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Back
to Great Debates
What
is the legacy of 1492?
In 1992 the peoples of the Americas
marked the five hundredth anniversary of Columbus's discovery
of the New World. To Americans of Italian and Spanish descent,
the anniversary was an occasion for celebrations. From this perspective,
Columbus's voyage was a vehicle of discovery and progress, which
forged a lasting link between the civilizations of the Old World
and the native peoples of the New World.
Many Americans of Indian and African
descent will likely regard the anniversary in less positive terms.
To many of these people, the legacy of Columbus's voyages is perceived
as slavery and colonialism. Rather than regarding Columbus as
a discoverer, many Latin Americans regard Columbus as an invader
who set in motion a train of events that devastated New World
peoples and cultures. Some will note that it was Columbus who
inaugurated the Atlantic slave trade. Others will maintain, not
entirely without basis, that Europe's prosperity was rooted, at
least in part, on the exploitation of the New World.
Assessing the impact of Columbus's
voyages is not an easy task.
Disease and death was one consequence
of Columbus's voyages. Pre-Columbian America had been isolated
from many infections that had swept through Asia, Europe, and
much of Africa. American Indians had been spared most of the diseases
common to societies that raise livestock. The New World thus provided
a fertile environment for epidemics of smallpox, influenza, and
measles, which were most lethal to adults in their most productive
years. The eight million Arawak Indians, who lived on Hispaniola,
site of the first Spanish New World colony, were reduced to ten
thousand by 1520. Twenty-five million Indians in Central Mexico
were reduced to 1.9 million by 1585. Indian populations in the
Andes and in North America were also decimated.
The development of the African
slave trade was another important consequence of Columbus's voyage.
Within decades, Spain introduced black slaves and sugar plants
into the New World. With the Indians seemingly on the path to
extinction, the Spanish and Portuguese turned to African labor,
who were used to mine gold and silver and to raise crops and livestock.
The "discovery" of the
New World carried epochal implications for European thought. America
offered a screen on which Old World fears and aspirations could
be projected. The Indians, for example, seemed to embody innocence
and freedom, lacking sexual restraints, law, or private property,
yet possessing health and enjoying eternal youth. Columbus's voyage
also helped invigorate the utopian impulse in European thought.
To take just one example, it was in 1516, just twenty-four years
after Columbus's first voyage, that Sir Thomas More published
his book Utopia, in which he described an ideal country where
poverty crime, injustice, and other ills did not exist.
Columbus's voyages represent one
of the major discontinuities in human history. His voyages truly
represented a historical watershed, with vast repercussions for
all aspects of life in both the Old World and the New. The year
1492 - perhaps more than any other year in modern history - was
a truly landmark moment, carrying enormous implications for the
natural environment, for intellectual thought, and for the international
economy.
Questions to
think about:
1. How would
you assess the significance of Columbus's voyages?
2. Were his
voyages a vehicle of progress, in your view, or more negative
in their impact?
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