Basques And Wabanaki Were The Exceptions To Their Rule And The Greenest Shoots of Democracy On Either Side Of The Atlantic
WASHINGTON, DC, November 21, 2023 /24-7PressRelease/ — In Exceptions to Their Rule: Basques and Wabanaki in an Age of Autocrats, Rick Sloan reminds us of how pernicious, incredibly deadly, and soul-blackeningly corrupt autocrats became in the two centuries before the Mayflower dropped anchor near Plymouth Rock. “Exceptions to Their Rule offers readers a master class in the evils of autocrats and their sycophants,” Sloan explains.
Between 1420 to 1620, autocrats consolidated their power across Europe. Simultaneously, emperors, kings, queens, and popes sought to expand their almost absolute powers to the newly found lands. Down the west coast of African, the evils of autocratic rule spread inexorably. Then, in quick succession, the Caribbean, Central America, and South America felt their greed and avarice. A century later, in New England and New France, autocratic rule spread like a vortex.
“The pattern was always the same,” argues Sloan. “Enslavement, exploitation, and extra legal executions followed in the wakes of their explorers’ ships. The Great Dying—accelerated by the arrival of European-borne diseases—erased 75 to 90 percent of the indigenous peoples on two then four continents. In 1620, one autocrat, King James I of England, even called that vicious vortex ‘a wonderful plague.”’
Sloan found but two exceptions: The People of the Dawn and the People of the Pyrenees. The Wabanaki reached consensus on issues big and small by creating a “talking-democracy” where all voices—male and female—were heard. And the Basques—fishermen, whale hunters, and fur traders—carried with them a fierce respect for their own hard-won representative democracy, one that governed their juntas generales and cofradias de mareantes.
According to the Kirkus Reviews, Sloan “argues that Wabanaki and Basque…were not savages but savants [who built] a rational, workable, small-d democratic Eden.” Kirkus Reviews’ also says “the author’s engaging writing style is geared to general readers…” His arguments are “supported by scholarly bona fides that include an impressive breadth of research…[and] forewords written by [the late] Daniel N. Paul (Mi’kmaq elder, historian, and activist) and Xavier Irujo (Director of the University of Nevada, Reno’s Center for Basque studies).”
Exceptions to Their Rule is now available from online bookstores (Amazon, Kindle, and Barnes & Noble) and directly from its publisher at BookBaby.com. For long-run book networks (Ingram and Baker & Taylor) and select local bookstores pre-orders will ship on December 1, 2021.
Rick Sloan is the author of A Novel Approach to the American Dream (2019), Revenge of America’s Unemployed (2017), and The Gift of Strategy (1995). His career as a political, policy, and communications strategist spans five decades. He can be reached at [email protected] or 240-274-0622.
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