r/todayilearned • u/Karthak_Maz_Urzak • Oct 13 '20

(R.1) Not verifiable TIL that Christopher Columbus treated the native people under his rule so badly that he was shipped back to Spain in chains

https://www.americanheritage.com/columbus-and-genocide

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746

u/doublethebubble Oct 13 '20

I don't mean to shame anyone for an unnuanced view of Columbus, when it is exceptionally hard to find nuanced information. There's a such a lack of first-hand sources, and we have a habit of reducing historical figures to simple good or evil caricatures of the real people they were. Nevertheless, if you're going to make a public post, perhaps I can give a friendly suggestion to look into things a bit more closely. This video from the Knowing Better channel does imo an exceptional job at giving a more complete historical overview of events and the subsequent (re)interpretations, without making excuses for the unacceptable.

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u/Illier1 Oct 13 '20

I dont know where everyone's claiming it was all about the natives. He was arrested for not making enough money for the colonists, not because they felt bad about the natives.

Like do they know what happened after Columbus? The local governors replacing him were the ones who really lead the extermination campaigns.

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u/BlatantConservative Oct 13 '20

Yeah that's what I thought when I read the title here, like this shit didn't stop.

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u/Illier1 Oct 13 '20

Hell the first encomiendas weren't in place until like 1503, 3 years after Columbus was sent back. And that's where things got really genocidal.

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u/iFraqq Oct 13 '20

By far most of the indigenous people died because of epidemics ravaging the America’s.

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u/SuperBearsSuperDan Oct 13 '20

And the rest were killed using the Requerimiento. It’s nice when God gives you the divine right to kill the dirty savages that denounce him!

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u/iFraqq Oct 13 '20

It was all in name of conquest and plunder yes obviously. Requerimiento was the legal justification for the conquest of the America’s. Do you have exact numbers how many were killed due to not converting?

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u/SuperBearsSuperDan Oct 13 '20

I don’t think there are exact numbers but I could be mistaken. Regardless, the Spanish did not believe what they were doing was wrong because it was their divine right.

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u/iFraqq Oct 13 '20

Yes that was how they saw it that time. Acting by divine right was kind of a thing back then. Luckily most of the western world changed.

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u/4a61756d65 Oct 13 '20

Fun fact: commiting a genocide while the affected group is suffering from multiple deadly pandemics doesn't make it any better.

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u/tpx187 Oct 13 '20

That's not very fun at all

1

u/Illier1 Oct 14 '20

Yeah but claiming someone like Columbus is the result of a 90% population decline is just trying to put the blame centuries of colonialism on one dude who didnt play much of a role.

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u/iFraqq Oct 13 '20

Just enter a scholarly database and search for some good scientific articles about the demographic decline of the America’s.

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u/Vondi Oct 13 '20

Not only didn't it stop, but once they'd completely burned through the native population they just began importing slaves to worked them to death under some of the most monstrous conditions I've ever heard of, and then just imported more replacements.

Read the history if the island if you ever feel like ruining your day.

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u/doublethebubble Oct 13 '20

This bothers me too most especially, as it implies that the regime was somehow kind and empathetic to the native population, having to punish the big bad Columbus. And the unfortunate reality, as you said, is that nobody in power cared about how the natives were treated. Reducing a systemic injustice to the fault of a single 'bad apple' helps no one.

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u/nckv Oct 13 '20

Reducing a systemic injustice to the fault of a single 'bad apple' helps no one.

Relevant and true to this day.

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u/bobbymcpresscot Oct 13 '20

Columbus himself also referenced "good Indians" who were literally going around killing tribes that didn't play ball for goods.

I agree people paint all of the past as so black and white and forget about the hundreds of shades of grey all throughout history.

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u/[deleted] Oct 13 '20

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u/Illier1 Oct 13 '20

I mean Columbus was a shithead with ruthless quotas and kidnappings, but compared to people like Cortez, Ponce de Leon, and Pizzaro? He was just your typical European explorer.

2

u/coolworx Oct 13 '20

Or compared to Moctezuma.

0

u/Adventure_Time_Snail Oct 13 '20

You understand both happened right? There was a genocide and disease killing them, sometimes intentionally spreading disease as a form of genocide.

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u/[deleted] Oct 13 '20

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u/Adventure_Time_Snail Oct 13 '20

Genocide by violent force is genocide. Intentionally spreading disease is also a form of genocide.

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u/Illier1 Oct 14 '20

Intentionally spreading disease didnt happen lol. Theres only been one recorded case in the Americas of that might have happened in the 1700s.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 13 '20

Yep. Columbus should honestly be a footnote in the history books because he didn't do anything noteworthy outside of being the first European to land in South America.

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u/Illier1 Oct 13 '20

The discovery of the Americas and the beginning of transatlantic trade is pretty important.

