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[Sho_Nuff82]

Posted this in the Japanese comfort girl thread, someone suggested I make a new topic.

Read this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies_My_Teacher_Told_Me

Exerpt here: http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/History/Hero-making_LMTTM.html

Christopher Columbus introduced two phenomena that revolutionized race relations and transformed the modern world: the taking of land, wealth, and labor from indigenous peoples, leading to their near extermination, and the transatlantic slave trade, which created a racial underclass.

He ended his description of them with these menacing words: "I could conquer the whole of them with fifty men and govern them as I pleased."

On his first voyage, Columbus kidnapped some ten to twenty-five Indians and took them back with him to Spain. Only seven or eight of the Indians arrived alive, but along with the parrots, gold trinkets, and other exotica, they caused quite a stir in Seville. Ferdinand and Isabella provided Columbus with seventeen ships, 1,200 to 1,500 men, cannons, crossbows, guns, cavalry, and attack dogs for a second voyage.

When Columbus and his men returned to Haiti in 1493, they demanded food, gold, spun cotton-whatever the Indians had that they wanted, including sex with their women. To ensure cooperation, Columbus used punishment by example. When an Indian committed even a minor offense, the Spanish cut off his ears or nose. Disfigured, the person was sent back to his village as living evidence of the brutality the Spaniards were capable of.

"Since the Admiral perceived that daily the people of the land were taking up arms, ridiculous weapons in reality . . . he hastened to proceed to the country and disperse and subdue, by force of arms, the people of the entire island . . . For this he chose 200 foot soldiers and 20 cavalry, with many crossbows and small cannon, lances, and swords, and a still more terrible weapon against the Indians, in addition to the horses: this was 20 hunting dogs, who were turned loose and immediately tore the Indians apart." Naturally, the Spanish won. According to Kirkpatrick Sale, who quotes Ferdinand Columbus's biography of his father: "The soldiers mowed down dozens with point-blank volleys, loosed the dogs to rip open limbs and bellies, chased fleeing Indians into the bush to skewer them on sword and pike, and 'with God's aid soon gained a complete victory, killing many Indians and capturing others who were also killed.' "

Spaniards hunted Indians for sport and murdered them for dog food. Columbus, upset because he could not locate the gold he was certain was on the island, set up a tribute system. Ferdinand Columbus described how it worked: "[The Indians] all promised to pay tribute to the Catholic Sovereigns every three months, as follows: In the Cibao, where the gold mines were, every person of 14 years of age or upward was to pay a large hawk's bell of gold dust; all others were each to pay 25 pounds of cotton. Whenever an Indian delivered his tribute, he was to receive a brass or copper token which he must wear about his neck as proof that he had made his payment. Any Indian found without such a token was to be punished." With a fresh token, an Indian was safe for three months, much of which time would be devoted to collecting more gold. Columbus's son neglected to mention how the Spanish punished those whose tokens had expired: they cut off their hands.

Estimates of Haiti's pre-Columbian population range as high as 8,000,000 people.. When Christopher Columbus returned to Spain, he left his brother Bartholomew in charge of the island. Bartholomew took a census of Indian adults in 1496 and came up with 1,100,000. The Spanish did not count children under fourteen and could not count Arawaks who had escaped into the mountains. Kirkpatrick Sale estimates that a more accurate total would probably be in the neighborhood of 3,000,000. "By 1516," according to Benjamin Keen, "thanks to the sinister Indian slave trade and labor policies initiated by Columbus, only some 12,000 remained." Las Casas tells us that fewer than 200 Indians were alive in 1542. By 1555, they were all gone.

A particularly repellent aspect of the slave trade was sexual. As soon as the 1493 expedition got to the Caribbean, before it even reached Haiti, Columbus was rewarding his lieutenants with native women to rape. On Haiti, sex slaves were one more perquisite that the Spaniards enjoyed. Columbus wrote a friend in 1500, "A hundred castellanoes are as easily obtained for a woman as for a farm, and it is very general and there are plenty of dealers who go about looking for girls; those from nine to ten are now in demand."

The except chapter contains bonus material on Woodrow Wilson, racist and imperialist, and Helen Keller, communist.

 

[Kreunt]

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/columbus_day

 

[Krakn3Dfx]

Yep, this all sounds about right.

