"'City people. Technicians. Pinkskins. Whatever you want to call them. Like that fat little von Sonderburg.' She was shrill again. 'Do you know what it's like, Captain, to associate with no one but an inferior class? It rubs off on you. Your soul gets greasy.'"
-Poul Anderson, Captain Flandry: Defender Of The Terran Empire (New York, 2010), p. 312.
Good heavens! Those of us with less refined souls do not have such problems. Lady Varvara offers to come to Flandry, even right away, just because he is from Terra. Flandry inwardly promises the deceased Bannerji that he will try to avoid this but it is his duty to be tactful, "For the Empire and the Race!" (ibid.)
They are both saved by the arrival of another visitor who turns out to be a more interesting prospect for Flandry. But later in his career, on Diomedes, the wife of another, still living, resident turns out to be a valuable source of intelligence for the skilled and resourceful Flandry.
2 comments:
I recall reading that Europeans before about 1800 noted that Christians living under Muslim rule tended to behave in ways those Europeans considered stereotypically 'Jewish'. They considered these behaviors rather distasteful.
Ie: living as a 2nd class citizen pushes one into subservient behavior to avoid retribution from the 1st class citizens, & outside observers see this behavior as rather repugnant.
Kaor, Jim!
Exactly! Oppressed and despised do tend, many of them, to be subservient, or at least deferential, to people belonging to the ruling group. If was what it took for people like the Christians you mentioned to survive under Muslim rule, then I cannot condemn them.
Or, for that matter, Jews under Christian rule, before about 1800. Or Jews under Muslim rulers
Ad astra! Sean
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