Speaker 1: Ho Ho Ho Mary. Late summer. I'm Santa Claus. Normally
Speaker 1: I'd come to you from the North Pole, but due
Speaker 1: to a series of d A raids and Bobo Ho
Speaker 1: Gus Telny charges, I'm in hiding right now. My friend
Speaker 1: Robert Evans has agreed to help me with all of
Speaker 1: the charges against me, and its thanks to him. I've
Speaker 1: used some of my CHRISP mismagic to put together the
Speaker 1: perfect behind the Bastard script. But of course her perfect
Speaker 1: script needs a perfect guest, so I've used Santa's Luciferian
Speaker 1: hell Forge, powered by the bones of the Devil himself,
Speaker 1: to conjure up the greatest podcast guest in history, Michael Swam.
Speaker 1: All right, that's all from Santa until the holidays, kids,
Speaker 1: And remember those children were dead when Santa got there.
Speaker 1: Oh thank you, Sanna Ah. Robert Evans here the newly
Speaker 1: conjured Michael Swain. Michael, how does it feel to have
Speaker 1: been birthed from Santa's Luciferian hell Forge? What the fuck?
Speaker 1: What the funk was that he's an immortal, immortal North
Speaker 1: Pole man just told us, Robert, everything about my conception
Speaker 1: of metaphysics has shattered. Now, Michael, this is interesting. Is
Speaker 1: it true that you never existed prior to this point
Speaker 1: and all of the memories that people have of your
Speaker 1: many hours of content were created by the devil in
Speaker 1: the last several seconds. I come from the yes and
Speaker 1: school of improvs. So absolutely, that's my entire beast. Now, well,
Speaker 1: now that you exist and have an extensive backlog of
Speaker 1: content and projects in that have been well underway for
Speaker 1: several years at this point going on, why don't you
Speaker 1: tell the audience what what kind of stuff you do
Speaker 1: and where they can find you before we get into
Speaker 1: this this Yule Tide extravaganza of an episode. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much? River. Well, it's true I was busy in
Speaker 1: Santa's sack, and I don't mean it's attack. But when
Speaker 1: I was but a gleam in Santa's I I was
Speaker 1: Let's see where can I take the metaphor um cobbling
Speaker 1: together a brand new show about video games with my
Speaker 1: friend Adam Ganza right here on the I Heart Network.
Speaker 1: So check us out. We're called one Upsmanship. That's the
Speaker 1: number one, and then the word lit upsmanship. I used
Speaker 1: to say word, but Adam told me that that's bullshit.
Speaker 1: But I need people to know that it's the number one.
Speaker 1: So yeah, we deep dive into various video games and
Speaker 1: argue about whether they would be shown to aliens if
Speaker 1: we wanted to like impress them and not have them
Speaker 1: destroy humanity. But it seems like the windows closing on
Speaker 1: that opportunity. But let's put it this way, when they
Speaker 1: sift through the ruins of Earth, these are the video
Speaker 1: games we want them to encounter. Now, it's Michael, it's
Speaker 1: it's very appropriate. You just talked about what we would
Speaker 1: show aliens if they came to Earth, because today we're
Speaker 1: kind of talking about that kind of story. This is
Speaker 1: the story of essentially a group of aliens led by
Speaker 1: the most alien creature in all of the universe and Italian,
Speaker 1: who come upon a world filled with people who you know,
Speaker 1: are are going to have to endure the realities of
Speaker 1: their of their appearance in this world. Um, I am,
Speaker 1: of course talking about Christopher Columbus and his voyage to
Speaker 1: the quote unquote New World. Masterful sege, not plague, not
Speaker 1: not at all, not at all. Michael, what do you
Speaker 1: what do you what do you what do you know about? Oh,
Speaker 1: Chris Columbus, not the director but also the director. I
Speaker 1: assume they're guilty of the same crimes. So the angrier
Speaker 1: you get it this, Chris Columbus, if you have a
Speaker 1: chance to do harm to the other Chris Columbus, just
Speaker 1: take a swing man. It's fine. Yeah. They both are
Speaker 1: noted for their similar like rapport with children. Both Chris
Speaker 1: Columbus have um well, I know, of course the pat version,
Speaker 1: which I wonder if it's still taught an element free school.
Speaker 1: But I first imbibed like the classic Happy Thanksgiving, Everything's
Speaker 1: fine Christopher Columbus story, and my, uh, my eyes were
Speaker 1: ripped from the veil whatever, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: probably middle of high school, where I learned a few
Speaker 1: let's say, fun facts about Christopher Columbus that I bet
Speaker 1: will come up over the course of this podcast. And
Speaker 1: then this all culminated for me personally when at Cracked.
Speaker 1: Among many many sketches, I got to portray Chris Columbus
Speaker 1: in a series we did called Dead Talks, which is
Speaker 1: an exhaustive like Chris Columbus bragging basically about the triangle
Speaker 1: trade and you know, putting it in sort of neo
Speaker 1: tech like we're going to change the world for the
Speaker 1: better terms is the premise of that sketch and I
Speaker 1: learned a lot through that actually, because cracked, as you know,
Speaker 1: it's very fact based, something you brought to it honestly
Speaker 1: before you were hired. I got to make shift up
Speaker 1: a lot more. And uh, then they are like, these
Speaker 1: kids really like the facts. Let's do the fact. I
Speaker 1: murdered the fun for you. That's right. We hybridized it.
Speaker 1: We got jokes in there. I know the feeling. He
Speaker 1: does murder the fun. I do murder the fun, just
Speaker 1: like Santa murdered those kids. According to the d e
Speaker 1: A there it is so Santa does not admit any
Speaker 1: wrongdoing in this case. So before we get into this episode, Mike,
Speaker 1: I think we should probably have a discussion about morality
Speaker 1: and the distant past, because whenever we talk particularly about dead,
Speaker 1: famous white guys who were once worshiped as heroes and
Speaker 1: are now being criticized for bad things they did, there's
Speaker 1: a cry that goes up from a certain corner that's like,
Speaker 1: you can't judge people from the past by modern moral standards.
Speaker 1: This is usually meant as a callow and cowardly attempt
Speaker 1: to stop all critical moral analysis of these people, but
Speaker 1: also the sentiment is not entirely without value, because things
Speaker 1: are different in the past, and if you are applying
Speaker 1: entirely modern standards to things, then you're going to like
Speaker 1: wind up just getting angry at ship and condemning people
Speaker 1: rather than kind of understanding their actual place in the
Speaker 1: moral universe of the time. And I think slavery is
Speaker 1: a good example of that, because viewing all slavery and
Speaker 1: all people who have owned slaves in history as the
Speaker 1: same as the worst slave owners in history, and I'm
Speaker 1: generally talking about the American Confederacy in this period of
Speaker 1: time or when I when I say that is kind
Speaker 1: of counterproductive because slavery has been the normal state of
Speaker 1: affairs in most society throughout human history. Most societies either
Speaker 1: had slaves or individuals in them were always at risk
Speaker 1: of being enslaved. This is a thing that has gone
Speaker 1: on basically forever. There have been some notable exceptions, like
Speaker 1: the Persian Empire and whatnot, were like there was no
Speaker 1: such thing as slavery, but there were generally structures within
Speaker 1: things like the Persian Empire or like structures like serfdom that,
Speaker 1: even though they were technically slavery, were worse off than
Speaker 1: slaves were in a lot of other Like you could
Speaker 1: compare a surf in the Russian step to like a
Speaker 1: slave in urban Rome, and slave in urban Rome has
Speaker 1: a lot more autonomy as a general rule, So like
Speaker 1: discussing all of these things as if they're kind of
Speaker 1: the same, I think does lose us some nuance. And
Speaker 1: so when we're talking about Christopher Columbus, I obviously none
Speaker 1: of this is set up in order to defend him
Speaker 1: or mitigate his bood. But yeah, I think if you
Speaker 1: want to actually understand what he did that was like
Speaker 1: super fucked up, it's important not to just kind of
Speaker 1: look at here's the things he did that we can
Speaker 1: say now in two are bad, But here is the
Speaker 1: things that he made worse. Here are the things that
Speaker 1: like he ways he changed the world in ways that
Speaker 1: made it more brutal and horrific than it had been,
Speaker 1: because he came into a pretty gnarly fucking world and
Speaker 1: he made it a lot worse. And I think that's
Speaker 1: the reason to condemn him, rather than being rather than
Speaker 1: stuff that he did that was like more or less
Speaker 1: in line with common morality at the time. So I
Speaker 1: think you do have to have an understanding of like
Speaker 1: what was accepted in his culture. You understand the things
Speaker 1: he did that were particularly fucked up. If that makes sense, Oh,
Speaker 1: it absolutely makes sense. Although I do want to say
Speaker 1: something that came to mind for me, uh was a
Speaker 1: trip to the Slavery Museum in New York that I
Speaker 1: where I encounter like a series of letters from people
Speaker 1: at the time when the Triangle trade was first like
Speaker 1: getting built and slave ships were coming to the shore.
Speaker 1: And what was really eye opening for me is several
Speaker 1: of the letters are and I'm paraphrasing here, holy sh it,
Speaker 1: these are human beings and they're enslaving them. They're doing this. Now,
Speaker 1: what the funk is going on? That's insane. We can't
Speaker 1: do that. What is this? It's so it's interesting that
Speaker 1: on and they it was on rare occasion, but there
Speaker 1: were people who saw it with modern eyes instinctively like
Speaker 1: you can't do that to a human being. Well, here's
Speaker 1: the thing, I will are you, we'll get into this more.
Speaker 1: They're not seeing it with modernized because most of those
Speaker 1: people accepted slavery in other forms, specifically the kind of
Speaker 1: slavery that Columbus instituted. They were like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: this is so much worse than anything we've seen. Like,
Speaker 1: everybody does a little bit of slave trading, but what
Speaker 1: he has introduced is like a new plague upon the world,
Speaker 1: and is is is so much worse than anything that
Speaker 1: had been seen before. I think that's part of what's
Speaker 1: interesting about him, because like some of the people who
Speaker 1: are condemning him, like day Las Casas, are people who
Speaker 1: like grew up with slave trading in their local in
Speaker 1: their own society, and like didn't really speak out about
Speaker 1: that being an issue. Yeah, and it's Las Casas. I
Speaker 1: I take the podcast wherever you want to steer it,
Speaker 1: but if you do get into the list of just
Speaker 1: like imagery, it's pretty it is a nightmare. But I
Speaker 1: do want to in order to actually, I think, in
Speaker 1: order to properly condemn Christopher Columbus to the with the
Speaker 1: most understanding that we can condemn him, we have to
Speaker 1: set the moral scene and and talk about the world
Speaker 1: he came into and like what was the norm in
Speaker 1: the society that he and his critics came into. So
Speaker 1: this is not just when we talk about the ship
Speaker 1: that was normal in Columbus's world. This is also the
Speaker 1: thing that the people who condemned him at the time,
Speaker 1: saw is normal, which gives you an idea of like,
Speaker 1: how fucked up what Columbus does later is um, because
Speaker 1: it's bad. But um, yeah, we will be talking about
Speaker 1: a number of different kind of historic defenses because we
Speaker 1: had this. So if you want to look at the
Speaker 1: broad sweep of how people have talked about Columbus, you
Speaker 1: had Columbus, great guy, hero, schoolhouse rock, you know, YadA, YadA, YadA,
Speaker 1: let's let's show him dancing, and then you have Columbus
Speaker 1: is was a monster and and a war criminal on
Speaker 1: a on a on a historic scale. And now you've
Speaker 1: got a pushback largely coming from conservatives. Um. If you
Speaker 1: want to go google Columbus Misunderstood or like Columbus, you know,
Speaker 1: revisiting or whatever, you'll find a bunch of daily wire
Speaker 1: fucking articles and ship about him, and a lot of
Speaker 1: them are going to quote one of the books that
Speaker 1: also is going to be a source of our in
Speaker 1: our episode today. UM. And it's a book by Carol Delaney,
Speaker 1: Um that is about It's called Columbus and the Quest
Speaker 1: for Jerusalem. Um. Now, this is a book that has
Speaker 1: some original research, and it will be quoting from it
Speaker 1: quite a bit, but we will also be quoting from
Speaker 1: other sources to point out how fucked up what Delaney
Speaker 1: is trying to do in rehabilitating Columbus is. Um. She
Speaker 1: is clear to note that she's trying to look at
Speaker 1: him quote from a contemporary perspective rather than from the
Speaker 1: values and practice or she's she's she complains that people
Speaker 1: try to judge him quote from a contemporary perspective rather
Speaker 1: than from the values and practices of his own time. Um.
