Italian American Heritage Project

The Italian American Heritage Project (IAHP)  provides educational resources about Italian American history, heritage, and culture with a straightforward view on the roles of Italians in American history and culture.

IMMIGRATION

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BEING ITALIAN AMERICAN

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   All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced without permission except when published with this credit: Excerpt from the Italian American Heritage Project, ©2018-2024 Janice Therese Mancuso. Copyright 2018-2024 Janice Therese Mancuso Contact: jtmancuso@earthlink.net         Subject: IAHP         

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Did Columbus establish a pattern of violence under conquest or was that pattern established from the beginning of human history? Blaming Columbus Much has been written about the violence perpetrated on the natives of the islands where Columbus landed in 1492 and during his subsequent landings from 1493 to 1504. According to these authors, Columbus is responsible for the torture and genocide of – what some claim – may be millions of natives and is also blamed for initiating slave trade. Authors who vilify Columbus do their best to demean him, mocking him for his background, his numerous attempts for funding, his lack of suitable connections, his insistence on a title and percentage of compensation, his miscalculations and error in believing he landed in India or China, and his, now in quotes, discovery of the New World. Apply these attributes – difficult background, early failures, rejection, limitations, mistakes, but with a sense of worth – to just about any accomplished person today and the descriptive words change to hard working, a will to succeed, persevering, didn’t give up, didn’t fit in, a believer. Many authors take the liberty to “know” or presume what Columbus was thinking. All point out the consequences of his discovery as if his colonization of the islands for Spain was the first case of conquest and violence in history. They also claim the natives lived in some type of paradise; not addressing what the outcome may have been if anyone else from Europe or another continent landed and settled on the islands. Conquest Columbus is attacked for his treatment of the natives, but one underlying cause was conflicts between the natives and the Spaniards. That started after Columbus returned to Spain, when the natives killed all the men in a small fort built at Navidad, the first European settlement on the islands. . When Columbus returned on his second voyage, arriving with over 1,000 men to establish the Spanish colony, the natives were more resistant. The islands were under Columbus’s rule, but he placed others in charge of the various forts being constructed with instructions to be kind to the natives. Accustomed to the European approach, the Spaniard’s demand of the natives caused numerous battles, and many natives were slaughtered because they could not defend themselves. Conquest is a part of history; and almost every country has a history of battles won and lost. In January 2016, it was reported that evidence of warfare from 10,000 years ago was found at Nataruk in northern Kenya. Identified as a “conflict between two nomadic hunter-gatherer groups,” the skeletal remains signify the “earliest known evidence of human conflict.” While the circumstances of conflict are different, the causes of conflict are, in most cases, for resources, land, or religion. With Columbus sailing for Spain, in the interest of the King and Queen, the goal was all three: resources, especially the spices of the east – pepper, cinnamon, ginger, cloves – but also gold and other precious metals, and new lands with any inhabitants being converted to Christianity. Columbus labeled his mission La Empresa de las Indies, Enterprise of the Indies. He was intent on finding a western route to the Indies, but he was also under contract with the King and Queen of Spain to provide them with the resources they expected as a result of funding the voyage. Land routes for spice trade blocked during the Ottoman Empire, uprisings caused by religious differences, and Portugal pursuing water routes along the coast of Africa to the east converged with Columbus’s plan and the Spanish monarchy’s desire for expansion, and provided the opportunity for Columbus to sail west. It’s important to understand the causes that led to Columbus’s first voyage. Teaching or writing about history must be presented as it relates to surrounding circumstances. Otherwise, history becomes skewed and when events in history are isolated, it’s easier to distort and twist the recorded accounts. Likewise, choosing one person in history, isolating his life by ignoring the history surrounding his life, attacking him based on misinformation, degrading his undertakings, and berating his accomplishments by not considering the history that affected his decisions and actions, presents a serious defect in the telling and teaching of history. The Books Chapter One of Howard Zinn’s book A People’s History of the United States is the foundation for the denigration of Columbus. On his website, Zinn is described as “a historian, author, professor, playwright, and activist.” In his biography posted on Spartacus Educational, he is quoted from You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train (his autobiography), “From the start, my teaching was infused with my own history. I would try to be fair to other points of view, but I wanted more than ‘objectivity’; I wanted students to leave my classes not just better informed, but more prepared to relinquish the safety of silence, more prepared to speak up, to act against injustice wherever