517 years ago, Christopher Columbus washed up on the shores of the New World. This was bad news for the indigenous people, no doubt. But, I still don’t mind commemorating the day — as a white male of European descent, I’m a direct beneficiary, so I guess I don’t have a lot of credibility here.
The event was important. Not entirely good, of course; but not unmitigated evil, either. Columbus was a product of his time and place, with all of the arrogance and cruelty that entails. But, he also did something pretty bold. He sailed off the map, and the world hasn’t been the same since. Sure, Leif Erikson did it before Columbus. But, the fact is, his society was not ready to do anything about Erikson’s discovery. The Europe from which Columbus set sail was ready to start moving.
I’m biased by more than being of white, European descent. I’m a history buff, and the Age of Exploration is probably my favorite era. The idea of being able to hop on a boat and find places and civilizations you had not expected really captures my imagination. For me, it’s not just Columbus.
It’s Prince Henry the Navigator pouring resources into Portuguese expeditions south along the western African shore until Dias rounded the Cape of Good Hope. It’s Da Gama reaching India. Columbus and the New World. Magellan sailing around the world. James Cook sailing everywhere. They were motivated by greed, religion, dreams of power, and a thirst for knowledge. (One of my favorite themes for this period was the Quest for Prester John, a mythical Christian ruler with great riches — this quest combined a number of the motivating forces.) Regardless of motivations and even brutal consequences, they went into the unknown as few others had been willing or able to do before them and, more importantly, they reported back in such a way as to firmly link the world together.
For me, Columbus Day isn’t the celebration of a virtuous man who brought light to a benighted world. I don’t think Columbus was that or did that. Rather, it’s commemoration of the linking together of the planet, for all the good and bad that has done.
Precisely. Only in ideology-land are events and/or people entirely good or evil. As I like to tell my students, I don’t care what their policy preferences are; when they leave my class, my fondest hope is that they use two phrases more often than they previously used them: “it depends,” and “it’s more complicated than that.”
I should probably poke around to see if psychologists have figured out anything about why nuance and shades of grey bother some people more than others.
I think it relates to cognition and human development.
For example, when you are a child and are asked to draw a tree, most children draw a brown stick with a fluffy green cotton ball on the top – and are pleased in the knowledge that they have created a tree.
As children mature, they begin to recognize that there are different kinds of trees, and they begin to try to replicate those differences in their drawings (coniferous and deciduous, for example).
Without training, children reach a point where they become extremely frustrated that they cannot replicate the tree of their choice in a realistic fashion (development of recognition that there are different types of coniferous trees, for example).
Too often, the result is twofold. First, they eventually quit drawing, no matter how much they previously had enjoyed the activity. Second, they learn to derisively deny that such a skill has any practical importance, since they cannot do it well enough to satisfy themselves anymore (take the general disinterest in art education).
To whit, they recognize that there are nuances, but have not been trained to express those nuances in a satisfactory manner (to themselves). The same for the spectrum between black and white. They are stuck trying to describe complex issues within an unformed framework dominated by simplistic symbologies. Since they don’t have the training to discuss nuance and shading, they too often simply express derisive dimissal of its importance. Shades of gray bother many people because being unable to express themselves about those shades makes them feel inferior, and few people like that feeling. Much easier to simply deny the importance of nuance, rather than address some gaps in their cognitive development, especially when they don’t recognize that they could learn about nuance.
Nice comment. It brings to mind a few things in a stream-of-consciousness kind of way.
#Newspeak: Orwell’s language in 1984 was based on the notion that if you reduced vocabulary and the ability of the population to articulate ideas, those ideas would effectively cease to exist. If “injustice” is reduced to “bad,” then the ability of a population to revolt over “injustice” is eliminated.
#White Fang: I’m reading this to my son and, at the moment, London is describing the development of the wolf cub’s awareness in terms of classification. First – simple “things that cause pain and things that don’t.” Then – more complex.
#Aesop’s Fox & the Grapes: When the Fox couldn’t reach the grapes, he started muttering about how they were probably sour anyway.
Rather than the Manichaean ridiculousness you ascribe to anyone who disagrees (the sort of thing Voltaire was forced to pray for), you might consider whether one or two of ’em might be nearly as nuanced as yourselves, and possibly even in possession of a fact or two.