Speaker 1: And then she goes ahead and leaves out all of
Speaker 1: the different judgments that people out at his own time
Speaker 1: made about him, and a whole bunch of other details too.
Speaker 1: It's just wild too. It was a different time, like
Speaker 1: stabbing pregnant people on their bellies, You're like different. That
Speaker 1: was always a problem, um, but it's interesting. I think
Speaker 1: part of the value of this episode is as we
Speaker 1: go through Columbus his life, we will be going through
Speaker 1: Delaney's book and pointing out all of the things she
Speaker 1: leaves out, because it's useful when you try to engage
Speaker 1: with people who are currently in the process of trying
Speaker 1: to rehabilitate Columbus, because that is like you may not
Speaker 1: have noticed it, and all of the other problems. But
Speaker 1: it's like a thing the right has been trying to do,
Speaker 1: particularly in the last two years. Um So, I think
Speaker 1: it's worth not just being like fuck that book, but
Speaker 1: also being like, here is why that's books fucked up in.
Speaker 1: Here is the things that it leaves out, and here's
Speaker 1: the holes in her research that other people have not
Speaker 1: had holes in. Um So, Yeah, Christopher Columbus was born
Speaker 1: not at long after the Black Death finished its last
Speaker 1: series of waves. Throughout his world, he's a he's a
Speaker 1: child of the Mediterranean. He's born on the Italian coast.
Speaker 1: Probably we don't know exactly, but there's a bunch of
Speaker 1: records of him as a young man in the city
Speaker 1: of Genoa, and he always claimed to be from Genoa,
Speaker 1: so it's pretty safe to say probably born somewhere around Genoa.
Speaker 1: Um and you know, Genoa is it's worth like again
Speaker 1: to kind of at the stage for like the kind
Speaker 1: of people who are around when he's a kid. The
Speaker 1: plague is still kind of in its last waves when
Speaker 1: he's born, and the Mediterranean is particularly like one of
Speaker 1: the places where the Black Plague does them. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of cities and towns, including Genoa, where it's not
Speaker 1: uncommon for like plague waves to kill fifty to se
Speaker 1: the population, whereas if you're looking at like England and stuff,
Speaker 1: it's often more like twenty, which is still devastating. Right,
Speaker 1: you think about how bad COVID has been and how
Speaker 1: much damage like a million dead has done in a
Speaker 1: country three million, and like you're talking about, you know,
Speaker 1: seventy five times that many people dying more or less
Speaker 1: in like or actually know, like a hundred and I
Speaker 1: don't know, I'm not great at math. A lot more
Speaker 1: as a percentage of your population, much more people. So
Speaker 1: number one. One of the things that this sets up
Speaker 1: understanding like the fact that an apocalypse has just occurred.
Speaker 1: When Christopher Columbus co and do he is going to
Speaker 1: cause an apocalypse, but he's also he is the child
Speaker 1: of an apocalypse. So he's born into a world where
Speaker 1: like a whole lot of ship got sucked up really hard,
Speaker 1: very recently in ways that are it would be difficult
Speaker 1: for us to put our heads, to put ourselves in
Speaker 1: the place of like people living in that world, because
Speaker 1: the collapse that they endured was like so much more
Speaker 1: severe than anything we've seen yet, you know, check back
Speaker 1: in in about a month and a half. But at
Speaker 1: the moment um, and obviously slavery was extremely common in
Speaker 1: the world. He grew up in the city of his birth, Genoa,
Speaker 1: was an influential Italian city state that made a significant
Speaker 1: amount of its income through slavery. Italy is not a thing,
Speaker 1: like it's a geographical thing, but like nobody would say that,
Speaker 1: like I'm an Italian. You'd say, like, I'm Genoese. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm from Venice, I'm a Roman. And they all hate
Speaker 1: each other, like they hate each other and they're yeah,
Speaker 1: they're city states and they're constantly murdering each other, and um, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's Italian's favorite thing in this period is
Speaker 1: killing each other. Um, it's like the thing that they
Speaker 1: do the most of um, other than make a shipload
Speaker 1: of money through trade, a lot of which is the
Speaker 1: slave trade. And the book is a good historic upgrade
Speaker 1: that rebrand in Genoa from slavery to Salamia, which I
Speaker 1: think and they're most associated with now major grad Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: it it sounds like Genoa was a fucking nightmare back
Speaker 1: in the day. And it is worth noting when we
Speaker 1: talk about this city there's about seventy five thousand people
Speaker 1: in Genoa when he's a kid, which makes it I
Speaker 1: think it's like in the top five or ten cities
Speaker 1: in Western Europe by population. It's one of the most
Speaker 1: I mean it's which makes it one of the most
Speaker 1: populous cities in the world at the time. Um, because
Speaker 1: there's not all that many people, you know. UM. Anyway,
Speaker 1: the book Columbus by Lawrence bear Green, who's a much
Speaker 1: better historian than Carol Delaney, I think, um ably describes
Speaker 1: the status quo in his home when he was born.
Speaker 1: R E slavery quote. Slavery was deeply woven into the
Speaker 1: fabric of the Genoese economy, especially traffic in girls who
Speaker 1: were only thirteen or fourteen years old. Every Genoese household,
Speaker 1: even modest ones, had one or two female slaves. Although
Speaker 1: Christianity prohibited bondage, an exception was made for these non
Speaker 1: Christian slaves. They were Russian, Arab, Mongol, Bulgarian, Bosnian, Albanian
Speaker 1: and Chinese slave traders and pirates sold them on a
Speaker 1: regular basis to Genoa. Occasionally, their wide net included a
Speaker 1: Christian girl whom they kidnapped and would return for a
Speaker 1: high ransom. The transactions were formal ordarized. Indeeded most slaves
Speaker 1: were sold as is. If others whose health had been
Speaker 1: guaranteed developed epilepsy or other health problems, the owner demanded
Speaker 1: an annulment of the contract. Some cautious buyers kept the
Speaker 1: girl of their choice on a trial basis to judge
Speaker 1: whether she would remain charming and adapt to a life
Speaker 1: of slavery. In Genoa, once acquired by a Genoese master,
Speaker 1: girls became mere property, bound to gratify his sexual wants,
Speaker 1: as well as those of his friends. Merchants able to
Speaker 1: afford a concubine, and many in this prosperous city could
Speaker 1: maintain them in households separate from their families. The master
Speaker 1: of the house specified the terms of the arrangement with
Speaker 1: the local note republic, especially concerning sensitive matters such as
Speaker 1: inheritance rights for children born out of wedlock. So a
Speaker 1: couple of things. You're number one, that's bad, Like it's
Speaker 1: bad to have your society based heavily around child sex trading.
Speaker 1: But also this is the norm, right, this is what
Speaker 1: he's born into. Right, It's yeah, it's just hard to
Speaker 1: put yourself truly in the mindset of an actual other
Speaker 1: time with truly different social morizes, in the sense that
Speaker 1: this is someone who's going, here's a fourteen year old
Speaker 1: girl I purchased, If you'd like to have sex with her,
Speaker 1: my friend, we're doing it. We're doing a society. This
Speaker 1: is civilization now. Uh, it's so inconceivable through modern eyes.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I totally get what you're saying in the
Speaker 1: opening about the contrast between what yes stept and what
Speaker 1: is normalized. And it is important. Again, obviously it is
Speaker 1: bad to sexually traffic children as slaves, but also this
Speaker 1: is not just the norm in Genoa in the fourteen hundreds.
Speaker 1: This was going on has been going on for a
Speaker 1: very long time, and you could argue the system is
Speaker 1: less shitty than it was, for example, like the height
Speaker 1: of the Roman Empire, because slaves in Genoa are primarily
Speaker 1: this kind of slave like how slaves who exist to
Speaker 1: satisfy like an old dude sexual whims, which is gross
Speaker 1: and bad, But a major factor of ancient Roman slavery
Speaker 1: was we are going to enslave these people and work
Speaker 1: them to death in a mind like in the worst
Speaker 1: conditions imaginable by the thousands, which is probably worse, and
Speaker 1: the fact that that's less common in the fourteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: you could say, is better. I don't think it's super
Speaker 1: useful to look at it that way, but like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's important to note that, like all, like Italian wealth
Speaker 1: for the last three thousand years prior to this was
Speaker 1: built on the back of slavery on a massive scale, right,
Speaker 1: always had been, you know. Um, And that's that's the
Speaker 1: world Columbus comes into, not just a world in which
Speaker 1: the trade in girls is a major industry in his city,
Speaker 1: but also a world in which no one can remember
Speaker 1: a time in which Italians did not make did not
Speaker 1: base a significant portion of their economy on slavery. Right,
Speaker 1: And like the world pre taken one, there's not a
Speaker 1: singlely amazing no so nothing can free these people. Um
Speaker 1: and yeah, so by the standards of the time, Um,
Speaker 1: an individual who like accepts within this society that like, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's just gonna be slavery around me, that's pretty normal. Um.
Speaker 1: And it's worth noting, well, actually there's debates whether or
Speaker 1: not Columbus himself owned a slave. This is the kind
Speaker 1: of thing that you're not going to get a satisfying
Speaker 1: answer on Um, but it is probably fair to say
Speaker 1: that like if Columbus were just another Italian who existed
Speaker 1: within a slave owning society and perpetuated it, he would
Speaker 1: not get an episode on his own um, because there's like,
Speaker 1: like every Italian prior to this point in history was
Speaker 1: involved in the slave trade basically. UM So yeah, anyway, UM,
Speaker 1: what I think is important is kind of setting the
Speaker 1: scene because the thing that he creates is like, it's
Speaker 1: not just worse than slavery that exists in Genoa of
Speaker 1: his birth, It's something that the Roman Empire would have
Speaker 1: looked at and been like Jesus Christ, dude, like what
Speaker 1: the fuck? He yes? I mean he yes, he he
Speaker 1: literally would have. But also like not not only did
Speaker 1: people at the time judge him, but like if you
Speaker 1: could go back and talk to like fucking Cicero, he
Speaker 1: would have been like what the fuck man, this is like,
Speaker 1: this isn't how you treat people. Um. So yeah, Christopher
Speaker 1: Columbus was not, as I think he gets described a
Speaker 1: lot by people on the left, just an er capitalist
Speaker 1: who want to do enslaved people in like mind their
Speaker 1: society because he was personally greedy. What's interesting about him
Speaker 1: as a bastard. Is that the reason for everything he
Speaker 1: does is that he becomes a Messianic Christian holy warrior,
Speaker 1: and the genocide that he's going to commit, which heavily
Speaker 1: involves slavery, is done in the name of funding a
Speaker 1: war to retake the Holy City in Christendom, Jerusalem. Like,
Speaker 1: that's why he does it. And so his excesses that
Speaker 1: we're going to be covering are just because he's greedy,
Speaker 1: although he certainly is, but it's because he's a frenzied
Speaker 1: narcissist who believes he's chosen by God to bring about
Speaker 1: the apocalypse, which is a different story than the one
Speaker 1: I had heard even on the left for the most part. Um, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've only heard the Chamber of Horror's version. I have
Speaker 1: not heard the Messianic cultist version. Yes he is. He
Speaker 1: is a Messianic apocalypse cultist, and that's why he does
Speaker 1: a genocide. So Christophero Colombo, which is his actual birth name,
Speaker 1: and it's ridiculous, so we're not going to call him
Speaker 1: that again, was born near Genoa in the summer of
Speaker 1: fourteen fifty one, quite possibly around July. We don't know
Speaker 1: the exact date or even month. But Carol Delaney notes
Speaker 1: that St. Christopher's Day was celebrated on July twenty and
Speaker 1: that his first name might be a hint as to
Speaker 1: win he was born. Um I have my issues with Carol,
Speaker 1: but this is not an unreasonable deduction. Um Any also
Speaker 1: notes quote the name given to a child at baptism
Speaker 1: was believed to have an influence on the child's character.
