I absolutely love this book. I read it for the first time 5 or 6 years ago and I've re-read some parts of it since then.

As a Basque myself, I see two aspects of this book that make it special:
First and foremost, the fact that is written by an outsider, with no conection with our people or ways whatsoever. It's simply beautiful to see that some foreigner can overcome the Media, the prejudices and the public image that is projected of our people and see things for what they are. This makes some parts simply heart-breaking, and I actually surprised myself shedding some tears.

The other one (quite alarming if you ask me) is that I actually learnt pieces of the history of MY people that I was absoultely unaware of. Truly remarkable things. I discarded them at first, thinking that Mark Kurlansky was simply too enamoured with the whole Basque myth to be fair. Shockingly, and after doing a little research, I discovered that they were, in fact, historical, scientific facts. Facts that, sometimes, the whole world accepts today as true, but that we, in the Basque Country, have never heard of.


For this reasons I recommend it to anyone, and specially interesting for the Basques themselves. As for the author, I can only say this: eskerrik asko, Mark.

If you want to know something about something, you can't ever go wrong signing on for a ride with Mark Kurlansky. My first was his book about Salt, called Salt. You'd think you can't go far down that road, and my friend, you'd be wrong. It was fascinating, and I've read it a number of times now - all prior to my GR days, so it doesn't show in my lists - in fact many of his books don't, but I've read most of them early on. Except this one. . .The Basque History of the World. Until now. . .

The Basque people are rather like that mysterious relative in your family tree, the one that popped out of nowhere and yet that seems to be from where the family's favorite feature comes. . .I'd be very thrilled to find a Basque relative in mine, but alas, not so far. However, they've out-existed all my currently known ancestral cultures, so the farther back we go, the more hope flutters cheerfully in our branches.

As with all of his featured subjects, this author has a James Michener approach - we start with what's under the ground, what comprises the ground, and we move up and out from there. With all that background on origins and beginnings the foundation is set for humans habitating and culture creation and effect. Language is always of interest to me and here the author shines - sharing the mysteries of Euskera and its potent binding power weaving a tight thread of loyalty through each of its speakers. It reminds me of Gaelic (Irish), that way. Also in the way poetry, poems and storytelling are a foremost feature of culture performance.

Beyond language and religion, all the usual landmarks of culture are part of the author's offering: peoples - the different groups within groups, foods, music, sport, celebrations, and places of particular interest - a tour guide of sorts.

Toward the end of the read one finds discussion and education in political histories of this people in one place while the world whirls on around them. While addressing the Basque influence on the world at large, it always comes back to the struggles of Spain and France because of their centuries long conflicted interests with the testy Basque population and how to manage the Basque mass indifference toward the nationhood of others. . .a fierceness I find admirable and impressive.

Another great Mark Kurlansky tour to a place I'll never get to see, but thanks to him, have the chance to learn about.

52:40

I've said for a long time that it's the hypocrisy about the Israeli question that so infuriates me, and I don't think any case can bring it more clearly to the forefront of the interactions than that of the Basques.

I hope that one day I can take a train from Paris to Bilbao and get a passport stamp, in Euskera, by a man wearing a beret. 4+3=1

Also, watch this video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzutvz...


The Basque History of the World (Mark Kurlansky)
- Highlight Loc. 63-64 | Added on Saturday, December 04, 2010, 05:34 PM

Everything seemed a little exciting and mysterious in Basqueland.
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The Basque History of the World (Mark Kurlansky)
- Highlight Loc. 241-42 | Added on Saturday, December 04, 2010, 06:08 PM

They also created numerous sports including not only pelota but wagon-lifting contests called orgo joko, and sheep fighting known as aharitalka.
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The Basque History of the World (Mark Kurlansky)
- Highlight Loc. 324-25 | Added on Saturday, December 04, 2010, 06:55 PM

Iparsortalderatu is a verb meaning “to head in a northeasterly direction.”
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The Basque History of the World (Mark Kurlansky)
- Highlight Loc. 368-69 | Added on Saturday, December 04, 2010, 07:00 PM

In one popular legend, the first Basque was Aïtor, one of a few remarkable men who survived the Flood without Noah’s ark, by leaping from stone to stone.
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The Basque History of the World (Mark Kurlansky)
- Highlight Loc. 449-50 | Added on Saturday, December 04, 2010, 07:16 PM

The Romans came to understand that the Basques could be pacified by special conditions of autonomy.
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The Basque History of the World (Mark Kurlansky)
- Highlight Loc. 601-2 | Added on Saturday, December 04, 2010, 07:32 PM

