I want to start this video off by saying that we should get rid of Columbus Day.
We should start celebrating Indigenous Peoples’ Day.
And if cities and towns want to take down their Columbus statue – or any other statue
for that matter – they should be allowed to do so.
That has always been my position.
But if that’s the case, why do I have a video called “In Defense of Columbus?”
This video was brought to you by Audible.
I don’t think we will ever not talk about Columbus, at least not in our lifetimes.
He’s too interesting of a historical figure.
He’s like the Titanic, hundreds, if not millions, of ships have sunk over the course
of human history, yet we keep talking about this one – why?
Because there’s so much more going on than just the iceberg.
There have been countless explorers, navigators, and colonizers, yet here I am making another
video about Christopher Columbus – why?
Because there is so much more you can ask.
What does it mean to be lost?
He thought he landed on an island off the coast of Asia.
Which is laughable to us now.
But if you were to ask him his latitude and longitude, he would have gotten it pretty
much exactly correct.
So was he lost?
What does it mean to discover?
People had been living in the Americas for well over ten thousand years and the Vikings
famously had a settlement for a few years.
But the two halves of the world didn’t know about each other until Columbus.
Regardless of your answers, the historical discussion of these questions is itself interesting
and has changed over time.
People have been disagreeing about Columbus, since Columbus.
There were Spanish historians who made things look better or worse depending on their personal
views, then British and later Americans told their versions of events.
In the late 1800s, Italian immigrants in America wanted an Italian-American hero to celebrate
to sort of insert themselves into US History, creating Columbus Day.
Retroactively making Christopher Columbus an Italian.
Italy wasn’t a country when Columbus was alive and wouldn’t be for another few centuries,
he was a Genoese navigator sailing under the Spanish.
Which, technically Spain awasn’t a country yet either.
See, there are so many different tangents and angles to this story that it’s almost
a perfect storm of historical discussion.
And that’s the story I wanted to tell.
A few months ago, a response was made to my Columbus video which took issue with some
of my portrayals.
I am not going to talk about that video here.
I disagree with some of the characterizations, but I’ve already talked that in a reddit
thread, which I’ll link below.
They’ve seen my response and said they’re cool with it.
So, I am not trying to stir up drama, but it would be disingenuous of me to not mention
it, since this video wouldn’t exist without that one.
I also said I would rework the original Columbus video before the next Columbus Day, so…
Shortly after that response video came out, I was in a livestream with Central_Committee
and Kormantine where we picked apart my Columbus video in real time.
That experience made me realize that…
I don’t really want to rework the original Columbus video, not because it’s incredibly
inaccurate or I’m embarrassed by it.
But because that’s just not what my channel is about anymore.
So, with it being 2020, let’s use the power of hindsight to examine the original video
and its shortcomings…
[Snap] … As I’ve already said, this video is not a response to the response, partially
because my original video is itself a response.
And that’s just too many layers for me.
Most people know the basics when it comes to Columbus, they know the names of the three
ships and that in 1492 he gave us a day off school.
You know, the elementary school stuff.
But they might not know the year of his second or third voyage, or where he landed, or what
year he died.
In 2017, the Dakota Access Pipeline was built and the country’s current and past treatment
of native peoples was at the forefront of public consciousness.
That year, a number of comedy channels decided to make Columbus Day videos which I felt took
advantage of the general population’s lack of detailed knowledge of Columbus.
So, I decided to respond to some of those videos.
I had assumed that most everyone was already familiar with the general story and popular
claims against Columbus, so rather than spend time on that, I just focused on debunking
some of the more ridiculous claims.
Usually in a “well, actually” tone.
In my defense, that style of video was pretty popular at the time, the main video I was
responding to was from the guy who basically made “well, actually” famous.
Actually!
You might think that style of video is awful… and the algorithm would agree with you.
There is a reason I had fewer than 3000 subscribers when that video came out and for several months
afterwards.
This is why I laugh when people tell me to bring back the live-action intros, since nobody
was watching me back then.
I made a number of videos in that style, though I think I got away with it in this video by
lampshading the fact that I was literally cherrypicking stories from history.
The point is, none of these videos were popular when they first came out.
I released Columbus in December 2017, which was after Columbus Day that year, it saw some
initial success on reddit but that was it.
It wasn’t until I shifted away from nitpicky responses and towards a more narrative style
that the channel really took off, and even then, it was mostly old videos like 4KTVs
and Wannabe States.
The Columbus video didn’t see its first real success until a year after its release
on Columbus Day 2018.
I was happy that those older videos were doing well and my channel was growing, but I was
mostly focused on making new content.
