Happy Columbus Day part 2
This was going to be a reply to Alex's post, but then I felt silly having a reply that's fully 5 times as long as the original post.
When I went backpacking with Rick and Frank we got into a long talk about Columbus and whether or not it was right to honor him the way we do. I remember Frank made what seemed at the time to be a fairly compelling argument for remembering his incredible achievement, even if he didn't REALLY discover America and also killed a bunch of Native Americans.
Then I read People's History of the United States, which opens up with a lovely little tale of Columbian Genocide circa 1492, and I feel pretty much like I was right the first time.
This is why I propose that to honor Columbus each year we as a country pool our resources and really use our heads to figure out the best way to commit genocide in Spain.
When I went backpacking with Rick and Frank we got into a long talk about Columbus and whether or not it was right to honor him the way we do. I remember Frank made what seemed at the time to be a fairly compelling argument for remembering his incredible achievement, even if he didn't REALLY discover America and also killed a bunch of Native Americans.
Then I read People's History of the United States, which opens up with a lovely little tale of Columbian Genocide circa 1492, and I feel pretty much like I was right the first time.
This is why I propose that to honor Columbus each year we as a country pool our resources and really use our heads to figure out the best way to commit genocide in Spain.
4 Comments:
My thing with Columbus boils down to this:
1. He showed that the New World could be profitable and colonizable.
2. In doing so, he roused Europe's ambitions and began the slow march towards the Reformation, Enlightenment, Capitalism, and the very American Democracy that would eventually work to undo his sins of genocide.
3. He was a visionary and motivated disparate peoples and leaders to extraordinary accomplishments.
On genocide...
I'm of the belief that if any European (or Chinese, for that matter) navigator reached the New World in the 1300-1500 window, there would have been:
A. Murder
B. Pillaging.
C. Lots of disease killing huge populations.
The whole Columbus: Murderer! label is to me, the least special, least original aspect of his identity. In short, every explorer back then was nuts and bent on conquest because that's just how it was. It was the last major global epoch that pre-dated the concept of individual rights and equality. You could replay the Columbian events a thousand times, and these guys would never turn out to be progressive explorer/scientists simply because the very concept and mindset wouldn't exist for another, oh, four hundred years.
"and the very American Democracy that would eventually work to undo his sins of genocide."
I can only assume that by "work to undo" you actually mean "work to complete," since the USA didn't so much undo the genocide of Native Americans as bring it to a full and glorious finish by killing nearly all of them. We really like to forget about that.
I mean, what you say about other explorers is certainly true, but I think in spirit of honesty you have to call Columbus a Conqueror, not an Explorer. He discovered the New World only in the sense that he discovered how to exploit its people and land. He was not the first human to set foot there, nor even the first European. He is a hugely important person in history, but that doesn't mean we need to honor him with a holiday.
I think debating conquereor vs. explorer is a matter of semantics. Until the 20th century they were interchangable labels.
As a conqueror, Columbus is kinda weak, actually. Cortez and Pizarro were much stronger in this regard.
As for the Indian genocide...
Indeed, I had forgotten. I think though that while we did "work to complete," the American system ultimately possessed an ability to self-correct that other New World civilizations based on the Iberian-Latin model, sorely lacked.
(i.e., our Indian wars were nothing compared to the systematic slaughters waged by the Spaniards on the Aztecs. Hell, they were nothing compared to wars of conquest the Aztecs waged on the Mixotecs before the Spaniards arrived!)
One other strange thought vis-a-vis conquerors/explorers...
If you *had* to choose an explorer of the New World to celebrate, Columbus is actually a fairly safe choice. From what I've read, he has noticably less blood on his hands than other Spanish and Portugeuse conquerors.
Magellen might be a relatively safe choice too.
You know who's not? John Cabot. Fuck him.
That's why it's so lucky that there's nobody on the moon.
Or is there?
Or was there?
Neil Armstrong killed all the moon people!
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