As Turner warns the reader in the preface, Beyond Geography may seem more like poetry than history at times. That sentiment encapsulates the style of the book perfectly. The substance of the book, while spanning subjects and eras as diverse as any I've ever encountered, manages somehow to tease from an awesome body of historical and other sources insights of profundity perhaps only matched in poetry. The result is a devastating, morally convincing thesis that literally strikes at the soul of Western civilization.

The theme introduced early on is the necessity of myth--that is, the ubiquity of the mythical view of the world prior to the formation of Western civilization, which has decisively supplanted myth with history, cyclical time with linear, renewal with progress, etc.

Turner begins his tour through history with the death of mythical thinking in ancient Mesopotamia where the first city walls were erected in an attempt to separate society from nature, creating the wilderness, ever-threatening to repossess the isolated new civilization. Expansion was the response to the perennial encroachment of the wild. Historical thinking is the fruition of the revolt against myth which Turner argues is first evident in the account of the Israelites seeking the Promised Land, a distant objective requiring relentless pursuit--which never seems to stop. No longer would myth and renewal be manifest in the spiritual or social lives of the People of the Book or any they would leave in their wake. Turner follows these themes through the defining moments in Western history up to the 20th century.

This is a beautifully written tragic memoir of our culture. It is intelligent and morally committed, which I strongly appreciate. ( )

In Beyond Geography Frederick Turner endeavors to explain the socio-psychological impetus behind the explorations and conquests undertaken by the nations of Europe. Undertaking what he calls “an essay in spiritual history” (p. 7), but what could be more conventionally termed an intellectual history, Turner highlights the inner yearnings and thoughts of Europeans that made them different from other peoples and allowed them to “subjugate” the globe. In doing so he dismisses worn out theories on European racial (or even cultural) superiority and downplays any ecological factors espoused by scholars such as Alfred Crosby. In the place of these hypotheses he asserts that Europe’s belief in a cold, historically-minded, and unmythological Christianity spawned a psychological need for expansion (to perhaps create new mythologies) and allowed Europeans to rape the lands it discovered, and tame them, and to bend any newfound populations to their will (because the land was not imbued with spirit and the indigenes lacked religion). What Turner offers is a new explanation for the rather wide diaspora of Europeans throughout the world.

Turner’s book lies in the epistemological backwater of intellectual history, an area of study that his hard to “prove” beyond any reasonable doubt. (How does the historian enter the minds of men?) Beyond Geography is a theoretical work and preaches a deterministic, almost teleological, philosophy of history – the psycho-religious history that created Western Christianity then drove Europe to expand into the wilderness and subjugate it. He gathers his argument principally from secondary sources across many disciplines, such as history, theology, and anthropology. For his analysis of various myths he does cite the occasional primary source. Some of his secondary sources, however, are rather unconventional. In the notes on sources for the chapter entitled “Estrangement” he references books outside mainstream history, such as Cyrus Gordon’s Before Columbus and Barry Fell’s America B.C. The lack of footnotes makes it hard to determine from what works his arguments derive. Still, the book is a thought-provoking and entertaining read.

