Columbus

Given that it's Columbus day I feel he is a concept worth talking about. In recent years it seems that the topic of Christopher Columbus has taken on a more controversial tone, and a deserved one in my opinion. For quite a long time, he was regarded as a pioneer of exploration. He was a glorified figure that paved the way for the settlement of the new world, however he was a much more complicated man than how he was portrayed. I'll start by saying that I'm not the biggest fan of the man, but that's because I'm aware of all of his flaws and shortcomings. Let's start with his prowess as a globe traveler. For one thing, he was not a master explorer. His reputation in Europe at the time wasn't very respected and the choice by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella to fund his voyage was more of a choice of whim based in the desire to find more resources coupled with the fact that Spain was low on funds. What they gave him to work with was also quite modest for the time, largely indicating that they didn't actually have that much faith in his ambition and prowess. It's common knowledge that not only did he make many mathematical and cartographic errors that led him to where he ended up, his destination wasn't actually the one he set out for. Columbus sought to find a quicker route to India and wildly underestimated/miscalculated how much resources he would need to cut across the Atlantic. Also, he never even set foot on the mainland of the North American continent, he just bounced around various Caribbean islands during his travels. Not only that, but the way he treated the indigenous Arawak people he encountered was absolutely atrocious. He has at many times been accused of genocide, which there is merit to that claim. However, the detraction to that assertion is that while he and his men certainly killed many indigenous peoples, the old world diseases they brought with them did the most damage, thus genocide is an unfitting term. I would say that is a pretty poor defense, since it's basically saying "yeah he killed a ton of people but it wasn't intentional for the most part". Not to mention the fact that there were many other European explorers both before and after him that were both more competent and less destructive. That's not to say that they were saints, that would be a wildly inaccurate statement, but my main point is that they were better. Leif Erikson was an Icelandic explorer widely regarded to be the first European to set foot on the North American continent. He did it about 500 years before Columbus and as far as we know he didn't kill anyone in the process, yet he gets very little love from history compared to Columbus. So if the man was so bad, why is he so prominent in history? There are a few answers to that. First, his popularity came about due to a desire to glorify explorers and the misconception that he was a great one grew quite a bit. Why did it grow? Well, it actually happened long after he died. During his time he was a relatively small footnote in the history of European exploration, but many years later when Italian immigrants were coming to the United States and needed a figure to point to for the purpose of citing their relevance to the American story, his name quickly came up and rose to prominence. In many Italian American communities he is still very revered which is disappointing because there are so many better and more respectable individuals that came from the nation. For people from the land that brought the world the Renaissance, the choice to select Columbus as representative of their cultural value is saddening to say the least. I do understand it though, he became the focus because of his relevance to the AMERICAN story, but still there were many better choices. Just today I had a brief conversation with a man on social media who seemed to be a fan of Columbus, and in that conversation I went over much of what I've said in this entry, however he wasn't particularly receptive to what I said. I'll admit that my tone could have been softer, but it was largely a result of the tone that he had taken in previous comments. I was happy that once I shifted my language to a more informative nature, he also softened his tone, and the conversation became much more focused on history rather than insults. I wont deny that I understand why the Columbus is popular, he was glorified so strongly for so long, so the impression he has on many people is still very much a positive one of a brave and amazing pioneer, a man who made an ambitious voyage and discovered an entirely new section of this planet. While there is some merit to his accomplishments, they are largely overblown and his flaws are still often overlooked. The issue with historical figures is that this is quite common. We don't like to think of our heroes as people who were flawed human beings but the fact of the matter is that was what they were and they should be viewed and analyzed as such. One can't just accept what they like about a certain historical figure, they need to accept the whole picture of who they were and what they did. Columbus is no different than any other man in this regard.