Christopher Columbus equal hitler.

Post Reply New Topic

Columbus was a jackass but that doesn't quite make him Hitler.

Well, in regards to the topic of the thread, Columbus was crazy. He was extremely greedy, for one - when he went to Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand to ask for a sponsorship, he demanded to be made "Admiral of the Ocean Sea [the Atlantic]", he wanted 10% of the treasure gained on the trip, and he wanted to be made governor of every land he discovered, and he wanted that position of governor to be passed down to his descendants "for evermore". (The King and Queen initially refused his sponsorship, but the Queen's confessor convinced her otherwise.) The person who first spotted land was to obtain a large reward, and Columbus claimed he had seen it, but it was actually another man who saw it. When he arrived at the island now known as San Salvador, he immediately took some of the Arawaks (the natives) captive and demanded them to tell him where the gold was. He didn't find much gold, but he brought back plenty of exotic plants and animals, and he took 500 Arawaks to Spain too. Three hundred of those Arawaks died due to the cold climate on the voyage back, and the rest were sold into slavery.

Columbus had left 39 men behind to gather more wealth - mainly because one of the ships was destroyed, and the other two could not carry the remaining men. These men were all dead when Columbus returned, because they had also been taking the native girls.

A tax was instigated on the Arawaks - all of them who were over a certain age had to bring a certain amount of gold back every three months, and they would get a copper token signifying that they had paid their tax. It was impossible to get this amount of gold, so after three months, the Spaniards began hunting the natives down with dogs and killing them.

One of the natives told Columbus that Cuba was actually an island while he was on Cuba. He ordered the rest of his men to not utter a word of that truth, on pain of having their tongues cut out.

I could go on and on about this, but I think that gives everyone the gist of how bad he really was.

Columbus was dead wrong about many things. He thought the ancient Greeks had made an error in their calculations, for instance, and that Earth was only 5000 miles around, which is why he thought he could sail to Cathay by going west. Had there not been a set of previously-unknown land masses in the way, he and his men would have all died at sea.

However, the only deliberate evil he perpetrated was on his third voyage, when he tried to take Carib slaves back to Spain. The Spanish officials on the island of Hispaniola arrested him and sent him home in chains.

Now, there were evils perpetrated by the conquistadores, from attempted genocide to slavery to destruction of the Mayan codexes (on the theory that since they weren't written by Christians, they must be heretical), but those weren't really Columbus' fault. It has become politically correct, particularly in the Azatlan movement, to claim such Hitlerian status for Columbus, but really it's more a matter of Godwin's Law that predates the Internet.

I don't celebrate Columbus day or Thankstaking.They both $uck.
Thanks for the diseases and invasive species Columbus.

Columbus was a selfish greedy prick but if it werent for him the rest of the world would be ignorant of the existence of the Americas except for the natives inhabiting the land. There would be no advancements of technology etc there would be no South American countries or Central American countries and there would be no Mexico. There would be no America either if there was a time machine to prevent coutries like America from forming im pretty sure many people would use the time machine for that purpose.

^ I wasn't misquoting you. The syntax of the sentence your wrote was ambiguous. Thanks for clearing that up.

You need another comma in that sentence.