The best TV shows and movies are the ones
with characters who are faced with moral quandaries that explore the gray area between good and
evil. People like to imagine what they would do
in those situations and can usually easily see themselves on either side. In real life though, we fit people into black
and white categories. A decision is either right or wrong and someone
is either good or evil. We often want to categorize people so much
that we will create a fictionalized version of them in order to shove them into one of
these two boxes. Columbus is one of those people. You probably have one of two views of Columbus. You might think that he was a brave explorer
who proved the world was round and by doing so, discovered the United States, and if that’s
the case – Congratulations on graduating elementary school! Now, I know every grown up says this, but
a lot of things are about to change for you, and not just for you personally but for what
you think you know, so… enjoy it while it lasts. But odds are you probably think… Columbus was an incompetent buffoon who never
even set foot in America. Christopher Columbus was an idiot and dum-dum. He got lost coming here, and he’s the one
who called us Indians because he thought he was in India. He was a doofus who was terrible at math. Yes! I’m one of history’s greatest monsters! Whoa that’s quite the contrast really. Well let’s take a look at the facts and
see if we can’t figure out which ones have been misunderstood, misattributed, exaggerated,
or straight up fabricated. Wow that was a lot of big words, I feel like
Johnny Cochran, only way underpaid… Anyway, might as well start at the beginning,
right? Columbus couldn’t have discovered that the
Earth was round, because in his time, it was already common knowledge. Globes for sale, perfectly ordinary globes
for sale! The way Adam phrases this makes it seem like
Columbus thought he was the first person to conclude that the world was round. He didn’t, nor did he claim to. People since ancient times knew the world
was round, nobody thought the world was flat. Some people probably thought the world was
flat, some people today think the world is flat, some people are idiots. But I also want to bring attention to those
“perfectly ordinary globes.” Globes weren’t exactly common back then,
in fact, this is the oldest surviving globe in the world, made in 1493, completely separate
from Columbus. Here’s a question for you, what continent
are we looking at? You don’t have to answer now, but just tuck
that thought away in the back of your mind. This projection of people saying what they
think Columbus thought doesn’t end, especially when it’s ridiculous. My math says that the Earth is teeny tiny
and shaped like a pear… and at the top, it has a succulent nipple. He actually believed that? Yes! I actually believed this! Do I actually have to talk about this… No, he didn’t think the world was shaped
like a pear with a nipple on top. In fact, I had never heard that claim before,
but luckily, Adam gives us his source. Who actually never says that Columbus thought
the world was shaped like a pear. In fact, she says “putting all of this together,
Columbus reasoned that the world was shaped like a ball with a breastlike protuberance.” Breastlike protuberance… On his third voyage, he wrote a rather poetic
letter describing how “he felt himself not just crossing the ocean but going up it. Had he reached the very tip of the protuberance,
he would have sailed straight into the Terrestrial Paradise.” So what does he mean by that? Well back in the day, maps were often oriented
with East on top, not North. And at the very far end of the east, or top
of the map, you would find the Earthly Paradise, also known as the Garden of Eden. This paradise was often depicted as sitting
on top of a protuberance. In one letter in 1498, Columbus ponders if
this depiction might be accurate. And then never mentions it again. The Earth is tiny, and also a pear, give me
money please. This man is an idiot. See what he did there? He took something that Columbus poetically
pondered once during his third voyage and made it look like he presented this idea to
the King and Queen of Spain. They didn’t fund his expedition just to
make him go away. The Ottomans had just defeated the Byzantines
and froze Europe out of the spice trade. And since Portugal was going all in on conquering
Africa and Spain had finally kicked the Moors off of their peninsula, they were ready to
get in on the whole exploration and colonization game. So what about all this whole “thinking the
world was tiny” thing that people keep repeating? Yeah that’s not true either. People knew the circumference of the Earth,
more or less. Turns out Columbus went with the less, but
stick with me. What they didn’t know was how big the ocean
was, or how big Asi- remember when I asked you what continent we were looking at on that
globe? It’s Asia. Here’s his globe projected onto a piece
of paper, and here’s a slightly less confusing version of that same projection, they thought
Asia was much larger. But this isn’t the guy I want to talk about
since he’s not really connected to Columbus. This is the map Columbus was going by, made
by Toscanelli in 1474. This is China on the globe we saw earlier,
this is China on Toscanelli’s map. It was Toscanelli who told Columbus “the
