Choice 评论
Gump (Univ. of San Diego) uses comparative history as an antidote to American exceptionalism. This engrossing work compares the historical transformations of the Zulus and Sioux (Lakotas) and the interaction between those groups and whites in the 19th century. The author sees the US-Sioux war and British-Zulu war as part of the intensified conflict worldwide in the latter half of the 19th century, which resulted in European and Euramerican domination of more than 80 percent of the globe by WW I. Contests over land, labor, and resources between Western powers and less technologically sophisticated peoples further exaggerated the economic disparity between the victors and vanquished. This is not, however, an exercise in conferring victimhood. Gump demonstrates that the Lakotas and Zulus pursued their own diplomatic and economic interests, often from positions of strength. Whites who encountered the Zulus and Lakotas did not monopolize aggression, ethnocentrism, and arrogance. On the other hand, as the author demonstrates, neither did whites patent human culture, despite pretensions to the contrary. All levels. L. G. Moses; Oklahoma State University