Nobody celebrates Columbus because of what he did as the first Spanish Governor of the Indies, especially what he did to the natives. Rather, he is celebrated for establishing a sustained linkage between the two hemispheres; Columbus's first voyage represents the moment in history when civilization became global in scope.
Of course, the radical egalitarians and environmentalists who romanticize primitivism hate Columbus for the very same reason. They in fact don't have any principled objections to murderers and slavers as such, just as they refuse to analyze the morality of establishing land claims in terms of John Locke's standard of mixing one's labor with the soil. What they really hate is civilization itself, and of course the institution of private ownership that serves as the foundation of any advanced civilization.
I think their hate is for themselves; guilt for being alive and guilt for being too cowardly to kill themselves. It's easy to extend that to hating the world for letting them live, but I think the core hate is of themselves.
I could be wrong. They plainly hate a lot more than is healthy, and assigning a specific target doesn't really help understand them.
Caplan's perspective is fundamentally childlike. Rather than seek to understand our ancestors and their actions, he sets himself up as judge and jury, and divides them into guilty and innocent, good and evil. This is the comic book view of history. Morally, Caplan is a case of arrested development. Based on the evidence of the Torah, were any of the ancient Hebrew kings and prophets not slavers and murderers?
I don't believe in collective guilt, it's nonsense used by demagogues. One can get on the Moral high horse and judge the past with incomplete information, but again it's easy to judge when you sit on the sidelines.
These days, when I see anything being written about colonization, I think about the bizarre "200 graves of indigenous children" moral panic going on now (but finally fizzling out) in Canada. Somebody alleged that ground-penetrating tech had discovered these graves, and the story was an absolute wildfire that swept across the country. Everyone went nuts.
And yet, no actual graves have been found, despite great efforts to locate them and excavate. However some of the tribal spokespeople say they "know" the graves are there because they can "hear" the dead speaking to them, and, you know, who are we presumptively guilty white people to question that?
Half the country believes the graves are there simply because they want them to be there, as it fits the colonist-oppressor narrative, and these believers score virtue points for indicting their fellow white people. The graves are being wished into existence.
There is massive demand for stories of the victimization of indigenous people. I have never looked into the history of CC, but I don't doubt that he did horrible shit. Europeans of his era did not see primitive people as fully human, so they often treated them like animals.
Modern writers who sensationalize these types of stories are creating outrage porn.
There was a story in the last month or so, some high politician warning people to not publicize the fact that no graves have been found, because that would be hate speech or something.
If only people with your 2026 values had been a significant part of the population throughout history. So many bad things would have been avoided. So much progress would have been made. What an extraordinary gift you are to the human race! If we can only maximize your value set for the next millennium, the world can achieve utopia.
Judging Christopher Columbus or any historical figure by modern ethical standards is a profound methodological error known in scholarship as presentism. The very moral norms you are using to judge him simply did not exist back then. If we follow this flawed logic consistently, absolutely all of our ancestors and greatest thinkers—from Aristotle to the Founding Fathers of the United States—automatically become villains. Aristotle viewed slavery as natural, and medieval rulers waged wars strictly by the rules of their time.
History demands historicism—analyzing a figure strictly within the context of their era. Columbus was a child of his time, the 15th century, where conquest was a civic virtue. A virtue, do you understand? Everyone thought this way; it was the absolute norm. This is exactly how the entire society of that era evaluated it. Accusing him by today's criteria is just as absurd as putting a medieval doctor on trial for not knowing about antibiotics and treating patients with bloodletting. We must strive to understand what past societies were truly like, what drove people back then, and what their motives and goals were—rather than handing out moral verdicts from the high horse of the present.
No mention of Cortez, Pizarro, Balboa, Alvarado or Ponce de Leon. Caplan , you are a typical poorly educated, virtue signalling "influencer". Your focus on the one name known to every half educated American gives away your level of thoughtlessness.
