Columbus was indeed a bastard by contemporary standards:
One man caught stealing corn had his nose and ears cut off, was placed in shackles and was then auctioned off as a slave. A woman who dared to suggest that Columbus was of lowly birth was… stripped naked and paraded around the colony on the back of a mule.
It got bad enough that he was sent back in chains (though he was released) and stripped of all his titles (permanently). There’s some thought that the report was a bit of a hit piece by his political enemies, but it seems like he, with his equally shitty brother, opened himself up by being such an asshole.
You don’t have to be an apologist for the Spanish regime or think they were enlightened somehow to understand that he was particularly shitty. As the historian in the article says, “The monarchs wanted someone who did not give them problems. Columbus did not solve problems, he created them.”
I have never understood why you wouldn’t want to judge the past by modern standards. Sounds like a good way to avoid becoming like them in terms of the wrongs they did, by modern standards.
Otherwise, yeah, I don’t know enough about this to add anything meaningful to the conversation around him.
The Spanish immediately after seeing what Columbus got away with doing as governor
Free Columbus!.
He did nothing wrong. He killed those natives in self defense.
They couldn’t have been too mad given the way they continued to plunder the New World after that. Only thing worse than a Spanish ship captain back then was a Jesuit priest.
I think OP is referencing Bartoleme de las Casa, who was rather more of an anomaly than representative of mainstream Spanish society. He’s also complicated by the fact that when he first went to the Spanish colonies, he spent over a decade exploiting the ever living shit out of indigenous peoples. (IIRC, he was studying the book of Sirach and became convicted.) As he transitioned into being an abolutionist (one of the first? if not the first,) he suggested using foreign (african) slaves instead, which the spanish adopted as a law
But I’m not sure it’s really fair to say Bartoleme represents all (or even most) Spanish at the time.
There may have been others before the 18th century, but I can’t find them.
Bart had me going in the first half NGL
to be clear… it’s pretty clear from his writings he had no idea how the african slaves were being, uh, sourced? I don’t know what he thought was going on down there, but he did get to a point where he saw slavery of any form as evil.
but yeah. it’s a fascinating progression and thing to settle on. “enslaving local people” is somehow more offensive than “enslaving foreign people and shipping them in.” I rather imagine he got to know a few of the locals. came to respect them, see them as humans and not something as lesser, but he never had that experience with african people, until, well, maybe he did. if that makes sense.
The thing is, it’s not that the monarchs hated slavery or exploitation - it was that Columbus’s slavery and exploitation were too horrific even for the Spanish monarchy et co to stomach.
But they kinda did. After they brought him back for trial… they just let them go, and there was a fourth voyage a couple years later.
Eventually he just retired in Spain and while they didn’t give him the full amount of wealth he was owed…. That wasn’t out of moral outrage.
They literally sent inspectors to the Americas to investigate the rumors of Columbus’s misrule, and upon finding it, Columbus was stripped of his position as governor and it was given to someone else despite the governorship being one of the key agreements over his original discovery.
His fourth voyage included no promises of governorship, and was supposed to be purely exploratory. It ended up a failure and garnering Columbus nothing.
oh. They fired him?
They didn’t even take the loot he stole. he was jailed for a bit during trial. and then he was let out. With no charges, keeping his share of the loot… and letting him go on a fourth voyage at all is kinda a tacit approval of his methods.
He’s like the killer cop they just fire and let go back to work in another agency. Or that asshole manager they send in to get get store/plant/whatever under budget and move on out when things are under control.
not exactly a ringing condemnation of assholery.
and letting him go on a fourth voyage at all is kinda a tacit approval of his methods.
I don’t really see how that follows, considering that governing and sailing are two entirely different things.
He’s like the killer cop they just fire and let go back to work in another agency. Or that asshole manager they send in to get get store/plant/whatever under budget and move on out when things are under control.
not exactly a ringing condemnation of assholery.
Considering that he was never considered for a position of governance again, despite spending the last years of his life constantly pleading for his privileges to be restored? It’s more like a killer cop being fired and blacklisted from law enforcement, but not catching any charges, and going back to their pre-cop career. Which is worse than it should be, but certainly not approval (and better than what we see in the States).
Is this another one of those weird threads where the internet tries to pretend that the king and queen of Spain were loving benevolent monarchs who cared so much about the natives and hated slavery and believed in equality? Cuz I’ve seen that bizarre ass propaganda a lot for some damn reason.
The monarchy of Spain doesn’t need to be good for Columbus to be exceptionally brutal even by their standards.
No matter how low you go, there is always someone whose standard of behavior is lower. Columbus was such a piece of shit that even other pieces of shit thought he was a piece of shit.
Funny how that was really how much of that was actually portrayed at the time.
Basically Machiavellian villains - sending someone to exploit the frontiers of Africa or “New World”, someone you know will not be doing things ethically, then convicting them for doing your own bidding. Whilst at the diplomatic table everyone maintains a facade of “we’re bringing jobs and higher quality of life for the natives, and teaching them the ways of God” while talking about Belgian Congo.
Sorry mate but I’m pressing X on this one
Eh a little of column A, a lot of column B (Column B is just a white washed version of Column A).
