Posted on 10/10/2011 1:29:18 PM PDT by massmike
Take a moment to find out what your children know about the man we purport to honor today.
Many will express contempt. Ask why, and they will explain earnestly that Columbus was a barbarian/villain/murderer who brought disease/slavery/environmental ruin to the peaceful indigenous peoples of the Americas.
It is far easier — and politically correct — to portray Columbus as villain, so as to undermine the very concept of exceptionalism.
What should kids know about this Italian navigator who, under the patronage of Spain, set off to chart new routes to Asia?
They should know that he was a visionary — an independent thinker who refused to be ruled by superstitions of his time.
They should know that he was persistent — that he tried for years to find a patron for his journey and that, even after multiple rejections, he never gave up.
They should know that he was brave — that he was willing to sail into the unknown and face whatever misfortune lay ahead.
They should know that he had faith — that he was willing to trust God and stay the course, even promising a mutinous crew that if they did not spy land within a time certain, they could behead him.
Columbus, of course, was no saint. By most accounts, he was stubborn, arrogant and narcissistic. And he made mistakes.
But he dared to do what others thought impossible, and the result was a changed world: the integration of two previously autonomous hemispheres; the birth of a new Hispanic culture; and the beginnings of colonies that would eventually become new nations, including our own.
We honor Columbus today, not because he was perfect, but because he was an imperfect person whose spectacular courage altered the course of human events.
(Excerpt) Read more at bostonherald.com ...
This is not a fact. It is the author's claim and one I disagree with.
Las Casas and many other honorable Spaniards of the time would also disagree.
But he dared to do what others thought impossible, and the result was a changed world: the integration of two previously autonomous hemispheres
This part is quite true.
During the century after 1492 it is likely the population of the Americas decreased by 85% to 95%. This is the big "proof" given for the iniquity of Columbus and other Europeans.
However, the vast majority of this die-off was due to the merging of the American and Afro-Eurasian disease ecologies. Most of those who died during this period never saw a Spaniard or other European.
The Spaniards did not want this or do anything specific to cause it. Pretty much the same thing would have happened if the Indians had been more advanced and had sailed across to and "discovered" Europe or Asia.
Happy Columbus Day Everyone. We celebrate it and we enjoy it. We revel in our food, drink and America. To those that do not...we can understand as there are holidays we do not choose to observe either. That is the beauty of the America Columbus discovered. We can disagree about things. But...in the meantime...bring on the pasta, meatballs, brashola, sausage, crunchy bread, cheeses, wines and desserts. MANGIA!!!
Sherman, is it true that most of Mexico today is run by Spanish decendents? I ask because of a debate I’m having about the indigenous peoples of Mexico and their representation in the Mexican government. Thanks in advance for any help!
Cauhatemauc Cardenas was a natice as was Juarez.
The rest, well yes mostly Spaniard blood.
BTW Whatever happened to Lopez Obragore??
If Columbus had never sailed in 1492, Europeans would have learned about the New World pretty soon anyway--in 1500 Pedro Cabral accidentally encountered Brazil while sailing around Africa en route to India. And of course John Cabot discovered Newfoundland in 1497 (but he was aware of Columbus--I'm not sure if he had the idea of sailing west before he heard of Columbus).
“However, the vast majority of this die-off was due to the merging of the American and Afro-Eurasian disease ecologies. Most of those who died during this period never saw a Spaniard or other European.”
It happened before Spainards even set foot on the mainland. They landed in Carribean islands. There was native traffic between the islands and the mainland. The Spainards carred smallpox. The natives carried smallpox back to the mainland. By the time the Spainards got to the mainland, native populations had been decimated.
The author spoke of native Americans, not imported Spanish slaves, but let’s run with it.
You may be right about eventual emancipation chances, but in actual brutality the French in Hispaniola probably led the pack, at least if you agree death rate of newly imported slaves is an appropriate metric.
ALL the Latin American and Caribbean slave countries had a negative population growth rate among the slaves. Populations of workers were kept up only with constant importation.
OTOH, the English colonies on the mainland (what’s now the USA) are the ONLY slave society in history of which I’m aware where the slaves had a massive natural population growth rate. Their birth rate was fully equal to that of the whites in the colonies and later states.
It is not unreasonable to assume that cruelty and brutality shortens lives and makes reproduction and survival of children to adulthood less likely, while reasonably decent treatment encourages population growth.
I’m no expert on the Mexico of today, but the laundromat where I wash clothes every week plays Mexican stations.
I suspect there are more “Mexican-looking” people on US TV than on Mexican TV. Blondes all over the place. Most look like Italians or Spaniards, not mestizos.
You can make of that what you will.
I was thinking of something I had read some time ago that discussed the status of slaves in the different legal systems. How it worked out in practice would depend on various things—being a slave on one of the sugar islands often meant a short life expectancy because the slaves were worked so hard (since replacements were cheap). In the English colonies it probably made a lot of difference if you were a household servant in New England or a plantation field hand in Virginia or South Carolina. And the white indentured servants didn’t have a good time of it either—many of them died before their period of service was up.
I think you can make a case that the reduced legal status of slaves in English vs. Spanish colonies was an unfortunate side effect of the generally more egalitarian English society.
With very rare exceptions, almost none of which were applicable in the colonies, all English freemen were equal under the law. (Actual practice, as in all societies, was somewhat different.)
In Spanish colonies, OTOH, there were massive differences in the legal status of various groups. Notably, if I remember correctly, government officials, military officers and clergy all had their own separate legal systems, not being subject to the general judicial system. In practice this meant these groups were essentially above the law, as “their own kind” was highly resistant to punishing them.
In English colonies you thus had the majority of society in one group. While it hadn’t been verbalized yet, the basic fact was that “all men are created equal.” The only groups outside this were the black slaves and the white convicts and indentured servants. So you have a big group that are “people,” and a smaller group far below them separated by an impassable gulf that are “not people.”
In Spanish colonies nobody was equal. There was a spectrum of status and rights from the slave to the Viceroy, with very slight differences between any two adjacent individual statuses (statii?).
So the Spanish had no difficulty thinking of slaves as people, they were just people with a different and lower status.
The English and later Americans had considerable difficulty doing so. All people are equal, but the slaves aren’t equal, therefore they must not really be people in some sense. This notion reached its highest (lowest?) point with the Dred Scott decision.
Interestingly, the English colonies in the New World dropped common law when it came to slaves and imported the foreign Roman civil law definition of slaves as “speaking animals,” with no rights whatsoever under the law. This was softened to varying degrees in different areas by the influence of Christianity.
Did English common law even recognize slavery as a status in the 16th century? By then the English are involved in the slave trade, but perhaps not taking any of those captured to England. The Spanish and Portuguese had a tradition going back to Roman law about slavery, reaffirmed by the church in the 1400s...one of the legitimate categories justifying slavery was “taken prisoner in a just war”—so any slaves purchased from dealers at trading posts on the African coast could be classified as prisoners of war taken in a just war. Somehow all the wars that resulted in captives were just wars.
I am not a common lawyer.
But the institution was outlawed in England in 1772 by the Somersett case which was based on common law, not a statute.
However, it had been accepted for several centuries there previously.
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