Jacobin
The Real Christopher Columbus
Howard Zinn | formerly Professor of Political Science, Boston University
See also Elias Isquith, 5 historical monsters arguably less terrible than Christopher Columbus at Salon.
Bryce Covert. Columbus’s Real Legacy: The Brutal Disparities Suffered By Native Americans at ThinkProgress
2 comments:
"These traits did not stand out in the Europe of the Renaissance, dominated as it was by the religion of popes, the government of kings, the frenzy for money that marked Western civilization and its first messenger to the Americas, Christopher Columbus.
The information that Columbus wanted most was: Where is the gold? He had persuaded the king and queen of Spain to finance an expedition to the lands, the wealth, he expected would be on the other side of the Atlantic—the Indies and Asia, gold and spices. For, like other informed people of his time, he knew the world was round and he could sail west in order to get to the Far East.
Spain was recently unified, one of the new modern nation-states, like France, England, and Portugal. Its population, mostly poor peasants, worked for the nobility, who were 2 percent of the population and owned 95 percent of the land. Like other states of the modern world, Spain sought gold, which was becoming the new mark of wealth, more useful than land because it could buy anything."
so here is another idiot who doesnt know the difference between the words "money" and "gold"....
Hey moron: the word "money" is an unsound metonym, that even today PhD members of the academe openly debate the meaning of and never agree .... while "gold" is a chemical element number 79 in column 11 of the PTE...
The ironic thing here is he is trying to complain about the old European govts view of "money" and he is just like them in this regard...
"Frenzy for money" >>>> "Where is the gold?"
?????????
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