Statues of him have been toppled all over the US. Others, I'm certain, will join them. OK, he kidnapped people, enslaved Native Americans, and was dishonest. Without a doubt, though, he was a terrific sailor and salesman, especially in his relations with Ferdinand and, in particular, Isabella.
Timing is everything. Columbus received financing from the Spanish monarchs in 1492. ("In fourteen hundred and ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue......") It was no accident. About half a dozen years before, he had approached the Portuguese, the leaders at the time in exploration of the world outside of Europe, about sponsoring his voyages. They knew he was wrong about his claims of reaching the riches of Asia (India, China, Japan) by sailing westward and turned down his request.
The Muslims were expelled from Spain, The Reconquest, in 1492. That freed up money (Wars are expensive!) for Ferdinand and Isabella to invest in Columbus's venture, to catch up with their neighbors the Portuguese.
OK, enough of that. People now blame Columbus for the ensuing slavery, genocide, ecocide, etc. The anti-Columbus movement started years ago. In 1992, the 500th anniversary of his first Atlantic crossing, popular posters were selling. They read, "Christopher Columbus: Wanted for Grand Theft, genocide, racism, rape, torture....." Columbus may have been first, the one who initiated the Europeanization (for better or worse) of the American continents. (And when will we hear the calls for renaming the "Americas?" After all, they were so named after Amerigo Vespucci, a European.) But he was not the one who was the most egregious. Many others followed him. And, had Columbus not "discovered" the Americas, does any reasonable person think no other Europeans soon would have?
And are these people ignorant of all history? "Canceling" it, or at least what many of these ignorant people seem to want to do, will not purify it. There is no absolute purity to history. To try to make it so is creating fairy tales.
History is the story of the conquest, slavery, etc. of some peoples by other people. The list is practically endless. In Africa, we can start but not end with Shaka Zulu. In Asia, there were the Chinese and all their emperors, native and adopted (Manchus, Mongols). Let's not forget Genghis Khan and his grandson. Kublai Khan. Perhaps we can ask the Eries (if we can find any!) and Pottawatomis what they think of the Iroquois. I wonder what the Cheyennes thought of the Sioux, those same Sioux from whom the protesters claim the US stole Mt. Rushmore. And speaking of the indigenous American peoples, the Aztecs, among others, practiced human sacrifice.
One lesson we can learn from Columbus is asking the question: Hero or Villain?
Hero? Columbus' deeds introduced American foods and medicines to Europe. How many lives were saved? The wealth from the New World helped to finance European growth n culture, the arts, business, technology, and ideas. (And, note below, it was Western Europe, through the Englightenment, which began the process of abolishing slavery, to the extent it has been abolished.) Opening the two American continents led to wider settlement, eventual population growth, and the consequent spread of a more complex civilization. In turn, that led to advances in health, industrialization, etc. all over the globe for the next centuries. (When the "woke" people are critical of this, ask if they are willing to give up their cell phones, their televisions, their computers, their cars, their indoor plumbing, their great life-expectancy, etc. If they are, then they aren't hypocrites.) There's more, but.....
Villian? Europeans decimated the Native American population; some claim as much as 75 to 90% of it. I have no idea how that number was reached given the times, no census, etc. Maybe someone threw out that number at one time and it stuck. We'll never really know. But the Indian population, especially in the Caribbean was devastated. Likely, the Europeanization led to the African slave trade, when the native source of slaves disappeared. But, again, slavery was not initiated by the Europeans after Columbus and the African slave traded was aided and abetted by Africans and Muslims--that's where the trade started. Hundreds and perhaps thousands of native plants and animals were destroyed, no doubt. The actual number will also never be known. Some say the precedent for colonization, not only of the Americas, but the entire globe was established, its odious residue lasting to the present. Remember, too, the Europeans weren't the first or only people to dominate others through colonization.
Was all this the fault of Columbus, rather than Europeans who followed, from Spain and Portugal to Britain and, eventually, Americans of European descent? Was this merely (and I don't say that lightly) the march of history, weaker peoples from all over the globe being dominated by more powerful peoples from all over the globe? Had Columbus not "discovered" the New World, no doubt some other European would have. Were the atrocities that followed foreseeable? Maybe, maybe not. But are they all to be laid at the feet of Columbus?
To recognize this is not to condone it. But people should get their facts straight. It was, after all, Western Civilization (if not the US, coming late into the picture) that began the process of ending the African slave trade, well, to the extent it's been ended. And the American Founders, I think, realized that slavery was evil, that it was something that needed to be eradicated. That they didn't is shameful, but, in some ways, understandable. But that's something for another post.
