In Defense of Columbus: An Exaggerated Evil

Video Statistics and Information

Video
Captions Word Cloud
Captions
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.
Info
Channel: Knowing Better
Views: 1,447,495
Rating: 4.6639838 out of 5
Keywords: history, columbus, christopher columbus, bartolome de las casas, hispaniola, explorer, discover, discoverer, navigator, spanish, china, india, asia, america, amerigo vespucci, toscanelli, waldseemuller, native, native american, indigenous peoples, columbus day, indigenous peoples day, colony, disease, small pox, journal, diary, flat earth, world round, spice, gold, adam ruins everything, cracked, leif erikson, vikings, caribbean, columbia, evil, villain, hero, good, morality, truth, letter
Id: ZEw8c6TmzGg
Channel Id: undefined
Length: 28min 52sec (1732 seconds)
Published: Sun Dec 10 2017
Reddit Comments

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.

"[...] dever ser buenos servidores y de buen ingenio, que veo que muy presto dizen todo lo que se les dezia; y creo que ligeramente se harian χρianos que me parecio que ninguna secta tenian. yo plaziendo a nuestro señor levare de aqui al tiempo de mi partida seys a vuestras altezas para que deprendan fablar."


"[...] they must be good servants, and of good ingenuity, as I see that they quickly say everything that's said to them; and I believe that they would easily become christians as it seemed to me that they had no creed. I will pleasing our lord bring from here at the time of my departure six (of them) to your graces so they learn to speak."


note: the italian translation begins with "they must be good (people)", without mention of the word "servants" which would imply that "servants" was being used as a term for "people", ie: "servants of god".
other than that, the italian translation shared the same message.

-

"[...] el qual se pudiera atajar en dos dias por isla aunque yo no veo ser necessario, porque esta gente es muy simplice en armas como veran vuestras altezas de siete que yo hize tomar para le llevar y deprender nuestra fabla y bolvellos. salvo que vuestras altezas al quando mandaren pueden los todos llevar a castilla o tenellos en la misma isla captivos. porque con cinquenta hobres los terna todos sojuzgados; y les hara hazer todo lo que quisiere."


"[...] which could be (short)cut/caught(?) in two days by/per(?) island although I dont see it necessary, since these people are very simple in weapons as your graces will see of seven that I made be taken to send and learn our language and return (?). unless when your graces order you can take them all to castille or keep them captive in the same island. because with fifty men you/he(singular) can have them subjugated, and will make them do everything you/he(singular) should wish."

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.

👍︎︎ 20 👤︎︎ u/suppow 📅︎︎ Dec 11 2017 🗫︎ replies

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.

👍︎︎ 14 👤︎︎ u/b42thomas 📅︎︎ Dec 12 2017 🗫︎ replies

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.

👍︎︎ 47 👤︎︎ u/beatmastermatt 📅︎︎ Dec 11 2017 🗫︎ replies

That was nuanced af.

Very good mealtime watch. Thanks for posting it.

👍︎︎ 57 👤︎︎ u/CaptnCarl85 📅︎︎ Dec 11 2017 🗫︎ replies

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.

👍︎︎ 77 👤︎︎ u/HeloRising 📅︎︎ Dec 11 2017 🗫︎ replies

this is really interesting!

👍︎︎ 12 👤︎︎ u/CheeseBis 📅︎︎ Dec 11 2017 🗫︎ replies

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.

👍︎︎ 24 👤︎︎ u/Intrinsically1 📅︎︎ Dec 11 2017 🗫︎ replies

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.

👍︎︎ 11 👤︎︎ u/balpomoreli 📅︎︎ Dec 11 2017 🗫︎ replies

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

👍︎︎ 4 👤︎︎ u/joshuams 📅︎︎ Dec 11 2017 🗫︎ replies
Related Videos
Note
Please note that this website is currently a work in progress! Lots of interesting data and statistics to come.