We have with us today Jeff Finn Paul, who teaches history at University of Leiden, and is co-editor of slaving zones, cultural identities, ideologies, and institutions in the evolution

of global slavery.

He is also the author of a new book entitled Not Stolen, The Truth About European Colonialism

in the New World.

That is our topic today, and it certainly is a timely one.

Welcome, Professor

Finn Paul. Thanks so much for having me on, Mark. Your book is obviously a corrective.

The knot there implies that. What, in broad terms, is the dominant narrative of European colonialism

in the new world.

Generally, what are students taught, you know, the basics?

What do they draw from the instruction?

Well, you know, it's gone absolutely mad during the 2010s.

I think that historians used to have a fairly balanced view of our colonial past.

I mean, they were always left-leaning.

They were always liberal biases going on.

But generally speaking, there was a sense that, yeah, when Europeans colonized the new world,

they did some bad and some good.

Since about the mid-2010s, however, you are basically as an historian not allowed to say that

Europeans ever did anything good, nor are you allowed to imply that natives or non-Europeans

ever did anything bad.

I mean, this is talking about slavery, this is talking about land purchases.

Even people getting along with one another, historians will now claim that every settler who ever came into contact with the Native American basically was out to murder them.

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