I've read the primary documents. I've seen no evidence that Columbus was a slaver.
He did take cannibals prisoner and take them to Spain for punishment and rehabilitation, some of which involved temporary indentured servitude.
I have encountered plenty of examples of Columbus's benevolence in the primary sources.
Many accusations were made against Columbus by his enemies, but the fraudulent nature of these accusations is illuminated by the barbaric actions of the accusers after Columbus was out of the picture.
He established the encomienda system there, which was effectively slavery. de Las Casas says he killed and mutilated natives to failed to meet gold quotas. I guess you at least have to give Columbus that he handed out terrible punishment to both natives and Spaniards.
My understanding is that although de Las Casas clearly exaggerated the numbers of the murders and atrocities directed by Columbus, historians largely agree that the nature of the allegations is accurate.
And there's no question that Columbus told the Spanish sovereigns that the native people were ripe for use as forced labor because they lacked weapons with which to defend themselves.
This is all pretty terrible. What's less clear is whether it was just normal for the day. The fact that he was arrested for his abuses and sent back to Spain is telling, though probably that was for abusing the Spanish colonists rather than the natives. Ferdinand and Isabella didn't punish him criminally, but they did strip him of his title, and he was explicitly barred from ever returning to Hispaniola, so his behavior apparently crossed a line for them.
It's certainly fair to say that he was less bad than Cortes or Pizarro -- and they weren't punished criminally for their conquest murders. So maybe it was just normal for his era. I'm hesitant to judge historical figures by modern mores.
Slavery is hard to describe and even define. I get the impression that in spite of my response to FFP, some slaves were treated better than others; when your tutor, cook, and barber were slaves, it's hard to think they were treated as badly as the criminal variety slaving away in mines.
I think slavery must have gotten worse over the ages. Galley rowers in Greek and Roman times were not slaves, but those of Columbus's time were. What changed? I have only a few ideas:
* War was more likely to kill than capture, yielding fewer "natural" slaves and leading to expeditions to proactively find slaves. I have no evidence for this, and if it happened, it was before widespread use of guns. It's just a wild-assed guess.
* Technology was changing work from mostly menial which slaves could do, to more technological which slaves were lousy at. It's easy to judge which slaves were not picking enough cotton; it's harder to tell which slaves are intentionally lousy weavers.
* Related to that, technology required more skill and paid more, and the guilds might not have approved of slaves taking their jobs.
* The plague killed 1/3 or more of the population and put labor in charge for a while. Pay went up, freedom went up, and it was easier to get good work out of free men than slaves.
And maybe the nature of slavery did not change. Maybe the printing press just made knowledge of slavery easier to disseminate and seem worse. How many craftsmen or apprentices actually understood slavery, first hand, as opposed to stories in the seventh generation of passing from village to village?
This is a cheap historical shot. Slavery was historically the more merciful alternative of putting conquered enemies to death. St Paul treats it as a status which requires obedience but equally requires a master to look after his slave as a fellow Christian. The truth is that ancient post pagan house slavery in the Later Roman Empire was a lot milder than Negro chattel slavery or Ottoman galleys or harems. It was more like being the born domestic servant of a household.
Yet Roman law required executing every slave in a household if the master was murdered by a slave. Some accounts say this extended to previous slaves who had been freed. That's nothing close to being like a domestic servant.
Slavery was normal, and it sucked. They are not mutually incompatible.
Bad identity philosophy. With either eternal inflation or Everettian quantum mechanics (Many Worlds), all physically possible events (including you or anyone else) not only exist, they exist an indefinite number of times. Also, try to read some better accounts of Columbus, or even just history in general.
Singling out Columbus for what was common practice, even among the natives, is performance theater, virtue signalling, and disreputable.
Nobody celebrates Columbus because of what he did as the first Spanish Governor of the Indies, especially what he did to the natives. Rather, he is celebrated for establishing a sustained linkage between the two hemispheres; Columbus's first voyage represents the moment in history when civilization became global in scope.