The two-dozen Arawak captives Columbus took back to Spain following his first voyage (a half-dozen arrived alive) created nearly as much excitement as the tiny amounts of gold he’d found. His second voyage (17 ships, 1500 men, and attack dogs) was wholly intended to subjugate. When the Arawak finally fought back (sticks and rocks versus cannon and guns) it was used as an excuse for wholesale slaughter. Survivors were forced to mine gold, grow food, and otherwise serve the Spanish. When Columbus couldn’t come up with enough gold to make an impression on Ferdinand and Isabella, he returned with boatloads of slaves, leaving his brother Bartolomeo behind to oversee the ongoing operations, which in addition to forced labor included hunting Arawak for sport and for dog food.
Pre-contact population estimates range as high as 8 million. By 1496 a Spanish census found 1,100,000 adults, suggesting maybe 3 million total. By 1516–twenty-five years later–there were 12,000 Arawak left in Haiti; they were all gone by 1555.
This was not because of smallpox. Even gold fever played a minor role. It was genocide, pure and simple, committed by a Christian nation, and what is not directly attributable to Columbus himself was the product of the system of self-enrichment he instituted. Appeals to a “different mindset” in the 16th century fall a little short of explaining eight million deaths; offers to split the difference in the interest of ripping good yarns ignore an unspeakable historical record.
I’m a sorry student of military history, and I’m frequently required to explain (generally to Americans) that it was the Soviets who defeated Nazi Germany, not George S. Patton. I would not feel compelled to accept as a consequence a national holiday honoring Stalin’s birthday.
Thankfully, the game “Call of Duty: World at War” is teaching today’s kids proper history.
DR, you’re right. You are a sorry excuse for a student of military history. Maybe you should refrain from explaining to anyone else that the Soviets alone defeated the Germans in WW2. In my class, you’ve just earned a “D-” for gross oversimplification without even a simplisitic foundation for your incorrect argument.
Your argument against Columbus also glosses over one or two items which ignores the entire context of Eurasian history through 1500.
And Manichean? Please. Back to the Doghouse for you.
We gave the Soviets supplies and opened up two other fronts to divide the Nazis’ attention, plus did the majority of fighting against the Japanese. But the Soviets did take the heaviest losses, and do the majority of the killing of Germans.
None of that has anything to do with the New World. Wherever contact was made, relatively small numbers of Europeans caused, in the ensuing few decades, 90-99% elimination of the natives. This was due to disease, enslavement, wholesale murder, and general mayhem.
Let’s just talk about the Caribbean in the 1400s.
The Arawaks and Caribs were keen rivals across the entire breadth of the Caribbean, whose male populations were mainly given over to martial pursuits. Plenty of wholesale slaughter went on before the arrival of the Europeans. The Europeans simply had better technologies. Plus, the Arawaks had been moving northwards for years, supplanting and/or enslaving the indigenous Taino and Ciboney populations.
The arrival of the Europeans simply accelerated the rate of change. And, the Caribs continued trying to expand their influence at the expense of the Taino and Caribs as Spanish influence increased. Talking about throwing your relations under the bus.
Don’t feel sorry for the Arawaks or Caribs. Sometimes, the shoe just doesn’t feel so good on the other foot.
T, I take issue with your numbers on population decline. There are several places where the various Caribbean populations persisted (even to this day). Where did your numbers derive from?
I might have to crack open my copy of James Michener’s “Caribbean” again.
No more “Factoids of Historical Misconception & Fiction” today, please.
I guess I missed Arawak Day being added to the Federal calendar.
Is it possible, varangianguard, to have a conversation in your vicinity which does not immediately veer off onto three separate tangents, and plow into parked vehicles on each? Let’s recap. Our host opines (“as a history buff and aficionado of the Age of Exploration”) that “he doesn’t mind” celebrating Columbus Day. And let’s agree now, as I’m guessing Doug did at the time, or else he wouldn’t have added the obligatory “even though bad things happened”, that the statement is in part objectionable. It is also in part defensible, and in large measure just plain silly, as relativism and modern bias is present any time we pick up a history book. Grounds enough for rebuttal, since I truly believe Mr. Masson to have been innocent of Columbus’ real doings in Hispanola, rather than a genocidal apologist. I mean, he seems nice.