So, when people wanted to respond to and discuss my videos, it was because they were seeing
it for the first time.
But to me, they were year old topics I had no more interest in.
I knew some of my older videos weren’t very good, not just when it comes to production
quality, but I was still figuring out how to present information to camera.
There’s a reason it took so long for the channel to take off.
In the beginning, I was still trying to market myself for grad school or a future job, so
all of my videos took a centrist political stance.
Which is a good skill to have for a teacher, but not so much for Youtube.
I also assumed a base level of understanding; I didn’t spend a lot of time on basics because
I figured you already knew them.
Which again, is a good skill for higher education, not Youtube.
The Columbus video was made keeping those strategies in mind, which some have called
irresponsible.
And going by the modern standards of my channel…
I agree.
I’ve long since abandoned that approach to making videos, you might not have noticed,
but during this video, I tell you the entire story of the Stanford Prison Experiment from
start to finish three different times, from three different perspectives.
I never tell you the full story of Columbus.
In the past, I’ve unlisted or even redone videos that I thought fell short or needed
to be updated for whatever reason.
That was the original plan here.
But in evaluating where my channel is now and where it was then – I don’t want to
do that.
I don’t want to defend Columbus, he iss not worth defending.
And I used to tell people, including myself, that the video isn’t really a defense of
Columbus, I know I called it that but that’s the Youtube game.
Nobody is going to click on a video called “a nuanced discussion of some of the recent
depictions of Columbus in pop culture.”
But since I never discuss the things Columbus actually did and instead spend the whole time
debunking spurious claims made by literal cartoon characters.
It is a defense of Columbus.
And since I wouldn’t remake that video today, rather than rework it, I’ve enlisted the
help of my friend Cogito to help me put that past defense of Columbus in its proper context.
In August 1492, Columbus departed from Spain on an expedition to find a western route to
the island of Cipangu, now known as Japan.
Columbus didn’t come up with the idea or the route, every mapmaker in Europe agreed
that this is where Japan was, because everyone was basing their work on Marco Polo’s travel
guide, which gives distances in days’ journey rather than miles.
As a result, they grossly overestimated the size of Asia, placing Japan where Mexico is
in reality.
When Columbus landed on Hispaniola two months later, he assumed he was on an island off
the coast of Japan and continued to search for the cities of gold Marco Polo described.
After a few months of exploration around the Caribbean, he returned to Spain with several
native Taino people with the outwardly expressed purpose of teaching them Latin and Christianity.
Intent is a major theme of my original video and many of my other videos at the time.
I’ve often told you the reasoning of the people involved, without offering any counter
arguments or even my own personal feelings.
In this video I explain the reasoning behind dropping the atomic bombs and putting people
into internment camps during World War 2 – two things I personally very much disagree with.
But since I only gave their perspective, it comes across as my perspective.
Whether Columbus intended to teach them Christianity or just wanted to kidnap them is irrelevant,
because in the end, it looks the same.
Many people mark this as the beginning of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, however, I
disagree on a purely semantic basis.
The Transatlantic Slave Trade typically refers to African slaves being transported across
the Atlantic to be enslaved in America… not Americans being enslaved in America.
Which happened six months later when Columbus returned to the Caribbean with 17 ships and
the expressed purpose of establishing permanent settlements.
This was the beginning of the encomienda system, which was similar to the feudal system of
lords and peasants in Europe.
People given an encomienda didn’t own the people, they owned the land, and the people
were just another feature on that land to be exploited.
While this isn’t chattel slavery, where people were auctioned off in front of a crowd,
it’s a distinction without a difference.
The fact that they owned the land, not the people, didn’t stop them from brutally mutilating
and killing the native Taino people whenever they felt like it.
Columbus was an active participant in that mistreatment, while he may not have personally
murdered anyone, he was the governor of the colonies.
He wasn’t really doing anything to stop it and, on several occasions, he outright
ordered it.
Near the end of his third voyage in 1500, the King and Queen of Spain replaced Columbus
as governor, citing his inability to extract enough silver and gold and his mistreatment
of the Spanish colonists and native people.
He was arrested and during his journey back to Spain, he wrote a letter where he defends
himself against various accusations, including the sexual slavery of nine-year-old girls.
The context of that quote is him complaining about a thing happening and how that thing
is harming his reputation.
But that doesn’t change the fact that it was still happening.
He was in charge and he wasn’t really trying very hard to stop it, in fact he may have
even participated in it.
The context of that quote, while interesting, doesn’t change the reality.
I did a similar thing in this video, does the fact that this quote was written when
he was a 22-year-old newspaper reporter change the fact that they burned down entire villages?
