“Europeans would be miserable savages in the jungle, the last of the savages would be a respectable man in the city”. Images of Americans, images of violence (1492-1797)

KWIATKOWSKI, NICOLÁS

Los Angeles

Simposio; Reinventing the Americas; 2022

Getty Research Institute

The contribution follows a collection of texts and images regarding American peoples, violence amongst them and violence against them. All of them were produced by Europeans, between the end of the fifteenth century and the end of the eighteenth century. It is a contradictory array of representations, devised with opposing intentions, in different times and contexts, with diverse approaches and consequences. They show power and resistance, stereotype and novelty, fantasy and reality. Their authors attempted to portray the world and to shape it, to dominate the people in it and to fight for their freedom. The experience and the image of Americans and of violence in the Americas had noticeable effects in Europe, and in the political and religious clashes that were taking place there. Those texts and images point to a European difficulty in the representation of otherness. But they also prove that the attempts to overcome those difficulties did not always lead to identical results.