#129 Sidebar: Columbus Counterfactuals Revised
The History of the Americans
Jack Henneman
4.9 • 632 Ratings
🗓️ 9 October 2023
⏱️ 38 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
As has become our tradition around Columbus Day, we speculate on various might-have-beens – for example, what if Columbus had sailed for a different monarch? – and some of the consequences of Columbus’s voyages for humanity writ large. This episode has been revised and re-recorded from those of previous years, and includes some thoughts on “Indigenous Peoples Day,” offered by some jurisdictions (and this year as a Presidential proclamation) as a counterpoint.
The image for this episode on the website post is of maize growing in Africa.
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Selected references for this episode
Samuel Eliot Morison, Admiral of the Ocean Sea: A Life of Christopher Columbus
Alfred W. Crosby, Jr., The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492
Nathan Nunn and Nancy Qian, “The Columbian Exchange: A History of Disease, Food, and Ideas”
Charles C. Mann, 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created
Noble David Cook, Born To Die: Disease and New World Conquest, 1492–1650
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the History of the Americans podcast, episode 129. |
| 0:11.3 | I'm your host, Jack Heneman, and this episode's a sidebar special for Columbus Day, 2023. |
| 0:18.1 | If you are new to the podcast, we are telling the history of the lands now encompassed by the United States from the beginning without presentism. |
| 0:27.3 | Also, if you're new to the podcast, sidebar is our term for an episode off the timeline, which I do from time to time when I come across something interesting or in recognition of a holiday, that sort of thing. |
| 0:40.0 | So it is with this episode, which we are recording on October 8, 2023, and Austin, Texas. |
| 0:47.9 | It's a revised version of episode 42, considering Columbus counterfactuals, now rewritten in certain respects and re-recorded. |
| 0:58.2 | Before we get to all of that, I do want to thank the hearty fans who came to the Philadelphia area |
| 1:03.2 | meet up last Friday evening at Nishamene Creek Brewing in Croydon, Pennsylvania. Several people |
| 1:10.3 | drive a couple of hours or more to get there. |
| 1:13.2 | The conversation was great, as it's been at all of these, and as usual, I learned a pile. |
| 1:18.6 | I'll do more of these when I can carve out time for my travels, hoping to get around to places |
| 1:23.8 | like Denver and Los Angeles and New York. |
| 1:28.6 | It's the time of year when historically minded public intellectuals and content creators dump on Christopher Columbus. |
| 1:38.3 | That's easy enough to do in that Columbus was an unattractive personality. |
| 1:43.6 | It was wrong about many things and had a great capacity to alienate people. |
| 1:49.1 | He was an incompetent colonial administrator, even by the standards of such people. |
| 1:54.9 | And he introduced Iberian-style slavery into the new world. |
| 2:00.1 | In recent years, his star has fallen so far that there's been a push |
| 2:04.4 | to obliterate any recognition of him and to reframe Columbus Day as Indigenous People's Day, as if to |
| 2:12.7 | erase his legacy entirely. I myself am no booster of Columbus Day in the United States, at least, because our national |
| 2:21.8 | connection to his legacy is attenuated. |
| 2:25.3 | However, neither am I much for the timing of Indigenous People's Day as a response, whatever |
... |
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