Musings on Columbus Day

(Since today is the real Columbus Day)

First off, I'd like to make the point that, no matter how people bash Christopher Columbus, it is nonetheless true that if not for Columbus, it would have been somebody else to land in the Western Hemisphere and stay there.

The Vikings came early in the Eleventh Century and possibly Chinese Admiral Zheng did in the early Fifteenth. The Vikings did not have the technology for crossing the ocean in large numbers, nor did they have the weapons necessary to defeat a larger foe. The Chinese have not traditionally been maritime powers. But the Europeans were and had been for centuries.

By the end of the Fifteenth Century, the Europeans had far better and larger ships as well as better weaponry. If Columbus had not made the trek, others would have. There was knowledge of the rich fisheries in the Grand Banks off Newfoundland. Whether to set up fish-processing colonies or look for treasure, the Europeans were going to come to the Western Hemisphere.

The two hemispheres had been separate for thousands of years. The people in one hemisphere were immunologically unfamiliar with the diseases of the other. The Western people gave the Easterners syphilis. The Easterners gave the Westerners smallpox. The exchange was largely accidental, at least at first. The fatality rate in some areas, whether from smallpox or from the collateral effects depopulated much of the Western Hemisphere, with population reductions of 90% or more. The population that remained was not large enough to fight off the European invasions.

At least of large numbers of Europeans. Things might have been different in the local tribes had diligently wiped out the European settlements once the initial transport ships had sailed back to Europe. Once the Europeans had gained a foothold, the game was effectively over. For it would be a few more centuries before the "civilized world" rejected the right of conquest.[1] Back then, the rule was that if you could take land from another nation and hold it, it was yours. Some areas changed hands a lot.

So it could be argued that the Euros did unto the Native Peoples what they repeatedly did unto each other. To paraphrase Jack Vance in "The Grey Prince", control of a country or region derived from a war, no matter how remote in time, and control of that territory depended on the willingness of the authorities and the people to defend it by force. The moanings of those defeated were futile.
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[1] Kellogg-Briand Pact. Which is why many nations do not formally recognize Chinese control of Tibet or Russia's annexation of the Crimean Peninsula.