they saw it. This, of course, was a recipe for trouble.” In the first chapter of A People’s History of the United States, Zinn writes, “The historian's distortion is more than technical, it is ideological; it is released into a world of contending interests, where any chosen emphasis supports (whether the historian means to or not) some kind of interest, whether economic or political or racial or national or sexual.” Several paragraphs later, “Thus, in that inevitable taking of sides which comes from selection and emphasis in history, I prefer to try to tell the story of the discovery of America from the viewpoint of the Arawaks.” Zinn writes, “The chief source-and, on many matters the only source-of information about what happened on the islands after Columbus came is Bartolome de las Casas.” Las Casas, identified as a “young priest” by Zinn, is frequently quoted as a savior of the natives and is misrepresented as a colleague of Columbus. Las Casas did not travel with Columbus; he first arrived on the islands in 1502, several months before Columbus arrived on his fourth and last voyage. Las Casas traveled to the islands to take part in Spain’s encomienda system, where land and labor were given to subjects of the conquering nation. He was a priest of a minor order, and remained a slave owner until around 1512 or 1513, when he was ordained a priest and then decided he would declare the natives were being mistreated. His writings about Columbus are from journals and other materials he collected about Columbus; not from first-hand accounts. Still, Zinn quotes las Casas numerous times, as does every other person who quotes Zinn and submits their written account online, based on their belief in Zinn’s book. Zinn also cites Samuel Eliot Morison, whom he claims “was the most distinguished writer on Columbus.” Morison, too, relies on las Cases’s writings, at one point noting, “Las Casas had access to reports from the Admiral to the Sovereigns which have since been lost …” (Why has almost all the documentation that las Casas used to write about Columbus disappeared?) From Morison’s Christopher Columbus, Mariner, Zinn quotes “The cruel policy initiated by Columbus and pursued by his successors resulted in complete genocide.” This sentence appears to be the origin of Columbus and genocide; and it is repeatedly used by those who abhor Columbus. However, preceding that sentence, Morison wrote, “By 1508 a census showed 60,000 of the estimated 1492 population of 250,000 still alive … Fifty years later, not 500 remained.” (Columbus died in 1506.) It’s not clear if Morison was relying on the writings of las Casas or a letter written about the second voyage and the treatment of the natives by Michele da (or de) Cuneo to back up his remark. Little is known about da Cuneo; some claim he was a childhood friend of Columbus, but the connection between the two has not been firmly established. Understand History History, including the history of the Americas, did not begin with Columbus. Numerous countries – on both sides of the Atlantic – have lost civilizations and many have a history of slave trading. Columbus did not plan to annihilate an entire population and he did not initiate slave trade. That began in the mid-1440s with the transatlantic slave trade from Africa to Portugal. Infante Dom Henrique of Portugal, known as Henry the Navigator, sponsored sea travel along the coast of Africa in an attempt to find a route to India. Whether kidnapped or sold by tribe leaders, the African slave trade was an instrumental part of Portugal’s economy; and in 1444, the first slave market was built in Lagos, opening up slave trade throughout Europe. In his article, Time to Abolish Columbus Day, Bill Bigelow writes, “The eminent historian of Africa, Basil Davidson, also assigns responsibility to Columbus for initiating the African slave trade to the Americas. According to Davidson, the first license granted to send enslaved Africans to the Caribbean was issued by the king and queen in 1501, during Columbus’s rule in the Indies, leading Davidson to dub Columbus the ‘father of the slave trade.’” Columbus did not rule the islands in 1501. Accused of mismanagement, Columbus was sent back to Spain, in chains, in October 1500. Francisco de Bobadilla was made governor of the islands until he was replaced in 1502. Columbus was exonerated and many of the privileges taken by Bobadilla were returned, but he never regained the title of Governor of the islands. Zinn states, “To emphasize the heroism of Columbus and his successors as navigators and discoverers, and to de-emphasize their genocide, is not a technical necessity but an ideological choice. It serves-unwittingly-to justify what was done. My point is not that we must, in telling history, accuse, judge, condemn Columbus in absentia. It is too late for that; it would be a useless scholarly exercise in morality.” He elaborates, “My point is not to grieve for the victims and denounce the executioners. Those tears, that anger, cast into the past, deplete our moral energy for the present.” Zinn claims, “I don’t want to invent victories for people's movements.” Yet, that is what the Zinn Education Project and Rethinking Schools are doing with their erroneous writings and teachings designed to “Abolish Columbus Day.” While archaeological finds and written records provide accounts of historic events, those who interpret these events should provide a well- rounded discussion on a topic. By constantly defaming the Italian explorer Christopher Columbus, the teachers, institutions, and supporters of Rethinking Schools, a collaborator with the Zinn Education Project not only skew history, but also damage the self worth of the students of Italian heritage they teach.

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