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Chris Columbus

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Poll Question: What do you think of Columbus? (scale 1-10; 1=worst, 10=best)
Poll Choice Votes Poll Statistics
7 [33.33%]
0 [0.00%]
1 [4.76%]
1 [4.76%]
2 [9.52%]
1 [4.76%]
2 [9.52%]
2 [9.52%]
2 [9.52%]
3 [14.29%]
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Le Renard View Drop Down
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  Quote Le Renard Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Topic: Chris Columbus
    Posted: 29-Aug-2005 at 14:53

In 1492 Chris Columbus landed on the New World which we all know is N. America.  He did many awful things to the natives in order to get gold for *Spain (I had England before). 

What are your feeling on him?  I am glad that he found the land of America, that made it possible for me to live here and enjoy what I enjoy, yet on the other hand, I hate what he did to the Native Americans. I would give him a 6.



Edited by Le Renard
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  Quote Seko Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 29-Aug-2005 at 15:00

Cristof was a hired hand for the Spaniards not England.

I'll give him a 9 for being an explorer and a successful one at that.

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  Quote Emperor Barbarossa Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 29-Aug-2005 at 16:07
Columbus was a great explorer. He was the second European to find the New World. It is sad though that he eventually gets thrown in jail.

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  Quote ill_teknique Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 29-Aug-2005 at 16:22
not to me , while he was an explorer he was extremely luck too , but anyone who read his journals should be disgusted by his visions of enslavement of the native populations and the eventual enslavement and genocide of 80-90 percent of the regions population where the Spanish were at at the time
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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 29-Aug-2005 at 16:29
Columbus is an extremely cool and interesting person, but at the same time he caused a lot of crimes. Of course I don't like his view of non-Europeans, but he wasn't the only one back then who thought like that. Anyway, I don't think Columbus can be held accountable for the Native American genocide. He only discovered America, he even did it accidentally. It were his antedecessors who were accountable for most of the cirmes.
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  Quote ill_teknique Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 29-Aug-2005 at 16:36
I dont know about him not being responsible, I mean if you read his personal journals he describes very vividly his position on the Native Americans and what uses he could have for them.  If he didnt finish it he sure started it, but there were other factors involved as well, the Spanish govt, etc, etc,
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  Quote ArmenianSurvival Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 29-Aug-2005 at 16:47
Columbus was in fact very ethnocentric and would have committed mass genocide if he had more power. When Columbus "landed on America", the first place he reached was the Bahamas. Here, he viewed the Native Arawak peoples of the Islands. He then wrote this in his official captain's log: "They would make fine servants...With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want."

If that is the first thought he has of the New World, imagine all the horrible things he committed after he established some sort of power there. There are documented stories which state that Columbus did in fact order the killing of many native peoples, including women and children, and exploited their labor to the point where they were all virtual slaves. Its all documented, he was in fact a very exploitative and ethnocentered man. He ruled this way in all the other places he went to including the modern-day countries of Haiti and the Dominican Republic (known as the Island of Hispaniola). And he would have done the same if he actually landed in India because until the moment he died he thought he had in fact reached India. Ya, he found America by mistake, but he knew what he was doing to these people from day 1.

And sure, hes a very exceptional navigator, im not saying the man was not competant, but dont let that compensate for killing thousands of innocent people.

And yes he did help propel enormous and unprecedented change across the globe. But was that change worth the cost? That is up to you. Its just that everyone talks about how great of a person Columbus was, but no one ever mentions anything else he did, its very biased.

Edited by ArmenianSurvival
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  Quote Jalisco Lancer Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 30-Aug-2005 at 00:58


Genocide of the american population.
I score him with 1
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  Quote tadamson Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 30-Aug-2005 at 09:55
The real issue with Columbus was that he was stupid.

He wasn't mocked by his peers because he thought that the world was round (that was common knowledge), he was mocked becaus he thought that the circumferance of the world was only 20,000 km (it had been correctly calculated at 40,000 km 2000 years earlier).

As it was they nearly starved befor they reach Bermuda (which he thougt was just off the Phillapines).

-  daft as a brush definate 1
rgds.

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  Quote Styrbiorn Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 30-Aug-2005 at 10:03
Originally posted by Le Renard

In 1492 Chris Columbus landed on the New World which we all know is N. America. He did many awful things to the natives in order to get gold for *Spain (I had England before).


Just pointing out that the New World was/is all of America from Alaska down to Tierra del Fuego.


And you can't be "daft as a brush" if you can pull off what he did.
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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 30-Aug-2005 at 15:51

[QUOTE=tadamson]The real issue with Columbus was that he was stupid.

He wasn't mocked by his peers because he thought that the world was round (that was common knowledge), he was mocked becaus he thought that the circumferance of the world was only 20,000 km (it had been correctly calculated at 40,000 km 2000 years earlier).