Turner’s book is split into three parts, each with distinct themes. The first section discusses the rise of Western religion from the dawn of civilization to the eve of the Age of Discovery. In the first chapter, “Estrangement” introduces his thesis: the true impetus behind Western expansion lies in the history of its spirituality, the forging of an inner impulse to expand. The next chapter, “Necessary Myths,” attempts to show that mythology is an essential component in the make-up of mankind, a process that helps man to make sense of his world. In “Bearings from the Ancient Near East” Turner begins introducing a theme that reaches its culmination in Christianity. The development of religion spawned a coeval marginalization and fear of nature. Religion established pockets of order in a world that was cruel and harsh. These Mesopotamian mythologies, evolved into Judaism, a religion, so he explains in “The People of the Book,” that wholly separated its god, YHWH, from nature. The abstract monotheism of Judaism created an even sharper line of discontinuity between nature and good. The Israelites were not bound to nature and mythology, but they strove to resist the evil and temptations of the wilderness. They even sacrificing scapegoats to Azazel, the demigod of the wild margins (p. 46). In the next three chapters, entitled “A Crisis Cult,” “Hecatombs,” and “Loomings,” Turner discusses the rise of Christianity from Judaism and the uncertainties of the Jesus’ Judea and the crumbling Roman Empire. According to Turner, Christianity, like all cults, arose during a crisis period, in this case the millennial era in Judea looking for a messiah. Cults that survive the crisis period intact, as Christianity did in the era of Paul, become organized churches. Christianity’s emphasis on a historical Jesus demythologized it, and the absence of any new divine revelations widened the divide between the body and the soul. In “Loomings,” this “fatal divorce between body and soul” (p. 73) opens a wide rift between nature and man – wider than that that existed in Judaism. According to Turner, Christians viewed the wilderness as inherently evil, a temptation that needed to be overcome. His evidence for such a theory lies, not only on his theory, but such examples as the unseemly breast of immoral nature’s physical woman as viewed by Raymond Lully (p.86). This illustration, as in other intellectual histories, leaves much to be desired.

In the second section of his book he begins with “Mythic Zones,” a chapter detailing various myths held by the inhabitants of the New World, presenting a sharp contrast to his de-mythologized Christianity. In two chapters with the oddly sexual (did he do this on purpose?) titles of “Defloration” and “Penetration,” introduces his next theme: the almost instinctual urge of Europeans to conquer the unrelenting and unfamiliar evil of the wilderness. Turner seems to imply that the explorers in Columbus’s wake yearned for new myths but because of Christianity they found these new lands hollow and frightening – a terra nullis to be subdued and shaped into Christian civilization. Throughout these chapters he highlights the extreme disconnect between the religion of the invaders and the close-to-nature mythologies of the indigenous populations. Turner’s take on the Roanoke and Massachusetts in the following chapters colonies share this similar theme. The English, like the Iberians, came to conquer the wilderness because they could not live in harmony and understanding with it as the Indians could. The Roanoke colonists failed to emulate the “superior” skills of the natives because they held them in contempt, unable to see their usefulness. These skills were “simple” and emanated from pagans in touch with the vile wilds and not living in the light of God. Turner points to the statement of Cotton Mather that “this little Israel [was] now going into a Wilderness” as an example of the rift Westerners harbored between nature and themselves. To the Puritans and their ilk, the primeval forests of the New World were the abode of the devil, and the savage Indians little better than demons (if unconverted). Like the Iberians, the English settlers, who held little spiritual respect for the land, had a yearning desire to conquer and transform the wilds of America into a familiar Christian land. This, according to Turner spurned Europe’s imperialism.

In the final third of his book, Turner discusses such seemingly disparate things as Indian captives and the frontier, yet manages to tie it into his theme that Europeans are inured with an innate fear and loathing of the wilderness due to Christianity. He also suggests in this section that the Europeans missed the opportunity to mix their intellectual savvy with the natural and soothing mythologies of the Native Americans. Here again Turner intimates that this lack of respect in nature and myth in whites leaves a void that yearns to be filled. Even Benjamin Franklin noted that Indian children raised by colonists retained their native habits but white children take to Indian living very quickly. There is a palpable sense that Turner believes the Amerindians were “in tune” with nature and that this mythology is an essential characteristic of the human condition that is lacking in Europeans.