 

[mantidor]

Conquistadors were a pretty awful bunch, this wasn't something limited to Colombus.

You have to also take into account the propaganda against Spain at that time, or so called "leyenda negra", sides greatly exaggerated things. It persist to this day.

 

[Fari]

This isn't exactly a secret.

 

[Gattsu25]

Yeah, the guy was a true monster. I introduced some of this stuff on my Facebook wall just before Columbus Day and was not surprised that people were learning this stuff for the first time.

 

[SJRB]

The US has a "Christopher Columbus Day"? What the hell? How is that even possible?

 

[Kabouter]

Worst part of it all is, Columbus wasn't even that unusual in his cruelty. The brutality of many European colonizers of the new world is matched by few in history :/.

That said, this I'm quite confident is rather misleading:

Estimates of Haiti's pre-Columbian population range as high as 8,000,000 people.. When Christopher Columbus returned to Spain, he left his brother Bartholomew in charge of the island. Bartholomew took a census of Indian adults in 1496 and came up with 1,100,000. The Spanish did not count children under fourteen and could not count Arawaks who had escaped into the mountains. Kirkpatrick Sale estimates that a more accurate total would probably be in the neighborhood of 3,000,000. "By 1516," according to Benjamin Keen, "thanks to the sinister Indian slave trade and labor policies initiated by Columbus, only some 12,000 remained." Las Casas tells us that fewer than 200 Indians were alive in 1542. By 1555, they were all gone.

Because that population decline is almost certainly overwhelmingly due to a genocidal weapon Europeans didn't even know they had, germs. Tens of millions of the pre-Columbian population of the Americas were killed by diseases introduced by Europeans :/.

I'm also curious, is this actually a lie Americans are told? While they spared us plenty of details in school here (as they did with most of history), we certainly weren't told that Columbus' 'discovery' of the New World was a positive event, or that Columbus was a good man. Quite the opposite.

 

[meltingparappa]

Conquistadors were a pretty awful bunch, this wasn't something limited to Colombus.

You have to also take into account the propaganda against Spain at that time, or so called "leyenda negra", sides greatly exaggerated things. It persist to this day.

Columbus may have made a pretty strong precedent but Cortez isn't a saint by comparison.

History has some pretty heavy hitting monsters if you're going to throw around comparisons.

The US may not have an Atilla the Hun day like Columbus, but vikings currently have a certain popular kitsch factor and they were certainly not so nice as a people. It's like in three hundred years, you'll have an Asterix and Obelix-esque holo-comic with Pol Pot and Ho Chi Minh.

 

[ThoseDeafMutes]

Thread filed under common knowledge, surely?

 

[Sho_Nuff82]

Conquistadors were a pretty awful bunch, this wasn't something limited to Colombus.

You have to also take into account the propaganda against Spain at that time, or so called "leyenda negra", sides greatly exaggerated things. It persist to this day.

I don't think you can take the accounts of Columbus' activity written by his son as propaganda.

The "black legend" was little more than an early attempt at historical whitewashing.

 

[Pai Pai Master]

The US has a "Christopher Columbus Day"? What the hell? How is that even possible?

The usual stubborn refusal to change long-standing traditions. It's not a major national holiday but could easily be changed to celebrate someone more deserving. Someone who didn't commit genocide and other various human atrocities.

But who cares, we get the day off.

 

[Patryn]

Yeah, he's actually one of the worst people to ever live.

Luckily, I think that's becoming way more common knowledge. I expect that Columbus Day will wane in support over the next half-century or so.

 

[Loxley]

At first I thought this was going to be about the first two Harry Potter films.

 

[muddream]

You gotta crack a few eggs to make an omelette.

 

[Sho_Nuff82]

Worst part of it all is, Columbus wasn't even that unusual in his cruelty. The brutality of many European colonizers of the new world is matched by few in history :/.

That said, this I'm quite confident is rather misleading:


Because that population decline is almost certainly overwhelmingly due to a genocidal weapon Europeans didn't even know they had, germs. Tens of millions of the pre-Columbian population of the Americas were killed by diseases introduced by Europeans :/.

