Friday, September 16, 2011
On Columbus
Christopher Columbus was a product of his time, just like Thomas Jefferson was a product of HIS time, just like Abraham Lincoln was a product of HIS time. To judge the man strictly according to today's sensibilities/moral yardstick is probably a wee-bit unfair. I mean, if you're going to call him evil, then you're probably going to have to call pretty much every fifteenth century European nobleman (or wannabe) evil, too...................................................................................................And, no, it wasn't just a white European thing, either. The Islamic empire was all about subjugating people, too (Spain, Palestine, etc.). Add to that the fact that Genghis Khan frigging pillaged and plundered, the fact that Native-Americans themselves waged one bloody conflict after another.....................................................................................................Now, is this in any way an attempt to justify such wanton cruelty, enslavement, or whatever? No, of course not. Mankind HAS BEEN and, in many ways, continues to be a bitch. I'm only attempting here to put forth a little bit of a perspective. And, besides, if it wasn't for individuals such as Columbus, we'd probably all be scrounging for scraps in some European ghetto (this, while the Native-Americans were being conquered by somebody else) - birching and moaning about that.
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15 comments:
I know where you're coming from. As well as the logical path followed to arrive at your rational conclusion.
Suffice it to say there are plenty who do not. Those folks never had a clue, never will.
Such is ....
Of course not being the "sharpest blade on the internet" I could be wrong.
Then again, I could be right.
On further analysis it seems clear your main premise is in fact right.
And those who don't get it, will in fact, never get it.
"To judge the man strictly according to today's sensibilities/moral yardstick is probably a wee-bit unfair"
The man personally procured the rape of pre-teen girls. It's well documented. This is just one thing. How can you put a good spin on that?
Conquerors have always been called even, in their time and in ours.
http://arashworld.blogspot.com/2011/08/columbus-as-brave-explorer-or-grave.html
Mr. Columbus was even, by any yardstick you use.
Columbus was like Lenin, Hitler, and Leopold II, a person who worked to make things far worse, even in the context of his time. This cannot be said of Lincoln or Jefferson.
The population of the island of Hispaniola was estimated to be over a million at the time of Columbus. Within a few decades of his arrival, the natives were entirely exterminated by him and his family. It's no secret or wild claim, and it is in Columbus' own writings, as in this one where he describes the export of Taino for sex slaves which he had set up:
"A hundred castellanoes (a Spanish coin) are as easily obtained for a woman as for a farm, and it is very general and there are plenty of dealers who go about looking for girls; those from nine to ten (years old) are now in demand."
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As for the Islamic empire, it was was indeed brutal and backwards. Compared to Christian Europe, it was a little better. Compred to the relatively tolerant Hellenistic-legacy civilization in the Middle East and North Africa, it was a big step backwards.
Way back in 1992 there was a funny political cartoon that sometimes pops up even now during the follow up to Columbus Day.
In the cartoon Columbus is on shore holding a flag surrounded by his men with his three ships in the background. The caption has him say," Rape and pillage all you can boys, cause in 500 years we will all be politically incorrect."
...is this in any way an attempt to justify such wanton cruelty, enslavement, or whatever?
Come down here to South Carolina Will, none other than Diamond Jim DeMint justified slavery to a local Confederate group as a benefit to the poor barbaric Africans when he was running for the senate.
Is there any source for this?
I'm not trying to put a good spin on it, dmarks. I'm just saying that enlightenment in 1492 was a hell of a lot different than enlightenment is today. And it'll be even different still in 2492 (well, that is, if we even make it that long).............I hear you on DeMint, double b. That dude's about as backward as it gets.
Some additional perspective from the New York Times............"Moreover, widely spread accounts that Columbus’s followers wiped out the Taino people of the Caribbean were inaccurate, says Jorge Estevez, himself of Taino lineage, who is a program coordinator at the National Museum of the American Indian in Manhattan. Mr. Estevez says that although many natives were murdered, fell victim to European diseases, or were taken captive, others intermingled with the Spanish settlers. And the settlers who were given Tainos as slaves were required to pay taxes on them, resulting in the undercounting of the Tainos as a form of tax evasion and leading to reports of their eradication."............Mr. Columbus has gone from hero to villain rapidly in the eyes of many. The truth, as it almost always is, is somewhere in between.
In fact, most of the “devastation” caused by Columbus was accidental, caused primarily by the unintentional exposure of disease to natives.
"In fact, most of the “devastation” caused by Columbus was accidental, caused primarily by the unintentional exposure of disease to natives."
Columbus' own writings detail the different ways by which the Taino were exterminated as fast as possible.
I don't doubt for a second that there were atrocities. But whenever you have a clash between 2 civilizations and 1 of the sides has an overwhelming advantage in terms of military sophistication/firepower AND disease resistance, the result is invariably what happened to the Native-Americans. It was an absolute tragedy but it was inevitable.......Also, Columbus didn't introduce slavery to the new world. It existed among the native people for centuries. What he did do was commercialize it/help turn it into a profit-making enterprise. And, yes, that itself was another typical action of the 15th century. Conquered people often became slaves. It wasn't an invention of Christopher Columbus.
Wow! If excusing genocide, slavery and rape are what it means to be a moderate... then count me out! I'm with dmarks on this one. Columbus' own writings document his evil.
This, IMO, is a new low for the "Contra O'Reilly" blog.
WD: No disagreement. This time anyway!
And wd, put your frigging thinking cap on for once, will you. This "genocide" that you speak about in the Caribbean happened largely because of small pox and the Native-Americans lack of resistance to it. The only way that it would have been avoided was for the European people to have NEVER "discovered" America (which would have been fine by you, right, you'd frigging be in Europe now being burped by the state?). And like the NY Times article clearly stated, slavery was the EXPECTED outcome of conquest in the 15th century (and at that point it DIDN'T have a racial component). You're, what, expecting Columbus to be far more enlightened than his contemporaries were?
This is some perspective from Professor Valerie Flint from the University of Hull in England. She puts the exploits of Christopher Columbus into some historical context.............
"The debate about Columbus ' character and achievements began at least as early as the first rebellion of the Taino Indians and continued with Roldán, Bobadilla, and Ovando. It has been revived periodically (notably by Las Casas and Jean-Jacques Rousseau) ever since. The Columbus quincentenary of 1992 rekindled the intensity of this early questioning and redirected its aims, often profitably. The word "encounter" is now preferred to "discovery" when describing the contacts between the Old World and the New, and more attention has come to be paid to the fate of the Native American peoples and to the sensibilities of non-Christians. Enlightening discoveries have been made about the diseases that reached the New World through Columbus ' agency as well as those his sailors took back with them to the Old. The pendulum may, however, now have swung too far. Columbus has been made a whipping boy for events far beyond his own reach or knowledge and a means to an agenda of condemnation that far outstrips his own guilt. Thus, too little attention has recently been paid to the historical circumstances that conditioned him. His obsessions with lineage and imperialism, his seemingly bizarre Christian beliefs, and his apparently brutal behavior come from a world remote from that of modern democratic ideas, it is true; but it was the world to which he belonged. The forces of European expansion, with their slaving and search for gold, had been unleashed before him and were at his time quite beyond his control. Columbus simply decided to be in the vanguard of them. He succeeded. Columbus' towering stature as a seaman and navigator, the sheer power of his religious convictions (self-delusory as they sometimes were), his personal magnetism, his courage, his endurance, his determination, and, above all, his achievements as an explorer, should continue to be recognized." BALANCE - a word that you apparently don't know the meaning of, wd.
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