Today is Columbus Day in the United States (and Thanksgiving Day in Canada. Happy Thanksgiving Canadians.) Columbus Day is celebrated tomorrow in Spain.
Every year about this time, various scholars and pundits emerge to denigrate the memory of the Genoese naviator and explorer. There were indeed many things for which Christoffa Corombo, as he was known in his home of Genoa, could be criticized for. He never reached China. He severely underestimated the circumference of the Earth, (which may have been more Ptolomy’s fault that Christoffa’s.)
Of course, these are not the faults for which what the modern pundits condemn Columbus. Columbus was indeed an imperialist and he promoted genocide. The man was clearly a monster! Or so they contend. Howard Zinn is his book A People’s History of The United States makes the case:
“To emphasize the heroism of Columbus and his successors as navigators and discoverers, and to de-emphasize their genocide, is not a technical necessity but an ideological choice. It serves- unwittingly-to justify what was done. My point is not that we must, in telling history, accuse, judge, condemn Columbus in absentia. It is too late for that; it would be a useless scholarly exercise in morality. But the easy acceptance of atrocities as a deplorable but necessary price to pay for progress (Hiroshima and Vietnam, to save Western civilization; Kronstadt and Hungary, to save socialism; nuclear proliferation, to save us all)-that is still with us.”
What Mr. Zinn so obviously fails to grasp is that to admire Columbus’ heroism is not to excuse his sins nor the sins of his time. Contrary to Zinn’s histrionics, neither Columbus’ courage nor his failures do anything whatsoever to justify Vietnam or Hiroshima or any other crimes or atrocities of our time.
What is absurd and simply bizarre is that historians like Zinn lack, or simply choose to ignore, historical context. Columbus was not a man of the twenty-first century and to judge him by contemporary standards is ridiculous.
What Columbus was, was a man of his time. His perspective was not significantly different from that of most 15th century mariners, merchants and rulers. Slavery was an ancient tradition, endorsed by the Bible. Of course, Columbus would view the native Americans as potential slaves. And, of course, Columbus was an imperialist. He was funded by the empire of Spain. What else could he be? Columbus’ treatment of native Americans was not significantly worse than the treatment of Europeans by other Europeans of the time. Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492. The Spanish Inquisition, established in 1478, was intensified after the royal decrees also issued in 1492. Zinn, and others like him, condemn Columbus’ slaughter of native Americans in Santo Domingo while ignoring the auto de fes of Seville. History without context is simply nonsense.
Columbus was what he was – a sailor and navigator of the 15th century. We should take from history the lessons of both heroism and evil. To admire the former is not to endorse the latter.
Happy Columbus Day everyone.
It is interesting perhaps to reflect that America was settled by the Puritans. This was due to their religious persecution in the United Kingdom. Yet when the United States came into existance in 1776 the immigration of Catholics was offically forbidden, it did not change until 1800. Catholics of course came to the United States they just did not make a big public issue of their religon until well established. Each time has its own ‘values’ and ‘morals’ which change and adapt as peoples thinking and education changes and hopefully increases in understanding different points of view. So it is rather pointless to judge other times by our present day ‘values’. History as three versions, their version, our version, what really happened which is often impossible to find out. Of course Colombus was really Jewish and ‘Converso’ to survive in the Europe of his time.
Good Watch.
I appreciate your thoughtful commentary as regards Columbus Day.
Although I do find some merit in the approach Zinn takes in ‘A People’s History of the United States’, I agree with you that to view history through a 21st century lens is sophomorically futile.
I celebrate Columbus Day because I admire the feat itself; the forsight, the courage, the stamina the man and his crew posessed. The European discovery of America for Spain was a seminal part in the development of the United States of America, the land of my birth, my homeland. It was built on human actions, many of them admirable, many deplorable, but all worthy of study and remembrance.
I am so glad my ancestors crossed an ocean to make their home here, and yes I am pained and grieved by the extermination of the Americans who were living here previously, whom I hesitate to call native Americans because they too, migrated from elsewhere. Except for maybe those peoples living in equatorial Africa, we are all immigrants.
I think you’re missing Zinn’s point. He explicitly states that he is not interested in labelling Columbus as good or bad. Instead, he is critiquing our contemporary society for creating and celebrating a sort of Columbus myth. He blames such national mythologies (not Columbus himself) for providing ideological justification for “atrocities” that he feels our contemporary society is guilty of committing.
It seems to me that you and Zinn are in fact suggesting similar things: rather than moralize about history, study it!
If that is what Zinn is suggesting then I agree with him. On the other hand, despite his attempts at balance, I find his invocations of Hiroshima and Vietnam when discussing Columbus to be over the top.