Christopher Columbus: Hero or Villain?
1) Stannard, David E. “American Holocaust: the Conquest of the New World.” American Holocaust: the Conquest of the New World, Oxford University Press, 2006, pp. xii-xii.
Summary: An unintended consequence of Columbus arrival in the Americas was the death toll. The Europeans spread an untold amount of disease throughout the population. This is considered the largest killer during the time period, estimates are in the tens of millions.
Statement: As one of the pioneers in this research put it twenty years ago, the “most hideous” enemies were not the European invaders themselves, “but the invisible killers which those men brought in their blood and breath” It’s true, in a plainly quantitative sense of the of body counting, that the barrage of disease unleashed by the Europeans among the so-called “virgin soil” populations of the Americas caused more deaths than any other single for of destruction.
2) Bergreen, Laurence. “Discovery.” Columbus: the Four Voyages, 1492-1504, Viking, 2013, pp. 14–14.
Summary: The Spaniards had come all this way, across the Ocean Sea, expecting to confront a superior civilization. Hw disconcerting to be confronted with ”naked people” who were “very poor in everything”. Columbus and his men would have to be careful not to hurt them, rather than the other way around. “ I saw some who had marks of wounds on their bodies , and made signs to them to ask what it was, and they showed me that people of other islands which are near came there and wished to capture them, and they defend themselves. And I believe that people do come here from the mainland to take them as slaves. Slaves. The idea instantly struck Columbus as plausible, even desirable.
Statement: When first meeting these new civilizations Christopher’s first expected to met an advance people which was not the case. His first thought was that they would be good servants or slaves. He also mentioned they were poor in everything, which he attributes to them being naked and without gold.
3) Tinker, Tink, and Mark Freeland. “Thief, Slave Trader, Murderer: Christopher Columbus and Caribbean Population Decline.” Wicazo Sa Review, vol. 23, no. 1.
Summary: When easy wealth in the form of gold proved not readily available in the Caribbean, Columbus resumed his slave trading occupation by loading the holds of his ships with Indian human cargo headed for the slave market in Seville. That he was a thief is equally self-evident, however a high-level thief he may have been. The law of tribute that he instituted in the island he called Espafiola sometime in 1495 forced Indian people on the island to surrender goods, including gold ore, can only be classed as armed robbery.
Statement: This is just another article backing the statements I’ve previously read. Columbus is taking from the Natives with no regard to how it affects them. He is willing to impose unjust laws that require people to turn over wealth and goods and also continued to use these people as slaves.
4) Duke, Selwyn. “Killing Columbus: Seeking the ‘Undiscovery’ of America.” New American, vol. 33, no. 19, 9 Oct. 2017, pp. 36–36.
Summary: Nor was Columbus involved in the slave trade, as critics like Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky have asserted. One of his boats crashed in Haiti [Hispaniola]. He had no room for 39 men, so he started a colony there. Columbus came back a year later to find that the Taino Indians killed all of them and left them where they fell. Columbus went to war with the Tainos and took 500 of them as prisoners of war, not slaves. They were released after the war.
Statement: This article provides a good counter argument to the ones I’ve cited above. It states that he did not capture these indians for slavery but to be used as hostages during a war that was started because they killed his crew. There are conflicting reports about why the crew was killed.