But then before I got here Ms Kennedy had observed that a full appreciation of history (one which, presumably, includes celebrating Columbus Day) was unfairly subjected to the objections of “ideologues” who insist on seeing the world as entirely “good” or “evil”. Hence “Manichaean”, by the way. And Doug concurred.
Which led me to add to the history of the Arawak the example of the Red Army (“and not George S. Patton”) defeating the Nazis, which does not excuse a national holiday honoring the genocidal Stalin. I did err in imagining that everyone in the audience would take my point.
Not only is this (the Soviet victory) not controversial, it’s not even central to my point, which could have been made with a thousand historical analogies; it was enough to say “Even though I believe….” But then you, for some reason, quote me as saying the Soviets won the war alone. Flummery.
Credit for one thing, though. You’ve got a reasonable sense of when to try to grab the ball and declare the game over.
Contemporary descriptions of the treatment of the natives can be seen in the writings of Bartolome de las Casas’. His population estimates (pre-contact) are probably way too high. But the accounts of the abuses are probably pretty accurate.
Populations persist and in cases have rebounded, I’m sure. But the massive scale of death was witnessed, and in some cases written down. Also, the presence of African slaves in the New World was due to the inconvenient happenstance that the natives died off too quickly and in too great numbers to serve as an effective longterm labor force.
Looking at U.S. population figures, total “Indians” in 1860 were 339,421, while in 1880, they totaled 306,543. Contrast that with what the white population was doing in the same time period. By 1900, the native population was down to around 250,000. Although pre-contact population numbers vary widely, the lowest estimate is around a million. So the best case scenario is a population decline of 75% after contact.
The short answer to your snide question Doghouse is no. My tangents are intended to elucidate my point(s). Obviously, in my rush to be timely, I have failed to make myself clear enough for you. I accept that as a criticsm. Though I find it surprising that you deride my tangents, as your obscure allusion to Manicheanism and the accompanying Voltaire quote are quite similar in scope.
My point was to take issue with your gross misrepresentations of “facts”, one being about the Arawaks, the second concerning the Red Army.
First, the Arawaks were keen on genocide themselves. So sorry that the tables were turned on them. That’s been the way of the world since the beginning of civilization. Genocide is still a problem today. Want to complain about it? Fine, but do so without making wildly inaccurate statements disguised as facts (…they were all gone by 1555), just for dramatic effect.
Second, who asked you to correct anybody about WW2? You are most certainly no better, worse perhaps, because you are so smug in spreading your own version of ignorance. So what, George Patton didn’t conquer the Germans? Neither did the Red Army, in the very same sense. And, so nice to blithely change scales between the entire Red Army (RKKA) and the somewhat smaller organizations commanded by Patton. Apples and oranges.
What beat the Axis (including the Germans) in WW2? The two main reasons were the strategic, geo-political myopia of the major Axis
powers themselves and, the broad spectrum of innovative technologies developed by the Allies (including the Soviets) combined with the realized industrial potential of the United States. The thing is, the factors concerning the war were so intricately interwined that it is difficult to compartmentalize them into simple lists. I’d elaborate, but that might include tangents and nuances that might prove daunting to someone who admits to being a sorry student.
Still, if you really think that there are 1000s of reasons bolstering your own opinion of how the RKKA defeated Nazi Germany, trot them out.
T, I’m just not sold on the validity of projecting statistical percentages using figures from a place where so many factors differed by so much. It isn’t the conclusion that the indigenous populations suffered tremendous loss, just in the methodology trying to quantify it.
De las Casas describes the populations of Hispaniola, Cuba, etc., being virtually wiped out. The same with many countries on the South American mainland.
From “A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies”: “When the Spanish first journeyed there, the indigenous population of the island of Hispaniola stood at some three million; today only two hundred survive. The island of Cuba is now to all intents and purposes empty; and two other large beautiful and fertile islands, Puerto Rico and Jamaica, have been similarly devastated. Not a living sould remains today on any of the islands of the Bahamas. The native population, which once numbered some five hundred thousand, was wiped out and sent to the island of Hispaniola, a policy adopted by the Spaniards in an attempt to make up losses among the native population of that island. A further thirty or so islands in the region of Puerto Rico are also now uninhabited.”