said voyage is not only possible, but it is true, and certain to be honorable…. And to yield incalculable profit.” Miscalculate the distance to what you wrongly
think is Japan, even though people have been calculating the circumference of the Earth
pretty well for centuries using sticks in the ground and shadows and math. He calculated the journey from Spain will
take him just 21 days. He underestimates the distance by 7000 miles. What’s striking about this is that any educated
person would know that Columbus was wrong. I guess by “any educated person” they
mean not Toscanelli, who is widely considered to be one of the great cartographers of his
time. So much so that Adam throws this in the background
to make it look like Columbus wasn’t listening to Toscanelli – when he clearly was. It’s actually pretty good attention to detail
that the map Columbus was pointing to in that Mankind scene is Toscanelli’s map. So where did they get that whole “7000 miles
off” thing? This is what Columbus was aiming for, Cipangu,
which is supposed to be Japan. Obviously, this isn’t where Japan really
is – but that is where everyone thought it was. So it wasn’t Columbus’s calculation of
the distance that was off, it was ‘any educated person’s’ positioning of Japan. Columbus was also hoping that there would
be uncharted islands off of the east coast of Japan, so when he landed here, that’s
what he thought found. And died thinking he had made it to India. People saying that you’re not in Asia? Insist that you are. He didn’t think he was in China, he didn’t
think he was in India, he thought he was somewhere new… off of the coast of Japan, but still
somewhere new. Remember, he landed here, which… there is no land on the map right here, so
what was he supposed to think? And here are the actual land masses. Columbus landed on the island of Hispaniola,
which is 7000 miles away from Japan. That’s where they got that number. So I suppose he kind of got lucky that he
accidentally discovered some new land. He didn’t discover America, and he didn’t
prove the Earth is round. Christopher Columbus was a savage man who
didn’t discover North America, didn’t prove the world is round. This is something you’ve heard everywhere
and is probably already down in the comments. Whenever Adam says America, he’s referring
specifically to the United States… which is a little strange. The Some News segment is a little more honest
by saying NORTH America. Which is true, he never landed in North America. So let’s about the guy who did, Leif Erikson. In 985 the Vikings set up two settlements
in Greenland - if you didn’t already know this, the name was just a sales technique
to get more settlers. Greenland is very much not-green. Which meant that the settlers there had to
travel further west in the hopes of finding timber. Erikson’s winter camp at L’Anse aux Meadows,
Newfoundland lasted one year before being abandoned. The Greenland settlements were mostly forgotten
by the rest of Europe because of the Black Plague, and they were finally abandoned in
1408. I personally have a problem with people who
say that the Vikings discovered America first. Imagine it’s 2010 and someone offers to
sell you bitcoin for ten cents a piece. You decline it because it’s stupid and worthless. Now it’s 2017 and they’re worth $10,000
each and you tell everyone about how you could have been rich because you knew about bitcoin
back in the day but never actually did anything with it. Okay, now swap out bitcoin for America and
extend the time scale to 500 years. The Vikings didn’t discover America first. They stumbled upon it looking for timber,
stayed for a year, but then left. And not only did they never come back, but
they just plain forgot about it. Their find amounted to nothing. Columbus’ discovery, on the other hand,
opened the world to two entire continents and changed world history forever. On his third voyage, in 1498, he landed here,
which he named the Gulf of Paria. And then, he named all of this Paria. This is the Terrestrial Paradise he was talking
about in that previous letter. He describes that the “[Land of Paria] is
a mighty continent that was hitherto unknown.” So not only did he know he found something
new, but he was describing the South American continent. He believed that the Caribbean islands, as
well as this new continent, were only slightly to the south east of Asia. Which is also what people like Amerigo Vespucci
believed. Amerigo Vespucci is an interesting character
in our story. Because he was full of-. He straight up made up two voyages, so historians
take what says with a grain of salt. But while he was in the service of Portugal
in 1502, he was mapping the coast of the continent and realized he was further south than anything
previously mapped in Asia. So he too thought that this must be a previously
unknown fourth continent. But his letters don’t account for huge river
deltas that would have been impossible to miss had he actually been there so... This was four years after Columbus said that
Paria was a hitherto unknown continent. And just like Columbus, Amerigo thought that
this continent lied directly to the south of Asia. So why is it called America? Well the usual story goes that Amerigo beat
Columbus to the punch when it came to publishing his findings and that the name was settled