I'm also curious, is this actually a lie Americans are told? While they spared us plenty of details in school here (as they did with most of history), we certainly weren't told that Columbus' 'discovery' of the New World was a positive event, or that Columbus was a good man. Quite the opposite.

I went to a nearly all black elementary so it wasn't quite as bad, but yes, most popular depictions are of Columbus the intrepid explorer. The slavery stuff is kind of glossed over.

The writer talks about the contribution of disease to the death count (in fact there's a later chapter devoted entirely to the ravages of European disease on the new world), I only included the stuff he was directly responsible for.

And the entire book is about how among the 12 American textbooks he sampled, none contained this information.

 

[gregor7777]

Christopher Columbus introduced two phenomena that revolutionized race relations and transformed the modern world: the taking of land, wealth, and labor from indigenous peoples, leading to their near extermination, and the transatlantic slave trade, which created a racial underclass.

He was pretty much a monster.

But to say the things above were introduced by Columbus? Read more history my man. Both robbing indigenous peoples and slave trading across territories have been rampant though many major civilizations in human history.

 

[RangerX]

This is pretty much accepted in Europe. He's as well known for all his misdeeds as his successes.

 

[Gattsu25]

Thread filed under common knowledge, surely?

Growing up in New York, we were not taught anything negative about Columbus.

 

[Toth]

He was a sad product of his times rather than a monster. He is faaaaaar from a saint that he is made out to be.

 

[Kabouter]

Oh, by the way for Americans specifically interested in reading the history of the European colonization of their own nation in quite a lot of detail, I would highly recommend Bernard Bailyn's 'The Barbarous Years'. Review here:
http://harvardmagazine.com/2013/01/brutish-beginnings

 

[swaggerdewitt]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbbMIg-Aw8E

 

[Angelus Errare]

Thread filed under common knowledge, surely?

If only that were true.

 

[ElectricBlue187]

The OP's article is pretty intentionally misleading and shitty. By modern standards Columbus was a bad dude for sure but that's not the way you're supposed to look at history, you have to understand it in context.

 

[kmfdmpig]

Growing up in New York, we were not taught anything negative about Columbus.

It probably depends on the school district/teacher. In the early 90s my high school focused on many of the negatives with Columbus. That was in the suburbs of NYC.

 

[Sho_Nuff82]

The OP's article is pretty intentionally misleading and shitty. By modern standards Columbus was a bad dude for sure but that's not the way you're supposed to look at history, you have to understand it in context.

In what context does rape, torture, and murder make someone an admirable person? How are you "supposed to" read these facts? The title is my own, the author is simply pointing out how appalling it is that American students are often ignorant of the facts. You can't form proper context with half truths.

Edit: please tell me you weren't being sarcastic due to your tag.

 

[Pai Pai Master]

The OP's article is pretty intentionally misleading and shitty. By modern standards Columbus was a bad dude for sure but that's not the way you're supposed to look at history, you have to understand it in context.

I get that, but we do still have a national holiday named after this guy and many people here do not even know his actual history and that's their education systems' fault 90% of the time. If that wasn't the case I would be totally in agreement with you.

Case in point, the post below mine. Granted I haven't been in grade school for a long ass time but I wasn't taught anything negative about Columbus in history classes. I'm sure more schools today do so, but it's probably all over the place and may not go into this kind of detail.

 

[Palmer_v1]

Honestly did not know about this. I knew colonization efforts were not nearly as peaceful as its generally made out, but this stuff is all new to me.

 

[radios shipping overview]

This Columbus = Hitler comparison seems to be more about getting a subversive thrill for whoever's making it than about discussing the overall ugly and violent process of colonization that took place over centuries.

 

[L1NETT]

Thread filed under common knowledge, surely?

Yup, or at least should be.

That whole period of conquest and the cultural decimation of the Aztecs and Incas in Peru by truly horrible people like the Pizarro brothers is horrifyingly interesting.

The extraordinary thing is that some of them genuinely believed what they were doing was the right thing, just shows the power of faith and religion back then.

But yeah, Columbus was not a nice chap and having a Columbus Day is just poor History. Hopefully more and more people learn the truth though.

This Columbus = Hitler comparison seems to be more about getting a subversive thrill for whoever's making it than about discussing the overall ugly and violent process of colonization that took place over centuries.

