Cristoforo Colombo, mille grazie!

It's has become a commonplace to 'debunk' the old, traditional white-man heroes of yesterday and many of the points made in the course of such 'debunkiture' are correct and important. Christopher Columbus has, I think, been especially subject to debunkification and we can all likely agree that he was in various ways a flawed man. In addition, we have all heard more or less convincing arguments which relativise and downplay his achievements.

All that said, he remains in my book a genuinely great man and his achievements are most definitely worth remembering. His initial voyage of discovery changed the course of history. We of European ancestry must thank him eternally for bringing to us the glorious chile.



From: Manzano and other less common chiles (link) posted by Amata.

Cristoforo Colombo, mille grazie!
Cristóbal Colón, muchas gracias!

In the end, for many the heroic vision of Columbus is perhaps gone, the myth and the man debunked... but then, after all, he preferred a hammock.

Felice Giorno di Colombo a tutti!
Antonius

http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/1492/images/hammock.jpg

See further:
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/today/oct12.html

Rabble rouser.

C.C. is a complicated guy. Someone recently suggested that he must be considered a villain around my house, what with the "Latino" element and all. But it is quite the opposite in most respects. Cubans and Dominicans are largely big fans, going so far as to fight about who has his bones in the local cathedral. Of course, the Italian part of my family thinks the only injustice is when the Colombi and Cabotti become anglicized and hispanicized. Only when you get to the Mexican and Guatemalan elements do you see the arguments against what the man stands for. Life is complicated. This guy was doing a job he was hired to do. I don't think he was thinking "big picture" the way the last century's anti-heroes did.

On the other hand, maybe "God, gold and glory" was as big picture as it got back then.

PS, he also probably introduced the European pig to the Arawak barbecue. A happy marriage indeed, and possibly never improved upon since that first Cuban lechon...

There's a really interesting new book called 1491 that talks about just how advanced the civilization in the Americas was before Columbus. I don't mean as in talked with space aliens or lived happy lives of peace and love (human sacrifice was a major entertainment category), but advanced in, population size, the size and complexity of cities, etc. (One of which is not far from here, Cahokia, near St. Louis.)

Unfortunately, Columbus could have had the best, most politically-correct intentions in the world for all it would have mattered. The smallpox virus and such things that traveled with him and subsequent explorers killed 90% of the residents of parts of the continent he found. (One point the book makes is that the image of a primitive, chaotic continent sparsely populated by hapless savages is probably an accurate picture-- of a post-plague remainder of a once-advanced civilization.)

So complaining about Columbus is about like complaining about a volcano or an earthquake. The meeting of two sequestered human populations, whenever it happened, was a disaster waiting to happen for at least one of them. But at least we got tomatoes and chocolate out of the deal. Thanks, followers of Quetzalcoatl!

Mars delenda est,
Mike G
cheery as always

A,

Thank you for posting this appreciation for a man who I always felt embodied the (admittedly) self-interested Renaissance spirit of discovery.

I don't blame CC for the bad things perpetrated by those who came after, any more than I blame Einstein for Hiroshima.

It was quite painful to hear my youngest daughter come home from school one day years ago and announce that Columbus was "a bad guy" -- painful not only because it struck at a point of genetically-based pride, but because it's so silly to view him in that one-dimensional way.

Hammond

PS. I still am amused by the slogan we saw on that t-shirt at the Pow-Wow last year: "Homeland Security. Fighting Global Terrorism since 1492."

Not so much Colombus, but on the interplay of world foods:

Through the magic of DVR (i.e., TiVo for Comcast), we have been watching Rick Bayless's latest series, Mexico: One Plate at a Time. I think I may have mentioned this show before, but I really enjoy it. Bayless really focuses on the actual food of Mexico and not the obscure as in cannon as written by him and Kennedy. After all, this is the show now, to learn how to make carnitas.

He's also very good on the history of Mexican food (as good as one can be in the format). One of his thesis's, is that Mexico was a real crossroad for world food ca. 1500. Via Manilla, Asian items like limes and mangos went east--is not it as hard to imagine Mexico without its limon as Italy without the tomato. Surely, some items came west from Europe to Mexico like the pig JeffB mentions, but so much of the bounty of Mexico went both ways: chiles, tomatos, chocolate. He covers this stuff often.

Check out the show if you have the chance.

Rob

Do remember that the concept of microbiology was unknown at that time. Who in Columbus's time would have thought that contact with those previously not exposed to Euroasian flora would be killed by it?

It does make you want to eat at Maiz tonight.

Mike G wrote:It does make you want to eat at Maiz tonight.

Or better, El Chimbombo in Berwyn (where the meal can be concluded with a tour of 101 flavors of Mexican ices and ice creams at Flamingo, is like a frozen version of this thread.)

If you not listening to kol nidre

Vital Information wrote:

Mike G wrote:It does make you want to eat at Maiz tonight.

Or better, El Chimbombo in Berwyn (where the meal can be concluded with a tour of 101 flavors of Mexican ices and ice creams at Flamingo, is like a frozen version of this thread.)

