Can We Blame Columbus?

This was actually a very difficult question to answer and I actually am still really stumped on this issue. I mean, how can we blame one man for the response of a continent to the new world? I guess in one respect we could blame him because he set the precedent for what to expect from the natives and the land itself, whether it was their "savageness" or the vast riches of the new world. Honestly however, I find this to be a fallacy and I think the reason that the subsequent brutal conquest of the Americas was due more to the European identity as a whole and its reaction to the other as Todorov points out in his book.

I think that the European attitude at the time reflected the struggle to come out of the middle ages. It was one that was deeply entrenched in religion that came from years of catholic expansion and the subsequent crusades. Europeans felt they had to expand their religion to come to enlightenment and escape the dark ages of their past. The renaissance was evidence of the beginning of their enlightenment. When Columbus and others came across Native Americans they saw something completely alien and foreign to them. They saw people living in a primitive state. After observation that they did not follow a "Christan religion" (they actually thought they had no religion) the Europeans determined that due to this lack of religion that they were in a state much like Europe had been after the fall of Rome. A state of barbarism, lacking sophistication, education, and civilization itself. I think this solidified their belief of the superiority and justice of their cause. How could they not, having nothing else to measure against?

Essentially while Columbus certainly embodied the European ideals of the time, he was in a class of his own in terms of really being an idealist. His crusading attitude was not felt among all those back in Europe, so I believe his descriptions of the new world did not form people's attitudes, but rather provoked their curiosity to find out for themselves. When more explorers found similar things, I think because of the societal and political structure of Europe at the time, they ended up coming up with a view as themselves and their religion as superior and almost a moral imperative to expand. This is not to say that greed for wealth did not play into it, but I think what I have described in this blog points out the cause for the aggressive pillaging of the Americas and the treatment of the new world in an objective, scientific, and project-like manner.