Controversial Columbus
Hello! 
I have a question. What do you think about Christopher Columbus?
He is generally perceived as a brave mariner who discovered America. But I must admit that this simple textbook version is unsatisfactory for me. I perceive Columbus as a very enigmatic and controversial person. And I know that many people perceive him as an evil man who launched the conquest of Americas by Europeans.
And I must add my favorite thought about Columbus: he wasn't the first European in America. Not everybody knows about it, but the Vikings reached America (more specifically Canada) about five hundred years before Columbus, so they were the first Europeans to discover America!
I am very curious about your opinions about Columbus.
Who was that man? A hero? A discoverer? The first conquistador? An extraordinarily lucky but ordinary sailor? 
12 Answers
Well first I don't believe he was a mariner, he was a cartographer but he had the , well how can I put this, nerve to seek funding to find and map a new route so let's give him his due credit.
Columbus was commissioned to actually find a new route for India by sailing west ( by this time most believed the the world was round but not everybody to include most sailor's). Columbus stumbled upon land in the west thinking he had found a new route to India. Once back in Spain there was a heroe's celebration for him and he was giving many titles, but once it was known that the land that he landed on was not India he was actually imprisoned by the king.
In the USA, during the 500th anniversary of his 1492 voyage of discovery, Columbus was blamed by some people for opening a frontier and a long history of conquering, occupation, slavery, and many other atrocities.
En los EE.UU., durante el 500 aniversario de su viaje de descubrimiento de 1492, Colón fue acusado por algunas personas para la apertura de una frontera y una larga historia de la conquista, la ocupación, la esclavitud, y muchas otras atrocidades.
How can anyone give a fair answer answer to a question like this in one paragraph. I do not know much about Christopher Columbus as a person so I won't even try. I will just remind everybody of the classic quote "History is written by the winners". Or better yet, the history you read is mainly taught to your national perspective. Were the mongols under Genghis Khan invading barbarians, or the creators of the largest contiguous land empire ever known. I would suggest the book "1491" by Charles C. Mann as a great treatise on the status of the Americas in that year. On a different, but related topic, "The Ambiguous Iroquis Empire" by Frances Jennings gives a great sense of how tenuous the colonists hold was, and how much less uneven the sides were than most Americans think. Archeologists are only recently uncovering how advanced civilizations were in the Amazon basin before they were literally decimated by disease brought by Europeans- long before they even got to that area. I use the word literally because the most realistic estimates I have seen indicate that about 1 in 10 Native Americans survived the period after 1492. As a side note, the "Black Death" only killed about 1/3 of Europeans, and may have been what created the much higher rate of hemachromatosis in affected populations. I generally find it safer in life to stay out of politics and religion, but stray from time to time.
Hello everybody
Thank you for all your comments!
I think that they are very interesting.
Now I am sure that I had right when I was thinking about Columbus as a very mysterious person.
But one is sure. His voyage changed the history of our world and it was one of the most important events in world history.
Hmmm. It's very complicated. I think what ensued after he came to the West Indies is incredibly tragic. Read "Lies My Teacher Told Me" (can't remember the author right now), which has a very thorough chapter on how all that really went down (and is very fair). I could barely get through it. But can you fault him for being just like any other guy in that time? Not really. Did millions of people end up dying, races tortured and then erradicated, war, enslavement, and a whole host of other deplorable things that people still pay the price for to this day, begin with him? Um, yeah. I guess it would have happened anyways, at some point, but who knows how different it could've been if it happened a different way. It's just incredibly sad...he started a chain reaction that changed the world, to be sure, but not without its price. And carrying with it many. many, many terrible things that will never go away. Needless to say, I don't think much of him. But I'm sure he had no idea what was about to go down. Or probably wouldn't have cared if he did.
Did you know that the Spanish think that Cristobal Colon (the Spanishized version of his name -- Christopher Columbus is the Anglicized version of his name) was born in Spain?