on in 1507 by the Waldseemüller map. Unfortunately, it’s just not that cut and
dry. This is the map, the Universalis Cosmographia. And here is the new, fourth continent, named
America, the female latinized version of Amerigo’s name. But up here to the north, we see a smaller
fifth continent named Parias, the latinized- you get it. Waldseemuller didn’t settle the dispute
or settle on a name, he credits both Columbus and Amerigo in the top left corner. There are still a few interesting things to
note on this map. Like this, this is still Cipangu which is
supposed to be Japan, and there are a number of places on the east coast of America which
are also on the east coast of India. Which shows that educated people still weren’t
entirely sure if America and Asia were connected or not. Anyway, the name Parias slowly falls out of
favor after they realize that North and South America are actually connected. Though even in 1587, Mercator named the northern
half “America… or New India”… so you know, it took a while for people to settle
on a name. So now that we’ve cleared all of that up
– kind of – and we’re in America, we need to talk about how primitive or not-primitive
the Native Americans were. People on both sides tend to lump all Native
Americans in together. They’re two huge continents spanning thousands
of miles, what’s true for one tribe isn’t necessarily true for another. If one tribe had mapped the stars and created
an almanac, that doesn’t mean they all did. If one tribe didn’t use the wheel, that
doesn’t mean they all didn’t. Some of them did invent the wheel, they just
didn’t use it for hauling because they hadn’t domesticated draft animals yet. I would have been fine with that statement,
until he said the word “yet.” This implies that given time they would have
eventually, when no, they wouldn’t have… ever. Not because they’re intellectually inferior
or anything like that, but because they had a really difficult spawn point. There are no draft animals – or work or
pack animals – in the Americas. There are no horses, donkeys, or camels. And because of that, they had reached somewhat
of a cap on their civilization tech tree, you can’t advance and have large cities
without animals. In fact, with the exception of the llama in
Peru, they didn’t have any domesticated animals. There were no cows, pigs, or chickens, which
left the Native Americans incredibly vulnerable and susceptible to disease. Again, not because of any genetic inferiority,
but simply because of their difficult starting location. Since Europeans and Asians had been living
in close proximity with animals for centuries, they had built up an immunity to all sorts
of animal diseases, like cow pox, chicken pox, and the various swine and avian flues. So on Columbus’s second voyage, when small
pox was introduced to the New World, it burned through the entire continent killing 90% of
the native population well before they had even heard of a European. This was inevitable and unavoidable. Whether it was Columbus, anyone who followed
him, or a Chinese explorer coming the other way. It was also unintentional at this point. The small pox blankets thing happens way later
in the 1700s. The point is by 1600, 90% of the native population
had died, so when the first British colonists arrived in North America in 1607 and 1620,
they found the land to be mostly uninhabited. Pre-Columbian population numbers for North
America vary widely, from 50 to 100 million. But everyone pretty much agrees on the 90%
disease mortality number, which means that we’re talking about 5 to 10 million in 1600,
spread across the entire continent. Before you go thinking that that’s exceptionally
bad, just remember that only 150 years before Columbus, Europe lost around 50-60% of its
population to the Black Plague. These epidemics just kind of happened. If you don’t count the quarter million Taino
people who lived there already. Occupied, someone lives here. Right, I know this part, he thought he made
it to India. Ugh we’ve covered this already. What a silly mistake. Yes, if by silly you mean brutal. Brutal is not a synonym for silly. The Taino treated Columbus and his crew with
the utmost hospitality. Hug? We need reinforcements! That’s not how it happened, Columbus didn’t
freak out and get reinforcements. On his first trip he bounced around a few
islands, left 40 people to establish a fort, and returned home to report his findings. The King and Queen sent him back after only
6 months with the expressed purpose of establishing more permanent settlements. So what did Columbus think when he first saw
the natives? Did enslave and brutalize the nice people
he found. There are journal entries literally from him
describing the natives being kind and bringing him things, having no knowledge of guns, so
they’d be easy to enslave. Okay that is a lot to unpack. But this is something that people bring up
all the time, that in his own words or in his own journals he said this or that. The most common quotes used are the ones he
shows, so let’s start with this one about them making good servants. What do you notice about this quote? How about the fact that it’s neither the
beginning nor end of the sentence, there’s clearly more to it. So we’re going to have to look it up. And here it is. “It appears to me, that the people are ingenious,
