Lost White Tribes [Kindle Edition]

And once he finds his subjects, their stories are fascinating. Americans will probably find the chapter on Confederates in Brazil the most interesting. This tells of the thousands who fled the South after the Civil War, rejecting Reconstruction in favor of a new life in Brazil. Their stubborn "rebel" identity and annual carnival in full Confederate costume is rather bizarre. My own favorite chapter is about small pockets of Polish genes in Haiti. These are the descendants of soldiers sent by Napoleon to assist in quelling the rebellion of 1803. When the rebels led by Toussaint Louverture won, the remaining French were systematically killed but the Poles were spared, as their country was also under Napoleon's boot. Orizio also tracks down pockets of inbred French in Guadeloupe whose reasons for settling in remote parts of the island in the late 1700s are lost to history, the remnants of indentured German laborers imported to Jamaica in the 1830s, Boers who left South Africa and mixed with a local Namibian tribe to become the Basters in the late 1860s, and the remnants of Dutch colonial rule over Sri Lanka/Ceylon.

The communities share some characteristics: most are, if not desperately poor, living on an economic razor's edge. Almost all retain some disturbing notions about race and the superiority of their own genes compared to others in their country. The past is clung to in bizarre and fantastic ways, such as the French on Guadeloupe insisting on their connection to French royal blood, and the Haitian Poles waiting in vain for their Polish Pope to help them. They're pathetic figures in many cases, as they seem unable to break free of their tight communities in order to assimilate to any degree that may bring a better life. Of course, Orizio's journeys are to find those stuck in their ways, and it emerges in many cases that the best and brightest youths often don't stick around. His style is fairly conversational and choppy, and each chapter stands alone as its own essay since Orizio never attempts to make connections between any of the groups' experiences. This may be off-putting to some, but it never bothered me—just think of it as a series of related long magazine essays. An excellent glimpse into some of history's lost corners, and sure to be of interest to amateur anthropologists (a bibliography on each "tribe" would have been nice or those of us interested in further reading).

Overall, I found this to be a wonderfully interesting book to read. The author does an excellent job of weaving together the tales of his search for these "lost white tribes" with the story of how they came to be there. Some of the stories are quite sad, with Haitians that consider themselves exiles and are waiting for someone to come take them home after 200 years, people who look down on the countrymen around them because they are not white, people who look down on these people for being white, and so much more. I found their stories to be quite enthralling, sometimes sad, but never boring.

If you want to see the tales of white people who went native during the colonial era, then this book is for you. I highly enjoyed it, and think that you will as well!