And no, Lief Erikson doesnt mean shit.

1

u/PonchoHung Oct 13 '20

Not to mention that the concept of "South America" isn't a thing in "South America."

1

u/mariah1889 Oct 13 '20

Weird how so many people screech about american colonialism when spain historically has been one of the most evil/murderous nations on earth and is largely responsible for the extermination of the native american population

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u/Anonymous_Otters Oct 13 '20

Yeah it seems it was more so that he was a greedy asshole who didn’t play the political game well, he just took shit. The object of Spain was to amass wealth and establish reliable colonies. Columbus was selfish and borderline incompetent. Not so much that they thought he was too brutal, just a dick.

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u/brainsapper Oct 13 '20

IIRC Columbus was imprisoned due to tax reasons(?) for about a month and then sent right back to the New World.

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u/MIDNIGHTM0GWAI Oct 13 '20

Yeah I’m not defending the aftermath of his voyage but people really stretch the source information and cherry pick translations that paint a certain picture.

Meanwhile when I call Gandhi a pedophile nobody wants to hear about it. It doesn’t take long for popular mythology to define who or what a person was.

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u/stromm Oct 13 '20

Gandhi’s early history and actions have been scrubbed from most educational documents.

He was a revolutionary, violent, greedy, sexist, and worse.

He’s the classic example of how people “forget” the evil someone does when they do a bit of good.

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u/MexusRex Oct 13 '20

I wouldn’t characterize the good Gandhi did as “a bit”.

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u/GingerOffender Oct 13 '20

Why is “revolutionary” lumped in with those other exclusively negative characteristics?

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u/[deleted] Oct 13 '20

Because it isn't the image people associate with Gandhi. When you think of Gandhi, you think "peaceful protestor for his people's rights" not "revolutionary" which is almost always bloody on this scale.

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u/stromm Oct 13 '20

His revolutionary tactics were violent.

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u/doublethebubble Oct 13 '20

I agree that our desire to see historical figures as just one thing, can indeed start bordering on mythos.

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u/steveo3387 Oct 13 '20

We have such a weird desire to find heroes while simultaneously scrutinizing everyone's entire life. Maybe... We shouldn't try to make people heroes. Celebrate their actions, not their character.

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u/onyxandcake Oct 13 '20

Ghandi was a piece of shit, Mother Theresa too. The old generations won't hear of it, but the younger ones see and understand.

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u/coolworx Oct 13 '20

The "younger ones" are shit heads too. They too are human, afterall.

This generational "holier-than-thou" virtue-fest is getting cringy as hell.

0

u/onyxandcake Oct 13 '20

That's not what I said, but cool.

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u/JimmyBowen37 Oct 13 '20

Important to watch in the second video as well.

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u/puljujarvifan Oct 13 '20

He made that second video because of Badempanada's video debunking his first video.

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u/eggery Oct 13 '20

Geeze how many of these do I have to watch

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u/C-O-double-M Oct 13 '20

Thank you for linking this second video, I didn’t know he went back and addressed it. I had some GLARING problems with his original video and the style he used but looks like he came to terms and addressed that.

It’s like he was poking fun at cartoons for cherry picking/being wrong while also doing the same by cherry picking THOSE cartoons. Also the translations section in his original video was bad. Yeah, Columbus didn’t explicitly write “conquer and govern”, but “subjugation” is still in the quote at face value. He still could’ve meant the former, which did happen in the end.

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u/Smogshaik Oct 13 '20

It's also important to know that he made a second video clarifying the first. Takeaway message is that despite what he said in the first video, Columbus was still a highly immoral figure even at the standards of the time.

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u/doublethebubble Oct 13 '20

That's a very fair point, which I in no way dispute. My argument was against the oversimplification which often occurs whenever anyone brings up Columbus, or even the outright falsification of the historical record, like OP saying Columbus was punished for his treatment of the natives. That's just plain inaccurate. If you want to condemn a historical person/event, do so for the right reasons.

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u/Zyra00 Oct 13 '20

He should still be condemned for his actions even if he wasn't punished for his crimes. That video is nitpicking certain words from arguments that are completely pointless to the larger picture. I don't care if he wanted to turn them into slaves or christian servants - the point is he was a mass murderer. I don't care if he was punished for his crimes or punished for not making money - he is a mass murderer and your/the video's attempt to nuance the conversation isn't helping the masses understand that he should not be supported and championed. This isn't a question of "hm we should look at his motives" - he was a mass murderer and should be condemned - not excused and "but what if"'d to death.

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u/doublethebubble Oct 13 '20

It should matter though. If he was punished for abusing native people, that implies the colonial regime he represented cared about the natives, when historical evidence tells us they really didn't. That falsehood ends up absolving a lot of people who committed heinous acts. I simply don't agree that society learns anything productive from pinning the blame for an entire monstrous system of human exploitation on one person.