and would be good servants and I am of opinion that they would very readily become Christians,
as they appear to have no religion. They very quickly learn such words as are
spoken to them.” In full context, the word ‘servant’ could
mean slave, or ‘servant of god,’ or ‘subject of the crown.’ When they just cut out the ‘ingenious, good
servant’ part, it only means slave, they remove any context and any doubt. But these are Columbus’s own words, we have
to take them at face value since we can’t figure out what he really meant, right? Do you see where I’m going with this? These weren’t his own words, because his
name wasn’t really Christopher Columbus, it was Cristoforo Colombo. Oh look, what do we have here? Yes, I really do have that kind of time on
my hands. Here’s what we’re looking for, from October
11, 1492. Now we have to translate it. Let’s just shove it in Google translate
and see what we get. They must be good servants and of good wit
that I see that very quickly he says everything he told them… Blah blah. Obviously google isn’t the best translator
since it doesn’t carry meaning very well. But it takes some linguistic gymnastics to
get from “they must be good servants and of good wit” to “the people are ingenious
and would be good servants.” They picked the absolute worst, most biased
translation to quote as “journal entries literally from him.” Fun fact, the Italian translation of his journals
don’t have the word servant at all, instead they translate it as servant of God or… For more on how bias can influence how the
same words can be translated to mean wildly different things, might I suggest watching
the movie Arrival. Don’t worry, I’m not going to do this
process for every single quote. But this is another one people like to refer
to, “I could conquer the whole of them with fifty men, and govern them as I please.” Here’s the Spanish, and here is what Google
translate says. “Because with fifty men they are all subjugated,
and it will make them do everything they want?” Okay that ending doesn’t make all that much
sense… but I can tell you what it doesn’t say. Conquer them and govern them as I please. But just to be sure, let’s look at a different
translation of the same quote. “For with fifty men they can all be subjugated
and made to do what is required of them.” The words conquer or govern don’t appear
anywhere here either. Again, they picked the worst possible translation
to highlight. Again, in full context, in this section Columbus
is asking what the King and Queen want done with the natives – suggesting that fifty
men would be all that is required to hold the island. There is nothing about governing them as he
pleases. And while we have Columbus’s journals open,
there’s one more thing I’d like to point out. Let’s say I brought a bunch of Indians back
to Europe to show off, and most of them died on the boat ride over. Because that’s true, I did that, that happened. Just say that you only meant to bring six
in the first place. Okay, well let’s see what he has to say
in his own words. Conveniently, the sentence in question is
right after that first quote we looked at. “If it please our Lord, I intend at my return
to carry home six of them to your Highnesses, that they may learn our language.” This was written two months before his journey
home. So unless they’re implying that Columbus
had a time machine and was able to change what he said from the start… And there’s yet another aspect to this I
want to bring up. None of Columbus’s original journals survive. All we have are transcriptions of his journal
written by someone who has probably already been mentioned in the comments below. Bartolome de las Casas. People often, incorrectly, say that las Casas
traveled with Columbus. Nope. He arrived in Hispaniola in April 1502 with
Nicolas de Ovando. Three months before Columbus’s fourth voyage
arrived in the New World. As far as we can tell, they never crossed
paths. Bartolome de las Casas was a noble who was
given an encomienda in the New World. Encomienda was the Spanish feudal system of
lords and peasants. And that’s what the natives were, peasants,
not slaves. Columbus said he wanted to subjugate them,
which means turn them into subjects of the crown, not enslave them. They were forced to work against their will,
but nobody owned them, nobody could buy or sell them. In 1515, las Casas gave up his encomienda
and advocated instead for the use of African slaves. That’s right, the Protector of the Natives,
as he would later be called, was the one who advocated for the Transatlantic Slave Trade,
which then started under Nicolas de Ovando, not Columbus. And became the progenitor to the Transatlantic
Slave Trade. And not his son. But Diego has built on my work with the Indians. Helping to found a triangular trade route
that represents the world first multi-national process, streamlining the Transatlantic free-labor
market, insourcing African workers. In 1530 he transcribed Columbus’s journals
and in 1542 he wrote “A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies.” Which is the thing that everyone points to
as las Casas saying Columbus was evil. He only mentions Columbus once, and it’s
rather neutral actually. The account is baout those who came after
