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Oct 8, 2015 · Christopher Columbus wasn't Italian? Kris Lane, professor of colonial Latin American history at Tulane University, busts five myths about the explorer. (Video: The Washington Post)
Oct 12, 2015 · When Christopher Columbus does come up in the media or the classroom, he is usually simply bashed or praised, depending on the viewpoint of the speaker. In either case, he remains more myth than man.
- Myth 1: He Was A Violent Man.
- Myth 2: He Committed Genocide.
- Myth 3: He Instituted The Slave Trade.
- Myth 4: He Had only Worldly Interests.
- Myth 5: He Did Not Accomplish Anything Extraordinary.
Las Casas spoke of Columbus’ “sweetness and benignity.” Far from being a violent man, he often got into difficulties because he would be indulgent — toward natives and Spaniards — and would then take extreme measures against bothwhen things got out of hand. He was a great navigator but a poor governor. By his third voyage, he was cautioning Ferdina...
There was no “genocide” during these early voyages, though many natives died from unfamiliar diseases and clashes between two very different cultures. The Americas had been isolated from the rest of the world for millennia, which is why people here, though they had had their own plagues, were especially vulnerable to diseases from outside. Nonethel...
Columbus was not interested in the slave trade; his goal was to set up a trading post or, later, an agricultural colony on the island of Hispaniola, today’s Dominican Republic and Haiti. He did, however, take slaves as prisoners of war, or where he found violations of natural law, such as human sacrifice or cannibalism — the only reasons Spain perm...
People often claim that Columbus was motivated by “God, gold and glory,” but assume God was just a cover for worldly interests. In fact, his religious devotion was sincere. Among other things, we know from his writings that he felt that he had been given a role in spreading the Gospel to all nations, which had to happen before Christ could return. ...
Many also claim that Columbus did not “discover” the New World. Those living here already knew where they were, the argument goes, and didn’t need to be discovered. This is a half-truth. Indigenous peoples, of course, knew their own lands. They did not know that they were part of a larger world. One reason we especially honor Columbus is that he be...
This article discusses the different myths of Christopher Columbus and their validity. The “traditional Columbus myth – which awards him personal credit for anything good that ever came out of America since 1492 – originated in the War of Independence” when our Founding Fathers were in search of an American hero on which to found the ...
Oct 5, 2020 · 1. Columbus set out to prove the world was round. If he did, he was about 2,000 years too late. Ancient Greek mathematicians had already proven that the Earth was round, not flat. Pythagoras in the sixth century B.C.E. was one of the originators of the idea.
Oct 11, 2015 · 1. Columbus proved the “flat Earth” theory wrong. In an early scene in the 1992 Ridley Scott film “1492: Conquest of Paradise,” Columbus, played by Gérard Depardieu, gazes out at the...
Oct 10, 2011 · So, why the conflicting stories? Well, we wanted to take this opportunity to brush up on some of the facts about Christopher Columbus that we may never have learned or have forgotten from...
