On this most reviled of national holidays, let’s reflect on what the contemners of Christopher Columbus actually condemn, by necessary implication if not in their conscious intent.
The Admiral of the Ocean Sea, whatever his personal virtues and defects, was not essential to the European discovery of the New World. Had he never lived, we would now celebrate Cabot Day or Hudson Day or some other eponym. The progress of European seafaring and the desire for less impeded routes to the Indies guaranteed that America would be found within a few years of the turn of the 16th Century. One can even dispense with all of the great explorers; by 1500 and likely well before then, a host of anonymous English and Breton fishermen were casting their nets off Newfoundland.
It follows, then, that, if one wishes to denounce Columbus’s achievement and the subsequent European settlement, he logically must denounce the developments that made those events imminent and inevitable, namely, advances in technology, wealth and population. If you like the concept of a world in which the great majority of humans die in infancy and all but a minuscule percentage of the survivors scratch out a subsistence living, by all means lament that Europe ever reached a stage at which it could explore the earth and send emigrants to another hemisphere.
The settlers did not, it is true, act in accordance with enlightened, abstract, liberal principles; that is, they did not turn around and go home. Let’s grant arguendo that their interest in bettering their lives at the expense of the natives was deplorable, but shouldn’t we also deplore the conditions that made the success of the Conquistadors possible?
First, America in 1492 was, except for Australia, the most technologically backward of the continents. That backwardness wasn’t just bad luck. The Amerinds had invented the wheel, and they used it for children’s toys. Their metal working was solely for ornamentation rather than practical use, so that they scratched their fields with wooden hoes and their warriors fought with obsidian weapons. Literacy, mathematics and astronomy were devoted to the glorification of rulers and gods; they laid no foundation for the natural sciences.
Second, and probably more important, the wealthiest and most impressive New World civilizations suffered from political institutions that guaranteed failure in the face of any severe challenge. (Some of the North American groups, such as the much admired Iroquois, did better, but they were too few and poor to resist the white tide for long.) By weight of numbers, the Aztecs and Incas could have defeated Cortez and Pizarro. What decided the issue was the rallying of subjugated tribes in favor of the Conquistadors. The prospect of alien rule was less terrible than the reality of Montezuma’s and Atahuallpa’s tyrannies, within which anyone outside the tiny ruling caste was regarded as essentially not a human being.
Third, the alleged crimes of the invaders were rather pale next to the regular practices of the invaded. The Conquistadors abolished cannibalism and human sacrifice, wars to obtain sacrificial victims, and the panoply of bloodthirsty gods. Though Christianity was imposed on the natives and emanated from an utterly unfamiliar mental world, they never sought to return to the sanguinary rites of their aboriginal faith.
Columbus Day commemorates not a lone man but a series of men and events. They were not the actions of saints unblemished by greed, bigotry and brutality. Without them, nonetheless, the world, both Old and New, would be a more miserable place.
“On this most reviled of national holidays”
I cannot begin to imagine what straw man you are inveighing against here, but surely MLK Day remains a close second, with President’s Day (compacted from Washington’s and Lincoln’s Birthdays) following at their heels.
“First, America in 1492 was, except for Australia, the most technologically backward of the continents.”
That statement depends on what you call “technology”. According to most modern historians, the Amerindians were generally taller, stronger and healthier with longer life expectancies than the short, dirty, smelly, underfed Europeans that confronted them at the end of the 15th Century. What the Europeans really had going for them was horses and pigs. The horses gave them tactical battle superiority and the pigs gave them disease carriers. The Amerindians had very few defenses for either and no counter offensives. The short, smelly European survivors of the Bubonic Plague visited their largess upon the New World with the inevitable results whose causes can only be denied by Creationists.
“The Amerinds had invented the wheel, and they used it for children’s toys.”
Meanwhile, the moldboard plow, invented in China in the 2nd Century, did not appear in Europe until the 17th Century as an import, after which European agriculture became phenomenally more efficient.
“Literacy, mathematics and astronomy were devoted to the glorification of rulers and gods;”
This sounds very much like Europe prior to the age of Columbus, and very much like an argument for some form of racial superiority proved by the fact that Europe “woke up” to “technology” before the Amerindians. Much of what Europe “discovered” was, like the plow that it subsequently appropriated, already in the hands of the Chinese or Muslims. What the Amerindians lacked was the relatively safe interaction with other cultures that the Europeans enjoyed.
“they laid no foundation for the natural sciences.”
Right. They ONLY developed maize which has replaced all other grains as the fundamental grain of the Western economy and essentially enslaved the world to its dominance. Greenhouse gases? Think beef forced to eat corn, for cows cannot be bred but only anesthetized and inoculated to digest it.
“Second, and probably more important, the wealthiest and most impressive New World civilizations suffered from political institutions that guaranteed failure in the face of any severe challenge.”
Well, if that isn’t a tautological argument then I don’t know what is one. “It happened therefore it had to happen.” It wasn’t the dictatorships that failed, it was the economies as whole populations fell to disease. You might see the hand of God here, I see Darwin.
“Columbus Day commemorates not a lone man but a series of men and events. They were not the actions of saints unblemished by greed, bigotry and brutality. Without them, nonetheless, the world, both Old and New, would be a more miserable place.”
And if, in some alternate universe, you were a descendant of the Amerindian conquerors of Europe, would you not say the same about “Atawallpa Day”? Despite the continuing poverty and illiteracy of the third world bequeathed upon that alternate Europe by your “ancestors”?
pbh
Posted by: pbh51 | Wednesday, October 14, 2009 at 11:55 AM