Columbus, including de Ovando, who is “best known for [his] brutal treatment of the native
Taino people of Hispaniola.” Keep that in mind, because it becomes important
later. Columbus was removed as governor of Hispaniola
in 1500 and put in jail. Not because of his brutal treatment of the
natives. But because of his mismanagement of the colony,
meaning he wasn’t extracting enough gold, and complaints from the Spanish colonists. Cut off people’s hands. Cut off people’s noses and hands unless
they give you silver, right? He was doing that to the Spanish. I’m sure he did it to the natives too, but
the King and Queen didn’t really care about the natives at this point. But his punishment was that he was removed
as governor and put in jail for a total of six weeks. After which he was given everything back and
sent out on his fourth voyage… so you can see how much they really cared about punishing
him. But it was while he was arrested that he wrote
an important letter. Girls as young as nine years old were sold
into sexual slavery. My customers wanted new world sex slaves,
and I heard them. Actual Christopher Columbus quote. This actual Columbus quote comes from the
important letter I just mentioned. In the letter, he complains about the robbing
and sexual slavery of the natives. Which is why he cut off colonist’s hands
and noses. And that “the violence of the calumny of
turbulent persons has injured me more than my services have profited me; which is a bad
example for the present and the future.” Am I saying that Columbus was a good guy? No. But am I saying that he was against the very
thing that people say he was for? Yes that’s exactly what I’m saying, yes. They’re quoting his complaint about a thing
happening and saying he was doing it, that’s… talk about taking something out of context. So Columbus was not the governor when las
Casas arrived. Las Casas had already given up his encomienda
and started the slave trade by the time he transcribed Columbus’s journals. So at this point he has every incentive to
make Columbus look as bad as possible, in fact it’s common knowledge that he paraphrased
and exaggerated. This is made even worse by Black Legend, which
is a propaganda campaign by English historians to make the Spanish look much worse than they
really were. So when people say “from Columbus’s own
journals” what they really mean is “from one specific and biased 1892 English translation
of the 1530 transcriptions of Columbus’s own journals, originally written forty years
earlier.” I hate to draw this comparison, but it’s
kind of like directly quoting Jesus. He didn’t speak English, and what you’re
reading is a centuries’ old translation of a third person account of what he said,
written hundreds of years afterwards. Oh yeah, that’s another thing, those original
transcriptions and even the translations of Columbus’s journals are written in third
person too. Columbus’s regime was so senselessly brutal
that by 1542, the Taino population on the island had fallen to 200. As we’ve already established, “Columbus’
regime” only lasted until 1500. Adam is attributing an entire 50 year span
to one person, 42 of which wasn’t even under Columbus. Do you even remember who the president was
42 years ago? De Ovando, who was the most brutal if you
remember, was in charge for longer than Columbus. 50 years is a long time, that’s 2 or 3 generations. Not only was Columbus dead, but his sons were
dead. I mentioned this in my Oregon Trail video,
but this is another example of taking something that occurred over decades and compressing
it down to blame it all on one guy. 50 years is twice as long as the Oregon Trail
existed. So okay, something else that really stuck
out to me is that 200 number. No matter what source you look up, you’ll
see 1542 population numbers around 2000 to 5000. Which is still small, don’t get me wrong,
but it’s 10 to 25 times larger than what Adam is saying, so where did he get this? Here…. “by 1542 there were fewer than
200.” But wait a second, did you notice something? Here, Adam says the Taino population in 1492
was 250,000, which is pretty accurate to what everyone else says. But in Adam’s source, it says the population
was 1.1 million, which is ridiculous. So don’t use the source when the numbers
are wildly unbelievable, but use it when it fits your narrative I guess. So how many people did Columbus and his men
kill, and does that count as genocide? If we take that 250,000 number and subtract
the 90% mortality rate from dis- The answer is that it doesn’t matter, that’s not
what genocide means. In 2012, George Zimmerman shot and killed
Trayvon Martin, that fact is beyond dispute. But he was found innocent, so how is that
possible? Because he was tried for murder, not manslaughter. Murder requires an intent to kill. Zimmerman didn’t leave his house that day
saying “I’m going to kill a black kid today.” Proving intent when the only witness is the
perpetrator is nearly impossible, and intent matters when trying to define a crime. After the Vegas shooting a few months ago,
many people wanted the crime labelled as an act of terrorism. Terrorism is the use of violence, or fear
of violence, to further a political agenda. There was no stated political purpose or message
behind the shooting, it was just a senseless mass murder. The intent is what matters. So when we look at what happened with Columbus