The Basque attack of August 15, 778, was to be the only defeat Charlemagne’s army ever suffered in his long military career.
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The Basque History of the World (Mark Kurlansky)
- Highlight Loc. 628-29 | Added on Saturday, December 04, 2010, 07:45 PM

This is because the fish is associated with Olentzaro, a pre-Christian evil sort of Santa Claus who slides down chimneys on Christmas Eve to harm people in their sleep.
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The Basque History of the World (Mark Kurlansky)
- Highlight Loc. 1695 | Added on Sunday, December 05, 2010, 09:26 AM

It was considered cowardly to “waste” deck space by stocking lifeboats.
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The Basque History of the World (Mark Kurlansky)
- Highlight Loc. 1775-78 | Added on Sunday, December 05, 2010, 11:53 AM

In 1766, Xabier María de Munibe, the son of one of the founders of the Royal Guipúzcoan Company, founded the Real Sociedad Bascongada de los Amigos del País, the Royal Basque Society of Friends of the Country, an eighteenth century think tank that, in addition to studying everything Basque from science and engineering to gastronomy, discussed and promoted the precepts of modern capitalism.
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The Basque History of the World (Mark Kurlansky)
- Highlight Loc. 1785-87 | Added on Sunday, December 05, 2010, 11:59 AM

Another lesson in capitalism practiced by the Basques and later espoused by Smith: Having broken the Dutch cocoa monopoly, the Basques caused the price of chocolate to plunge. Far from causing a crisis, the almost halved price made chocolate more accessible and greatly expanded the market, making the trade far more profitable than it had been under Dutch price fixing.
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The Basque History of the World (Mark Kurlansky)
- Highlight Loc. 1809-10 | Added on Sunday, December 05, 2010, 01:38 PM

FOR THE REST of the world, the little-remembered Carlist Wars were to have only two lasting consequences: the invention of the political term liberal and the popularizing of the beret.
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The Basque History of the World (Mark Kurlansky)
- Highlight Loc. 1955-56 | Added on Sunday, December 05, 2010, 01:55 PM

One of the few Euskera words to have become part of popular American English is jauntxo, which in English has kept the same pronunciation and become the word honcho.
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The Basque History of the World (Mark Kurlansky)
- Highlight Loc. 2563-64 | Added on Sunday, December 05, 2010, 06:28 PM

Because Aguirre is a very common Basque name—it means “an open field cleared of weeds”—shouting fans distinguished him by the nickname “Aguirre, chocolate maker.”
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The Basque History of the World (Mark Kurlansky)
- Highlight Loc. 4183 | Added on Monday, December 06, 2010, 10:52 AM

The Israeli-Basque connection,
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The Basque History of the World (Mark Kurlansky)
- Highlight Loc. 4472-74 | Added on Monday, December 06, 2010, 12:37 PM

One teacher would force the student, caught in the act of speaking Euskera, to stand by the door holding a broom until he could catch someone else speaking it. The newly betrayed Euskaldun would then be given the broom until he caught someone else. The one holding the broom at the end of the class had to write fifty times, “I will not speak Basque.”
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The Basque History of the World (Mark Kurlansky)
- Highlight Loc. 4595-96 | Added on Monday, December 06, 2010, 01:02 PM

From the French point of view, le Pays Basque is a tourist destination. Basque nationalism is often reduced to something folkloric, something nice for the tourists.
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The Basque History of the World (Mark Kurlansky)
- Highlight Loc. 4597-99 | Added on Monday, December 06, 2010, 01:03 PM

The ikurriña, that politically charged symbol that is fought over on the other side of the mountains, is a favorite souvenir of French Basqueland sold in every tourist shop—flags, scarves, earrings, key chains, even scented cardboard ikurriñas to dangle from the rearview mirror of the car.
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The Basque History of the World (Mark Kurlansky)
- Highlight Loc. 4733-35 | Added on Monday, December 06, 2010, 01:30 PM

Slowly, names are changing back to the Basque spelling. Many are easy to understand. Guernica in Euskera is Gernika. Bilbao is Bilbo. But San Sebastián is Donostia, Vitoria is Gasteiz, Pamplona is Iruña, Fuenterrabía is Hondarribia.
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The Basque History of the World (Mark Kurlansky)
- Highlight Loc. 5070-72 | Added on Monday, December 06, 2010, 02:49 PM

In industrial pig slaughter, the animal is stunned and then the unconscious animal is bled. But these farmers insisted that the industrial way of killing was “not as beautiful.”
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The Basque History of the World (Mark Kurlansky)
- Highlight Loc. 5163 | Added on Monday, December 06, 2010, 03:04 PM

Julián Gabikaetxebarria

You should clearly realize that the author thoroughly explores local cuisine (as far as providing recipees and ingridients) as narration unfolds. Might become confusing for pure history enthusiasts.

