Thursday, October 23, 1997
Put history into context before criticizing past
HISTORY: Columbus a victim of social forces, not malicious
conqueror
By Brent Eldridge
With the advent of Columbus Day, there was much anti-Columbus
propaganda. Some of this sentiment is not misdirected, as The Bruin
so succinctly pointed out in Monday’s editorial, "Protest
antagonizes, not educates audience" (Oct. 20). Admittedly, Columbus
was not the most benevolent of discoverers. Howard Zinn points out
in his wonderful book, "A People’s History of the United States"
(which was required reading in my high school American History
course), the piercing truth: the "us and them" mentality prevalent
in Columbus’ own journal. He goes on to detail the inhumanity of
the colonization process, especially in Hispaniola. But even Zinn
admits that this mentality was not monolithic, nor ideological; his
records are from a monk’s journal, which astounded the author to
have documented such horrible crimes occurring in a Christian
nation.
However, most people, eager to join in on the condemnatory
chorus, do not give the Europeans the same benefit of doubt as they
do the indigenous peoples. Columbus was the product of a world
which had known war and strife for a thousand years. Since the fall
of the western Roman Empire, Europe had been invaded time and
again; Germanic tribes, Moors from Spain, Viking raids, the Huns
and even the Mongol Horde threatened the gates of Europe. In this
world dominated by continuous invasion and instability, an
unconscious ideology was born; it was based on militarization and
mistrust of outsiders. In simplistic terms, it can be boiled down
to: "Kill or be killed."
Columbus was a product of this environment. Spain had only
recently been unified into a single state – a process it still
hasn’t come to terms with. Italy was dominated by the legates of
the Pope, Germany was a multitude of little states, Britain was a
soggy little island busy fighting over who got to be king.
Spaniards realized that a strong central government was a tool
toward stability and peace, albeit internally; their state was
reorganized to meet the requirements of the Roman model, a state
which survived for 1,000 years. What European wouldn’t want to
strive to re-establish the Pax Romana? What European wouldn’t want
to establish new routes for trade which did not have to go through
hostile territory?
This was Columbus’ goal. What he found was something completely
different. He found a place where there was not a strong central
government; he found a land devoid of horsepower; he found a people
who did not fear him as he had expected. In short, he saw easy
pickings. Columbus is not to be lauded for this position, but he
cannot be condemned for it either. His environment, with all its
neuroses, superstitions and fears, pushed him into a
conquer-or-be-conquered mind frame.
The attack on Columbus, while not unfounded, is still
uneducated. One chalk-graffiti message read: "Know your history!"
It is apparent that all do not know their history, on either side
of the question. Many raise Columbus up as an evil man (just as
many claim him a hero), but it was not he himself who committed
these crimes, nor was it he who thought of a step-by-step plan for
wiping the Indians off the face of the earth. He is simply the most
famous explorer who was pushed by the inexorable forces of history.
Many claimed to have found the "New World" – from the Viking
explorers who founded Greenland and Nova Scotia to Amerigo Vespucci
and the unknown others shipwrecked or washed to the West.
Know your history. Understand that Europeans were not mindless
automatons on autopilot to kill. Nor were all Indians; many
Europeans encountered the earthy, altruistic foils to them. Know
your history. Multiplicities exist in every time and in every
place. Just as "diversity" is a catchphrase to describe UCLA, it
can be applied to everything. Any truly educated person understands
that "diversity" and even contradiction is a prerequisite in times,
places and even the individuals themselves. Know your history, and
talk to each other in tones which seek to reconcile; know your
history, and learn that it is history and that we are not slaves to
it. We can still change.