Speaker 1: So when Susannah that's his mom, selected the name Christopher Oh,
Speaker 1: she may well have been trying to affect his destiny.
Speaker 1: The name Christopher Oh. Christopher means Christ Bearer and is
Speaker 1: derived from the story of a pagan man, Reprobus, who
Speaker 1: once carried a small child across a river. As they crossed,
Speaker 1: the child became heavier and heavier, until he revealed to
Speaker 1: Reprobus that he was carrying the weight of the entire world.
Speaker 1: With that Reprobus, we realized that he was carrying the
Speaker 1: christ child. For his service, Reprobus became a saint known
Speaker 1: as Christopher. So that's the guy he's named after. And
Speaker 1: that's relevant because he is going to take that name
Speaker 1: that he gets super Literally, someone sold you a bag
Speaker 1: of rocks, dude, you've been scammed. History dude, Yeah, you
Speaker 1: have been scammed. And you know who else has been scammed? Michael, Oh,
Speaker 1: gosh me in the future. After I hear these great,
Speaker 1: wonderful products and services, I would say, the people who
Speaker 1: haven't her of these products and services have been scammed.
Speaker 1: But you know you can judge for yourselves. You really
Speaker 1: turned me around on that issue. Oh we're back. So
Speaker 1: Christopher is born just two years before one of the
Speaker 1: most critical events in Christian history, the fall of Constantinople
Speaker 1: to the Ottoman Empire. Now this is a really fascinating
Speaker 1: story in and of itself, but it's importance to our
Speaker 1: story is that this was both seen as a sign
Speaker 1: of the looming apocalypse. The enemy was quite literally at
Speaker 1: the gates, and it was a calamity for European access
Speaker 1: to global trade. Constantinople was one of the I mean
Speaker 1: it still is like one of the major If you
Speaker 1: just look at it on a map, you can see
Speaker 1: why it's an important port city. Right. It's you can't
Speaker 1: get shipped by sea from from Asia to the Mediterranean
Speaker 1: without sailing around a bunch of extra bullshit unless you
Speaker 1: cross through the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles, which Constantinople effectively
Speaker 1: allows you to guard Um, and prior to its fall,
Speaker 1: Christian control of the city gave Europe basically all of
Speaker 1: its access to spices and textiles from the Orient. Right,
Speaker 1: That's how you get stuff from China, That's how you
Speaker 1: get stuff from like even like Eastern you know, the
Speaker 1: Russian provinces, places like Kazakhstan. It flows to you through
Speaker 1: over the Black Sea, through fucking Constantinople. Constantinople falls, the
Speaker 1: Ottomans blest the ship out of it with some very
Speaker 1: cool canons um, and then suddenly Christians are like, oh no,
Speaker 1: we're We're fucked. And there's a fun little story here.
Speaker 1: They almost end the Eastern Orthodox Church as part of
Speaker 1: an agreement with the pope to like send reinforcements to
Speaker 1: save them, but it doesn't quite work out in time,
Speaker 1: and it falls anyway, and then I guess the Eastern
Speaker 1: Orthodox Church is like, well, why are we gonna? Yeah,
Speaker 1: fuck it? I guess yeah. Um, So when the Ottomans
Speaker 1: take Constantinople, which they call istanbul Um, there's a good
Speaker 1: song about this setting up defining my favorite bands A
Speaker 1: thousand years later. Whatever. Although you know, a lot of
Speaker 1: different ethnic groups in the region would say that it's
Speaker 1: quite a few other people's business. But the Turks, although
Speaker 1: under air to win, the Turks would say that there
Speaker 1: are only Turks in Anatolia. This is a whole contentious
Speaker 1: historical man hates man. Yeah, particle man hates universe man
Speaker 1: and recognizes the reality of the Armenian genocide. Um, that's
Speaker 1: what everyone knows about particle man. Um. So when the
Speaker 1: Ottomans take Constantinople, they get the ability to tax and
Speaker 1: control all trade throughout the city or that comes through
Speaker 1: the city, right and so and obviously, like you know,
Speaker 1: they're Muslim, Christians are Christians. There's some like bad blood there.
Speaker 1: So they don't have like the most interest in making
Speaker 1: it uh easy for Western Europe to like get goods
Speaker 1: from the East. Um. They want to make their fucking cut.
Speaker 1: They've spent a lot of time going to war in
Speaker 1: order to get the ability to do this. Um. And
Speaker 1: you know this is a problem for Europe. Um. There's
Speaker 1: attempts crusades. None of them really work out very well,
Speaker 1: which is generally what happens with crusades. Usually they go
Speaker 1: very badly. Um. And as Christopher goes grows up, he
Speaker 1: was probably a little too young, you know, when Constantinople
Speaker 1: falls to remember it. But a lot of his early
Speaker 1: memories are going to be adults talking about these attempted crusades,
Speaker 1: talking about the need to reconquer Constantinople and talking about
Speaker 1: fall in Jerusalem, right, and the fact that like that
Speaker 1: is a thing that Christians should be trying to reconquer.
Speaker 1: So Jerusalem it was believed. Again this is not like
Speaker 1: this is a belief at the time, but it's also
Speaker 1: a belief among a lot of Christians today that Jerusalem
Speaker 1: has to be in Christian hands, and particularly there's some
Speaker 1: fucking temple there that has to be returned to like
Speaker 1: being a Christian church or turned into a Christian church.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I ever, I'm not an expert
Speaker 1: on Jerusalem mystery. Don't yell at me, um, but like
Speaker 1: there's a Jerusalem has to be in control, like the
Speaker 1: Christians have to be in control of it so that
Speaker 1: God can end the world. Right, that's that's that's the
Speaker 1: idea word for work, Yes, yes, um. But the problem
Speaker 1: is that Jerusalem fell to Soladin in seven because again
Speaker 1: crusades bad idea what and and Saladin very cool guy,
Speaker 1: we'll talk about in one of these days. Um, But
Speaker 1: it's worth noting that like this is very recent. Number one,
Speaker 1: things move a little bit more slowly back then in
Speaker 1: terms of history. This is three years before his birth,
Speaker 1: But this is also very recent history to everybody in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways. Um. And to think about like
Speaker 1: the way in which like this might have been talked
Speaker 1: about the time. Remember, the founding of the United States
Speaker 1: is a political entity. Is about the same distance from
Speaker 1: you and me as the fall of Jerusalem was to
Speaker 1: Columbus as a young person. Think about the degree to
Speaker 1: which that period of time shapes all of our lives
Speaker 1: right now, the degree to which every people still talk
Speaker 1: about the quote unquote founders and ship. And that will
Speaker 1: give you an idea of like how immediate and relevant
Speaker 1: the fall of Jerusalem would have been to Christopher Columbus
Speaker 1: as a kid. Right. Yeah, you can still win any
Speaker 1: argument if you can prove that Thomas jeff Well, that's
Speaker 1: what Thomas Jefferson would have wanted, which is so and
Speaker 1: it cares about that and in his day, the Trump
Speaker 1: card is well, this will help us retake Jerusalem. Like, well,
Speaker 1: you're not focusing enough, right you know. Um, Yeah, so
Speaker 1: for young Christopher and for any good Catholic, it would
Speaker 1: have been taken as read that the chief goal of
Speaker 1: Christian civilization ought to be the reconquest of the Holy Land. Now,
Speaker 1: this was for some people an actual fervent belief that
Speaker 1: they devoted their lives too. For most people, this is
Speaker 1: kind of like the way old people today talk about
Speaker 1: the deficit, right, Like they'll say, like, well, of course
Speaker 1: I want to retake Jerusalem, but like, we gotta do
Speaker 1: this too first, and like we got all this other
Speaker 1: stuff to do, right, Like, it wasn't really on their
Speaker 1: front burner, you know, um, which is why it never
Speaker 1: gets retaken, among other reasons. Um. So, since there was
Speaker 1: no real hope of taking the city and most of
Speaker 1: the actual rulers were not going to burn all of
Speaker 1: their treasure and all of their armies, probably failing to
Speaker 1: retake Jerusalem, Christians at the time who were fanatics had
Speaker 1: to content themselves with fantasies in order to like feel
Speaker 1: like there was a chance of actually retaking the city.
Speaker 1: One of the most common fantasies was about a guy
Speaker 1: named Prester John, they believed, and who was this like
Speaker 1: mythical Christian warrior king he's supposed to have a powerful
Speaker 1: kingdom with a mighty army somewhere between Russia and China.
Speaker 1: A lot of times people would say it was like
Speaker 1: kind of where Tibet actually is. Um And basically the
Speaker 1: way people will talk about it is that like any
Speaker 1: day now, Prester John's gonna save us from the rampaging
Speaker 1: Muslim hordes. You know, he's gonna come down from somewhere
Speaker 1: in Asia and we'll we'll, we'll beat those devious Muslims,
Speaker 1: you know. Um. The other hope they had, and this
Speaker 1: may be surprising to people, was the Great Khan. Now
Speaker 1: they're generally talking about Genghis or um Or or uh
Speaker 1: Kubla Khan, right when they talk about the Great Khan,
Speaker 1: that none of those guys were around in Columbus's day.
