I am already familiar with the work of Leon-Portilla).
Anasazi America is a fantastic complement regarding the North American Southwest, and it is wonderfully written to boot, but the focus is only regional.
Where should I go to for more in-depth, detailed and comprehensive Pre-Columbian syntheses? In particular, I am curious about the Pacific Northwest (and Mesoamerica, but that's easier), but I am pretty ecumenic.

Any advice welcome.