In October 1989 Dr. Cleveland Eneas gave a speech on the subject of the approaching "Discovery Day" holiday. A day now known as Heroes Day in an effort to erase the memory of Christopher Columbus like other "places that think they are being "politically correct".
He pointed out that "…anything that has changed the world as much as Columbus' discovery has, is worthy of great adulation."
Dr. Eneas had a great sense of humour and he noted:
"Nevertheless, Columbus goes down in the records as our first European tourist, who left home on borrowed money, not knowing exactly where he was going and didn’t know where he was when he got there, and ended up in goal when he got back home. This has been the fate of many since him."
In his penultimate paragraph he asked "What Do We Celebrate".
Here's what he said:
"In 1992, this new world would have been included on the map of the globe for 500 years. In those five centuries, the thinking, the beliefs, and the demeanour of the earth have changed enormously and the question is: is the globe any better off for it? I dare say there is not one of you who will not agree that it is better. I am certain that it is “Better in The Bahamas” and for many reasons. In spite of the fact that the Spaniards had no hand in making it better, we still have cause to celebrate."
Read Dr. Eneas' entire speech here...(pdf)
One of my favourite authors, Dr. Thomas Sowell, shared a similar view on the importance of Columbus discovery of the "New World" in the third book of his trilogy on culture, Conquests and Cultures he explains:
"When the Europeans arrived in the Western Hemisphere, these invaders behaved, by and large, as conquerers have behaved all over the world for thousands of years - which is to say, brutally, greedily and with arrogance toward the conquered peoples. Indeed, that is very much the way that Indian conquerors behaved toward other Indians, long before Columbus' ships first appeared on the horizon. However, Europeans' discovery of the Western Hemisphere was not only a watershed in the history of the indigenous peoples of the New World, it was one of the most momentous events in the history of the human race, for this discovery meant that each half of the planet now became aware of the other half's existence and began a massive interchange of material things and cultures, as well as a massive movement of people across the Atlantic.
"Nothing would ever be the same again, in either half of the world. Foods never seen before would become crucial to the diets of people thousands of miles away - the potato in Ireland, for example - and commercial crops never grown before, such as rubber in Malaya and cocoa in Nigeria, would become mainstays of national economies. Sweet potatoes would become a defence against famine in China, which ended up producing more of this Western Hemisphere vegetable than the rest of the world put together..." (Conquests And Cultures Page 255.)
There is no doubt the Spanish treatment of people in the new world left a lot to be desired. But was that treatment any worse than how the Moors treated the Spanish when they invaded and conquered them even though they brought them Mathematics? Man's inhumanity to man has been horrible throughout history but on net I agree with with Dr. Eneas and Dr. Sowell that Columbus arrival in the West made it better for everyone eventually.