Speaker 1: They were still talking about the Great Khan. The Western
Speaker 1: Khanate had ended, which is like Russia Ish had ended
Speaker 1: in thirteen seventy. In the Eastern Khannate was deep into
Speaker 1: declined by the late four hundreds, but news didn't really
Speaker 1: travel back then, right, So like people just knew that
Speaker 1: a couple hundred years ago the Mongolians had been unstoppable
Speaker 1: and assumed they still were. And one of the things
Speaker 1: that the Mongolians did was fucking absolutely curb stomp um
Speaker 1: a big Muslim empire, like they they fucking melt Baghdad. Basically, Um,
Speaker 1: it is gnarly shit. And so another thing is that,
Speaker 1: like you get these stories from Marco Polo, right, who's
Speaker 1: like a hundred and fifty two hundred years earlier than
Speaker 1: this period um, and still would have been very relevant
Speaker 1: in the day that Columbus is going up, in part
Speaker 1: because Columbus tells the story of like his magical journey
Speaker 1: to Asia while he is captured by Genoese soldiers and
Speaker 1: imprisoned in Genoa, right, Like he's another Italian and he
Speaker 1: like gets captured in a war, and he tells this
Speaker 1: fucking story that's at least the story about how the
Speaker 1: story comes out. Hey, everybody, I screwed up here at
Speaker 1: this point, and at a couple of their points, I
Speaker 1: say Columbus us when I meant to say Marco Polo,
Speaker 1: makes a little bit confusing. I apologize for the error
Speaker 1: and will burn a city in penance. And Columbus one
Speaker 1: of the things he'd said in his purported voyage to
Speaker 1: like hang out with the Great con in Asia is
Speaker 1: that the con was really interested in Christianity, and if
Speaker 1: we could just get some guys to go talk to
Speaker 1: him about Jesus, he might convert, and then we'll be
Speaker 1: able to retake the Holy Land, right because the Mongols
Speaker 1: will do it for us once they're Christian, you know,
Speaker 1: um yeah, um, and so yeah, these are the stories people,
Speaker 1: and particularly people in young Columbus's orbit, would have been
Speaker 1: telling themselves. And we know from his own writings and
Speaker 1: from things he says later he grows up believing all this,
Speaker 1: both that there is a great con with a powerful
Speaker 1: army who's probably you can convert to Christianity if you
Speaker 1: can just he just is waiting for a guy to
Speaker 1: come talk to him, you know, he's just got to
Speaker 1: get the right dude, and he'll be like, all right,
Speaker 1: we're Christians, got him, But we ran out of pamphlets,
Speaker 1: we ran out of pamples. We tell we we got
Speaker 1: right up, we got right up to Jesus, but then
Speaker 1: we no one could tell what had happened after Jesus
Speaker 1: turned like thirty. And so he was like, well, I
Speaker 1: don't see why this is. Yeah, we forgot Bible, got wet,
Speaker 1: got smug, yeah, if only the pope had been there.
Speaker 1: None of us knew what Jesus did because we're not
Speaker 1: allowed to read the Bible in this period, which is
Speaker 1: actually not wildly far from the truth. So Clumbus grows
Speaker 1: up believing all this um, and so probably do most
Speaker 1: of the people around him. Because Jenoa is kind of
Speaker 1: people are pretty fanatically fucking Catholic there. His family is
Speaker 1: middle class, probably upper middle class, although again those terms
Speaker 1: and the fourteen hundreds not super useful for actually understanding
Speaker 1: for one thing, politics Even so, obviously all of the
Speaker 1: city states are constantly murdering each other, all of the
Speaker 1: different political factions in the cities are also constantly murdering
Speaker 1: each other, and so your ability to be like quote
Speaker 1: unquote middle class or whatever is heavily tied to, like
Speaker 1: you being friends with the people who are in power,
Speaker 1: and if they happen to get murdered, which happens constantly,
Speaker 1: ship can change very quickly for you because you're very
Speaker 1: much reliant upon them for like the right to sell
Speaker 1: or buy certain things or get this, you know, whatever
Speaker 1: government job. His father, Domenico, was a cloth weaver who
Speaker 1: does good enough. He makes friends with the people who
Speaker 1: are in charge of the city. When Columbus is a
Speaker 1: little kid, he gets a cushy job at one point,
Speaker 1: like is the gatekeeper, which is a pretty pretty sweet
Speaker 1: gig um. Now, as Columbus grows up, he goes to
Speaker 1: obviously he's he's attending church constantly. The cathedral that he
Speaker 1: would have gone to as a kid was most noted
Speaker 1: by this gigantic fresco. It has of the apocalypse, um,
Speaker 1: which he's probably spending a lot of time thinking about
Speaker 1: the end of the world is. Interestingly, it was the
Speaker 1: first thing he saw and he was gazing upon it
Speaker 1: as he lost his virginity. For some reason, he got
Speaker 1: like really into it. Yeah. It's his star wars, his
Speaker 1: whole personality. Yeah. Um. He he's got like all sorts
Speaker 1: of fucking what do you call them, funco pops of
Speaker 1: like Pagan's wailing as Christ burns them. Um. One of
Speaker 1: the most influential religious minds of his day or slightly
Speaker 1: before his day, would have been the Franciscan monk St. Bernardino,
Speaker 1: who had given famous sermons in Genoa about a generation
Speaker 1: or so before Christopher was born. Bernardino was an apocalyptic preacher.
Speaker 1: He warned evade an imminently coming end time, and he
Speaker 1: would screech that today's Christians had slipped into sin and
Speaker 1: we're in danger of damnation. God was angry at them
Speaker 1: because they weren't Christian enough. YadA YadA, YadA, San Bernardino,
Speaker 1: it's pretty apocalyptic, it is. It is. It's the end
Speaker 1: of days. That is how I feel. We got a
Speaker 1: nu kid, just like the Great Light. Anyway, we'll talk
Speaker 1: about that later. Carol Delaney writes, quote, people would gather
Speaker 1: in town squares day after day, sitting for hours listening,
Speaker 1: transfixed by this fascinating but horrific moral tales about the
Speaker 1: wages of sin. Bernardino focused especially on sins committed by witches,
Speaker 1: consorting with the devil, the sin of sodomy, and the
Speaker 1: sin of fraternizing with the Jews. You have to do that,
Speaker 1: it's the only way. Yeah. Specifically, you also are supposed
Speaker 1: to go out sodomy. Sodomy, Yeah, thank you. His sermons
Speaker 1: were important enough they were transcribed, copied, and distributed widely
Speaker 1: by the time Christopher was a kid. When he was nine,
Speaker 1: this fixation with sin and a need to fight for
Speaker 1: God would have been reinforced by the launching of a
Speaker 1: crusade by Pope Pious, the second being a port city.
Speaker 1: Genoa was a major rowling point for crusader, So as
Speaker 1: a little kid, he's probably seen a bunch of guys
Speaker 1: go off to do a crusade, which again doesn't go
Speaker 1: great because none of them do. It is noteworthy that
Speaker 1: young Christopher grows up knowing how to read and write. Um.
Speaker 1: This is not common at the time, and it is
Speaker 1: in fact widely agreed upon that his penmanship was gorgeous
Speaker 1: and that he could have made a solid living on
Speaker 1: the fact that he was really good at writing. Maybe
Speaker 1: done that, then maybe he gigs should have done that.
Speaker 1: We aren't certain where he learned to read and write.
Speaker 1: His family was friendly with a group of wealthy nobles,
Speaker 1: the decun Eos, who will be relevant later in the story. Um.
Speaker 1: It's also possible that he attended classes with them, just
Speaker 1: because like they're like, oh, yeah, you know, we've got
Speaker 1: a tutor for our rich kids. You're a friend of
Speaker 1: the family, come on, learn how to read. It's he
Speaker 1: also might have just gotten educated through the guild that
Speaker 1: his father belonged to. Guilds are kind of doing running
Speaker 1: a lot of civil society in Genoa, and they do
Speaker 1: provide educations kids of people who are in guilds. Sometimes.
Speaker 1: It's worth noting also that because Genoa's a port city
Speaker 1: and the economy focused entirely around maritime trade, the fall
Speaker 1: of Constantinople leads to like economic shit fuck for Genoa.
Speaker 1: To make matters worse, the French, who are allied with
Speaker 1: some of Genoa's enemy city states, are like in the
Speaker 1: period where he is a child and a young man,
Speaker 1: steadily raiding Genoa and shipping and dominating its economy. Um
Speaker 1: Lawrence Burgreen, author of Columbus the Four Voyages, notes that
Speaker 1: there are rumors that the Columbus family had once been
Speaker 1: half wealthy, but, like Jittewah, had fallen from their past
Speaker 1: glory by the time Christopher came into the picture. Burgreen
Speaker 1: proposes that he may have been motivated to regain that
Speaker 1: lost glory and build a legacy for himself because both
Speaker 1: his city and his family used to be doing good.
Speaker 1: You think a guy named christ Pharaoh might have grandiosity
Speaker 1: or like yes, yeah, well it doesn't. It does a
Speaker 1: little bit. It does a little bit. You're not that
Speaker 1: far from Egypt. So in late fourteen fifty nine. When
Speaker 1: Columbus was around eight, his family home was fifty yards
Speaker 1: from the Porta to San Andrea, where the doge, who's
Speaker 1: basically the mayor of the town, gets cornered by a
Speaker 1: gang of rivals who were backed by the French and
Speaker 1: like murdered in the street. Like he's beaten to death
Speaker 1: with iron rods and his corpses torn apart in front
Speaker 1: of everybody. This is fifty yards from Columbus's front door.
Speaker 1: There's a good chance he watches this, right, like a
Speaker 1: pretty good shot. He's just looking at this from his
Speaker 1: window or something. Um and his father is allied with
Speaker 1: the guy who gets torn apart in the streets. So
Speaker 1: this is this causes problems? Is good? Get a load
Speaker 1: of this. This is his This is his watching the
Speaker 1: Rugrats on Nickelodeon. You know, is seeing this man torn
Speaker 1: apart in front of his death? Is that an iron rod?
Speaker 1: That's pretty good? Yes, that's the Uh, that's the I
Speaker 1: don't know Simpson's season four of His Child, the iron
Speaker 1: Rod would be Angelica clearly. Oh okay, that's fair. I
Speaker 1: was gonna just I was going to compare that that
Speaker 1: man getting torn apart and beaten to death in front
Speaker 1: of his house to the Mono rail episode. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's all so. I can't emphasize enough just how religious
Speaker 1: his upbringing would have been. The Genoese, for all of
Speaker 1: the fact that they're Italians and sailors, are a dour
Speaker 1: and joyless people. They are members of a fucking death cult,
Speaker 1: which is pre millennial Catholicism. And in order to make
Speaker 1: that point, I want to quote from Lawrence burg Green's
Speaker 1: book Now. Clothing worn by the Genoese was strictly regulated
Speaker 1: by the Office of Virtue. Beginning in thirty nine. The
Speaker 1: Office and forced a series of sumptuary laws to regulate
Speaker 1: morality by curbing luxury and excess, as well as prostitution.
Speaker 1: These laws limited the amount of money Genoese could spend
Speaker 1: on luxury items and even on weddings limited to fifty guests.
Speaker 1: They regulated the days on which prostitutes, a staple of
Speaker 1: Genoese nightlife, could roam the streets. They measured their time
Speaker 1: with clients by the half hour marked by a flickering candle.
Speaker 1: Girls with a candle, as the prostitutes were known, were
Speaker 1: forbidden to inter a cemetery or approach at shirts, and
Speaker 1: had to wear insignia indicating their profession. If caught out
Speaker 1: of bounds, the prostitutes were punished by having their noses
Speaker 1: amputated and their livelihood ruined. Holy shine again, not fun people,
Speaker 1: Um no, it It never surprises me when it's like
Speaker 1: and they were executed, But when it's so specific, when
Speaker 1: they're like and their left eye was plucked out and
Speaker 1: pins to their breast and they wore it for a week. Damn. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they really put a lot of put a lot of
Speaker 1: work on the back end the this. So these sumptuary
Speaker 1: laws mandated that men should wear only gray clothing. Red
Speaker 1: and purple were strictly forbidden. Women had limits on how
Speaker 1: much jewelry they could own and how much money they
Speaker 1: could spend on dresses. They were fined if they violated
Speaker 1: these limits. Adultery also had a series of fines, and
Speaker 1: a woman who failed to pay her adultery fine would
Speaker 1: be beheaded. Um. It is unclear if Columbus found these
Speaker 1: rules stifling, as he was a religious extremist himself, but
Speaker 1: he also spends most of his life in Lisbon, Spain,
Speaker 1: or like in Portugal in Spain, or at sea, so
Speaker 1: like maybe he kind of was like Jesus, fuck genous bullshit,
Speaker 1: he's living over them. But he does. He does get
Speaker 1: the funk out of there about as quickly as he can.