Now, his pre-contact numbers are highly suspect. The notion that ALL of the people of the Bahamas is also likely totally wrong. But the generalization that there were a lot of people, and then in a few decades there were almost none, seems quite probable. Look at the present populations of the islands above, which are largely African rather than native.
I should say, the non-white populations are primarily African in descent, rather than native.
Certainly the document is a valuable tool, as long as it is recognized that the man had a partisan agenda, and that his writings would have been extremely prejudiced in nature.
I would bring up an interesting tangent, but don’t wish to dilute my comments.
Oh, okay:
1. Whether the Arawak were murderous neolithic cutthroats of the sort found throughout the human-inhabited globe, or placid little does served up as dog food is utterly beside the point. We don’t celebrate Arawak Day. We don’t celebrate the original colonizers of our own real estate, either, except by naming sports teams after ’em. The point was Doug’s middling defense of Columbus Day, in which we do celebrate a genocidal slave trader, and the attendant suggestion that people who think otherwise allow agenda to supersede nuance.
2. Now, if you want to argue that them Arawaks had it comin’, fine. But you seem to imagine that this constitutes holding trumps, that no one’s ever heard this counter-argument before. There’s a reasonable assumption that when someone like Doug Masson casually dismisses the genocide of millions he is unfamiliar with the story. There is no such assumption that someone who has just recounted the sad history of the Arawak from 1492-1550 is, in all other respects, totally ignorant of Arawak society.
3. Similarly, the Second World War: I’m at a loss to explain what in my original comment would lead anyone to honestly conclude I was innocent of Normandy or Lend-Lease, technological advancements, political economy, strategic resources, or whatever. And I’m not sure how anyone missed that I was using it as a simile, but fer chrissakes, I then explained to you I was using it as a simile, and you’re still demanding evidence.
3a. Okay, if it needs to be spelled out: 1) The Red Army was the first and only to stop the German war machine in the field (Moscow, ’41); 2. It was the first to turn back the Germans (North and Central fronts, ’42); 3. It encircled and destroyed the 6th Army outside Stalingrad in December, 1941, after which the defeat of the Nazis was a foregone conclusion, and after which they never launched an offensive action outside the tactical. From here there is only time standing between the Soviets and the English Channel. For comparison’s sake, at this point the Western Allies had just finished off the Vichy French in the sideshow of North Africa, and were preparing to take on the Italians.
4. Look, either throw the first ad hominem, or complain about someone being snide, but not both. I shouldn’t have to explain that when I say “not George S. Patton” I’m referring to a particular brand of school-sponsored historical myopia, not trying to con the unsuspecting Masson’s Blog reader into agreeing with me (He’s right! I looked it up, and Patton did not win WWII!). Suggesting this is some dastardly manipulation of scale is just peevishness. If you find Manichaeanism and Voltaire’s Prayer to be obscure (they aren’t) so be it, but it’s not grounds for accusing me of deliberate obscurantism (for what? To impress people on the internets?). Words make poor cudgels. Someone else’s comment’s section makes a poor spot for arguing about footnotes.
The Germans had lost the war no later than on 22 June, 1941. The tragedy just dragged out for almost another four years. You confuse field campaigns with success in warfare. I view field campaigns as success in battle, not war. It is an important distinction, yet I cannot convince you in a forum like this except to mention one word – Afghanistan. Still, kinda humorous that you consider Kursk to be a tactical action.
The problem here was what you probably meant is not how it read in the postings (at least to me). And for that, I will accept culpability.
Not sure I want to wade back into this particular hornets nest after stirring it up in the first place, but just to expand upon what Doghouse has accurately described as a middling defense of Columbus Day: the reason I pay some notice to the day is because it commemorates an important event in world history. I’m not proposing hero worship of Columbus. Maybe we should change the name to emphasize what is important about the event. Columbus didn’t single-handedly change history. He had some characteristics that made him more likely than many others to lead the expedition that got to the New World at that particular point in history. But, the tipping point had been reached. If it hadn’t been him, it would have been someone else very soon after.
If I sound wishy-washy on the subject, it’s because I am.