Conquest of...

"The conquest of information leads to that of the kingdom." (pg 104)

"In other words, is any influence, by the very fact of its externality, detrimental? (pg 177)

In conjunction with The Sparrow, these were my two favourite quotes from The Conquest of America. They highlight certain aspects of the Jesuit Mission's interaction on Rakhat and how that could potentially have led to either a conquest - had they been more successful in communicating - and how in actuality the human presence merely had a detrimental effect because its externality upset the existing balance.
The different ideas of communication were particularly interesting to me. Todorov points that such a seemingly arbitrary difference as viewing time linearly or cyclically could propagate such deep cultural misinterpretations. In this light, its no wonder that merely planting a garden could wreak such devastation.
Todorov also caused me to acknowledge that because interhuman - though from radically different cultures - interaction with the "other" can be so contorted, our potential contact with any other species of "other" has a high probability of disaster. If humans can't even judge and communicate with eachother, how well do we expect to do when faced with something absolutely foreign?
Along that pessimistic line of thought: the second quote I mentioned also seems only to ask if there is any hope for positive relations with the "other". I'm not sure. Todorov, though incredibly interesting, offers only a possibility of success on this front in future interactions, but nothing for certain.