Speaker 1: Feels to love the city. So it feels like the
Speaker 1: dad from the Witch would get the funk out of there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it does. It does feel like this is like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a little stern for me. We're going to live
Speaker 1: in the woods. Yeah. So we don't know when he
Speaker 1: goes sailing for the first time, but I say, Genoese boy,
Speaker 1: he would not have lacked opportunities to do so. Later
Speaker 1: in life, he wrote that he started sailing at a
Speaker 1: young age and that he was particularly drawn to the
Speaker 1: art of navigation, which he said, quote incites those who
Speaker 1: pursue it to inquire into the secrets of the world.
Speaker 1: For whatever reason, I often find myself reiterating to the
Speaker 1: audience that from most of Western history fourteen counted as
Speaker 1: an adult, and so when Christopher was that age, he
Speaker 1: starts working full time as a sailor. Um he probably
Speaker 1: started out sailing on a caravel, which is a sail
Speaker 1: bearing merchant vessel mainly was supposed to like kind of
Speaker 1: stick either close to the rivers or to the coastline. Um.
Speaker 1: And he seems to have been good at this enough
Speaker 1: that he's signed on for several more trips. This is dangerous,
Speaker 1: backbreaking work. Young sailors are made to do the kind
Speaker 1: of tasks that older men with their ruined joints and
Speaker 1: off broken bones, could no longer handle. Um. As is
Speaker 1: always the case when young boys put to sea, there
Speaker 1: was a significant risk of being sodomized. UM. We have
Speaker 1: no information about this whatsoever, so I'm not gonna like
Speaker 1: belabor the point, but like, that's that. If that the
Speaker 1: fact of sea life. Yeah, UM. Refer to the Pogues
Speaker 1: album Rum Sodomy in the Lash for more information on
Speaker 1: that part of sailing. UM. In addition to the obvious
Speaker 1: dangers of the sea, in the fourteen hundreds, Italian sailors
Speaker 1: in the Mediterranean lived under constant threat of attack. Every
Speaker 1: city in Italy was always at war with every other city,
Speaker 1: and they can always like if you're always allowed to
Speaker 1: be a pirate to other Italians. UM. So Italians haven't
Speaker 1: changed all that much in the last couple hundred years.
Speaker 1: It is not unlikely that Christopher would have found himself
Speaker 1: in the midst of several small neighbors naval skirmishes in
Speaker 1: his early twenties. All we know for certain, though, is
Speaker 1: that by the time he was twenty one, he had
Speaker 1: mastered the skills of a sailor, and he had proven
Speaker 1: himself to be a particularly gifted navigator. He had also
Speaker 1: developed a talent for manipulation. I'm gonna quote from Carol
Speaker 1: Delaney here. He was commissioned by King Renee of Andrew,
Speaker 1: who would continue to oversee the government of Savona, to
Speaker 1: capture a galleus, a very large, three massive galley that
Speaker 1: included rowers as well as sales, off the coast of Tunas.
Speaker 1: En route, Columbus learned that in addition to the gallias,
Speaker 1: there were two ships and a carrick, which frightened my people,
Speaker 1: and they regard resolved to go no further but to
Speaker 1: return to Marseilles to pick up another ship and more men. I,
Speaker 1: seeing that I could do nothing against their wills without
Speaker 1: some ruse, agreed to their demand, and, changing the point
Speaker 1: of the compass, made it sail at nightfall, and at
Speaker 1: sunrise the next day we found ourselves off Cape Carthage.
Speaker 1: While all aboard were certain we will bound for Marseilles,
Speaker 1: so he like as the navigator secretly takes them into
Speaker 1: battle when they think they're going back for reinforcements because
Speaker 1: he doesn't want to like funk up this deal he's
Speaker 1: got going on with this king. And one of the
Speaker 1: things that saves him on this because this goes pretty
Speaker 1: well for them. Genoese are like the best sailors. They
Speaker 1: are famously good at fighting at sea. Um The first
Speaker 1: time we can confirm Christopher experienced ship to ship combat
Speaker 1: was in fourteen seventy six when he was twenty five
Speaker 1: and his convoy. So he's in a convoy of ships
Speaker 1: and they get accosted by a group of French privateers
Speaker 1: allied with an Italian city state, and they're outnumbered. I
Speaker 1: think it's something like two to one. Like this is
Speaker 1: a disastrous looking battle, but the Genoese lose three ships,
Speaker 1: including the boat that Columbus is on, and the attackers
Speaker 1: lose four hundreds and hundreds of minde And this is
Speaker 1: they have like rudimentary guns and cannons at this point.
Speaker 1: For the most part, they're slamming their boats into each
Speaker 1: other and beating each other to death with sticks and
Speaker 1: knives at close range and lighting each other on fire.
Speaker 1: With patrole. It is a nightmare like and he fights
Speaker 1: in this battle. He fights in this battle, very nearly dies.
Speaker 1: His ship sinks and he has to swim six miles
Speaker 1: to shore, clinging to an oar. Um like this is
Speaker 1: it is. It is very unlikely that he survives the
Speaker 1: circumstances he finds themselves in, but he manages to do it.
Speaker 1: Um and yes, um, he finds himself in Lagos in Portugal. Um.
Speaker 1: They take care of him because there's generally all the
Speaker 1: seafaring cities, like even if they're at war or and
Speaker 1: I like, well, if you're a sailor who like washes up,
Speaker 1: we have a duty to like take care of you,
Speaker 1: because that's just kind of good business, you know, for everybody. Um.
Speaker 1: So they take they they they patch him up, and
Speaker 1: he eventually gets back in the convoy which had survived
Speaker 1: the battle, and he finishes his voyage in London. Um.
Speaker 1: While he's in London, he takes on another gig and
Speaker 1: he actually sails as far north as Iceland, which at
Speaker 1: that point is known as Thule. I think it's actually
Speaker 1: pronounced tula um. Now it was during this far northern
Speaker 1: voyage that Christopher first felt the easterly currents of the Atlantic,
Speaker 1: which helped to inspire an idea in him. If he
Speaker 1: were to voyage far to the west, beyond the roots
Speaker 1: known to any European, he could probably count on those
Speaker 1: eastern currents to carry him back to Europe. It was
Speaker 1: also on this trip that he visited Galway, where several
Speaker 1: frozen dead bodies had washed up and they appeared. Columbus
Speaker 1: says that they're Asian people. He has never met anybody
Speaker 1: from that part of the world. He has read descriptions
Speaker 1: in Marco Polo, and these are water logged corpses. Who
Speaker 1: knows what dead people he encountered. Three John Wayne yea like,
Speaker 1: he has no idea who these people are. He decides
Speaker 1: they're probably from like China, um. And he concludes because
Speaker 1: of these waterlogged corpses that Asia is much closer to
Speaker 1: western Europe on the western side than previously guessed. Right,
Speaker 1: So he's like, look at these Yeah, so you can
Speaker 1: see things coming together based largely on like a mix
Speaker 1: of accurate things. Yes, those currents can in fact carry
Speaker 1: you back from you know, the West to to to Europe. Um.
Speaker 1: Just look at this bloated corpse. What do you mean
Speaker 1: why this dead body, dead ass motherfucker means that I'm
Speaker 1: gonna get rich. So in between his voyages, Christopher settles
Speaker 1: into a new life in Lisbon among the expat Genoese
Speaker 1: community there. Again, they're the best sailors pretty much in
Speaker 1: the Mediterranean, so like they're kind of in demand everywhere
Speaker 1: else that has sports. So they set up a lot
Speaker 1: of different like little little Lisbon. Everybody wears gray and
Speaker 1: traffics children ums video game. They are very super good at. Yes,
Speaker 1: the sex trafficking doesn't make it into syn I never
Speaker 1: unlocked that perk. See, that's why you're That's why you
Speaker 1: keep losing. Michael always um. So he gets married in
Speaker 1: fourteen seventy nine. She's going to dive right away, don't worry.
Speaker 1: And he has a child, Diego. In fourteen eighty um
Speaker 1: now his wife's father, participated in Portugal's first colonizing mission
Speaker 1: UM in Porto Santo between Europe and Africa. The island
Speaker 1: is Portugal's base of operations for their colonizing in Africa,
Speaker 1: which had started in this period. Portugal is starting to
Speaker 1: operate and it's not This is not colonization in the
Speaker 1: sense that you are going to see it later during
Speaker 1: the scrambled to Africa, where they are taking in and
Speaker 1: governing large land masses, they are setting up kind of
Speaker 1: trading missions on the African coast right um. And it's
Speaker 1: here that we're going to need to leave Carol Delaney's
Speaker 1: account of Columbus's life behind, because she leaves this part
Speaker 1: entirely out. This is the first major bit of whitewashing
Speaker 1: and her Columbus in Jerusalem book she Uh. She does
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about the time he spends on
Speaker 1: the African coast. She notes that in late fourteen eight
Speaker 1: one or early fourteen eighty two he participates in a
Speaker 1: trip to Portuguese controlled Ghana. Um. For a bunch of
Speaker 1: complicated reasons we don't need to get into, the Pope
Speaker 1: had given Portugal the right to handle all trade on
Speaker 1: the West African coast. Only Portugal gets to do that
Speaker 1: in this period. This comes with the rights to enslave
Speaker 1: any Pagans or Muslims they encounter. Now, again, this is slavery.
Speaker 1: This is not yet racial slavery, because if people convert
Speaker 1: to Christianity before they're enslaved, they cannot be enslaved. So
Speaker 1: this is religious slavery, right, like that is the basis
Speaker 1: for it, as opposed to what's going to be the
Speaker 1: basis for it in the future. Um, which is not
Speaker 1: on the night, but it's different. And hung up on
Speaker 1: the fact that it's the pope's call, decides he gets
Speaker 1: the right to go to spoil after Yeah, it's the
Speaker 1: and he said and he says Portugal. Um. So Delaney
Speaker 1: mentions this that like they have the right to enslave
Speaker 1: people that they encounter on their yeah. Um. But she
Speaker 1: spends most of her time just talking about like, so
Speaker 1: there's these series of beliefs that Europeans have about skin
Speaker 1: color in the equator. It is generally taken that people's
Speaker 1: skin gets darker closer to the equator. There are some
Speaker 1: attendant racial beliefs that are kind of like the early
Speaker 1: stirrings of the kind of white racial hierarchy that's going
Speaker 1: to be in place not that far in the future.
Speaker 1: This is where like those ideas are coming together. But
Speaker 1: there's this understanding that like, people near the equator have
Speaker 1: darker skin, they are very smart, but they can't control
Speaker 1: their emotions, whereas people who are like further north are
Speaker 1: are dumb but calm and then like people who were
Speaker 1: in people in Europe are the perfect balance of everything.
Speaker 1: So that's why they're the best. This is more or
Speaker 1: less their understanding of like. And they also at the
Speaker 1: same time, again because everyone's very dumb back then, they
Speaker 1: believe that all metal is the same thing, and that
Speaker 1: the closer you get to the equator, the more time
Speaker 1: metal has to like ripen and that's what makes it gold.
Speaker 1: So they there's this is valuable context for what comes
Speaker 1: next that Europeans of the time belief your skin gets
Speaker 1: darker closer to you to the equator, and all medalist
Speaker 1: metal and you find gold at the equator. Right. Um.
Speaker 1: This is again why he winds up because again you
Speaker 1: think about Columbus is trying to sail west to find land.
Speaker 1: Why wouldn't he start his voyage like from the coast
Speaker 1: of Iberi, you know, further north or further north in
Speaker 1: Europe as opposed to he sails to the Canary Islands
Speaker 1: and then he goes to the Caribbean. He goes down
Speaker 1: south because the equators where you find gold. Right Um.
