Word: columbus
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...attack on 1492 has two parts. First, establishing the villainy of Columbus and his progeny (i.e., us). Columbus is "the deadest whitest male now offered for our detestation," writes Garry Wills. "If any historical figure can appropriately be loaded up with all the heresies of our time -- Eurocentrism, phallocentrism, imperialism, elitism and all-bad-things- generally-ism -- Columbus...
Therefore, goodbye, Columbus? Balzac once suggested that all great fortunes are founded on a crime. So too all great civilizations. The European conquest of the Americas, like the conquest of other civilizations, was indeed accompanied by great cruelty. But that is to say nothing more than that the European conquest of America was, in this way, much like the rise of Islam, the Norman conquest of Britain and the widespread American Indian tradition of raiding, depopulating and appropriating neighboring lands...
...murder to merit a hanging. But if one judges civilizations by what they have taken from and what they have given the world, a nonjaundiced observer -- say, one of the millions in Central Europe and Asia whose eyes are turned with hope toward America -- would surely bless the day Columbus set sail...
Thus Part I of the anti-'92 crusade is calumny for Columbus and his legacy. Part II is hagiography, singing of the saintedness of the Indians in their pre-Columbian Eden, a land of virtue, empathy and ecological harmony. With Columbus, writes Sale, Europe "implanted its diseased and dangerous seeds in . the soils of the continents that represented the last best hope for humankind -- and destroyed them...
...mankind is the better for it. Infinitely better. Reason enough to honor Columbus and bless...