And narrative of the encounter between Europeans and indigenous Americans in the late 15th and 16th centuries has generally been written from the point of view of the former discovering the latter.

That in 1492 and thereafter it was Columbus and those who followed him, who were the ones finding a strange and savage new world.

But what if we were to turn this on its head?

What if we looked at the encounter from the indigenous point of view?

What if we thought about the thousands of native American people who travelled to Europe from the 1490s, either of their own volition or under compulsion as those enslaved and kidnapped by Europeans?

Arguably it was they who were arriving in a strange and savage new world.

It is today's guest who has proposed this new perspective and who has done the hard graft following the stories of many of these indigenous travelers.

She is Dr. Caroline Dodd's penic, senior lecturer in International History at the University of Sheffield.

She's been a guest on the podcast before speaking to me about Aztec Society.

Today we're going to be discussing her important new book on savage shores, How Indigenous Americans Discovered Europe.

It's a story you need to hear.

Caroline, Dr. Dodd's penic, I am absolutely delighted to welcome you back to not just the tutors, it was such a pleasure to talk to you last time.

I am absolutely delighted to talk to you about your groundbreaking, very important new book on savage shores, How Indigenous Americans Discovered Europe.

There is so much to ask you about this book.

Thank you for having me on again. It's really nice to talk to you.

I suppose we really ought to start our discussion by thinking about the doctrine of discovery, the legal fiction that underpinned the relationship between European people and indigenous people in America.

Can you explain this and its impact on something of its legacy?

The doctrine of discovery is really a legal fiction by which Europeans claim the right to territories in the Americas and actually all across the world by saying they were the first to find these places.

And of course it's nonsensical because there are people there already, the mere idea of discovering somewhere that millions of people are living.

When you think about it, it's totally ludicrous. It's like me coming around and discovering your house. It doesn't make any sense at all.

But it becomes a very powerful legal fiction that is then written into U.S. law actually and used in the 19th and even in the 20th century to justify ongoing ownership of land by Europeans.

It comes in the first instance though from papal bulls that are granted first to the Portuguese and then to the Spanish saying that they have the rights to the territories in Africa, in the case of the Portuguese and the Americas in the case of the Spanish initially, on condition they evangelize these lands.

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