Caroline Dodds Pennock

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We have long been taught to presume that modern global history began when the ‘Old World’ encountered the ‘New’, when Christopher Columbus ‘discovered’ America in 1492.  Caroline Dodds Pennock, the UK’s only Aztec Historian argues that for tens of thousands of Aztecs, Maya, Totonacs, Inuit and others – enslaved people, diplomats, explorers, servants, traders – the reverse was true: they discovered Europe. For them, Europe comprised savage shores, a land of riches and marvels, yet perplexing for its brutal disparities of wealth and quality of life, and its baffling beliefs. Their story is one of abduction, loss, cultural appropriation, and, as they saw it, of apocalypse.