and his men, nobody can deny that mass killings took place. I am not trying to deny, excuse, or minimize
what happened. But when trying to label what happened as
a genocide, we have to look at the intent. Genocide, as defined by the UN, is an “act
committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial,
or religious group.” Columbus’s intent was not to- wipe them
out, all of them. In his own words, he wanted to subjugate them. It wasn’t racially or ethnically motivated,
it was conquest motivated, and those who fought back were killed. When Napoleon was trying to conquer Europe,
he killed hundreds of thousands who resisted and we don’t call that genocide. The end result is the same, whether we’re
talking about Trayvon Martin, the Vegas Shooting, or Columbus. People were killed and that’s awful. But when trying to label the crime as manslaughter,
murder, terrorism, or genocide, it’s the intent that matters. You and I would likely agree on the number
of natives killed, but we might disagree on what to call that crime. For centuries, Christopher Columbus was a
historical footnote. But that all changed in 1828 when Washington
Irving, author of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and other tall tales, wrote the first English
language biography of Columbus. Historical footnote… right… that’s why
this state capital, the district of the nation’s capital, this state capital, and this territory
were all named after him. Not to mention all the other cities and counties
in the US and an entire country in South America… all before 1828. Truth is Columbus and his imagined female
goddess form Columbia have been part of the American story since the beginning. Here she is telling you to ration food during
World War 1 and here she is in the painting you all know, even if you’re not American,
as the depiction of Manifest Destiny. Admittedly, American folklore has probably
turned him into a bigger deal than he should be, given his rather minimal involvement in
US history. Which is why I don’t personally think we
should have a day for him. But, conversely, I also disagree with just
renaming it Indigenous Peoples’ Day… because what is it really? Ah f**k him. Yeah f**k Columbus. F**k Christopher Columbus. This’ll be f**k you. It’s just Anti-Columbus Day. What do people do on Indigenous Peoples’
Day? They hate Columbus, they burn him in effigy,
and they hold mock trials of him. If you want to have a day where we celebrate
native history and native cultures, then let’s do that. Don’t just name swap it and make it hate
on Columbus day – we don’t have days where we hate on objectively more evil people like
Hitler or Stalin… it’s weird. Was Columbus a good guy? No. Was he a bad guy? If we look at him through a historical lens,
not really, he was no worse than anyone else. But if we hold him up to modern standards,
absolutely, he was a bad guy. Columbus is just one part, the first part,
but a relatively small part, in what happened to the Native Americans. So why do people hate Columbus – or rather,
why do people want to hate Columbus? Why do people seem to exaggerate and even
go so far as to fabricate evidence in order to discredit, downplay, and demonize him? Well, Wonder Woman got it right… Maybe people aren’t always good. Don’t you wish I could tell you that it
was just one bad guy to blame? It’s not! De Ovando was objectively worse, Cortez and
the other conquistadors were objectively worse, and the US government was most of the time
objectively worse. But more than that, all of the unnamed soldiers
under these people were the absolute worst. But despite all of that, Columbus is the one
everyone can name. To many people, Columbus deserves none of
the credit for discovering America, but all of the blame for what happened to it. If we can pin 400 years of awful history on
one guy, then it shifts all of the guilt for what happened to the Native Americans away
from the rest of us. Well, the rest of you, my relatives didn’t
come over until after the end of the Indian Wars, so not me. Putting people into nice neat little boxes
of good and evil just isn’t that simple, people are more complicated than that… and
deep down we all know that. We just don’t want it to be true. We a villain to blame. And the next time someone tells you that Columbus
is responsible for the genocide of millions or that he thought the world was shaped like
a pear, hopefully now, you’ll know better. So what do you think, was Columbus the most
evil person to walk the earth, or just a man of his time? Who’s story should I deconstruct next? Let me know down in the comments and don’t
forget to discover that subscribe button. Yes, this is chocolate, and I can’t wait
for all of you to tell me how dangerous this is in the comments below, at least it’ll
be a nice change from everyone calling me a racist. When you’re done with that, follow me on
facebook and twitter and join the conversation on the subreddit.
hey, I took the liberty of translating the diary fragments, keep in mind that this is medieval spanish whereas what I know is modern spanish, but the difference is very small and it feels to me that it is smaller than that between modern and shakespearean english for an average english speaker who is not trained in old fashioned vocabulary, linguists may disagree.