Of course, the radical egalitarians and environmentalists who romanticize primitivism hate Columbus for the very same reason. They in fact don't have any principled objections to murderers and slavers as such, just as they refuse to analyze the morality of establishing land claims in terms of John Locke's standard of mixing one's labor with the soil. What they really hate is civilization itself, and of course the institution of private ownership that serves as the foundation of any advanced civilization.
I think their hate is for themselves; guilt for being alive and guilt for being too cowardly to kill themselves. It's easy to extend that to hating the world for letting them live, but I think the core hate is of themselves.
I could be wrong. They plainly hate a lot more than is healthy, and assigning a specific target doesn't really help understand them.
Caplan's perspective is fundamentally childlike. Rather than seek to understand our ancestors and their actions, he sets himself up as judge and jury, and divides them into guilty and innocent, good and evil. This is the comic book view of history. Morally, Caplan is a case of arrested development. Based on the evidence of the Torah, were any of the ancient Hebrew kings and prophets not slavers and murderers?
I don't believe in collective guilt, it's nonsense used by demagogues. One can get on the Moral high horse and judge the past with incomplete information, but again it's easy to judge when you sit on the sidelines.
how is it "collective guilt" to judge one man based on his documented crimes?
These days, when I see anything being written about colonization, I think about the bizarre "200 graves of indigenous children" moral panic going on now (but finally fizzling out) in Canada. Somebody alleged that ground-penetrating tech had discovered these graves, and the story was an absolute wildfire that swept across the country. Everyone went nuts.
And yet, no actual graves have been found, despite great efforts to locate them and excavate. However some of the tribal spokespeople say they "know" the graves are there because they can "hear" the dead speaking to them, and, you know, who are we presumptively guilty white people to question that?
Half the country believes the graves are there simply because they want them to be there, as it fits the colonist-oppressor narrative, and these believers score virtue points for indicting their fellow white people. The graves are being wished into existence.
There is massive demand for stories of the victimization of indigenous people. I have never looked into the history of CC, but I don't doubt that he did horrible shit. Europeans of his era did not see primitive people as fully human, so they often treated them like animals.
Modern writers who sensationalize these types of stories are creating outrage porn.
There was a story in the last month or so, some high politician warning people to not publicize the fact that no graves have been found, because that would be hate speech or something.
If only people with your 2026 values had been a significant part of the population throughout history. So many bad things would have been avoided. So much progress would have been made. What an extraordinary gift you are to the human race! If we can only maximize your value set for the next millennium, the world can achieve utopia.
Judging Christopher Columbus or any historical figure by modern ethical standards is a profound methodological error known in scholarship as presentism. The very moral norms you are using to judge him simply did not exist back then. If we follow this flawed logic consistently, absolutely all of our ancestors and greatest thinkers—from Aristotle to the Founding Fathers of the United States—automatically become villains. Aristotle viewed slavery as natural, and medieval rulers waged wars strictly by the rules of their time.
History demands historicism—analyzing a figure strictly within the context of their era. Columbus was a child of his time, the 15th century, where conquest was a civic virtue. A virtue, do you understand? Everyone thought this way; it was the absolute norm. This is exactly how the entire society of that era evaluated it. Accusing him by today's criteria is just as absurd as putting a medieval doctor on trial for not knowing about antibiotics and treating patients with bloodletting. We must strive to understand what past societies were truly like, what drove people back then, and what their motives and goals were—rather than handing out moral verdicts from the high horse of the present.
No mention of Cortez, Pizarro, Balboa, Alvarado or Ponce de Leon. Caplan , you are a typical poorly educated, virtue signalling "influencer". Your focus on the one name known to every half educated American gives away your level of thoughtlessness.
I've read the primary documents. I've seen no evidence that Columbus was a slaver.
He did take cannibals prisoner and take them to Spain for punishment and rehabilitation, some of which involved temporary indentured servitude.
