We open our video–documentary series with a scene from Trenton, NJ. There, an empty pedestal, where a statue of Christopher Columbus once stood stands desolate. Eerily, the displaced statue of a man who had changed the entire world lays on its side in a dingy, dusty city warehouse. His face and hands are still covered in red paint, symbolizing blood for all his purported crimes against the indigenous peoples of the Americas and Africans who had arrived in the New World, years after the explorer’s death.

2020 saw many attacks on Columbus and on other American icons such as: Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, and Junípero Serra. In contrast to the attempts to cancel American history, the Consul General of Italy in Philadelphia, Andrea Canepari wrote, “The Christopher Columbus monument in Marconi Plaza (South Philadelphia), the Venturi obelisk, Land Buoy, and other monuments in the city, such as the one dedicated to Octavius Catto, an African American, unveiled in 2017, are ways of recognizing the role of minorities, not oppressing them. In fact, over the last century, the celebration of Columbus in Philadelphia has been one of the measures of the rise of Italian Americans from the status of a denigrated minority; the celebration of this Italian hero in America and Venturi’s 1992 obelisk were, in a sense, a step in the broader revision of history that is now underway in favor of minorities and not against them.”

Nevertheless, over the past few years, Christopher Columbus has come under intense assaults, both verbally and physically. Many attacks seem to come from people who view Columbus as a symbol of a Western Civilization that needs to be demolished. These attacks mirror the Ku Klux Klan’s violent assaults on Columbus, his statues, and the holiday, roughly 100 years ago. Then, the Klan publicly denounced Columbus’ Catholicism, his Italian heritage, and his Spanish patrons– the foundational elements of Western society.  The Klan also held the whole Hispanic people, a product of Western Civilization, in contempt.

Some consider Columbus the New World’s first immigrant who established permanent settlements; though, he himself had traveled back and forth from Spain four times.  He was undoubtedly an intrepid explorer and generations lauded him for traversing dangerous, uncharted seas, along with opening the New World. Over the years, various people from diverse nationalities claim their co-nationals had made the heroic voyage with him. Archives at the National University of Ireland, Galway indicate that Irishman, Guillermo Herries (William Harris) had met Columbus in Ireland years earlier and accompanied him to the New World.  He was part of the crew left by Columbus on Santo Domingo who had been slaughtered by native Carib raiders.  Luis de Torres and a few other Jews, who had converted to Catholicism right before they had left Spain on the King’s orders, also accompanied Columbus.  Columbus took Torres along to serve as an interpreter since Torres knew Hebrew, Chaldaic, and Arabic, and the explorers might meet Mideastern merchants in the Spice Islands.  An African also is reported to have been a member of the crew.  Recent archaeological digs at the La Isabela site, in present day Dominican Republic, seem to confirm this.  Whether all these men were part of the crew is open to debate, but it shows how many ethnic groups wanted to be part of Columbus’ momentous discoveries. 

Columbus opened two large continents and many islands to Europe, Asia, and Africa.  His discoveries enabled the creation of a new Hispanic ethnicity and culture. His expeditions initiated the Modern Era, stimulating and expanding nascent capitalism in Europe, along with accelerating the development of experimental science. It enabled the Columbian exchange, where many different animals and crops were introduced from one hemisphere to the other for the first time in human history. His discoveries began the emergence of Western Europe’s economic, cultural, and intellectual ascendancy.  The discoveries spread Western Civilization and Catholicism to millions in the New World and in Asia. Columbus’ voyages subsequently allowed the influx of New Spain (Mexico) silver into China through the Spanish Philippines. New World riches also helped develop armies and navies to stop the spread of the Ottoman caliphate and the conquest of Central Europe. In addition, Columbus began the Age of Exploration and colonization not only for Spain; Portugal, France, England, the Netherlands, and Sweden quickly followed the Spanish into the New World.

No one can minimize what Columbus did to irrevocably change the world. Some, nevertheless, cast the chief founder of the modern world as a tyrant.  They blame him for institutions that had existed throughout all human history and in nearly all global cultures. He is blamed for violence, conquests, and slavery of peoples who were quite used to violence, conquests, and slavery well before Europeans had arrived. He is blamed for African slavery in the New World; whereas slavery existed in Africa and the New World for millennia, and no African slaves had come to the New World until years after Columbus’ death.

During his time in the New World, Columbus treated his native Taino friends generously and defended them against brutal Carib Indian attacks.  He had even executed Spanish settlers for their abuse of natives.  Columbus fulfilled a promise to his lifelong Taino friend, Chief Guacanagarí and travelled from island to island to free Tainos who had been captured by the Carib cannibals.  He destroyed the Carib boats, seized some of the Carib warriors, and sent them to Spain to prevent future attacks on Tainos. The Italian “Admiral” even adopted one of Chief Guacanagarí’s sons as his own and named him “Diego,” after his own biological son.  His adopted son accompanied Columbus on his final three voyages.

Many of the criticisms regarding Columbus are rooted in a report to the King and Queen from Francisco de Bobadilla.  Scholars who defend Columbus report that Bobadilla lists complaints by Spanish settlers who were upset with the “Italian” Columbus’ policies that had restrained them and had protected Indians from the settlers’ mistreatment. The settlers accused Columbus of committing incredible horrors, leading Bobadilla to arrest Columbus, sending him back to Spain in chains.  Interestingly, once he had arrested Columbus, Bobadilla immediately took Columbus’ position as governor with the support of the Spanish settlers.

Other scholars point out that Bobadilla’s report did show that twenty-three notarized witnesses had spoken to Bobadilla.  Columbus had owed Italian financiers considerable amounts of money for the first voyage.  The Italians had financed 50% of the trip. He also owed people money for the second trip. Witnesses included that he had worked to get those debts paid, many times at the natives’ and the settlers’ expense.

