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Synopsis Red Gold covers the history of the Brazilian Indians from 1500 to 1760, from the point of first contact through to the expulsion of the Jesuit missionaries. The first contacts between Europeans and indigenous peoples aroused mutual wonder and even admiration. The Indians appeared to the Portuguese as 'people good and of pure simplicity' who embodied the myth of the 'noble savage'. The whites seemed god-like beings whose metal knives and axes helped them clear the forest and carve canoes. However, this uneasy friendship was not to last. The colonists revealed themselves as brutal, greed-fuelled men who abused the hospitality of the Indians, using their women as concubines and their men as slaves. European diseases, slavery, gruelling forced labour and fierce battles decimated the tribes in a demographic catastrophe. This terrifically comprehensive history of the impact of European settlement, details the subjugation of almost 2,500,000 people, and starts a historical trilogy of breathtaking ambition.stoSy ‘Hemming’s historical accuracy and his firsthand relish for the physical world of Latin America have produced a book of… high quality.’ C P Snow, Financial Times ‘He is a wonderfully fluent writer and the narrative is always of interest… And what a story it is!’ David Holloway, The Daily Telegraph ‘A rewarding and important book… Hemming is at his best describing the complicated relationships between settlers and Indians…’ Raymond Carr, Spectator ‘Scrupulous scholarship and narrative power… rich in imaginative understanding. He sets two incompatible cultures side by side – and the reader may decide for himself which was the more barbaric.’ Colin Thubron, Sunday Telegraph ‘An horrendous document, a demographic tragedy… stupendous, too, as a record of the Portuguese achievement… Hemming has the scholarly perspective to marshal a huge theme, and the speculative imagination and eye for landscape and human interest that adds sparkle to authority.’ Christopher Wordsworth, The Observer ‘John
Hemming is among the few real explorers alive today… Moreover,
he is a historian of such distinction… and he writes so agreeably
that this 500-page volume seems not a paragraph too long…The
pathos of this terrible story increases chapter by chapter.’
Dervla Murphy, The Irish Times
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