RE: Eastlings important in Middle Earth?
Michael > November 11th, 2023, 12:46 PM
Actually, badlands, your question points to one of the many criticisms leveled at J.R.R. Tolkien. I think it's unfair, or at least has been used abusively by people to make unreasonable demands of the author.
Tolkien's premise for Middle-earth is that it is our Earth - "round and inescapable". But his stories are set in "the northwest of the Old World" (basically northern Europe) and are told from the perspectives of the peoples who lived in those regions.
So some people argue that Tolkien must have been racist since he didn't tell any Easterling stories. But that's an absurd argument. They might as well complain that the ancient Chinese history of the Roman Empire doesn't exist, or the Aztec Chronicles of the Indian Subcontintent.
Throughout most of real history, entire civilizations have risen and fallen without making contact with or learning about other contemporary or past civilizations.
So Tolkien's lack of stories about the Easterlings and Southrons isn't wrong. It's unfortunate in some ways because I think such stories could have made Middle-earth richer. But then, Tolkien probably wouldn't have been able to write about fictional cultures in the south and east the way he could write about them in the north. And had he tried to do so, perhaps he might have used racial stereotypes that would bring him even more criticism today.
I think he made the right decision to not take those racial stereotypes too far. He used them to a certain extent because he had to invent something for the cultures of eastern and southern peoples. But he didn't focus on them or make them primary elements of his stories.