There is a large historiography which calls what happened in that time the American Holocaust. The comparisons in that sense are not far of.

I think you can understand it by both their standards and modern standards. But it's not just about that. Columbus could have chosen, as others of his time did, to recognize the common humanity he shared with the indigenous people he met rather than thinking of them as subhuman chattel.

The Aztecs viewed the Spanish as Gods. They had these wild mythical beasts known to you or I as Horses. The Spanish believed they were saving these lost Pagan souls who had not yet found the one true God. Choosing to view them as equal was out of the quesiton. The Vallodoid conference years after debated this, and they came to the conclusion that the Indians were simply innocent minds, like children and they should be helped.

 

[duckroll]

A famed explorer killing thousands of people and is revered by some as a hero? Sounds like Uncharted to me. I guess nothing has changed over the centuries!

 

[Azih]

The OP's article is pretty intentionally misleading and shitty. By modern standards Columbus was a bad dude for sure but that's not the way you're supposed to look at history, you have to understand it in context.

I think you can understand it by both their standards and modern standards. But it's not just about that. Columbus could have chosen, as others of his time did, to recognize the common humanity he shared with the indigenous people he met rather than thinking of them as subhuman chattel.

 

[angular graphics]

A famed explorer killing thousands of people and is revered by some as a hero? Sounds like Uncharted to me. I guess nothing has changed over the centuries!

LOL!

 

[water_wendi]

The US has a "Christopher Columbus Day"? What the hell? How is that even possible?

Its celebrated in other American countries as The Day of the Race. The only country i know of off the top of my head that doesnt any more is Venezuela where its celebrated as The Day of Resistance (happened when Hugo Chavez came to power).

 

[Sho_Nuff82]

A famed explorer killing thousands of people and is revered by some as a hero? Sounds like Uncharted to me. I guess nothing has changed over the centuries!

Weebay.gif

 

[SummitAve]

Japenese comfort girl thread? Wtf? I would have expected a different kind of monster to come from a thread called that.

 

[RedShift]

Columbus may have made a pretty strong precedent but Cortez isn't a saint by comparison.

History has some pretty heavy hitting monsters if you're going to throw around comparisons.

The US may not have an Atilla the Hun day like Columbus, but vikings currently have a certain popular kitsch factor and they were certainly not so nice as a people. It's like in three hundred years, you'll have an Asterix and Obelix-esque holo-comic with Pol Pot and Ho Chi Minh.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you were saying, but Asterix and Obelix weren't vikings.

 

[EmCeeGramr]

The OP's article is pretty intentionally misleading and shitty. By modern standards Columbus was a bad dude for sure but that's not the way you're supposed to look at history, you have to understand it in context.

Columbus was such a brutal and heinous despot that the Spanish crown (aka, the people behind the Spanish Inquisition) had him arrested, stripped of his titles, kicked out of the governorship, and thrown in prison. de las Casas writing only a few decades later would describe him as a criminal and say that the amount of death and destruction inflicted on the Indian populations wouldn't be believed by future generations because it was so shocking that it sounded like an exaggeration.

So yeah, no, even back then Columbus was a huge piece of shit.

 

[alfredofroylan]

I'm mexican and our history is pretty much like this: Natives were good, conquistadors were bad. Tenochititlan was paradise on Earth and it was ruined by those pesky spanish.

That of course is a big lie, Tenochtitlan and pretty much all our pre-hispanic were like every society at the time with their good and bad things and the contact between Europe and America was pretty much inevitable.

 

[zeemumu]

The US has a "Christopher Columbus Day"? What the hell? How is that even possible?

We do, but as a holiday it holds very little weight. We used to recognize it but not so much anymore. Most people don't even get it as a day off. It's just there, like Leif Erikson Day.

 

[mantidor]

I don't think you can take the accounts of Columbus' activity written by his son as propaganda.

The "black legend" was little more than an early attempt at historical whitewashing.

What the hell are you talking about, the black legend was about portraying Spain in the worst light possible, how that could be anything close to whitewashing is beyond me.

 

[abuC]

The US has a "Christopher Columbus Day"? What the hell? How is that even possible?

Why is it a shock, the US is only 48 years removed from having Jim Crow laws.

 

[Stet]

They should rename it Chris Columbus day and have everyone watch Gremlins.