As it was they nearly starved befor they reach Bermuda (which he thougt was just off the Phillapines).

What on earth are you talking about?  The fact that the earth is round was common knowledge in 1492?  That's ridiculous.  I'm also not sure about the correct circumference being calculated 2000 years earier, that seems old to me.  Also, the Philippines were discovered much later so Columbus wouldn't have thought he was there.

Revisionist history demands that Columbus be castigated for his views and treatment of the natives in the western hemisphere.  However, look to the context of the time and this can be explained I think.  This doesn't make his views right, but it makes it impossible to pick out one person who should be blamed for those views.  Additionally, Columbus can hardly be blamed for the disease that he and his successors unknowingly brought to the new world......a greater cause for native death than conquistadors.

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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 30-Aug-2005 at 16:58
Originally posted by Achilles03

What on earth are you talking about?  The fact that the earth is round was common knowledge in 1492?  That's ridiculous.

It is not ridiculous, it's a fact. Medieval people (at least the educated ones) were well aware that the earth was round. The tale that people in the Middle Ages thought that the earth is flat was made up in the 19th century.
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  Quote strategos Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 30-Aug-2005 at 17:38

He was brave.

People tend to judge him too much today by modern standards, and we must remember that was how it was done in the past, even though some of the stuff he and his men  did was very cruel.

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  Quote Constantine XI Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 30-Aug-2005 at 22:42

It is true that most properly educated people at the time knew the earth was round (those who didn't were looked down on as being rather quaint).

I give him a 10 for being a great leader of men, being very intelligent, an excellant sea farer and being quite brave. He is not responsible for the genocide and exploitation which followed. In the end he was that little bit braver and more intelligent than his contemporaries and set out to achieve something he thought was great, an alternative route to the East. That the Spanish government and her citizens should do what they did to the land is something for which they should carry the blame, not Columbus who was merely responsible for exploring.

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  Quote ill_teknique Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 31-Aug-2005 at 02:47
^^ he himself was governor of hispanolia and himself participated i the enslavement and explotation of the natives it was during that time that the population of natives in hispanolia dropped criticaly
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  Quote tadamson Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 31-Aug-2005 at 04:12
Originally posted by Achilles03


What on earth are you talking about?  The fact that the earth is round was common knowledge in 1492?  That's ridiculous.  I'm also not sure about the correct circumference being calculated 2000 years earier, that seems old to me.  Also, the Philippines were discovered much later so Columbus wouldn't have thought he was there.


Look up Eratosthenes (276-194 BC) who calculated the circumferance of the Earth (his result was 250,000 stadia so slightly over), distance to sun and moon, tilt of the Earths axis etc...  This was all incorporated into the various Greek texts and by 1492 published throughout Europe (ok it's nerly 1700 years rather than 2000).  Europeans didn't "discover" (viz actually land there) the Philippines till later but the exsistance of the large islands as the most Easterly of the spice islands at the same lattitude as the Canaries was known.  This gave Columbus a simple route.  Go to the Canaries and sail due West.
rgds.

      Tom..
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  Quote gcle2003 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 31-Aug-2005 at 16:30

Originally posted by Mixcoatl

Originally posted by Achilles03

What on earth are you talking about?  The fact that the earth is round was common knowledge in 1492?  That's ridiculous.

It is not ridiculous, it's a fact. Medieval people (at least the educated ones) were well aware that the earth was round. The tale that people in the Middle Ages thought that the earth is flat was made up in the 19th century.
 

You may be confusing round=spherical with round=disc-shaped. But I'd agree the theory that the earth was spherical was around in ancient times. It was really the (assumed) Christian requirement that Christ's return would be simultaneously visible to everyone that meant most Christians though the earth was flat.

 

 

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  Quote gcle2003 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 31-Aug-2005 at 16:33

Originally posted by tadamson

Originally posted by Achilles03


What on earth are you talking about?  The fact that the earth is round was common knowledge in 1492?  That's ridiculous.  I'm also not sure about the correct circumference being calculated 2000 years earier, that seems old to me.  Also, the Philippines were discovered much later so Columbus wouldn't have thought he was there.


Look up Eratosthenes (276-194 BC) who calculated the circumferance of the Earth (his result was 250,000 stadia so slightly over), distance to sun and moon, tilt of the Earths axis etc...  This was all incorporated into the various Greek texts and by 1492 published throughout Europe (ok it's nerly 1700 years rather than 2000).  Europeans didn't "discover" (viz actually land there) the Philippines till later but the exsistance of the large islands as the most Easterly of the spice islands at the same lattitude as the Canaries was known.  This gave Columbus a simple route.  Go to the Canaries and sail due West.

That wasn't why Columbus went south and then west. It was because that's the way the prevailing winds go (which was well-known at the time). Sailing ships went on taking approximately that route until the age of steam. (and you come back from the Caribbean by sailing north-east before you sail east).

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