On Savage Shores
A New Statesman Best Book of the Year 2023. A Waterstones Book of the Year 2023. An Economist Book of the Year. One of Smithsonian Magazine‘s Ten Best History Books of 2023. A BBC History Magazine Book of the Year 2023. Winner of the Voltaire Medal.
‘An untold story of colonial history, both epic and intimate, and a thrilling revelation’ Adam Rutherford
‘Mind-blowing . . . this is how history should be told’ Benjamin Zephaniah
In this groundbreaking new history, Caroline Dodds Pennock recovers the long-marginalised stories of the Indigenous Americans who – as enslaved people, diplomats, explorers, servants and traders – left a profound impact on European civilisation in the ‘Age of Discovery’. On Savage Shores is a sweeping account of power and influence in America and Europe – one which could forever change the way we understand our global history.
‘An untold story of colonial history, both epic and intimate, and a thrilling revelation’ Adam Rutherford
‘Mind-blowing . . . this is how history should be told’ Benjamin Zephaniah
In this groundbreaking new history, Caroline Dodds Pennock recovers the long-marginalised stories of the Indigenous Americans who – as enslaved people, diplomats, explorers, servants and traders – left a profound impact on European civilisation in the ‘Age of Discovery’. On Savage Shores is a sweeping account of power and influence in America and Europe – one which could forever change the way we understand our global history.
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Reviews
A thrilling, beautifully written and important book that changes how we look at transatlantic history, finally placing Indigenous peoples not on the side-lines but at the centre of the narrative. Highly recommended
In On Savage Shores, Dodds Pennock has performed a monumental work of historical excavation. Beautifully written and painstakingly researched, this is first-rate scholarship
Imaginative and passionately argued
On Savage Shores is a magnificent wide-ranging study rooted in impressive research.
An untold story of colonial history, both epic and intimate, and a thrilling revelation, not about the invasion of the Americas by Europeans, but the journeys of Indigenous people to Europe. Caroline Dodds Pennock is the perfect guide, cannily and eloquently shifting the axis of global history away from its Eurocentric grip
Keeps readers engaged with riveting and often surprising stories of Native people abroad, but its larger accomplishment is tying these stories together into a sweeping geographic framework . . . its comprehensive scope, fascinating stories, and head-on engagement with some of the heaviest-hitting subfields of Atlantic studies promise to make On Savage Shores a benchmark in transnational Indigenous history
Deftly weaves diverse and fascinating tales of the exciting adventures, complex diplomatic missions, voyages of discovery, triumphant incursions, and heartbreaking exploitations - of the many thousands of Indigenous travellers to new lands. Essential reading for anyone interested in how the events of the "Age of Exploration" shaped the modern world
Inspiring and important . . . Expertly researched, convincingly argued, erudite yet readable, and introduces new readers to the reality of Indigenous American experience
As Caroline Dodds Pennock shows, there were many thousands of Native Americans in early modern Europe who have long been forgotten . . . an overdue diversion of attention towards people marginalised by race . . . Dodds Pennock's skilful method involves subtly layering European accounts
On Savage Shores offers a welcome non-Eurocentric narrative about how the great civilisations of the Americas discovered Europe . . . an important book
Pennock has pieced together hundreds of fragments to create a new and remarkable portrait of the travellers who crossed the Atlantic not to the Americas but from them, and who found in Europe a strange, often hostile, sometimes intriguing society, vastly different from their own
Dodds Pennock's unpeeling of the indigenous experience from obscure manuscripts . . . is a much-needed and refreshing take on our all-too Eurocentric telling of the past
On Savage Shores is a work of historical recovery . . . few books make as compelling a case for such a reimagining
Caroline Dodds Pennock's utterly original book is chock full of remarkable stories . . . there is much to enjoy in this unusual history of a forgotten corner of our past
Caroline Dodds Pennock offers a remarkably fresh and compelling account of the so-called Age of Discovery. Whether arriving as ambassadors or enslaved, these travellers experienced Europe as a new and disorienting world: a place of shocking violence and perplexing social norms. Pennock, a leading authority on Indigenous Mexico, tells their stories with insight and humanity. A must read
On Savage Shores not only changes how we think about the first contact between America and Europe but also sets the methodological standard for a new way of understanding the origin of the modern world.
Not only changes how we think about the first contact between America and Europe but also sets the methodological standard for a new way of understanding the origin of the modern world
On Savage Shores is mind-blowing, and it's an important contribution to struggle for a fair and more balanced telling of history - I felt genuinely enlightened. Dodds Pennock is a truth teller of the highest order, and a first class communicator. This is how history should be told
An impressive and consequential act of research and interpretation that consistently acknowledges the profound and ongoing . . . fissure caused to indigenous identities by colonisation, enslavement, violence and displacement.
[A] fascinating and fluidly written revisionist history . . . This innovative and powerful account breaks down long-standing historical assumptions
An excellent exploration of Indigenous presence in and contribution to Europe and nascent globalization. Pennock, by recognizing and voicing a space for Indigenous Peoples in Europe, has told a story that needs to form a part of every history class from grade school to university. On Savage Shores is an original and important recasting of sixteenth-century Europe . . . a decolonizing and un-whitening approach to the past