After reading this amazing lecture i just realized that Cristopher Columbus was a great leader and of course, his most important characteristic was loyalty at least for me, this is because he always was doing lots of things thinking of his majesties, and not by himself at all. Among other things, he also used to see people in a not very good way, it was obvious that he just wanted people to work for him, i might think he sees them as objects and not for their true value, i mean we all are humans in front of God.
But i think that the most important thing was his religious, he used to say thanks to God for every action, no matter time and circunstances he was a very passionate, loyal and religious person.
I also noted that distances in Columbus journeys were very tired for all members of his crew, but instead of saying desperate thigs to them, Cristopher always acted in a very enthusiastic way, thing which was very useful for his journeys and of course, the main reason of this is that he was giving hope to all of the people that he was leading in this mission.
On the other hand, Cristopher Columbus goals besides gold of course, were religion and language. When he was conquering or visiting some place he always started to think on how those people from those lands could be useful for his own matters, and he was trying to see them as how will they serve to his majesties by knowing spanish and in the mean time by showing their true loyalty through this faith that i mentioned before.
Also, one thing that i noticed is that people from Latin America is also related with Cristopher Columbus because both of them have same characteristics, focused on religion and language.
Questions
1) What was the main reason of Columbus obsession with religion?
2) What was the main reason that Columbus always wanted to be very loyal to his majesty?
3) Why he used to see people as things and not like humans?
Hi Adrian,
It is so interesting that you took this particular approach to the readings as I personally took a very different one. I never thought of it in a way were he is actually loyal. Although I understand where you are coming from, respectfully, I personally feel that it wasn’t for the King and Queen but instead for himself. Although he often mentions gold and land for the King and Queen, it is perhaps because he expects to get recompensed for his findings and thus that is why he ends up finding ways to not directly describe his journey and instead often wavers in his diary. He does this by constantly repeating that he cannot alone describe the scenery etc. and thus, I believe that for him, it was a need to keep saying that it was for the King and Queen so that they would continue to allow his travels.
You mentioned religion, and I noticed that it was a big part of his journal as well! To answer your first question, I believe that it wasn’t exactly Columbus alone who was obsessed with religion alone, but in fact it was just the period of time he lived in. Religion was a massive part of the daily life, and thus I believe that if he didn’t incorporate religion in his life or his findings, he would be going against the common norm. Nevertheless, I truly found your response very intriguing!
Hey Adrian
I read your blog and I really found it interesting how you brought up Columbus’ loyalty and devotion to his religion. I believe conquering and controlling new land and territory goes hand in hand with religion and could be a topic to spend a lot of time discussing it. But in lamest terms I believe that after going back to his Majesty, the next time the conquerers came to the New World it world have been imperative to bring with them religion, and in this case Catholicism. In older times the Church controlled all aspects of life, as in, names of places, peoples ideas, and the thoughts of an afterlife. I would be very surprised if the Church was ran by anyone else other than somebody from the conquering country, and therefore, they could implant any ideas they pleased on the indigenous peoples of the New World. The Church is essentially backing up the legitimacy of the colonizers. And although the colonizers were the minority, by converting populations of the indigenous people to Catholicism, it instilled the Church was the leader and what they said goes, not forgetting the Church was run by colonizers. Hopefully that made some sense.