Speaker 1: So it's because of these beliefs that he picks the
Speaker 1: route that he picks. Um. So this is valuable context
Speaker 1: for what comes next. But Carol Delaney, just when she
Speaker 1: talks about columbus time on the African coast, this is
Speaker 1: all she talks about, Like the geographical knowledge acquires, his
Speaker 1: growing understanding of winds and currents, the notes he makes
Speaker 1: in his log book, that's all the detail. Like this
Speaker 1: line here is about all of the detail you get
Speaker 1: about Columbus's time and Ghana. Quote. With a new information
Speaker 1: about winds and currents that Columbus absorbed on this trip,
Speaker 1: combined with his belief about the width of the ocean,
Speaker 1: he concluded that the ocean could be crossed and then
Speaker 1: on the far side of it, in the same climactic zone,
Speaker 1: there would be gold. Now again that's not useless context,
Speaker 1: But if you have an inquisitive mind, you might be
Speaker 1: going hmm, right now, he probably I bet he did
Speaker 1: other stuff when he was on the coast of Africa,
Speaker 1: because he spends eight years in Lisbon, and he makes
Speaker 1: a number of voyages for Portugal. And in order to
Speaker 1: talk about what he's doing in that period, I'm going
Speaker 1: to quote now from the book The Other Slavery by
Speaker 1: Andres Riscindez Andre Racinda. Sorry, the early Portuguese slave trade
Speaker 1: assumed several forms, from inherited slavery to indentured servitude forced
Speaker 1: labor for a fixed period of time, occasionally with modest wages.
Speaker 1: This was the form of slavery with which Columbus was familiar.
Speaker 1: He briefly wrote a about his experimenting with importing entire
Speaker 1: families from Guinea to Portugal, not just men, and his
Speaker 1: disappointment that the experiment did not ensure greater loyalty or
Speaker 1: cooperation among the slaves. The problem, as Columbus saw it,
Speaker 1: was the babble of tongues spoken in Guinea. Now, the
Speaker 1: fact that Columbus is importing entire enslaving and importing entire
Speaker 1: families from the African coast to Europe, Carol the Lady
Speaker 1: doesn't think that's worth talking about, because she makes a
Speaker 1: major the through line in her book is that he
Speaker 1: wasn't pro slavery, and he was horrified at the fact
Speaker 1: that people kept getting enslaved, like it's one of those
Speaker 1: like casablanga gambling occurring in this establishment moments um, but
Speaker 1: with you know, the ownership of human beings. She's like,
Speaker 1: we was there, he accrued people he didn't like slavery.
Speaker 1: She completely leaves out the fact that he is he
Speaker 1: is enslaving and importing entire families into Europe in this
Speaker 1: period of time. Um. Now, obviously this is again pretty
Speaker 1: normal behavior for a guy at the time. The slavery
Speaker 1: that the Portuguese are engaged in is not pretty. But
Speaker 1: again it's also not what it is going to become yet. Um.
Speaker 1: But he is enslaving people. He is in the business
Speaker 1: of being a slave trader way before he is sailing
Speaker 1: to the New World. So when we talk about what
Speaker 1: comes later, slavery is not something that does not come
Speaker 1: naturally to Christopher Columbus. But Michael, it's time for a
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Speaker 1: which is just the power we use on devices that
Speaker 1: no one is using, just completely unnecessary power drain multiple
Speaker 1: countries you know, could be powered by what we were
Speaker 1: very wasteful people, and nothing embodies that better than our
Speaker 1: nuclear weapons stockpiles. Michael. Did you know that the United
Speaker 1: States spent trillions of dollars building a nuclear arsenal, researching
Speaker 1: nuclear weapons from the time of the Cold Warp to
Speaker 1: the present day and we never use those weapons after
Speaker 1: nineteen forty five? Did you know that? Michael? Horrible? Wait,
Speaker 1: it occurs to me that that's a waste now, Michael,
Speaker 1: m in order to be environmentally friendly, I think we
Speaker 1: got to use those nukes, and nowhere makes more sense
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Speaker 1: is a controversial thing. I'd like to make two points.
Speaker 1: Number one number one, Sophie number one, all of those
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Speaker 1: Are you yeah? Yeah, yeah exactly? Are you a fan
Speaker 1: of the song the Wreck of the Edmond Fitzgerald very much?
Speaker 1: Great song? Lake Superior is killing our sailors, killed our sailors.
Speaker 1: We wouldn't have that, We wouldn't have that song. Well,
Speaker 1: but we have the song, I mean, but it's such
Speaker 1: a sad nuke it Now, protect our Sailors nuke the
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Speaker 1: No Ah, We're back. So Columbus the slave trader comes
Speaker 1: along away from his time enslaving people in order to
Speaker 1: profit um for Portugal, convinced that he could sail west
Speaker 1: and reach Asia. This would allow him to avoid the
Speaker 1: Muslim blockade on trade. From that part of the word,
Speaker 1: it's not really a blockade, but it like it makes
Speaker 1: it a lot more expensive and difficult. Whenever you have
Speaker 1: political ship with the Ottoman Empire, they're not going to
Speaker 1: let you trade, so it's like a problem for the Christians. Um.
Speaker 1: So he sees this both as if we can get
Speaker 1: to Asia from the west, number one, we can get
Speaker 1: all their good ship. Number two, we can get all
Speaker 1: that gold, because if we can get down, if there's
Speaker 1: this landet, there's probably a funckload of gold there um,
Speaker 1: and we can convert all these goodwilled heathens, who, as
Speaker 1: we know from Marco Polo, are just waiting for a
Speaker 1: guy who likes Jesus enough, and then they're gonna they're
Speaker 1: all gonna give up whatever they've been doing, you know. Um,
Speaker 1: it's it's gonna be fine. Um. And yes, the Ottomans
Speaker 1: are an obstacle, as they so often are asked, Dick
Speaker 1: van Dyke, Oh, I'm sorry for that? Was that was good?
Speaker 1: That was not good? You go ahead, No, that was fine.
Speaker 1: That was fine because the only person who's committed more
Speaker 1: genocidean than Christopher Columbus is famously Dick Vandy. The walnuts
Speaker 1: that came out of closet each represented a village that
Speaker 1: he That's right, that's right, right, that's right. That's why
Speaker 1: I don't know how to continue this bit anyway, as
Speaker 1: one scholar Columbus exchanged letters with said quote. It will
Speaker 1: also be a voyage to kings and princes who are
Speaker 1: very eager to have friendly dealings in speech with the
Speaker 1: Christians of our countries because many of them are Christians.
Speaker 1: So again, they also believe that there's all these Christians
Speaker 1: stuck over in Asia who are like isolated from broader
Speaker 1: Christendom that they can like make deals with. This is
Speaker 1: not entirely There are like groups of Christians in the
Speaker 1: East that like are kind of separated from the main
Speaker 1: there's like a Storian Christians and stuff. So it's not
Speaker 1: this doesn't come out of nowhere, right, But obviously, like
Speaker 1: among other things there there there winds up. You may
Speaker 1: not know this, Michael. There's actually a couple of continents
Speaker 1: in between Europe and Asia and the West, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're pretty big ones. Um. So much of the next
Speaker 1: bit of stuff is things you're going to remember from
Speaker 1: your time in middle school social studies class. Columbus spends
Speaker 1: years going all of the rich people, the nobles and
Speaker 1: kings that are listened to him. He tries to sell
Speaker 1: them on his grand scheme to cross the ocean. Uh.
Speaker 1: This brings us back to Carol Delaney because she is
Speaker 1: very much in the right by trying to return to
Speaker 1: a historic understanding of the fact that Christopher Columbus is
Speaker 1: not motivated primarily by a desire to explore or to
Speaker 1: some cap realistic urge to find new markets. He is
Speaker 1: a religious extremist and he wants to sail west in
Speaker 1: order to fund a holy war. Now, during this period
Speaker 1: he's living in Lisbon, he starts reading the Bible, and
Speaker 1: this is a weird thing for him to do. People
Speaker 1: don't read the Bible back then, Right, normal people do not.
Speaker 1: Most of them are illiterate for one thing. And there's
Speaker 1: also a strong understanding, sometimes enforced through law, that the
Speaker 1: Word of God is not supposed to be consumed directly
Speaker 1: by worshippers. It is supposed to be transmitted through the
Speaker 1: clergy to worshippers. Right. Um, But Columbus starts reading the
Speaker 1: Bible for himself, and it's only available in Latin. Right,
Speaker 1: You're not getting the Bible in other languages. It's considered
Speaker 1: kind of like sacrilege to translate the Bible. Um. So
Speaker 1: he starts reading the Bible, and he's he's he's starting
Speaker 1: to read the Bible primarily because he wants to calculate
Speaker 1: when the end of the world is coming, because he
Speaker 1: needs to he he knows that Christians have to reconquer Jerusalem,
Speaker 1: and he's trying to figure out, like how much time
Speaker 1: is on the clock? Right, how much time do we
Speaker 1: have to retake? This is he is the end of
Speaker 1: the world. He is the end of the world. Yes, um, quote,
Speaker 1: there were there were sev hundred and fifty nine years left,
Speaker 1: plenty of time for fifteenth century Christians to complete the
Speaker 1: necessary tasks before the end time. Twenty years later, however,
Speaker 1: Columbus revisited and revised his calculations and drastically reduced the
Speaker 1: number of years left to a hundred and fifty five.
Speaker 1: It his earlier vision had been focused primarily on wrestling
Speaker 1: Jerusalem from the Muslims, he was now beginning to see
Speaker 1: that it as an integral part of the world historical
Speaker 1: drama that would culminate in the end of the world.
Speaker 1: So again, his goal is to end all life on Earth.
Speaker 1: That that is, that is his motivation. What a fortunate
Speaker 1: coincidence that after revisiting the information, it turns out I'm
Speaker 1: the most important one to ever live and it's all
Speaker 1: gonna happen during my watch under my auspices. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: am the special boy who gets to end all life
Speaker 1: on Earth. Um, that's that's a pretty again shoot for
Speaker 1: those stars. So you land on the moon or whatever.
Speaker 1: He almost got there. There's a lot of people who
Speaker 1: are like, I want to sail to this place. People
Speaker 1: haven't been able as far as I'm aware of that,
Speaker 1: people have never sailed you before. And there's also a
Speaker 1: lot of people who are like, I'm fine with selling slaves.
Speaker 1: Not a lot of people are saying, I am taking
Speaker 1: personal responsibility for harolding the apocalypse. I would like the
Speaker 1: versus of the beast and leash the energy of God
Speaker 1: upon the people. And that's you know, it's quite a
Speaker 1: goal when you grow up. Yeah, the bringer of the
Speaker 1: end of all things. Wait, wait in a good way,
Speaker 1: in a good way. Yeah. Yeah. So, like many fanatics
Speaker 1: before and after, he saw himself as a key ingredient
Speaker 1: in God's plan, and he came to believe that his
Speaker 1: budding understanding of how he might sail west to Asia
Speaker 1: was a key aspect in God's design. Quote. He knew
Speaker 1: that another crusade would be necessary if Jerusalem was to
Speaker 1: be retaken from the Muslims. He knew that there was
Speaker 1: enough gold in the East to finance such a crusade.
Speaker 1: He also knew that if the Grand con and his
Speaker 1: people could be converted, as seemed likely, he could count
Speaker 1: on their support. Yeah. So, many of us probably did
Speaker 1: learn in school that Columbus believed the world was round
Speaker 1: and most people thought it was flat. I think this
Speaker 1: has been debunked fairly well. Anyone who thought about it
Speaker 1: was probably true that a lot of people didn't think
Speaker 1: about the shape of the world because like there's plagues
Speaker 1: and stuff like you got shipped to do. But anybody
Speaker 1: who sailed and navigated knew that the earth was broadly spherical.