Obviously not.
I also did a pretty poor job of explaining the translation section of my original video,
I’ve regretted that since the day I uploaded it.
If only I could use the power of 2020 hindsight to…
Huh, so, the original intent of that section was to show how people can pick and choose
different translations to convey whatever meaning they want.
These two translations are derived from the same original sentence.
One of them makes it seem like Columbus was personally power hungry, while the other makes
it look like a suggestion, one of the many possible options for the King and Queen to
choose from regarding what to do with the islands.
I obviously favor the second interpretation.
But that doesn’t change the fact that Columbus was like “Hey, it would be super easy to
take these people over, just saying.”
Columbus was in prison for six weeks, after which, they gave him all of his land and wealth
back and sent him off on his fourth voyage in 1502.
The Caribbean was now under the governorship of Nicolas de Ovando, who hated Columbus and
hated the Taino people even more, seeing them as a rebellious people who needed to be pacified.
The native people had been so decimated that by 1515, Bartolome de las Casas gave up his
encomienda and advocated for the importation of African slaves instead.
Decades later he said that that was a mistake, but the damage had already been done.
African slaves were brought to the Americas by the millions, partially because they already
had an immunity to the many Afro-Eurasian diseases which killed 90% of the Native American
population by 1600.
In many cases, well before European contact.
Obviously, not all of these deaths can be directly attributed to Columbus…
Columbus’s regime was so senselessly brutal, that by 1542, the Taino population on the
island had fallen to 200.
This sentence was the impetus behind my original Columbus video.
If you want to say that it was the system he established or the culture he created,
then say that.
Saying “Columbus Regime” makes it so misleading that it’s false.
Columbus was removed as governor in 1500 and died in 1506, how did his regime last until
1542 when even his sons were dead for decades at that point?
Let me be clear, Christopher Columbus is directly responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands,
if not hundreds of thousands.
The resulting European colonization, which he started, killed millions more through disease
transmission and military conflict.
And continues to keep people in really poor conditions to this day.
That video, was me looking down the list of charges and evidence against Columbus and
saying, “I don’t really know if two or three of these belong on here.”
This video is me saying that the rest list is still really long.
Two years ago, I was nitpicking terrible historical arguments for fun to an audience of basically
nobody.
Now that I have an audience, I try to be more responsible.
A few weeks ago, during my video on the Stanford Prison Experiment, I said…
So, I get why they did it, but that doesn’t make it right.
I wish I had said that years ago and that’s going to be my approach to history moving
forward.
I’ve heard the criticism from fans that I don’t do enough history anymore and I’ve
heard critics say that my non-history videos are still okay.
But, almost all of my videos are history videos.
I may not talk about World War 2 or Vietnam, but I will talk about Milgram and Zimbardo
or the Political Party Switch or Paradise Lost, all of which are history labeled as
something else.
History is more than just battles.
It’s the story we tell ourselves about why things are the way they are, sometimes that’s
through politics, sometimes it’s psychology.
And the best version of that story can be found on Audible by going to audible.com/knowingbetter
or texting knowingbetter to 500-500.
Where you can get a free 30-day trial of Audible, which includes two Audible originals and your
first audiobook for free.
I personally recommend Sapiens, a Brief History of Humankind, which offers a pretty unique
perspective on how society and culture built itself up from nothing.
We like to think that things are the way they are because some wise people planned it out
that way, but that just isn’t the case.
And with it being a new year, Audible is challenging you to finish three books by March 3rd in
exchange for a $20 Amazon credit.
Get started by going to audible.com/knowingbetter or texting knowingbetter to 500-500, you’ll
also be supporting the channel when you do.
Does Columbus deserve all of the hate that he gets?
I used to think that if it were up to me, we’d talk about Columbus in the same way
that we do Magellan, buried in some middle paragraph of history.
But now I know that’s just not possible.
Not only because of the historical and educational value of his story, but because we have a
day to celebrate him.
And we shouldn’t.
As long as our calendar, and by extension our government and our culture, continues
to elevate him as a symbol of colonial domination, he deserves to be torn down.
Get rid of Columbus Day.
New year, new outro card.
I owe a huge thanks to Cogito for helping me with this video.
I’d also like to give a shout out to my newest Golden Fork patron, Sarah.
If you’d like to add your name to this list of contrarian centrists, head on over to patreon.com/knowingbetter,
or for a one-time donation, paypal.me/knowingbetter.
Don’t forget to colonize that subscribe button, or the join button if you’re feeling
especially subjugated.
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to cut this down, this is too long, isn’t it?