Turner’s “spiritual determinism” is the corrective to the cold determinism of Crosby’s ecological imperialism. Crosby held that ecological factors beyond the control of Europeans, their animals, crops, and pathogens, enabled them to transform certain sections of the world into little “Neo-Europes.” Crosby, at one point in Ecological Imperialism, quickly mentions the fact that Europeans had found the will to expand beyond their homeland but just as swiftly he returns to his argument. In Beyond Geography, Turner advocates that the Christian religion of the European West was the factor that spurred the West to explore, subjugate, and mold the foreboding wild places of the world into something familiar and befitting their unmythological intellectual worldview. The problems with Turner’s monocausal theory are manifold. Like Crosby, Turner de-emphasizes and does not even mention any other plausible hypotheses that might explain Europe’s dominance of much of the globe. Is a need to control and demystify nature what spurned the technological innovations preceding the Age of Exploration? Many such inventions were borrowed from other societies such as China and the Muslim world (which Turner does not touch upon). Surely in Turner’s paradigm, the Chinese are “closer to nature” than their Western counterparts on the Eurasian landmass? Do the Chinese exhibit a yearning to control and subdue the evils of the natural world? Also, Turner’s thesis rests on squarely on his interpretation of Western Christianity. Is Christianity truly devoid of mythology? Does the fact that Jesus existed as a historical character detract from the fact that, according to what can only be called Christian myth, he supernaturally defied the physical laws of death and ascended into heaven? Are the Amerindians truly “in touch” with nature? If they possessed the same technology as the Europeans, would they have molded nature to their means? The Incas terraced their hills to grow their crops, transforming nature. Still, Turner’s thesis does provide for much initial thought on finding some sort of spiritual or intellectual reason for Europe’s global expansion and dominance since the fifteenth century. ( )

In Beyond Geography, Frederick Turner contends that Europeans, due to their Judeo-Christian heritage, find Nature, and by extension the aboriginal peoples found there, to be separate from religion and spirituality; and because of this disunity, Europeans tend to view Nature as something that can and should be manipulated, exploited and brought under control. Turner divides his material into three parts, roughly equivalent to Ancient and Dark Ages, Renaissance and Age of Exploration, and Modern times. Besides the chronological arrangement, he also shifts his focus to various locations, showing the reader the mystery cults of Rome, the hunting myths of the Zunis, the encounters of Columbus with the Arawaks, the conquest of Moctezuma by Cortés all the way down forward to Buffalo Bill.
Besides primary sources such as logs of the explorers, colonists, and missionaries and records, both parish and municipal, Turner draws from a wealth of Native American myths and tales as well. He uses secondary material from diverse disciplines as literature, science, anthropology, psychology and theology besides the numerous historical sources. The bulk of Turner’s work rests on contemporary historical, psychological and anthropological studies as they relate to European versus non-European concepts of spirituality and nature. His uses primary sources as supporting evidence for his positions or for the positions of the secondary sources he uses.
In part one, Turner deals with Western attitudes toward man and nature and how Judeo-Christian beliefs steered the Europeans down a path very different from that of Native Americans. In “Estrangement�€?, the first chapter, Turner relates his personal feelings of being divorced from nature and separate from the deep history that lives in North American locations. He feels a sense of history only in so far as it is the white man’s history, but almost no connection to the much larger and longer chain of events which the American Indians history embody. Here Turner uses the first person; he shares his personal thoughts and how he came to explore the subject. The chapter is more of a preface or introduction, unlike the more substantive chapters that follow.
In “The Necessity of Mythâ€? Turner starts ab ovo, going back to Paleolithic cave art. He intertwines speculations on the people who produced the cave art and a detailed account of a ZuÅ i tale of a young man’s first deer hunt with modern attitudes of contempt and dismissal of the people who produced such things. He lays the foundation for discussing two important recurring themes: that Europeans tend to be dismissive of the spiritual part of nature and see nature as something to be used and / or controlled; that Native Americans tend to seek a harmony with nature. He elaborates on the two themes with a Keres Indian myth which tells of a lost city, how it came to be lost and why the Keres live where they do. Turner tells how the white investigators insisted on exhausting all leads to find the city and, having done so without producing positive results, dismissed the tale as pure fabrication. The Indians, however, continue to derive value from the story regardless of its factual basis; viewing it as a source of stability and comfort.
