Christopher Columbus was a villain. He was a man who indulged in African slave trade for several years before 1492. This he did after he realized that it was no longer easy to gain wealth from dealing with gold. Therefore, he began trading in slaves. He would occasionally fill his ship with hundreds of Indian human cargo and ship them to the slave market that was in Seville (Gallay, 2009). As he did this, he believed that he was saving the souls of his prisoners and giving them eternal life by taking them out of their native environment and shipping them to Seville. That alone reveals that he was quite the opposite of the genius that people think he is. Not only did Christopher Columbus deal in slave trade, he raped, murdered and enslaved the local people of the countries where he sailed. His cruelty was too much that he did not even stop his crewmen from raping the poor Indian women slaves (Duiker, 2016). He even beat them with ropes. In addition, he would mutilate the limbs of the slaves who did not collect enough gold for him, or murder them (Duiker, 2016). He was also an armed robber who forced Indian people who lived in the Island to yield goods to him. The goods included ore and gold. The man who is praised for discovering America was also involved in murdering many Indians, which is equated to genocide, an act that resulted to the decline in population of the Indigenous Indians. The sad part is that he believed that he was doing justice to the people by taking their lives (Duiker, 2016).
Most of Christopher Columbus’ critics think that he was a mulish and egoistic man who believed that the world was twenty-five percent smaller than it really is (Duiker, 2016). It is said that he did not actually discover that the world was round, but sailed to prove that it is indeed round. However, the crimes he committed make him a villain rather than a hero.
References
Duiker, W. (2016). Essential world history: Since 1500. Place of publication not identified: Cengage Learning.
Gallay, A. (2009). Indian slavery in colonial America. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
