The meaning of Christopher Columbus
To the Times:
After five centuries, Christopher Columbus remains a mysterious and controversial figure. He has been viewed as a national hero, a genius and to some as a ruthless and greedy imperialist.
The Columbia, published by the Knights of Columbus, in their article “Columbus Rediscovered” by Felipe FernandezArmesto, the William P. Reynolds, professor of history at the University of Notre Dame and a leading Christopher Columbus scholar, referred to the toppling of Columbus’ statues as “misplaced vengeance.” The article talked about his bravery and his sympathy toward other cultures including the Native Americans. These facts are being ignored.
To quote Professor FernandezArmesto:
“Hero? Yes. Villain? Of course, because you can’t be one without the other. While sainthood is universal, heroism is partisan. Someone’s hero is always some elses’ villain.”
He explained further that:
“To understand Columbus’ follies and fears, one has to realize that social ambition drove him: the desire, as some of his men noticed, “to be a great lord.” What mattered was not so much where he was going as whether, in a social sense, he would “arrive”.
He described the man that Columbus was as a person who had read “the 15th-century equivalent of station-bookstall pulp: Storybook heroes take to the sea, discover islands, battle monsters and become great rulers. That was Columbus’ quest to imitate in real life the romantic protagonist of sensational tales; …..
He was willing to take a risk that no real-life predecessor embraced: to ride the sea with the prevailing wind. “
As for being an important historical figure, most nationalities adopted him. Professor Fernandez-Armesto states:
“Eventually, however, almost everyone in the Americas claimed him, as if he were an adoptive founding father: Italians by right of birth, Spaniards by naturalization. Nineteenth-century immigrants in the United States – Jewish, Portuguese, even Polish, Greek, English and Scottish – invented “evidence” to link him with their own communities. Now, at an even more perverse state of the myth, post-colonial “correctness” blames him for consequences he never foresaw.”
What he really accomplished matters more than the myths. His discovery, not of America but of a viable route there and back, put sundered cultures in touch and opened unimagined prospects for commercial and cultural exchange.
He launched the greatest humanly induced upheaval in the course of evolution: Until Columbus’ second voyage - for perhaps 150,000 years- life forms had diverged as landmasses drifted apart. Now, convergent evolution began, swapping biota between continents, enriching diversity and multiplying sources of food.”
This year, on the anniversary of Christopher Columbus Day, let’s celebrate the pursuit of discovery. Oct. 12, 1492 is the day set aside for honoring Columbus’ discoveries in the “New World”. This date (Oct. 12) does not celebrate his birthday or his death but the day he and his crew connected the Old World with the New World.