- Christopher Columbus
- Didn’t know where he was going
- Thought he was going to China
- Thought the world was small in diameter
- Was going to explore with the wind behind him
- Was an extraordinary risky and daring
- Mixture of virtues and values
- Quite good person in the his time
- Was a weavers son; humble background; wanted to be socially prominent
- Explorer vocation was one of the few that would make you notable at the time
- Atlantic had adverse winds
- Two ways to get to Indian Ocean
- The Nile
- Cross the Ottoman Empire (was hostile to Christendom)
- Thought Monsters were out in the ocean
- Overcoming prejudices for the people on the other side of the Atlantic and seeing them as people
- Didn’t really know what he was doing; choose a terrible route the first time
- Everybody knew the world was round in his time; thought it was too round compared to what it really is
- Had to deliver for his Patrons; to be a Lord; Tried to find evidence he was close to China
- State of mind when he arrived and saw this new land and peoples
- Didn’t have a great education; didnt know how to use the navigational tools
- Look out for Chinese guys or Monsters due his prejudices as people at that time
- Struggling as he’s conflicted when meeting the people in America
- Maybe their nakedness was the innocence of Eden
- Conclusion: Genuinely human people that are just like us
- Saw wounds on the bodies of the peoples; seeing there’s lots of conflict with the aboriginal peoples already
- Getting back was harder as they had to find the right wind
- Was in a race with his second in command to tell the story and be the hero of the story
- His diary was heavily edited
- Was voice for the rights and freedoms of indigenous people of the Spanish monarchy
- Although he didn’t find anything profitable; he told his patrons that he found real people with real immortal souls; since the King of Spain was committed to converting people to Christianity
- His First success did lead to a stampede of people following him to the new world
- King of Spain banned people following up on Columbus’s achievement until 1499
- English and Portuguese tried to get in after 1499
- Had no personal slaves
- Success finding new routes to the New World
- Ferdinand Magellan
- Much worse guy than Columbus
- Planning first circumnavigation of the world; accident
- Massacred indigenous people
- Starting conflicts
- Exploiter
- Failure
- 90% of crew die, including himself
- Most explorers died doing it
- Disease
- Morally neutral
- They explorers had no idea about diseases; natural immunization
- Terrible disaster for the colonizers as well; due to the Christian responsibility of their subjects
- Needed their labor
- Tremendous investment in health care for the indigenous especially by the Spaniards; 1000s of hospitals which were specifically for the poor indigenous and Africans
- Plague was the normality of the day; a plague of a year normally
- Terrible fact of plague is that its terrible if you, but great for the people that survive in a sense of resources
- Many of the indigenous of the Spanish colonies were enriched by the demographic disaster of plagues as they emerged from it with more land etc..
- Spanish as they were first, got the best parts
- The Spanish left the indigenous to preserve their cultures; not because their nice guys but because it suited them economically
- English exterminated or expelled the native populations; not because their bad people; but because it didn’t suit the economically they wanted
Age of Discovery
The Age of Discovery or the Age of Exploration, part of the early modern period and largely overlapping with the Age of Sail, was a period from approximately the 15th century to the 17th century, during which seafarers from a number of European countries explored, colonized, and conquered regions across the globe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Discovery
From the notebook