If you not listening to kol nidre

No, no. We're staying in so we can have a primo of pesto alla Genovese followed by a pork stew with beans and tomatoes and chiles.

Italo-Liguro-Caribo-Hispano Freundschaft.

Antonius

Going back to the wonders of disease and resistance ...

MikeG wrote:Unfortunately, Columbus could have had the best, most politically-correct intentions in the world for all it would have mattered. The smallpox virus and such things that traveled with him and subsequent explorers killed 90% of the residents of parts of the continent he found. (One point the book makes is that the image of a primitive, chaotic continent sparsely populated by hapless savages is probably an accurate picture-- of a post-plague remainder of a once-advanced civilization.)

So complaining about Columbus is about like complaining about a volcano or an earthquake. The meeting of two sequestered human populations, whenever it happened, was a disaster waiting to happen for at least one of them.

This should make someone’s day: it is believed syphilus originated in the new world.

Most Europeans and European-Americans are descendants of those who survived or had a natural resistance to the plague, which wiped out at least 1/3rd of the population of Europe in the 1300's. While AIDS is devastating Africa, it is not having the same effect in European populations. It is suggested those who are descendents of the plague are more resistant to AIDS. There is an interesting article from the London Times here.

A few years ago, I had a friend who was studying her family’s genealogy. Her great grandparents came with their children to the USA around 1913. In 1917 and 1919, both grandparents died leaving orphaned children to raise themselves. I suggested to her at the time they may have succumbed to the flu pandemic around that period, which appears to be the situation.

While there are concerns of an Avian flu pandemic presently. I hope it may be like Illinois overdue for a strong earthquake from the New Madrid fault. Both are statistically high though highly random and may be postponed long into the future.

Cathy2 wrote:
Most Europeans and European-Americans are descendants of those who survived or had a natural resistance to the plague, which wiped out at least 1/3rd of the population of Europe in the 1300's. While AIDS is devastating Africa, it is not having the same effect in European populations. It is suggested those who are descendents of the plague are more resistant to AIDS.

Cathy,

I think the truth of the matter is that the Ameri-Euros have much more money and are able to afford medical treatment and take steps to help slow down the desease through the use of condoms and other safe sex practices, while Africa suffers from the one-two punch of poverty and ignorance. In Africa AIDS is still so stigmatized that people don't even acknowledge that they have the desease, thus hastening its spread. There are no Government sponsored educational programs and treatment, such as it is, is largely being provided by the international community. It's more politics than genetics that is the problem in Africa.

The article from the London Times is interesting but it sounds as if the research is still rather speculative. I'm curious to see how that line of inquiry develops.

Meanwhile, I have to agree with the idea that political and socio-economic factors are clearly (the) major contributors in the differing rates of occurrence among different populations, and that's true not just with regard to Africa vs. Europe but also with regard to different demographic groups in this country.

But that doesn't have much to do with Columbus, so...

***

David Hammond wrote:It was quite painful to hear my youngest daughter come home from school one day years ago and announce that Columbus was "a bad guy" -- painful not only because it struck at a point of genetically-based pride, but because it's so silly to view him in that one-dimensional way.

David:

I'm not surprised, having heard things along those lines for some time now, but I agree with you very much. Personally I find it distasteful that the p.c. propaganda of this sort is so far winning out completely. And one can anticipate (already observe in some cases) that the response from some elements of the opposing camp will only be equally if not more strident and stupid.

Whether Christopher Columbus was a 'good man' or a 'bad man' is an issue that moveth me not. Of course, there are obvious cases where moral judgement of historical figures is inevitable and proper, but as one goes further back in time, both the need to make such judgements and the basis on which we might reasonably form them become increasingly weak. Attempts to compare Columbus to or equate him with genocidal dictators of the 20th century express deep-rooted and legitimate frustration and disgust with the overall course of European-Native American relations but don't speak to any demonstrable historical facts.

That said, he was part of an unabashedly exploitative and, from our perspective, thoroughly racist and regularly brutal imperialist state and he himself was hardly so enlightened as to reject that system, once he got to know it. On the contrary, so far as we know, he actively took measures to exploit and oppress native populations. But does that make him 'evil' or 'Hitlerian'? Who ignores historical context, as best as we can understand it, is probably not interested in engaging in the discussion of history but rather in advancing a mythology and/or a political agenda.

I'll readily admit that on account of ethnic pride and the indoctrination which I received as a child, I might well be inclined to be a little overly forgiving of Columbus. But not so much that I'm moved to deny that he actively took part in the exploitation of native peoples. And therefore I am also not inclined to try to argue that he was "a good guy." I suspect that he was, like the vast majority of us, a morally mixed-bag. But in the end, whether he was a good man or a bad man is beside the point: he was a great man insofar as he did some great things, that's why he's remembered and that's why he was -- and for the moment still is – celebrated by some. His achievement is worth commemorating, whatever one’s perspective is and whatever one’s judgement of the subsequent history is. For those who wish to call attention to the negative –– insofar as they actually will base their denunciation on historical facts –– that strikes me as fine and a worthwhile topic of discourse. But overwrought, propagandistic demonisation will hardly win over mature people of any sort of reflective bent. But then, I guess the real targets of the propagandists are the children.

