1492–1992: the Legacy of Columbus

1492–1992: the Legacy of Columbus by Howard Zinn

Madison, Wisconsin, October 9, 1991: Howard Zinn delivers a speech reflecting on the meaning of Columbus amid the "new world order" proclaimed by President George H. W. Bush, noting that for the first time on such a scale, customary celebrations of Columbus are being challenged nationwide. He recalls attending the 1892 quadricentennial celebration in New York, a five-day event of parades, military marches, and naval pageants drawing a million visitors, at which Chauncey Depew, a paid lackey of Cornelius Vanderbilt, denounced any "spirit of historical inquiry which doubts everything." Zinn argues there is no real dispute about the basic facts: Columbus was desperate for gold, enslaved the Arawaks and Tainos, mutilated them, hunted them with dogs and horses, and hanged and burned those who resisted. Columbus was devoutly religious, erecting crosses across Hispaniola alongside gallows. Zinn notes that even Samuel Eliot Morison, Columbus's admiring biographer, used the word "genocide," though buried mid-volume, while the Columbia Encyclopedia's entries on Columbus and on the priest Las Casas omit the atrocities and Las Casas's protests. The issue, Zinn says, is omission and emphasis, not outright lying, and these choices reflect the values of those recounting history today. He recounts a debate at Kent State University against a Princeton historian who argued it is unfair to judge the fifteenth century by modern standards. Zinn rejects this, citing transcendent values invoked even in that era by resisters like the Indians themselves and by Bartolomé de Las Casas, who spent forty years advocating for the Indians against critics like the priest Sepúlveda, who argued Indians deserved enslavement as uncivilized and unchristian. Zinn contends the real argument is about Western civilization itself across five centuries, not Columbus alone. He traces the theme of conquest by violence through U.S. westward expansion, describing how the Louisiana Purchase, Florida Purchase, and Mexican Cession were taught as bloodless transactions rather than violent displacements of native peoples, and how President Polk manufactured a pretext for the Mexican War. He extends this into "The Age of Imperialism," describing U.S. intervention in Cuba supposedly to liberate it from Spain but resulting in American corporate control (United Fruit, land bought for ten cents an acre), the annexation of Puerto Rico and Hawaii, and the acquisition of the Philippines, where President McKinley echoed Sepúlveda's justification by claiming a need to "civilize and Christianize" the population. Zinn identifies dehumanization as a recurring theme, from Columbus's own admiring journal descriptions of the generous Arawaks who were nonetheless enslaved and shipped to Spain as proof of profit, through European imperialism in Africa and Asia (citing signs barring "No Chinese or dogs allowed" in Shanghai's Western enclaves), the dehumanization of Black Americans under slavery, and General Colin Powell's indifference to Iraqi casualty counts in the recent war. He discusses the profit motive as another transcendent thread, noting that American industrial "progress" after the Civil War concealed enormous human costs: 35,000 workers killed in a single year in industrial accidents, 5,000 railroad amputees annually, 5,000 laborers dead building Vanderbilt's Panama railroad, and unnumbered Chinese and Irish workers who died building the Transcontinental Railroad. Finally, Zinn highlights resistance across five centuries: the Seminole Indians' long war in Florida, labor strikes against private enterprise, Black Americans' civil rights struggles reasserting the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, and the survival of Native Americans despite the Cherokee and Choctaw death marches of the 1830s–40s, culminating in their re-emergence at Wounded Knee, Alcatraz Island, and in fishing-rights battles, now leading countercelebrations during the quincentennial. He closes by urging that history and the present be viewed from the perspectives of those long left out of Western civilization's benefits, arguing this could enable unity and unpredictable, sudden change.

By Howard Zinn · First published 1492 · Genre: Political Commentary, Historical Revisionism, Non-fiction Essay · 5,865 words

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Madison, Wisconsin, October 9, 1991.

The opening chapter of Zinn's indispensable A People's History of the United States turns much of our traditional teaching of history on its head. By exploding the conventional narrative of Christopher Columbus's "discovery" of America, and looking at the conquest of the Americas from the standpoint of the indigenous population, he has led millions of people to question our national mythologies. In this speech, Zinn continues his reflections on the meaning of Columbus in the context of the "new world order" proclaimed by President George H. W. Bush.

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colonialism · indigenous-peoples · native-americans · columbus · european-expansion · american-history · imperialism · historical-critique · conquest · indigenous-rights · exploration · cultural-impact

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