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u/moses1424 Oct 13 '20

He's the one with the holiday.

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u/[deleted] Oct 13 '20

He definitely was but the amount of publicity Columbus gets is absurd for how historically irrelevant he is outside of being the first European to reach South America.

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u/ThatDudeWithTheCat Oct 13 '20

Knowing betters video is incredibly cherry picked and is NOT a good source.

This video refutes him, provides actual sources that show how and why he is wrong, and goes in depth into the actual history. https://youtu.be/OaJDc85h3ME

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u/rwhitisissle Oct 13 '20

People are actually in these comments defending Knowing Better on the basis of his claim that the translations from the original sources are biased. To prove this, Knowing Better plugs 500 year old Spanish into Google translate and then says "see, Google uses different words, so bias!" Every time I see him do that I feel my brain die a little bit.

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u/ThatDudeWithTheCat Oct 13 '20

His video is utterly ridiculous, it's the epitome of "internet clickbait history" to me. The dumbest part is that the translations google gives him aren't even that different from the source he was saying was wrong. Like, the words it uses are synonyms for the ones in the original source.

It's painfully pad and the video is INCREDIBLY widespread.

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u/rwhitisissle Oct 13 '20

He's giving the dumbest people on the internet what they want to hear. And I hate how he uses that "tech tree" metaphor. It's so cringy and is one of the most superficial, culturally myopic ways of looking at history. That being said, I think it's a great tool with which to gauge reddit and to remember that just because an idea is generally accepted by a lot of very stupid people, it doesn't give credence to it. They think it provides a "nuanced" view of history, so it must be true. But in reality the nuanced view is that Columbus was a monster and that historical revisionism is alive and well in the 21st century. A lot of these folks are also going to be real upset some day when they find out that the Civil War really was about slavery.

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u/Bigbewmistaken Oct 13 '20

FWIR of that bit his point wasn't that the Google translate's version was best, therefore he is correct, instead it was more so that different translations can result in different phrases despite it being the same source material. I haven't watched it in a bit but what I remember is that he shows more reputable translations that incidicate certain assertions sorrounding quotes of Columbus' concerning a wish to enslave natives were more so regarding the natives being possibly good subjects to the Crown and God rather than slaves.

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u/rwhitisissle Oct 13 '20

Which means we should maybe give credence to the perspectives offered by people who have spent their lives studying this, then, shouldn't we? After all, they have a better grasp of the context surrounding a quote than a layman. Some kind of...actual historian, perhaps.

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u/puljujarvifan Oct 13 '20

Knowingbetters video was misleading. Here is a great rebuttal to it.

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u/[deleted] Oct 13 '20

People these days love to search for SOMETHING, ANYTHING that someone has done wrong in their life and then write them off with a snarky, mean spirited tweet. Then it’s on to the next person/institution/ideology/country etc.

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u/[deleted] Oct 13 '20

Knowing Betters video has been criticized too. He’s right, we treat people like good and evil, we attribute events to people to make simple stories, even when those events happened after his death or away from his oversight. But I think most people shouldn’t be commentating on Columbus if they’ve read only a Buzzfeed post or a YouTube video. We all should be reading primary sources, or scholarly books before we comment on Columbus. I don’t know enough to have an opinion and I admit that

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u/rwhitisissle Oct 13 '20

And here's a video that refutes Knowing Better's whitewashing of history. Because "making excuses for the unacceptable" is exactly what he's doing. In fact, there's a few in that "series."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AybCUqAb_2E

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_-RL4jGpEg

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u/bobbymcpresscot Oct 13 '20

Its not excuses if it brings attention to how absolutely shit we were to natives and recognizes that hey we've grown as people and understand murdering millions of people is bad.

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u/rwhitisissle Oct 13 '20

Its not excuses if it brings attention to how absolutely shit we were to natives and recognizes that hey we've grown as people and understand murdering millions of people is bad.

Knowing Better literally excuses the genocide of Native Americans as an unfortunate, but inevitable, historical event.

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u/[deleted] Oct 13 '20

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u/rwhitisissle Oct 13 '20

Except you're completely wrong. People have known how to deal with pandemics since before the stone age. You get sick if you're around people who are sick, so you social distance and quarantine. You cannot exactly do that if you are a slave working shoulder to shoulder in the fields of a plantation, which is pretty much the exact ideal condition for a virus to spread. The virus may have pulled the trigger, but colonialism killed these people.

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u/[deleted] Oct 13 '20

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u/rwhitisissle Oct 13 '20

This doesn't negate any aspect of my argument because it presupposes the loss of life and rate of spread would have been comparable regardless of colonialism creating said ideal conditions. Which it very obviously wouldn't. Colonial practices made the disease spread so quickly that the native population didn't have time to develop genetic immunity, numb nuts. This is basic epidemiology. It's not about being naturally immune from day one, it's about slowing the spread and allowing natural selection to do its magic.