I was very disappointed in this book. I've had it on my shelf for years (like many books) and I finally got around to reading it. I had high expectations because I'd heard great things about the book Cod by the same author and because I've been interested in the Basques since I stopped in Irun to change trains and I asked to buy a ticket in very bad spanish and the ticketmaster looked at me like I was the biggest idiot on the planet. I realized later that he was just pissed that I wasn't trying to speak to him in Euskera.

Anyway, the book, it was so-so. There was some good stuff on their specific brand of nationalism, there was some good stuff on the Spanish Civil War, there was some good stuff on ETA and the end of Franco... but it was a long haul getting to these good parts. It didn't seem to tie itself together until at least half way through the book. The opening chapters seemed pretty random. And the close was odd. There was a good quarter of the book though, that I would recommend. The rest... take it or leave it... probably leave it.

This satisfied most of my curiosity about the Basques, but there’s now stuff I understand less, like the Carlist wars, what the heck? Kurlansky is at his best when writing about food of course and there’s plenty of recipes in here that I hope to never be confronted with in real life. The chapters about the ETA and other nationalist political organizations, the bits about the antifascist war, the Franco era, and the Transition were solid, but deeply sad. Although I did laugh at the expression “one more pothole, one less asshole.” I was disappointed that Mondragon doesn’t even get a mention, that pre-modern Basque economy is called “capitalist” while the economic losses of the 1980s are in a chapter called “Surviving Democracy “... democracy does not equal capitalism. And I don’t know, but shouldn’t anarchism have gotten more of a discussion in a book that spends significant ink on Basque literature? Maybe not.

It’s a tall order, to get it all in one book about the Basques and there’s not a lot out there in English which kind of adds pressure to get it all in. And topics like the history and development of the Basque language could have gotten too technical so Kurlansky deserves praise for keeping it so balanced.

Though I had not known much about the Basque before, this book gave me a good overview of their history and culture. The Basque people inhabit the 4 most northeastern provinces of Spain and the three most southeastern ones in France, though the book only has one chapter that really brings out the lives of those living in France. I found the first part of the book somewhat confusing because it concentrated on different idiosyncratic parts of their culture and I did not have the context often to fully understand it, but the second part on the history of the people helped give me a context. I liked the book but it did not grab me as much as some of his other history on different people and places.

I've always been mildly interested in Basque culture and history, given that it's received only a passing mention in any of my Spanish classes, and that only increased when I visited and fell in love with the north this semester (San Sebastián is definitely my favourite city in Spain). One of the most interesting aspects of the Basque to me is also the most important—the language of Euskera. While I'm not sure the history and significance of the language can be fully explored, especially by someone who is not Basque, I thought Kurlansky did a good job of giving context and insight into its importance in Basuqe culture. I also enjoyed the historical discussion and how the país vasco has interacted with the rest of Spain, although I would have liked a little bit more information about the Basque population in France, even if it only consists of 10% of the Basques. I also found the book to be choppy at times, going from a chapter on Franco's regime and the ETA to an exploration of eel as a delicacy and back, but at the same time it did keep it from being textbook-dry.

Weird that I've never paid much attention to the Basques given that they show up in a lot of topics I'm interested in, such as: The Song of Roland, The Spanish Civil War, niche national liberation struggles, gladio-type conspiracies, pre-Confederation Canadian history, and the Newfoundland cod fishery.

This book is almost more of a miscellany presented in chronological order than a proper history, but that's fine for folks like me coming to the topic as beginners. A good jumping-off point, like a book length wikipedia article.

A bit heavy on the recipes and the personal narrative/travelogue parts were a bit clunky. Sometimes when he was quoting someone it was hard to tell if he was taking this from another source or his own experiences.

Still, a great primer on the Basques.

Absolute crap.

Kurlansky's on his game with this one. "Cod" led him to the Basques, it was an obvious segue as the Basques had a jump on everyone else in this area (fished off Newfoundland Banks long before Columbus, etc.) Anyway, I enjoyed the book thoroughly, but I recall very little of it now, 8 years later. The Basque were/are a fascinating people, with their own language, culture, food, separate from Spain & France, but...well, wish I could remember more...

I finished this book despite it begin poorly organized because I wanted to learn more about Basque culture and history. I am glad I read it but the content really should've been reorganized and trimmed to make it a more coherent read