Speaker 1: Columbus was not a trailblazer here, and in fact his
Speaker 1: understanding in theories. But he's terrible at geography. Um. He
Speaker 1: felt that Asia was so huge that there was very
Speaker 1: little ocean between Europe and Asia, and generally he believed
Speaker 1: that like a sixth of the land's surface was ocean
Speaker 1: and the rest of it is all land. Um. He
Speaker 1: also ended his life thinking the earth was pear shaped
Speaker 1: rather than round. So again, not great at the stuff
Speaker 1: that everyone gave him credit for when we were kids. Um.
Speaker 1: Most of Columbus attempts to convince Royalty to back his
Speaker 1: plan failed. The King of Portugal is more interested in
Speaker 1: getting around the Horn of Africa. Um. He's also put
Speaker 1: off by Columbus's list of demands for carrying out the exploration,
Speaker 1: which are bug fuck and I'm gonna quote from Bear
Speaker 1: Green's book Columbus only Green Eminem's upon the ship. It's
Speaker 1: kind of worse than that. The personal demands that Columbus
Speaker 1: made of King Juo were far more onerous and unrealistic.
Speaker 1: He wanted a title preparably Night of the Golden Spurs
Speaker 1: that would permit him and his descendants to style themselves Dawn.
Speaker 1: He also wished for himself the grandest title he could
Speaker 1: think of, Admiral of the Ocean Sea, with all the
Speaker 1: privileges of rank, prerogatives, rights, revenue, and immunities enjoyed by
Speaker 1: the admirals of Castile. Even to Portuguese ears accustomed to overstatement,
Speaker 1: this description verged on the absurd. A tireless conversationalist and
Speaker 1: self promoter, Columbus never knew when to stop, and he
Speaker 1: demanded an appointment as viceroy and governor in perpetuity of
Speaker 1: all the lands and terra firma discovered either personally by
Speaker 1: him or as a result of his voyage, And he
Speaker 1: planned to award himself one tenth of all the money's
Speaker 1: accruing to the Crown in respective gold, silver, per jim's metal, spices,
Speaker 1: and other articles of value and merchandise of whatever kind, nature,
Speaker 1: or variety that should be purchased barter, discovered or won
Speaker 1: in battle through the length and breadth of the lands
Speaker 1: under his jurisdiction. So he doesn't just want to discover things.
Speaker 1: He wants to personally be the emperor of everything discovered
Speaker 1: under the King of Portugal, but he wants it to
Speaker 1: be his property whatever they find. Basically, he wants the
Speaker 1: elden ring and the iron throne. So that again it's
Speaker 1: not to say that he's not greedy, he's in this
Speaker 1: extraordinarily greedy man. It's also that his greed is focused
Speaker 1: on he wants to build riches so that he can
Speaker 1: contribute to the conquest of Jerusalem and in the world.
Speaker 1: Um So his demands are extreme and outlandish, and Burgery
Speaker 1: notes that he was basically trying to He was basically saying, Hey,
Speaker 1: if I do this, you have to make me almost
Speaker 1: as powerful as you, King of Portugal. Um. Now, the
Speaker 1: Portuguese king. For a little bit of context, this guy
Speaker 1: once stabbed his child nephew to death in a jealous rage.
Speaker 1: So this is like not a man you funk with.
Speaker 1: And in fact, a lot of historians are kind of
Speaker 1: surprised that Columbus doesn't just get murdered for saying this
Speaker 1: kind of ship to the King of Portugal. Well, they're
Speaker 1: in the middle of an iron rod shortage and this
Speaker 1: this dude, again, the king of Portugal is a crazed,
Speaker 1: violent narcissist, and he's like, Wow, this Christopher Columbus dude
Speaker 1: is a crazy narcissist. Yeah, Jesus, this guy needs therapy.
Speaker 1: Am I right? Oh? I stabbed you to death? Sorry? Um, So, Christopher,
Speaker 1: you know things don't work out. There's some back and
Speaker 1: forth with Portugal. We're not going to go into tremendous
Speaker 1: to dale about all this. Christopher tries with other sovereigns.
Speaker 1: He since his brother Bartholomew, who's like better at talking
Speaker 1: to England, to try and convince that king to fund
Speaker 1: the voyage. He doesn't have any luck with that. Eventually,
Speaker 1: at age forty and kind of feeling like because at
Speaker 1: forty you're kind of old to be a sea captain,
Speaker 1: he travels to Spain, which is kind of his last hope,
Speaker 1: right that like, maybe I can convince these fucking monarchs
Speaker 1: to fund my ship. Now again, he's an old man.
Speaker 1: He's starting to panic that, like he's never going to
Speaker 1: get to do these things that he think God wants
Speaker 1: him to do. Um. But over the course of several years,
Speaker 1: he manages to like wrangle an audience with Queen Isabella
Speaker 1: and King Ferdinand. A lot of this is because he's
Speaker 1: he gets in good with a bunch of monks, and
Speaker 1: like there's some like rich dude who visits the monks,
Speaker 1: and the rich dude is like, this is a good idea.
Speaker 1: I know the king and queen and it's a whole process.
Speaker 1: You can learn all of the history if you want
Speaker 1: by reading about it. I think it's kind of boring. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: it worked right. And both of these Ferdinand and Isabella
Speaker 1: again for first off, not a love match. Um, not
Speaker 1: very similar people. Um. Both of them had just spent
Speaker 1: the last few years unifying Spain, which is a pretty
Speaker 1: violent process. Uh. They kick out all of the Muslims
Speaker 1: or force them to convert. They also force all of
Speaker 1: the Jewish people to convert or leave. Uh. They like
Speaker 1: ethnically cleanse all of the Jewish people who won't leave
Speaker 1: their religion, and those people have to sail to the
Speaker 1: Ottoman Empire, which is like the only place that will
Speaker 1: take them. Um, it's a pretty gnarly process. There's an inquisition,
Speaker 1: right that happened in this period. There's all these crimes
Speaker 1: against humanity. Maybe we'll talk about it one of these days.
Speaker 1: These are not nice people, which is fun because they're
Speaker 1: both going to be much more moral people than Christopher
Speaker 1: Columbus as the story goes on. Um, but I just
Speaker 1: want you to know, these are the Inquisition people. So
Speaker 1: when we're talking about them being outraged at Christopher Columbus's behavior,
Speaker 1: it's the people who started the Inquisition who are like, Wow,
Speaker 1: this guy is not very like very uh like bad person. Um. Anyway,
Speaker 1: Christopher manages to get a sit down meeting with the
Speaker 1: Queen and may have a six for the first time.
Speaker 1: Carol Delaney make sure to note that he's hot, which
Speaker 1: is a little weird, But then Bear Green also kind
Speaker 1: of says that he's hot, so maybe he was hot. Um.
Speaker 1: He is a charismatic dude obviously because he's he talks
Speaker 1: them into this eventually, so yeah, maybe he's hot. I
Speaker 1: don't know. Um. He does succeed in talking to King
Speaker 1: and Queen into funding his expedition, mainly the Queen. The
Speaker 1: King never really buys into Columbus, but like his whye
Speaker 1: is on board and he's like, what are you gonna do?
Speaker 1: You know? Gems this way some gems see what happened,
Speaker 1: and this is a law he has to follow. He's
Speaker 1: kind of like following the King and Queen for half
Speaker 1: a decade while they finish the series of battles to
Speaker 1: like unify their realm Um. He actually fights in a
Speaker 1: battle to take the city of Bassa in Granada in
Speaker 1: order to impress them, um, and apparently fights very well.
Speaker 1: Like yeah, like they He goes to war for them
Speaker 1: and stuff during this period to try to convince them
Speaker 1: to let him take a bunch of boats. Um, they
Speaker 1: conquered Granada. Uh. And despite the fact that a commission
Speaker 1: they convene to study his proposal is like, this is impossible,
Speaker 1: Queen Isabella decides to trust Columbus more than her advisors
Speaker 1: and she approved the expedition. Uh. Ferdinand again doesn't fight
Speaker 1: his wife on the matter. Now you know what comes next, right.
Speaker 1: In four ninety two, Columbus sails his ass across the
Speaker 1: Ocean Blue in three ships, the Nina, the Pinta, the
Speaker 1: Santa Maria. He set sail on August third, fourto um
Speaker 1: one bit of fun trivia. The Nina and the Pinta
Speaker 1: are assembled last minute by a Spanish town that had
Speaker 1: like piste off the King and Queen and owed them
Speaker 1: a bunch of money. So like two thirds of the
Speaker 1: fleet was built at the last minute as kind of
Speaker 1: a bribe. The ships are technically the property of these
Speaker 1: brothers who Columbus has going to have an issue with,
Speaker 1: But we'll talk about that in the next episode. Um,
Speaker 1: I'm not going we'll do even better than that. You'll
Speaker 1: see as they shook their fists at the diminishing boats
Speaker 1: and I almost figured it out. Um, So I'm not
Speaker 1: going to go into a lot of detail about the voyage.
Speaker 1: It's worth noting that Columbus was the thing that he's
Speaker 1: best at is navigating, not geography. He's constantly wrong and
Speaker 1: he gets into a lot of trouble and gets other
Speaker 1: people into trouble because he refuses to accept that he's
Speaker 1: terrible at like geography, but he's incredible at what's called
Speaker 1: dead reckoning. And this is I don't this sounds like
Speaker 1: magic to me. You're basically sitting in a dark room
Speaker 1: building charts and estimating distances based on compass readings that
Speaker 1: you've taken. And normally when people do dead reckoning, they
Speaker 1: have other data that, like other sailors have taken sailing
Speaker 1: the same route, so they're just kind of modifying it
Speaker 1: slightly in order to like optimize the route. No one
Speaker 1: has done this route before. So Christopher is flying purely
Speaker 1: on instinct and just like doing math in his cabin
Speaker 1: to figure out how to get from the Canary Islands
Speaker 1: to the Caribbean, and the route he picks is still
Speaker 1: to this day basically the best sail route between Europe
Speaker 1: and the Caribbean. Like, if you're sailing that distance, you
Speaker 1: more or less do just what Columbus figures out without
Speaker 1: any benefit of anything but like a compass, and like
Speaker 1: his ability to do math. It is an astounding achievement
Speaker 1: in navigation. Samuel Morrison, who's a Harvard sailor who recreated
Speaker 1: Colubus Voyage in nine nine wrote when he was analyzing,
Speaker 1: he did the whole bit he does he kills so
Speaker 1: many people. Yeah Harvard, uh quote, No such dead reckoning
Speaker 1: navigators exist today, No man alive limited to the instruments
Speaker 1: and means that Columbus's disposal could obtain anything near the
Speaker 1: accuracy of his results. Um so he's pretty good at
Speaker 1: this one thing, perfect pitch of navigating. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the thing that he's good at. Um. Credit where
Speaker 1: it's due. Now, as we're all aware again bad at
Speaker 1: actual geography. He sure knew his way around this old pair. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well a little bit of it. Um. So he lands eventually,
Speaker 1: after like thirty three days, on a little island off
Speaker 1: the coast of Hispaniola or modern day Haiti in the
Speaker 1: Dominican Republic Um. Here is how Carol Delaney describes the
Speaker 1: moment of their first landing quote as the anchors were dropped,
Speaker 1: the men stood on the decks and gazed at the
Speaker 1: green island, a soothing site after so long at sea
Speaker 1: with only gray, blue water and sky, and saw naked people.
