The stories of early interpreters
Fulcher of Chartres, one of the chroniclers of the First Crusade, was an insider who travelled with Duke Robert of Normandy and Count Stephen of Blois. He had every reason to know when communication within a given group might present problems. Outside observers had little time for the nuances of regional participation: Anna Komnene referred to the Crusaders as Kelts, …
The Portuguese slave-trade laid the foundations for what was to come, as did the Iberian conquests in the Americas. Had it not been for the need for labour in the New World to supplement reluctant and scarce native peoples, the sixteenth-century trade would not have grown to the transatlantic displacement of millions of Africans. As it was, when the Dutch, …