Turner shifts his spotlight to the Fertile Crescent in next two chapters, “Bearings from the Ancient Near Eastâ€? and “The People of the Bookâ€?. He examines life in a settled community versus the life of nomads. He argues that, far from being “a place furnishing ready-to-hand conditions for reaping agricultural surplusesâ€?, this area required intense and constant effort in order to yield adequate provision (p. 24) He points out that until ample harvests could be depended on, the peoples of the area continued to rely on the shepherds and other semi-nomadic sources for at least a part of their food and. The mythology of the pastoral peoples, who for various reasons, dominated society, tended to be more masculine than that of the agriculturalists. Whether it be a result of this pastoral dominance or due to the harsh environment that promoted the aggression and violence often associated with the masculine impulse, in most of the cultures of the ancient near east, male deities dominated the spiritual lives of the people. He describes in detail the lives of the shepherds as contrasted with the lives of those more sedentary. To the nomads even the rudimentary villages could have seemed luxurious indeed while a truly large city with parks and gardens may easily be imagined as paradise by the itinerant shepherds (p. 38). During this time Hebrew myth was forming around the idea that their god promised them a permanent place of their own, where they could settle and become farmers rather than herdsmen. As this body of myth grew, the Hebrews’ goal was to become settled; that contrasted with the fact that they were not settled. As they continued to migrate, a sense that they did not belong in a particular place grew within their collective consciousness. Since they believe their god was always with them as they wandered, an associated belief grew as well: that their god was separate and distinct from nature rather than in nature. Their god was the creator of nature and all things therein and therefore by extension was not any one of the things he had created. Turner writes:
Moreover, in a curious way the very oneness, the singularity, of this god emphasizes the separation from nature, for though he created the earth and claims all of it as his, yet he is not to be found everywhere in it…. (p. 45)
With this view came the idea that nature was something to be resisted. The wilderness (nature) became regarded as the place from which to escape. A return to the wilderness was to be avoided and should that happen it was a sign of great misfortune, disgrace or punishment.
Next, in “A Crisis Cultâ€?, Turner shifts his attention to the Roman world, particularly the time of the Empire when dissatisfaction, discontent and decadence increased. Roman religion, a conglomerate of ancient gods revered by aboriginal Latin peoples along with many of the gods of the peoples the Romans had conquered, most notably the Greeks, easily assimilated the beliefs and practices of other cultures. While these Roman gods tended to serve well as Imperial-sized monumental beings, the level of personal involvement grew or remained small. The man in the street derived little benefit from serving these traditional gods. Meanwhile there were plenty of new choices; not all of the gods with whom the Romans came into contact submitted to the assimilation process. Several alternative religions flourished within the empire because they filled a spiritual need not met by the traditional Roman gods. Eventually Christianity got its foot in the door to the extent of not merely being tolerated, but being declared the religion of the Emperor and therefore of the state. It is at this point, Turner contends, that the defining acts occurred which propelled Europeans down a path insisting on the separation of religion and nature and of religion and myth. The Christians demanded that theirs is the only god and that he is apart from nature or anything in this world. Furthermore, their god had a historical presence on Earth; he existed for a while in history. This small distinction served to isolate Christians since it locked the believers into history. There could be no further revelations or divine events unless they too occurred in a verifiable manner. Turner argues the separation of their god from nature led Christians to see the body and soul as not merely distinct, but as being at odds with one another. The sense that in order to serve one’s spirit one must deny one’s body emerged within Christian belief around this period.
Turner devotes the chapter, “Hecatombsâ€?, to expanding the idea of denying the flesh and the far-reaching consequences of such attitudes. Turner cites numerous instances of holy men mutilating and torturing themselves that they might loosen their grip on worldly things and concentrate on the life of the spirit. It is not a huge leap of logic to think that if mortifying one’s own flesh is a good thing then doing the same thing to someone else must also be good. It was with the Crusades that this concept reached fruition. Turner relates how spiritually inactive society had become by the eleventh century. In an effort to revitalize spiritual life the Pope called for a crusade to free Jerusalem from the Muslims. Soon this was interpreted to imply eradication or conversion all unbelievers by any means necessary. In the ensuing years Muslims were not the only targets; there were Jews, witches, homosexuals and Christian heretics as well. Not only was killing such people condoned, it was encouraged by the Church as a holy act which could possibly help gain entrance to heaven for the perpetrator. These attitudes and events illustrate Turner’s point that if Christians are willing to hurt themselves and others so readily, how easy it must be for them to regard others as objects for them to act upon.
