Tag Archives: new world

The age of conquest…

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Columbus Day is one of those odd holidays that no one enjoys unless you’re Italian, work for a bank, or find yourself in the employ of the federal government. There are plenty of hand-wringers out there who tell us that it’s Indigenous People’s Day or that there should be no celebration at all commemorating the arrival of Europeans in the New World – I also choose not to quibble about things like who got here when or whether it should be Lief Erikson Day. The concept of discovery is more important than the individual act itself. And to those out there wanting to argue that you can’t “discover” a place where people already life, I mostly say “nuts.” Columbus and his crew discovered territory that, to them and to most of Europe at the time, was new and wholly unexpected. Call it a flapjack and it’s still a rose by any other name.

See, Columbus sailed during what use to be called the Age of Conquest. Some nations and civilizations did the conquering and others were vanquished. It’s happened since the dawn of recorded time and was happening long before we bothered writing the stories down. As often happens with the vanquished, we don’t hear much about their history. Now as a student of history myself, I’m all about understanding their story, but I’m not about rewriting the entire age of exploration into an overly simple victim narrative. Likewise, I’m under no illusion that Columbus or those that followed are some kind of demigods. History is a more complex animal than that.

All I’ll say is we’d do well to learn a bit more about the Age of Conquest. I suspect some of the lessons there are shockingly applicable to those of us schlepping around in the modern world.

Columbus Day…

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You know what? Chris Columbus wasn’t perfect. He did some bad things. He also had the courage to climb aboard a hundred foot wooden ship and sail 2500 miles into an ocean that was more or less uncharted. Looking for a trade route to the Indies, he landed in the Americas and opened two continents to further exploration and began the largest age of migration in all of human history.

I’ve watched a number of reports this morning condemning Columbus as a genocidal maniac and all I can do is shake my head in frustration. I will never understand why educated people insist on applying 21st century morality to 15th century actions. Of course if we “discovered” an unknown continent tomorrow, we wouldn’t approach it the same way that Columbus did in the 1490s. We wouldn’t approach it the same way the Great Powers of Europe approached Africa in the 19th century, either. We would approach it using our best judgment based on 21st century understanding of peoples and our “improved” sense of morality. And 500 years from now, we would probably be criticized for our actions because they were not how those “future” observers would handle the situation.

Columbus is roundly criticized because he “didn’t even know he was in America.” Of course he didn’t know he was in America (aside from the continents actually not being called America at that point). Up until that point, perhaps a relative handful of Europeans had ever set foot on the continent and most of those did so in the extreme north. There were no accurate maps, no global positioning systems, and actually no way to even accurately establish longitude. And still, for God and glory, Columbus captained three fragile ships to a new world.

I won’t become an apologist for history. The history is what it is. Actions were not all good, nor all bad. They simply are what was done at the time. While Columbus legacy is clearly “mixed,” I have no qualms about celebrating him as an iconic figure in our history.