Revisionist historians on too many
of America’s college campuses – and most of the political left in this country
for that matter – have painted a picture of Christopher Columbus the criminal,
caricatured as a Spanish conquistador hell-bent on merciless destruction.
Every October, the debate begins
over whether or not Columbus Day should be renamed, replaced, or outright
abolished. The argument goes that honoring Christopher Columbus is condoning
the rape, murder, and exploitation of the Americas and the indigenous peoples
who lived here. Much is made over colonial imperialism and the imposition of
“western civilization” on the native culture.
Was this the real Christopher
Columbus? Was his 1492 voyage the beginning of America’s evil and imperialist
history?
The answer will surprise you.
For starters, Columbus was neither
Spanish, nor a conquistador. He was an Italian explorer who was determined to
circumnavigate the globe to find an alternative trade route to India and China.
By the fifteen century (1400s), Europe’s economy was beginning to expand
considerably, and international trade was on the rise. The rise of
Christianity, what most people regarded as a faith of reason, led to incredible
scientific and economic advances that began lifting European standards of
living. Additional income meant more consumerism, which led to increased trade
across Europe and into Asia. Trade routes spanned across western Europe and
through what was then called the Byzantine Empire, which was also known as the
Eastern Roman Empire, and across the Bosporus River near Constantinople (modern
day Istanbul) into Asia.
The rise of the Ottoman Empire,
which was raised out of an earlier Islamic caliphate, effectively cut-off these
trade routes to “Christianized” western European nation-states. By sacking
Constantinople in 1453, the Ottoman Empire effectively ended the Byzantine
Empire, and established Islamic law in what is now modern-day Turkey. At the
same time, Moorish kings still controlled the Iberian peninsula, on which are
the nations of Spain and Portugal. With much of North Africa, Eastern Europe,
and the Iberian Peninsula under control of what was, effectively, a caliphate,
European nations were largely cut-off from trade routes to Asia.
That’s what Christopher Columbus
aimed to remedy with his famous voyage.
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