“Loomingsâ€? contains Turner’s explanation of what triggered the Age of Exploration. He tells of Raymond Lully’s efforts to launch another crusade and his proposal that a sea route around Africa would be the best way to reach the Muslim world. This idea of reaching the East by sea predated Columbus by two centuries. Turner tells of that other great figure who helped trigger the voyages of discovery, Marco Polo. Because of Polo’s extensive stories telling of and often exaggerating the wealth and mysteries of the Far East, many a man yearned to see and have some of the vast riches waiting there. Turner contends that Polo’s tales had a direct influence on Columbus. This chapter deals less with spiritual matters than those of the first part. Rather here Turner sets the stage for the onslaught of Europeans into the western hemisphere.
“Mythic Zonesâ€? serves to give the backdrop for the western hemisphere as it was at the time the Columbus was poised to embark. Turner relates four myths at some length and detail. No only do these myths show the depth spiritual life and sophisticated nuance of understanding of the Indians, but specifically they each illustrate the interconnectedness the Indians feel with nature. They see themselves as but some of the many beings that exist in nature. They do not see nature as theirs to exploit, control, or ignore nor do they see themselves as above the other parts of nature. Furthermore from these myths emerge the idea of the hero as someone who learns to work with nature rather than to subdue it. This chapter serves as a contrast to the attitudes taken by the Israelites in their home. The Indians sought communion with their surroundings whereas the Israelites sought escape from or submission of their environment.
“Deflorationâ€? refers to the initial contact between Columbus and other whites and the Arawak Indians. Turner supplies some of the background of Columbus’ personal idiosyncrasies. Columbus had plenty of failings; he eventually broke down mentally. He is not presented as a monster. Unfortunately he is fairly typical of what is to follow. The truly monstrous aspect is the insensitivity, arrogance and rapaciousness of the whites. The whites were quick to use violence to subdue resistance offered by the Indians. Since the Indians were not Christians they were fair game for any treatment the Europeans found it expedient to dish out. In only a few years the patterns had been established of regarding the Indians as little more than intelligent pack animals, whose belongings could be taken without recompense. With outright aggressive violence, callous ill treatment, mere neglect and exposure to virulent diseases never before encountered, the Indian populations dropped rapidly. The survivors were cowed into cooperation.
Turner moves to Hernán Cortés in the chapter, “Penetrationâ€?. He goes into considerable depth relating how Cortés manipulated people, including his Moctezuma, other tribes of Indians less friendly to the Aztecs, as well as his own countrymen. According to Turner, Cortés was driven largely by dreams of gold; and he did acquire a lot of it in taking Moctezuma’s empire. While it is debatable how much Cortés himself believed in the Gospel, he did conduct his conquest under the guise of spreading Christianity. The veneer of evangelizing was thin however; the Spaniards made perfunctory efforts to instruct the Indians in how to become good Christian subjects of the Spanish monarchs. The instructions being in Latin, the Indians inevitably failed to comply and war ensued.
