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European Reactions to de Pauw I. REACTIONS IMMEDIATE AND DELAYED DE PAUW'S paradoxical and outrageous theories rapidly produced an angry swarm of replies and counterreplies; he was criticized in general and in detail, obliquely and directly. In Europe the Prussian abbe found himself facing the defenders of the Noble Savage and Virgin Nature, flanked on one side by the admirers of the ancient pre-Colombian civilizations and on the other by the paladins of the glory and humanity of Spain; bringing up the rear there was the odd geographer and naturalist armed with his eyewitness account, and finally a host of critics and believers willing to fight to the death to overcome such a pessimistic view of history. Providence, Nature, Progress, the civilizing mission of Christianity , and faith in the miracles of technology, trade, and good government -all were mobilized in one confused mass to beat back this corrosive slander threatening their dignity and prestige. When this first violent reaction had subsided (ca. 1768-74), the Recherches continued its work but on a deeper level. And a decade after its publication-a decade which saw the arrival in Europe of the Jesuits ejected from Spanish America (1767) and the North American colonists' declaration of independence from England (1776)-the debate reopened, taking a rather loftier and more profitable tum with the contributions of Robertson, Clavigero, Carli, and Herder. While the other hemisphere was producing its first literary retorts, Europe was reaching that supreme stage of self-awareness in which even non-Europe, the rest of the world, was still somehow part and progeny of Europe; and as the romantic trend began to prevail the very foundations of the debate shifted, slipping from the realm of nature and ethnography into the domain of theology and history. De Pauw's first opponents were men of somewhat limited horizons, more given to argument than to reflection; one was a Benedictine abbe, 80 European Reactions to de Pauw 81 Joseph Pernety; another, an obscure soldier and engineer, Zaccaria de Pazzi de Bonneville; and the others, the learned mathematician Paolo Frisi and the scientist Delisle de Sales,I seem to have become involved in the polemic almost accidentally. As for indirect or implied contradictions of de Pauw, one could well include all the apologies for the American native, beginning with Marmontel and his ideal Peruvians, Mexicans, and West Indians. But it took the poor Indians some time to recover from the blow de Pauw had dealt them. Although there was no lack of new and zealous defenders, the Indians were to suffer for some considerable time from the effects of de Pauw's degrading accusations. One need only observe how much more often after 1768 the savages are derided, denigrated, or ridiculed, even by authors who have really nothing to do with the polemic.2 It is also a great pity that the essay on the Americas written by that most dogmatic and almost demented assertor of man's innate and fundamental wickedness, the Marquis de Sade, should not have survived. The three volumes of the Recherches were among the few books he still had with him in his cell at the Bastille (ca. 1787), and one can presume that, in the apparent absence of other works on America in this prison library of his, it was de Pauw's work that inspired him to write his "philosophical essay on the New World," which according to the Catalogue raisonne of 1788 was to complete the first volume of the Portefeuille d'un homme de lettres, and according to the publicity announcement prepared by de Sade himself was to be a completely original work, a true product of his own genius.:l Be that as it may, the concealed effect of de Pauw's Recherches in undermining the idea of the Noble Savage - if only in furnishing ammunition to those who were already disciples of civilization and enemies of nature unadorned- was certainly greater than we can document in the present treatment of the subject. Dr. Johnson, for example, was certainly not the sort of man who needed a de Pauw to strengthen him in his convictions . In his Rasselas. Prince ofAbyssinia (1759) he had already produced "the classical rebuttal of soft primitivism."4 But one cannot help suspecting that he must have had at least some indirect contact with the Recherches (of 1768) when we find him replying (30 September 1769) to the ever-present Boswell, who had provoked him by expatiating on I...

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