-
that was fun to do.
I only translated the parts that were shown in the video, because I couldnt get the source to load.
the grammar might be a little awkward because I tried to keep the original wording as close as possible while getting the same message across.
Regardless of whether you agree how credible his fact-checking is, I think his point at the end is pretty solid. We shouldn't try to condense the blame of all the atrocities against Native Americans onto one guy. Yeah he's still a bad dude and shouldn't have a day named after him, but there are so many people who were also awful. We tend to distort mass swaths of history from consumable chunks, and it's important to recognize when we do.
If only every video was this thorough and nuanced. Then again, there's a good reason why every video isn't this thorough and nuanced. It's a lot of work to put something like this together, and it's a long meal to watch something like this.
That was nuanced af.
Very good mealtime watch. Thanks for posting it.
Ehhh this is not a good video.
He swings between nitpicking and just being flat out wrong most of the time.
Initially he criticizes the Adam Ruins Everything clip because of its facetious presentation, as though the clip was saying literally that globes were available everywhere and Columbus persisted in his thinking the earth was flat despite this. The style of the show is generally to sarcastically over-state things in such a way as to be blindingly obvious, in this case that the idea of a round earth was already common knowledge at the time.
Furthermore, the video splits hairs by going into the shape concept. "No, he didn't think the world was shaped like a pear with a nipple on top, he thought it was a ball with a breast-like protuberance." Ok...what other description could you use for a pear? Maybe a sphere with a breast-like protuberance on it?
Again, it's nitpicking and not particularly informative.
His griping about distances isn't right either.
Columbus underestimated the circumference of the earth by about 10,000 miles which, in the grand scheme of things, isn't criminal. But due to a mix up with calculations he did estimate the distance between Japan and the Canary Islands as only 3,000 miles when in reality it's almost 20,000 miles.
He effectively underestimated the distance because of a conversion error. The OP video neglects to mention this.
There's more info here with citations at the bottom).
With regard to the Viking settlements, why bring this up at all?
Especially if you're going to half-ass it. The video completely neglects the fact that the Vikings visited the North American continent many times, including establishing the Vinland of the Sagas and coming into contact with the First Nations people.
They didn't "abandon and forget" North America, they peaced out due to repeated conflicts with the First Nations people who routinely kicked their ass. Despite the Vikings naming them "skraelings" (meaning "weaklings" or "uncivilized people") they eventually decided that it wasn't worth battling them for the land and left.
Saying that there were "no work animals" at all and never would be is shoddy at best. He is right in that the majority of easily domesticated animals were confined mostly to Europe and Asia and that this gave Europe an advantage but to say that the First Nations people would never domesticate any animals for work is ludicrous at best.
Criticizing translations as "biased" after literally just running Google Translate is sloppy as hell. And then to boot recommending people watch "Arrival" as though it's some authoritative documentary.
He truly goes off into fuckery territory with the "Well they weren't slaves because nobody owned them! They were just made to work against their will."
His "defense" consists of taking disjointed potshots at truncated, made-for-entertainment clips from Cracked and a shown known for its heavy use of sarcasm coupled with a selective memory with regards to the stuff he's actually quoting. Fuck this video.
There are better, more researched videos on Columbus from other, more reliable YouTubers.
this is really interesting!
Great video. The amount of revisionist history proponents on the internet is really annoying. e.g. the "Mother Theresa and Ghandi were actually monsters" narratives.
Great vid. Exaggerated evil and dumbed down. Columbus was an interesting caracter, I don't think he deserves the holyday, but when I hear bullshit about him I like to call it out.
The was a really interesting video and after watch a couple more equally good others from the channel, it makes me a little sad that they’re only getting 5-10k views each