Christopher Columbus: Analysis Of Braveness And Tyranny

Christopher Columbus, brave or tyrannical? In many places, Christopher Columbus is considered a saint for finding America, but in others, he is a dictator who ruined numerous lives. Along with voyaging and wanting to spread his gospel, he spread despair and slew countless native people. Columbus went on many voyages and even has a holiday to commemorate him. While discovering America, Christopher Columbus partook in numerous actions that negatively impacted the people of the land.

When Columbus first reached the Bahamas and claimed it for the Spanish in 1492 he believed he landed on Asia. Columbus wanted to find a new course to the Spice Islands, China, India, and Japan. He knew the world was round but didn’t realize there was a landmass (the Americas) in the way of sailing around Africa and eventually to India and Asia. While wanting to find new routes to numerous places, he also wanted wealth and to spread Christianity. The Asian Islands near China and India were fabled for their spices and gold, making them a popular destination for Europeans such as Columbus.

Christopher’s 1492 voyage was not his only excursion, he also sailed in 1498 and 1502. His journey in 1498 was to Sanlúcar, Spain with six ships for his third trip to the New World. After seeing the coast of South Africa and Trinidad from August 4th to August 12th, they explored the New World. As Columbus looked closer at clues in the environment he realized that the way the water stirred and the volume of freshwater that was there was an indication of the landmass being a continent and not an island. Ten years after Columbus’s first voyage he sailed in search of the Strait of Malacca to the Indian Ocean. On May 11, 1502, four ships and 140 men under Columbus’s company went to sea from the harbor of Cadiz. On this journey, his charge was to explore uncharted areas throughout the Caribbean. When he returned to the island of Hispaniola he was not welcomed famously, a lot of the locals remembered his corrupt acts. After he finished his visit there he continued with his voyage and passed a hurricane with some damage to a few of his ships. Once spending a year on Jamaica they made shelters and bonded with natives who gave them food. Once ships arrived in 1504, Columbus and his crew returned to Spain to find Queen Elizabeth dying and without her sanction, he wouldn’t be able to voyage to the New World again.

As I had before stated in the previous section Columbus did a lot of really immoral things to the people who lived in the areas he visited. One of the things he did was selling young girls and women into sex slavery. Along with putting the people, he enslaved to work he also sold them as young as nine into sex slavery. At the time he was selling these girls into slavery he had also been removed from Governor of the American territories after articles surfaced of horrific misgovernment and brutal treatment of natives. Another thing Columbus did was forcing Indians to comply with the Spanish or else. That “or else” is exactly what they did. They destroyed stores so the enemies couldn’t eat it, poisoned themselves with different substances, and even starved themselves. After this was all done an estimated 50,000 Indians had committed suicide to avoid contact with the Spanish.