In my schooling in the U.S. I accepted that Columbus was an Italian funded by the Spanish crown to explore a route to India that resulted in "discovering" the new world. (The indigenous Americans knew it was there all along.)
In the U.S. the Italian Americans come out in force to celebrate Columbus Day every year. This "proves" he's Italian, right?
After moving to Spain, I learned that Spanish school students are taught that Columbus was Spanish. I haven't researched this issue, but I did discuss it with a Spanish friend of mine, who was emphatic about Columbus' Spanish origin, saying that he was sure that careful research would determine that he was right.
I think it is interesting that the history of the world depends entirely upon whom you ask.
If you look at wikipedia entries for "Christopher Columbus" and "Cristobal Colon" you get the two very different stories. (You will have to be able to understand the Spanish text for Cristobal Colon to discern the divergence of opinions here.)
In my opinion, if something as cut and dried as the origin of someone's birth can be open for dispute, everything else about what we know of this man's life has been politicized beyond recognition and is questionable.
W.E.B. Dubois:
One is astonished in the study of history at the recurrence of the idea that evil must be forgotten, distorted, skimmed over. We must not remember that Daniel Webster got drunk but only remember that he was a splendid constitutional lawyer. We must forget that George Washington was a slave owner... history ... paints perfect men and noble nations, but it does not tell the truth.
A quick, interesting read found in the Los Angeles Unified School District documents:
I like Stadt's comments and agree about perspectives. The current attitude that life in the Americas was idealistic and romantic and wonderful before the evil Europeans destroyed it is just as wrong headed as the idea that we all need to be socialists and communists to save the world from self destruction. For hundreds of years before white men arrived, the natives of America lived lives one step ahead of death by starvation, murder, and oppresive governments or tribes. The only things that changed were the elites in power and the new diseases and technology that enabled the changing of the tyrants. There was one notable area that because of some coincidences or "inspired influences" developed differently.
The USA came about because of a series of events that when put into perspective appear to have been guided by some unseen power to result in the first large country on earth founded on the idea that God gives men certain rights and not governments or rulers. There is no divine right of kings. USA was "lucky" enough to have a series of good men (not perfect by far) in positions of power to actually bring about and build a nation where for about 200 years government was the servant, not the master, and elected office was a temporary service not a career. Civil service was a service, not a guaranteed job that now pays on average, much more than equilivent private sector jobs. The government was limited to being a referee in a free enterprise system, not an owner, player or coach as is now the case.
The stories of nations the world over is usually of mostly evil, corrupt, immoral men using power to control the lives of their countrymen for their selfish purposes. You can tell the general goodness of your system of government, by the number of people trying to get into your country vs those who are trying to escape your country. My opinion: Columbus was guided by God to discover the Americas. For those who avoid religion and politics, your lives are directly affected by both. Your head in the sand exposes a vunerable part of your anatomy! Test out and find true principles to live your life by, search out God by his scriptures and personal prayer, and most of all, be anxiously engaged in service to others.
Colombus life is not pretty. He commited crimes, or what we would these days percieve as crimes. In those days everyone in power was bad. That sounds like a basic way to put it but it is. His employers - Ferdinand and Isabella were presiding over the latter stages of the Spanish inquisition lots of torture and murder of innocents. His native Italy was in total chaos and war. The papacy was a position for which brutality seemed to be a prerequisit. Not to mention that rich families could make their offspring pope, or cardinal just by paying for it. In Florence the Medici family ruled with terror.
Colombus was just another rich guy with power during this time. So when he landed in the "new world" he did what any of his contemporaries would have done. He cheated, killed, enslaved the natives. He did everything he could to make himself rich.
I think that Columbus was just a strong willed individual who was a product of his time. Who like other explorers before him and after him, was driven by the need to earn a living and riches.
While I don't think that he was an angel, and history has given him more credit than he probably deserves, I do recognize his achievement and also regret some of the consequences of his voyage.
May I suggest the book The Penguin History of Latin America by a Scotsman, Edwin Williamson.
For another view from another era, I can propose In Search of Spain by H.V.Morton.
