Christopher Columbus Persuasive Essay

Rethinking Christopher Columbus:
Explorer or Exploiter?

For more than 500 years, the world has told itself a lie. People have praised Christopher Columbus, and celebrated his life as though he was someone who did good for us. We are taught that he discovered the Americas on a great voyage. We are told that he found great gold and jewels. But what did he really do to 'accomplish' these tasks? He slaughtered and enslaved the peaceful Native Americans who welcomed him and his crew with gifts. Columbus is famous for setting sail for a long adventurous journey in 1492 that resulted in the discovery of the Americas. What Columbus should also be famous for is death, slaughter, and taking over a land that was not his. Christopher Columbus turned …show more content…
He set sail with the intent of finding a shorter route to Asia by sailing west to get east. Warren H. Carroll said, “And of all discoverers, Christopher Columbus was the greatest because he accomplished the most under the highest odds.” He bravely went west without a map, trusting his instincts and calculations. He was very loyal to his patrons, the King and Queen of Spain, and they rewarded him by sending him to the New World a total of four times. But there are many stains on his legacy as well. According to the Columbian Exchange Map, he and his crew brought awful diseases, such as smallpox and tuberculosis, to which the men and women of the New World had no defenses, and millions died. In addition, Michael Kammen says, “Societies in fact reconstruct their pasts rather then faithfully record them…” This means that people take events from the past and embellish them to make them seem more important. In this case, Christopher Columbus’s story was embellished, and many facts are usually left out when the story is told. We look at him as a hero, but in fact he was no such thing. He was cruel to the Native Americans, mocked them, killed them, erased a whole tribe of people from existence, and he wasn’t even the first European to discover the Americas. This proves that Christopher Columbus was a

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