The First Global Man
26th April 2012
Among scholars, the simplistic debate over whether Columbus was good or bad has become considerably more nuanced. The full significance of 1492 for global history — and the history of globalization — has come into ever-sharper relief. Historians now focus more on the role that native peoples played in the course of European expansion and conquest, treating them less as passive victims and more as active participants in global integration.
April 26th, 2012 at 19:26
Ja, sure. Natives, innovative, harmony, blah blah blah. The local natives used to sacrifice folks, slaves mostly, when they dedicated their houses, among other enlightened things. One innovation our modern pinkos might fancy is the custom of being able to declare folks slaves if they didn’t contribute their fair share. I’m sure they’d hope for more than thirty blankets for Uncle Walton ‘though. Can’t support too many voters on thirty blankets.
April 27th, 2012 at 06:54
For ‘global integration’, read: ‘the biggest land grab con game in world history’.
The indigenous peoples of the ‘new’ world were on the whole no worse or better than people anywhere else. The mightiest and most glorious empires of history–Rome, China, India, Persia, the Caliphate–were all built on the backs of slaves. Ditto those of the Maya, Aztec, Inca.
We gave them smallpox and measles. They gave us syphilis, along with potatoes, maize, and tomatoes.
Had pandemic diseases from Europe not reduced the population of the Americas by some 80% within a few decades of first contact, the history of the world would have been much different.