![]() ![]() The other photo is of the tennis star John McEnroe. “These snatches of history made me dream.” “He gave me a taste for history from a narrative point of view,” Binet said. “I think Montaigne summed it up very well when he wrote that ‘we all call barbarous, things that are contrary to our own habits.’”īinet’s love of history was instilled in him by his father, a teacher who would entertain him with factual stories about World War II and the Hundred Years’ War. “I find reversals of perspective and points of view quite stimulating,” Binet said. The Incas are horrified by the savagery of the Spanish Inquisition, in spite of their own traditions of human sacrifice. Atahualpa becomes known as “the Protector of the Poor” for his egalitarian policies. In his book, however, Binet depicts the conquering Incas as far more benevolent than their European counterparts. ![]() “The desire to conquer is not just European, it is universal,” he said, noting the empire-building of the Mongols and Aztecs. But Binet is convinced that is not the case. When “Civilizations” came out in France in 2019, some critics, such as Lise Wajeman at Mediapart and Frédéric Werst at En Attendant Nadeau, wondered whether Binet hadn’t attributed to the Incas an appetite for conquest that was uniquely European. “That sentence was a real trigger for me, and I thought: Why not tell that story instead?” “In it Diamond wonders why it was Pizarro who came to capture Atahualpa in Peru and not Atahualpa who came to capture Charles V in Spain,” Binet said. ![]()
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