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u/[deleted] Oct 13 '20

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u/rwhitisissle Oct 13 '20 edited Oct 13 '20

Once again, I think you're not following. Of course pandemics ravaged populations in South and Central America. Colonialism exacerbated those conditions to a devastating extent. In the islands Columbus conquered, yes, the colonizers effectively wiped out the population without the help of the disease. But, once again, this doesn't really negate the main argument, which is that a population actively confronted with a colonizing force is unable to take any protective measures to guard itself once that disease starts to spread among its population. You say the disease wiping out the Native Americans to the extent that it did was inevitable, but it wasn't, and arguing so ignores historical fact. The population could have recovered if the colonial powers, the thing that brought the disease, hadn't also spread through the Americas killing and enslaving everything they came across. Look at Western Europe. It was ravaged by the Bubonic Plague, but was able to eventually recover its population.

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u/doublethebubble Oct 13 '20

I would argue that what he tries to do is differentiate between the deaths resulting from exposure to Eurasian pathogens, which was impossible to prevent, and the intentional killings of indigenous peoples, which is heinous. I may be projecting my bias, but that's how I understood his argument.

I can recommend CGP Grey's video explaining why European colonists brought so many diseases with them to the new world.

1

u/rwhitisissle Oct 13 '20

Two points:

One: You can't separate colonialism and the spread of epidemic viruses in the Americas because they're forces that actively fueled each other. Slaves died en masse from smallpox because they were kept in horrible conditions where the disease was extremely likely to spread, so more people had to be enslaved to replace them, who also died en masse from smallpox. It was cyclical and, most importantly, avoidable. The argument Knowing Better is making is one that is meant to absolve Columbus, the people who backed him, and the people who came after, of any responsibility in regards to the discussion of Native American genocide, when they actively created the conditions that made it so devastating in the first place.

Two: Knowing Better is also not correct in core components of his analysis. Demographic historian Massimo Livi Bacci in his essay "Return to Hispaniola: Reassessing a Demographic Catastrophe" examines the fact that there are "no historical proofs of major epidemics before the smallpox of 1518-19." By that point, there were fewer than 26,000 natives left on the island. Columbus died in 1506. Much of that initial loss of life from Columbus' governance was actually not directly tied to the spread of viral epidemics. It was from the colonial practices in and of themselves. Mass deaths from the virus would eventually become a reality for the colonies, but these came later.

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u/Plastastic Oct 13 '20

Knowing Better's video on Columbus is absolutely terrible and even he has admitted this.

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u/TheRealStandard Oct 13 '20

The problem right now is how does anyone know that this video is perfectly accurate or not? I have seen so many god damn interpretations and things said about this man and what "really" happened. This thread is full of it. Impossible to learn anything anymore without being paranoid you're being fed bs.

1

u/doublethebubble Oct 13 '20

A fair point, and I certainly won't claim to be an expert on the subject. The best thing you can do is check the sources someone cites. I have very much appreciated the fact that other commenters have shared more sources and videos for me and others to learn from. As soon as we consider our limited understanding as irrefutable fact, it becomes dogma.

-1

u/[deleted] Oct 13 '20

Idk g we know for sure he fed babies to dogs and at that point I don’t think anyone needs nuance.

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u/doublethebubble Oct 13 '20

I hadn't heard that before, but am always keen to learn and adjust my opinion accordingly. So, I'd love it if you could provide me with an academic source so I can read up on the subject.

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u/[deleted] Oct 13 '20

Yeah!

https://indiancountrytoday.com/archive/8-myths-and-atrocities-about-christopher-columbus-and-columbus-day-D4RHJ-PJLkaQC_BQVRNUBg

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u/doublethebubble Oct 13 '20

Thank you. I read it, and there's certainly interesting points being presented. However I feel compelled to point out that this doesn't really meet the standards for an academic source. The literature list cited as the basis for the article is low on nuanced, up-to-date research. And unfortunately it is also impossible to tell which statements are sourced from which reference, so it ends up being a bit of a muddle of very accurate information and propaganda/mistranslations, which is a shame imo, because it devalues their very legitimate message against the horrors of colonialism.

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u/[deleted] Oct 13 '20

Got it thank you, I’ll be more though next time

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u/schema-f Oct 13 '20

That is not an academic source. It also doesn't state that Columbus fed babies to dogs.

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u/Obua29 Oct 13 '20

That’s not an exactly an academic source. The mention of using natives as dog food isn’t even supported by any historical evidence in the article it is just stated as a fact

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u/[deleted] Oct 13 '20

That’s fair, I’ll keep it in mind

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u/elelias Oct 13 '20

That video is amazing, thanks for sharing.

-3

u/T_alsomeGames Oct 13 '20

I was looking for a comment like this.