I have encountered plenty of examples of Columbus's benevolence in the primary sources.
Many accusations were made against Columbus by his enemies, but the fraudulent nature of these accusations is illuminated by the barbaric actions of the accusers after Columbus was out of the picture.
He established the encomienda system there, which was effectively slavery. de Las Casas says he killed and mutilated natives to failed to meet gold quotas. I guess you at least have to give Columbus that he handed out terrible punishment to both natives and Spaniards.
My understanding is that although de Las Casas clearly exaggerated the numbers of the murders and atrocities directed by Columbus, historians largely agree that the nature of the allegations is accurate.
And there's no question that Columbus told the Spanish sovereigns that the native people were ripe for use as forced labor because they lacked weapons with which to defend themselves.
This is all pretty terrible. What's less clear is whether it was just normal for the day. The fact that he was arrested for his abuses and sent back to Spain is telling, though probably that was for abusing the Spanish colonists rather than the natives. Ferdinand and Isabella didn't punish him criminally, but they did strip him of his title, and he was explicitly barred from ever returning to Hispaniola, so his behavior apparently crossed a line for them.
It's certainly fair to say that he was less bad than Cortes or Pizarro -- and they weren't punished criminally for their conquest murders. So maybe it was just normal for his era. I'm hesitant to judge historical figures by modern mores.
Slavery is hard to describe and even define. I get the impression that in spite of my response to FFP, some slaves were treated better than others; when your tutor, cook, and barber were slaves, it's hard to think they were treated as badly as the criminal variety slaving away in mines.
I think slavery must have gotten worse over the ages. Galley rowers in Greek and Roman times were not slaves, but those of Columbus's time were. What changed? I have only a few ideas:
* War was more likely to kill than capture, yielding fewer "natural" slaves and leading to expeditions to proactively find slaves. I have no evidence for this, and if it happened, it was before widespread use of guns. It's just a wild-assed guess.
* Technology was changing work from mostly menial which slaves could do, to more technological which slaves were lousy at. It's easy to judge which slaves were not picking enough cotton; it's harder to tell which slaves are intentionally lousy weavers.
* Related to that, technology required more skill and paid more, and the guilds might not have approved of slaves taking their jobs.
* The plague killed 1/3 or more of the population and put labor in charge for a while. Pay went up, freedom went up, and it was easier to get good work out of free men than slaves.
And maybe the nature of slavery did not change. Maybe the printing press just made knowledge of slavery easier to disseminate and seem worse. How many craftsmen or apprentices actually understood slavery, first hand, as opposed to stories in the seventh generation of passing from village to village?
Who owes any historical figure “gratitude”?
Am I thankful the New World was discovered? Yes.
Was it a net good or evil? I would say good so far. Definitely mixed though.
Am I grateful to Columbus or Lincoln or whomever? Nope.
The “show Columbus proper gratitude” argument" works because revenge is the holiest of holies. Even GOD IS OBLIGATED to punish evil.
It is staggering how universal that is.
This is a cheap historical shot. Slavery was historically the more merciful alternative of putting conquered enemies to death. St Paul treats it as a status which requires obedience but equally requires a master to look after his slave as a fellow Christian. The truth is that ancient post pagan house slavery in the Later Roman Empire was a lot milder than Negro chattel slavery or Ottoman galleys or harems. It was more like being the born domestic servant of a household.
Yet Roman law required executing every slave in a household if the master was murdered by a slave. Some accounts say this extended to previous slaves who had been freed. That's nothing close to being like a domestic servant.
Slavery was normal, and it sucked. They are not mutually incompatible.
Bad identity philosophy. With either eternal inflation or Everettian quantum mechanics (Many Worlds), all physically possible events (including you or anyone else) not only exist, they exist an indefinite number of times. Also, try to read some better accounts of Columbus, or even just history in general.
It's viewed as a collective condemnation by those living today, thus disavowing Columbus' reputation.