Speaker 1: Columbus summoned the Pinzone brothers, the captains of the other
Speaker 1: two ships, donned his armor and went ashore in the launch,
Speaker 1: carrying the royal banner and two flags emblazoned with a
Speaker 1: green cross and the initials of Ferdinand and Isabella. Now
Speaker 1: the Spanish sailors, they're relieved, first of all the fact
Speaker 1: that these natives, you know, they're naked, they have paint
Speaker 1: that's not familiar. They look peculiar, but they also look
Speaker 1: like normal humans, which is a huge relief because at
Speaker 1: the time, all of these guys believe what Pliny the
Speaker 1: Elder wrote about geography, which is that these other islands
Speaker 1: are like there's these things called anthropophagi, which are like
Speaker 1: headless monsters with like torso men that like are cannibals
Speaker 1: and stuff. So it's normal people great like that. That
Speaker 1: is kind of like the first overwhelming reaction is like, oh,
Speaker 1: thank god, they're not They're not monsters. Oh cool, we
Speaker 1: were really worried about that, all right. Well, yeah, Columbus
Speaker 1: never believed there were monsters. On his part. Um, he
Speaker 1: is moved to comment on how attractive they are, which
Speaker 1: everyone does in this period. Um he names the island
Speaker 1: which had been inhabited basically forever San Salvador quote. He
Speaker 1: called for the Escravano Scribe, and as protocol dictated, he
Speaker 1: had him record as witness that he took possession of
Speaker 1: it in the name of the Catholic Sovereigns, with appropriate ceremony.
Speaker 1: In words, taking possession of lands hitherto unknown or undiscovered
Speaker 1: was primarily a signal to other European nations to keep off,
Speaker 1: a sign that whoever took possession first had the pre
Speaker 1: eminent right to discover, explore, and established trading posts. It
Speaker 1: did not automatically imply conquest or ownership now that's what
Speaker 1: Carol writes, and it's really interesting to me that she's
Speaker 1: trying to push this claim that like, well, he wasn't
Speaker 1: really he was just this is just a warning to
Speaker 1: other Europeans. He wasn't really saying we own this now.
Speaker 1: Obviously that's not what this means necessarily, which is very
Speaker 1: silly because that's exactly what it means and exactly what
Speaker 1: he's done. And she later writes about the process of
Speaker 1: him conquering and like taking and governing these islands for Spain.
Speaker 1: It's extremely funny that she even now has to like
Speaker 1: pretend that that he's not just seeing islands inhabited by
Speaker 1: people and immediately being like, we own a ship. Now
Speaker 1: I'm governor, which is exactly what he actually is doing. Um.
Speaker 1: So he writes excitedly about the resources on the islands.
Speaker 1: He keeps finding, like we'll talk more about this in
Speaker 1: episode two, but he keeps seeing people like little gold
Speaker 1: pieces of jewelry, and he spends a lot of the
Speaker 1: next couple of weeks eagerly searching to go for gold,
Speaker 1: trying to find minds that Splain can exploit, because that's
Speaker 1: really everything to him, right, he has promised the sovereigns.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna find gold and we're gonna use that to
Speaker 1: fund an army that we can use to bring about
Speaker 1: the apocalypse. Everything very ripe here, Yes, the medal, the
Speaker 1: medal is ripe. Um. More to the point, though, he
Speaker 1: writes very enthusiastically and positively about the local culture, and
Speaker 1: in fact, it's probably worth noting that there's elements of
Speaker 1: what he writes that are not terrible, um, diminishing their
Speaker 1: culture or reductive. No, he's he's super there are elements
Speaker 1: of that he's but he's also there's like a lot
Speaker 1: of like one of the things that's noted is that
Speaker 1: he's one of the few guys in these voyages who's
Speaker 1: like all about trying out the native foods and stuff. Um.
Speaker 1: And he writes earlier there's there's things that he does
Speaker 1: minimize and stuff. It's worth noting that, like Carol points
Speaker 1: out a lot about how enthusiative, enthusiastic and positive he
Speaker 1: is about them, um. But also she kind of again
Speaker 1: among the other things she ignores is that he's enthusiastic
Speaker 1: about them because of what good subjects they're going to
Speaker 1: make for the Spanish crown, right that's the thing he's
Speaker 1: most excited about. Um Delaney gives Columbus great credit for
Speaker 1: the fact that his immediate thing is like, oh, these
Speaker 1: people are if you want to talk about diminishing. He decides,
Speaker 1: based on a couple of days of communicating with them
Speaker 1: through hand signals, that they don't have a real religion.
Speaker 1: Now what he means by that, And Carol's like, well,
Speaker 1: all he means by that is that they're not Muslim
Speaker 1: or or you know, some other kind of clear pagan religion.
Speaker 1: They don't have strict beliefs, so he thinks that they'll
Speaker 1: take to Christianity. He's literally saying, based on hand gestures,
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure they don't believe in anything, so we
Speaker 1: can make up christian real easy, right. The other thing
Speaker 1: that Carol, but this is where we're really getting into
Speaker 1: the ship about her, that's fucked up. She's like, look,
Speaker 1: the fact that he thinks the natives will be easy
Speaker 1: to convert to Christianity, Well, it's not just that it's
Speaker 1: a compliment. It means that he doesn't want to enslave them,
Speaker 1: because you can't enslave Christians. You can enslave someone and
Speaker 1: then they can convert to being Christian and that doesn't
Speaker 1: free them. But if you convert them into Christianity, they
Speaker 1: cannot be enslaved. Right. So she's like, look, Christopher Columbus
Speaker 1: clearly didn't want anything bad for these people because he
Speaker 1: wanted to convert them. Um. This is again very fucked
Speaker 1: up of her, very manipulative, and and and sketchy. Um,
Speaker 1: it's also fucking nonsense. Lawrence bear Green describes things rather differently. Quote,
Speaker 1: the Spanish should come all this way across the ocean
Speaker 1: sea expecting to confront the superior civilization. How disconcerting to
Speaker 1: be confronted with naked people who were very poor in everything.
Speaker 1: Columbus and his men would have to be careful not
Speaker 1: to hurt them, rather than the other way around. I
Speaker 1: saw some who had marks of wounds on their bodies
Speaker 1: and made signs for them to ask what it was,
Speaker 1: and they showed me that people of other islands which
Speaker 1: are near came there and was to capture them, and
Speaker 1: they defended themselves. And I believe that people do come
Speaker 1: here from the mainland to take them as slaves. Slaves
Speaker 1: the idea enslaves. Yeah, The idea instantly struck Columbus as plausible,
Speaker 1: even desirable. They ought to be good servants, he continued,
Speaker 1: and of good skill. For I see they repeat quickly
Speaker 1: everything that is said to them. So Delaney is like,
Speaker 1: of course he doesn't want to enslave him. He wants
Speaker 1: to convert them. And fucking Lawrence bear Green just points
Speaker 1: out the first thing he writes about these people is
Speaker 1: they're going to be great slaves, Like that's like servants,
Speaker 1: right servants. But what happens is they all get enslaved.
Speaker 1: So I think it's clear what he means. So he
Speaker 1: has he has discovered quote unquote new people and thought
Speaker 1: number one is like, oh man, number one, these people
Speaker 1: are not as good at fighting as at us. And
Speaker 1: number two, it's going to be really easy as ship
Speaker 1: to enslave them, hot dog um. And we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about what comes next and everything Christopher Columbus does,
Speaker 1: and we will we will try to give some insight
Speaker 1: into these people that he has found. Two, because they
Speaker 1: go extinct very quickly, and so there's not as much
Speaker 1: known about them as is ideal, but there there is
Speaker 1: some There are some people trying to do decent anthropology
Speaker 1: in this period, including delas Casas, to try to like
Speaker 1: save something of like these folks. Um, so we'll talk.
Speaker 1: We will be talking about that, and we will be
Speaker 1: talking about everything else that Christopher Columbus is about to do,
Speaker 1: which is much worse. It gets a lot worse after
Speaker 1: episode one. I know, he's been a very likable guy
Speaker 1: up to this point. Yeah, as another famous Columbo once said,
Speaker 1: one more thing and then genocide and then genocide. So, Michael,
Speaker 1: how are you feeling at the end of part one?
Speaker 1: Has this changed your mind on Christopher Columbus. I'll tell
Speaker 1: you I thought Amerigo Vespucci was a piece of ship
Speaker 1: this guy. Yeah, No, I'm uneasy Robert leaning puns for
Speaker 1: my own comfort. Yeah, I mean Amerigos Gucci, Christopher Columbus. Look,
Speaker 1: do we need to figure out what's going on with Italians?
Speaker 1: You know, maybe shut down immigration from that, from that
Speaker 1: perfidious our isthmus, I don't understand geographic turns like Columbus.
Speaker 1: I'd broaden it to all humanity. I mean, we're all
Speaker 1: just metal ripening in the wind. We're all just metal
Speaker 1: ripening in the wind. That's right, That's right. Until to
Speaker 1: next time, find the director Chris Columbus and just huck
Speaker 1: a beer. Bottle at him, like really really brain him
Speaker 1: hard right in the side of the head him. At
Speaker 1: least pull your arm back in anticipation of a huck,
Speaker 1: and then tune in for the next episode. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: what is he? What is he directed? What are his movies? Oh?
Speaker 1: He did the Harry Potter's movie. Well, there you go,
Speaker 1: that's reason enough. Yeah. Uh, screw that turf. I guess
Speaker 1: by association, even though there's I've heard nothing but fine
Speaker 1: things about Chris Columbus, literally never heard anything about it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he has the name of the other guy. Um, I
Speaker 1: don't know. He looks like a guy who would enslave
Speaker 1: an entire people. You know what I say, screw people
Speaker 1: who have the same name as someone else, right, Robert Evans, Hey,
Speaker 1: all my namesake ever did was a hell of a
Speaker 1: lot of cocaine. Yeah he's a great Yeah, there's nothing
Speaker 1: wrong with either. Robert Evans. Nope, not going to read
Speaker 1: into that anymore. Um So, Michael, you got any plug
Speaker 1: doubles to plug? Oh? Sure, I'll do a second plug.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. Uh. Specifically, I'd be remiss if
Speaker 1: I didn't mention one upsmanship. If you like hearing about
Speaker 1: video games as an art form and sort of the
Speaker 1: whole medium and the ongoing dialectic of what games are real?
Speaker 1: Good Me and my the Adam Ganzer discussed that at
Speaker 1: length every week on One Upsmanship. That's the number one
Speaker 1: ups Manship. Check us out now, Michael m hmm, I
Speaker 1: just learned something funked up about Christopher Columbus, the director
Speaker 1: oh his production company Pictures Oh. Does this mean that
Speaker 1: the Harry Potter movies were created as part of an
Speaker 1: occult right to in the world because our Christopher Columbus
Speaker 1: also views himself as an agent of the apocalypse. Harry
Speaker 1: has to re establish the Promised Land, as like the
Speaker 1: magical Kingdom needs to take over the world. Perhaps this
Speaker 1: Christopher Columbus is gathering gold to himself by making movies
Speaker 1: in order to retake Jerusalem. And you said he was hot,
Speaker 1: and but we don't. We're not sure exactly what he
Speaker 1: looks like. I'm going to assume he has just slits
Speaker 1: for a nose and it is basically a Baltimore test.
Speaker 1: I'm saying, is it took Robert I don't know twenty
Speaker 1: seconds to turn a man into a bastards anyway, Hunt
Speaker 1: him down, folks, bring him to justice. Oh he directed
Speaker 1: the Home Alone films. Yeah, and Mrs down Fire. No
Speaker 1: call off your dogs, no, no, no hunting, no, no hunting.
Speaker 1: This is the greatest mortal quandary and behind the Bastard's history.
Speaker 1: We'll have to crack that next time. Behind the Bastards
Speaker 1: is a production of cool Zone Media. For more from
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