 

[i_am_ben]

There's no way Haiti could support 8 million people in the 15th Century. That would make it larger than almost every single country in Europe at the time.

 

[water_wendi]

Why is it a shock, the US is only 48 years removed from having Jim Crow laws.

What Latin American countries celebrate Christopher Columbus and his October 12 arrival?

 

[Sho_Nuff82]

What the hell are you talking about, the black legend was about portraying Spain in the worst light possible, how that could be anything close to whitewashing is beyond me.

I meant, the people who wrote about black legend are now widely viewed as Spaniards attempting to control and idealize their own history. They are whitewashing history by claiming that everyone else is a liar or exaggerating.

There's no way Haiti could support 8 million people in the 15th Century. That would make it larger than almost every single country in Europe at the time.

Whether it was 8 million, 5 million, 3 million, or 1 million (the Spaniards estimation), does that make their complete extermination any more acceptable? If so, I guess "a million is a statistic" is true.

 

[Liberty4all]

I went to a nearly all black elementary so it wasn't quite as bad, but yes, most popular depictions are of Columbus the intrepid explorer. The slavery stuff is kind of glossed over.

The writer talks about the contribution of disease to the death count (in fact there's a later chapter devoted entirely to the ravages of European disease on the new world), I only included the stuff he was directly responsible for.

And the entire book is about how among the 12 American textbooks he sampled, none contained this information.

Canadian here. Columbus was looked at as a hero when I was in elementary school in the 80's. We even sang songs about him

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBehzPcEH_4

In fourteen hundred ninety-two Columbus sailed the ocean blue, It was a courageous thing to do But someone was already here. Columbus knew the world was round So he looked for the East while westward bound, But he didn't find what he thought he found, And someone was already here. Chorus The Inuit and Cherokee, The Aztec and Menominee, The Onandaga and the Cree; Columbus sailed across the sea, But someone was already here. It isn't like it was empty space, Caribs met him face to face. Could anyone discover the place When someone was already here? Chorus So tell me, who discovered what? He thought he was in a different spot. Columbus was lost, the Caribs were not; They were already here. Chorus

Poetry too:

IN 1492

In fourteen hundred ninety-two
Columbus sailed the ocean blue.

He had three ships and left from Spain;
He sailed through sunshine, wind and rain.

He sailed by night; he sailed by day;
He used the stars to find his way.

A compass also helped him know
How to find the way to go.

Ninety sailors were on board;
Some men worked while others snored.

Then the workers went to sleep;
And others watched the ocean deep.

Day after day they looked for land;
They dreamed of trees and rocks and sand.

October 12 their dream came true,
You never saw a happier crew!

“Indians! Indians!” Columbus cried;
His heart was filled with joyful pride.

But “India” the land was not;
It was the Bahamas, and it was hot.

The Arakawa natives were very nice;
They gave the sailors food and spice.

Columbus sailed on to find some gold
To bring back home, as he’d been told.

He made the trip again and again,
Trading gold to bring to Spain.

The first American? No, not quite.
But Columbus was brave, and he was bright.

 

[Vyroxis]

He is still considered the guy who discovered America in most textbooks, despite evidence that viking explorers were here years (dozens? a hundred?) earlier. And he is still celebrated because people refuse to change their minds about him because god forbid they have to give up that holiday.

The guy was a monster, and his name should be shit on as much as possible as the man who helped bring ruin to the new world.

 

[TacticalFox88]

Ugh. This is why I hate our education system. It's so fucking whitewashed and uses broad strokes on the brutality, cruelty, and disgusting practices at the time.

"Hey white children...feel bad...but don't feel TOO bad."

 

[ElectricBlue187]

Columbus was such a brutal and heinous despot that the Spanish crown (aka, the people behind the Spanish Inquisition) had him arrested, stripped of his titles, kicked out of the governorship, and thrown in prison. de las Casas writing only a few decades later would describe him as a criminal and say that the amount of death and destruction inflicted on the Indian populations wouldn't be believed by future generations because it was so shocking that it sounded like an exaggeration.

So yeah, no, even back then Columbus was a huge piece of shit.

He was arrested for killing natives? Seems hard to believe that the same nation that gave us conquistadors had such a progressive view on the subject.