The next two chapters, “The Lost Colonyâ€? and “Things of Darknessâ€?, focus on the English colonial dealings with the Indians. The English were no better behaved nor kinder than the Spaniards plus they benefited from a century’s example of Spanish colonial experience. In encounters between Indians and Europeans, the particular European nation involved mattered very little. The Europeans were more like each other than like any of the Indians. Drawing from the accounts of the settlers, Turner presents a grim picture of the mistrust with which the English approached the Indians. In case after case the English pushed the Indians further from their lands and belongings and showed them little genuine good will. When some Indians had been pushed to far and refused to be trammeled, the English felt their mistrust had been justified all along; they also regarded this as grounds for totally ridding themselves of troublesome natives, be it through relocation or through extermination. He weaves in themes from Shakespeare’s “ The Tempestâ€?, drawing parallels on the shipwrecked characters and the Pilgrims. He discusses Caliban at length. There are several similarities between Caliban and the Indians but more importantly, there are similarities in how Prospero views Caliban and the way the Pilgrims regard the Indians. Turner also reintroduces the theme of the Israelites’ wanderings. Just as the Hebrews struggled to resist the wilderness, to adhere to their spiritual beliefs, so did the Pilgrims strive to remain true to their beliefs. They had left Holland when their children were in danger of becoming Dutch. How much more fiercely would they strive to avoid being influenced by the Indians? Turner also illustrates how the Indians saw the English, particularly striking was the Indians’ horror of the English methods of war. To the Indians war was at least partly symbolic and ritualized; a war of extermination was unthinkable to them. Turner compares the carnage of an English attack on the Indians with accounts of the slaughter of Muslims during the crusades: streets running with blood, passages clogged with piles of bodies, Christians savagely destroying men, women and children in the name of the Prince of Peace.
In part three, Turner looks at the more settled experience between whites and Indians. In “Possessionâ€? he uses the word, “possessionâ€?, on multiple levels. He deals with the concept of spiritual possession, pointing out that to Christians, the idea of being possessed is always a bad thing; whereas the Indians actively sought being possessed by spirits as a means of spiritual growth and enhancement. This ties back to the theme of the differentiation between spirit and body that the Christians insisted upon. Since to the Christians the spirit is the only thing that matters, for it to be displaced was terrible. He also discusses whites that “go nativeâ€?; one may say the Indians possessed them. In the examples Turner cites there was unanimous choice in favor of continuing life as an Indian. His point is that given the opportunity to free oneself of European modes of thought, one would not readily choose to return to those ways again.
Turner draws up to the end of the 19th century in “The Vanishing New Worldâ€?. He illustrates how the Indians have been systematically reduced by any standard of measurement: population, influence, self-sufficiency, and dignity. He dwells mainly on how the whites hunted the buffalo to near extinction. He shows the wanton disregard for the animals, for the Indians who depended upon them, even for sport itself since this was more of a slaughter. Turner offers an ironic contrast between the violent taming of the west with the Transcendental Movement and Thoreau.
Concluding with “A Dance of the Dispossessedâ€? Turner gazes at the white triumph over the American Indians in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He focuses on William Cody, a.k.a. Buffalo Bill. Turner shows Cody as a sad man who has outlived his place in the scheme of things. Cody realized that his achievements were not heroic and exhibited regret at the paths he chose. Turner uses Buffalo Bill as a figure to represent the European conquest of the Americas. It is only when the conquest is complete, the lands and resources are trashed, that the white man thinks that just perhaps he did not make the right choice. Turner evokes further irony by Cody’s association with the circus and the sense of sideshow sham that Cody’s life became.
Turner guides the reader by carefully crafted steps toward the conclusion that there is something basically flawed in the Judeo-Christian concept of how God, man, and nature relate. He argues that while there have been major benefits, such as freeing man from seeing all of nature as inhabited with spirits, thus enabling dispassionate objective observation, so too have there been less fortunate consequences. Although Turner makes a good case for his views, it is by no means airtight. One gets a sense that Turner is showing only what he needs to make his point and that much other evidence is simply discarded or glossed over. That which he omits argues against him. It seems difficult to accept that every single recorded incident of a white person living with the Indians preferred to stay rather than return to white man’s ways. In speaking of man’s inhumanity to man stemming from the religious heritage of Judeo-Christianity, he does not mention the cruel acts done by Hindus or Buddhists or any other group. His arguments would be more acceptable if there were a greater sense of objectivity. In his eagerness to condemn Europeans for all of mankind’s ills he comes across too heavy-handed to be totally convincing. This criticism is more of an issue of style rather than to say he outright set out to deceive. The deeply felt passions of his beliefs prevent him from being as objective as one might hope; but that passion also helps shape a well-crafted work that sometimes transcends history. ( )