Week Two: The Meeting of Two Worlds
Having grown up in Europe the image of Columbus presented to us at school was that of the accidental hero who stumbled across America whilst in search of India and returned home with mountains of gold much to the pride and delight of Spain. However, recent socio-political movements regarding the glorification of colonisation in Europe has put Columbus’ heroic status along with other key imperialist figures such as Napoleon and Rhodes into question. And so it is with these two conflicting outlooks that I began this week’s reading and lecture hoping to find a resolute answer to whether Columbus deserves the status of a hero or a villain. As I began Columbus’ journal I was initially intrigued by his leading strategy, lying to the crew about how far they had sailed presumably in the hope of encouraging them to work harder the next day. He struck me as a respected, competent leader – however this may just be due to his own perception of himself as arguably he cannot have been that com...