Students can investigate reports of these affidavits in the lessons. Recently, the notarized testimonies were discovered, shedding more light on the Spanish colonial frontier.  The witnesses came from various classes of people and included both women and men, priests, sailors, servants, all with different perspectives. Some witnesses were even Columbus’ friends. History established that Columbus was a fearless adventurer and an inspiring leader of crews on his ships. Certain evidence, however, seems to point out he was a horrible, and even cruel administrator as governor of the colony. 

Once Columbus was back in Spain, the King and Queen realized the charges were not entirely just and released him. They eventually returned his property and restored the title of “Admiral of the Ocean Sea,” which he passed down to his son, Diego. After some time, Columbus was permitted to successfully sail back to the West Indies but was not allowed to go to Santo Domingo.  The monarchs allowed Columbus to use his best talents as a navigator and an explorer, rather than as an administrator.

Ferdinand and Isabella subsequently summoned Bobadilla back to Spain, but tragically he drowned at sea during a hurricane, so we do not know what he would have said to defend himself. In Columbus’ defense, however, the famed protector of the Indians, Bishop Bartolomé de las Casas of Chiapas, Mexico, later wrote that the monarchs had treated Columbus unfairly when they sent Bobadilla to the New World and charged the Admiral with mismanagement. Las Casas defended Columbus against people who blamed him for the disorders and violence that occurred following the first Spanish contacts with indigenous peoples. The great explorer’s missteps, las Casas said, were the result of ignorance of divine law and misjudgments about how to proceed: “Truly, I would not dare blame the admiral’s intentions for I knew him well and I knew his intentions were good.” These serious charges against Columbus and exculpatory evidence are among the issues students will explore in these lessons. 

To think historically, students need to judge Columbus by 15th century standards. Logically, he could only operate within those parameters, not as a 21st century man. Very few men and women of the past satisfy 21st century cultural standards. Examinations of ancient empires and kingdoms and other polities of the past, along with all tribal associations have myriad tales of conquest, plunder, slaughter, colonization, and slavery, among other things the modern person would find distasteful and even abhorrent. When looking at the past, we must understand the cultures as products of their own times. It is fairer to contrast cultures within their own era and with cultures from earlier periods to get the best understanding of the particular society and an individual’s behavior.  Some blame Columbus for the entire conquest of the Western Hemisphere by European powers. They seldom consider that this was normal behavior among nations and tribes for all human history.  As historian Jared Diamond shows in, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, more advanced societies dominate less advanced societies. Those with bronze technology easily defeated stone age peoples. Those with iron technology defeated bronze age cultures. Nations with gunpowder and guns routed those with spears and arrows, whether in Europe, Asia, Africa, or the Americas. In 1492, Spain had guns and cannons, while the natives were in a stone age civilization. They were still in a stone age world when the British settled North America over 100 years later.  If it were not Columbus, some European power would have found the New World and the results would have been similar. We cannot demand those of the past behave as we insist they should have behaved, especially from our much safer and much more comfortable positions. 

Many who complain that Columbus and the Europeans stole the land are selective in their outrage. There were abundant instances of conquests and dominations taking place then and no current calls of indignation. Thirty-nine years earlier, Muslim Turks conquered the ancient center of Eastern Christianity in Constantinople. Muslim Turks had displaced the Greco-Romans and other peoples who had occupied Asia Minor for millennia. The Turks had brought a virulent Muslim slave culture to the conquered lands of the Eastern Roman Empire that had earlier made slavery extremely rare. By the first half of the 7th century, the Eastern Romans called slavery “an evil contrary to nature, created by man’s selfishness.”  Seldom do we hear complaints of the Turks stealing land and promoting slavery; whereas Columbus, selectively comes under constant condemnation for coming to the New World.

Despite what some 21st century sensibilities might dislike, Columbus did initiate salubrious changes to the native American cultures. He and the Spanish ended human sacrifices, cannibalism, infanticide, and ritualized killing.  What are considered horrors to the present-day mind were thought equally horrible to the Spanish, though they were quite ubiquitous throughout the Americas. These rituals were practiced by indigenous cultures in the New World as they were in the Old World many centuries and millennia prior. For example, before Columbus in 1487, at the re-consecration of the Great Pyramid of Tenochtitlan, the Aztecs sacrificed an estimated 80,400 prisoners to local deities. Scholars point out that the Aztecs sacrificed up to 250,000 victims to their gods every year during the 15th century.

If we judge Columbus by our 21st Century standards and remove his accomplishments from our collective memory, who from the past would be able to withstand such selective and fastidious scrutiny? In historical context, we need to study the good, along with anything we judge as bad, to get a complete picture. Otherwise, who from the past would be left to be judged worthy of acclamation and emulation?

As a non-Spaniard, Columbus was not the best administrator of Spanish settlers on a rough colonial frontier. Nevertheless, he patently was an intrepid world explorer; he connected worlds that were oblivious of one another from the beginning of time. He was a pioneer, sea captain, navigator, missionary, businessman, administrator, and colonizer. From his daring adventures, the world quickly moved in directions that his contemporaries could not have imagined. The opening of the New World to the Old launched the Modern Age that changed the globe forever.

These lessons will explore those changes. Students will study the Venetian Spice monopoly that launched Europeans’ search for alternate trade routes. The second lesson will examine Columbus in the New World; the third will investigate the origins of the Hispanic peoples. The final lesson will research the causes, decisions, and consequences of Italian and Hispanic peoples’ migration and emigration to the United States. 

We look forward to having students examine material from various perspectives, always thinking critically, and arriving at their own conclusions about the “Admiral of the Ocean Sea.”