You hit the nail very squarely on the head when you say that "it's so silly to view him in that one-dimensional way."

***

I've been perusing Columbus' travel logs on and off over the past couple of months and they make for very interesting reading, at least in part; some sections are less engaging than others.

One observation he makes that's worth noting here is the following, from the entry for 15 January 1493:

...También hay mucho ají, que es su pimienta, della que vale mas que pimienta, y toda la gente no come sin ella, que la halla muy sana: puédense cargar cincuenta carabelas cada año en aquella Española...

'There is, moreover, much ají (chile), which is their pepper, and which is more valuable than pepper, and all the people don't eat without it, for they find it very healthful: there could be loaded fifty caravels each year in this Hispaniola...'* (this writer's quick rendering)

Clearly Columbus appreciated just how wonderful chiles are and how popular they could ultimately be in Europe.

Antonius

* P. 131 in: Cristóbal Colón. 1991 [1946]. Los cuatro viajes del amirante y su testamento. Ignacio B. Anzoátegui (ed.). Madrid: Espasa-Calpe.

I find that stridency about the sins of the past increases with how unlikely it is that the benefits the accuser enjoys from them could be taken away.

As the chance is zero that one's home will be taken away and given back to the representatives of Mesoamerican culture as one is shipped back to the village from which one's people emigrated centuries ago, Columbus is a very safe target. Bad, bad Columbus!

I have no real quarrel with Christopher Columbus, but there are reasons he's made out to be a "bad guy" in a lot of today's teachings:

Before he left on his second voyage he had been directed by Ferdinand and Isabella to maintain friendly, even loving relations with the natives. However, during his second voyage he sent a letter to the monarchs proposing to enslave some of the native peoples, specifically the Caribs, on the grounds of their aggressiveness. Although his petition was refused by the Crown, in February, 1495 Columbus took 1600 Arawak as slaves. 550 slaves were shipped back to Spain; two hundred died en route, probably of disease, and of the remainder half were ill when they arrived. After legal proceedings, the survivors were released and ordered to be shipped back home. Some of the 1600 were kept as slaves for Columbus's men, and Columbus recorded using slaves for sex in his journal. The remaining 400, who Columbus had no use for, were let go and fled into the hills, making, according to Columbus, prospects for their future capture dim. Rounding up the slaves resulted in the first major battle between the Spanish and the Indians in the new world.

I was very disappointed when the 500th anniversary of the founding of the America's seemed to be little celebrated. While the 400th anniversary at least had the Columbian Exhibition, yes I know 1893, which is still talked about today.

I really expected or hoped for a national celebration on par with the 200th anniversary of the USA in 1976. Instead it was just a little ripple, which I found sort of sad.

Regards,

As a historian, I find this discussion most compelling and hope it’s okay if I jump in. As Antonius and others offer, I would agree that labeling Columbus and other explorers “evil” or “bad” is not helpful or even correct (though with Cortez, it might be fair to feel so moved.) It is more useful, certainly, to assess what economic and political systems propel people in them to do. But I think it is okay to venture some opinions about whether those systems have been good or bad (or more correctly, for whom they have been good and for whom they’ve been bad); without some of that one veers into ahistoricism and thus political paralysis – i.e. all individuals are morally complicated; all systems are complex; why bother figuring them out or trying to change them? Thus, while it is true that smallpox and other diseases were the real “evils” experienced by Native Americans (the argument put forth, for one, by Jared Diamond), what it ignored in that thesis is why Europeans were so keen on exploring in the first place and why, once they arrived in lands already inhabited, they nonetheless thought they had a right to conquer those places and banish or enslave the peoples they came in contact with. The political and economic systems that create that sort of mindset are worth figuring out (and can be judged, I think) and such discussions have relevance today. En re politically correct teaching in the schools – I have serious issues with the generally bad teaching of history that goes on in our public schools today, but I don’t think political correctness is the major culprit. I just think America is not, generally speaking, a nation committed to knowing and learning from its own history, especially the history that is less than glorious. When I was a kid at McCutcheon Elementary in Uptown, back in the 1960s, we learned all about the great explorer Columbus and nary a thing about American Indians, despite the fact that quite a few of my classmates were themselves Native Americans. Now my kids learn a lot about Indians, not too much about Columbus, but in my opinion the way that history is taught hasn’t much changed: kids learn a lot about heroic individuals (insert Sacagawea for Columbus) but not very much about historical movements. Even the “politically correct” suffer from this, I believe: thus during African-American history month, my kids learn a laundry list of Important Individuals (and usually the same ones, year after year) but little about the ways blacks lived under slavery, for instance, or what the Civil War was actually about, or how the civil rights movement was organized. This sounds maybe too weighty for elementary school instruction, but I think exploring how history actually works is doable for any age level: I’ve always thought that food, in fact, would be a good way to teach about the Columbian encounter, the ways in which people have moved across the globe, exchanging foods, goods, ideas, learning from each other but sometimes doing harm to each other, on purpose. Kids can handle complexity and that’s what makes history interesting; always having to focus on what’s “great,” I think, is what makes history seem so dull for so many people.