Lost Leaders: The Deaths of James Cook and Aldo Moro Compared

Abstract

This chapter deals with the gestation and unfolding of two singular events: the violent deaths of an eighteenth-century English sea-captain and a twentieth-century Italian politician. On 14 February 1779 England's most famous maritime explorer Captain James Cook met a violent death at Kealakekua Bay in Hawaii. Cook was killed in the course of a cross-cultural encounter in which both sides had to manage their exchanges with very limited understandings of each other's beliefs, values, and social relations. Cook's principal biographer describes him as enigmatic, possessed of a sceptical, elastic, and patient mind and a remarkable capacity for perseverance in pursuit of his goals. Exactly the same may be said of Aldo Moro. The relevance of using the anthropologist Anne Salmond's approach to improve the understanding of Moro's death is greatly supported by the recent multiplication of genuinely historical accounts of the events of 16 March-9 May 1978. Show more