On Columbus Day

Mike Coté

Mike Coté is a writer and podcaster focusing on history, Great Power rivalry, and geopolitics. He has a Master’s degree in European history, and is working on a book about the Anglo-German economic and strategic rivalry before World War I. He writes for National Review, Providence Magazine, and The Federalist, hosts the Rational Policy podcast, and can be found on Twitter @ratlpolicy.

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12 Responses

  1. Philip H says:

    We mustn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater, but keep the baby safe while refreshing the water around it. Like Columbus himself – a Genoan sailor who served the Spanish crown – the holiday has had multiple lives. Columbus Day started out as a memorialization of the first European exploration of the Americas, was broadened to become a commemoration of Italian-American heritage, and should now be seen as a celebration of our national cultural diversity. After all, what’s more American than adaptation?

    See you are still doing history wrong. Columbus wasn’t first – the Vikings were (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-58996186). So celebrating him as “First” is just wrong factually.

    That aside – why should Italian Americans get a federal holiday and not German Americans, or Cajun French Americans … or Native Americans? Italians definitely contributed to our national tapestry, but they aren’t head and shoulders above the rest.

    And about that genocide? No, Columbus didn’t start out get every Tribe and Nation killed, but he was dispatched by the Spanish Crown for reasons of trade and economic conquest. The Conquistadores who followed him were even more focused on securing and exporting resources back to Spain. They were given clear orders by the Crown to not allow any interference from anyone – the Dutch, the French or local tribes. When necessary they were brutally efficient at that, and exacerbated the tribal hostilities you report on to make that happen.

    Even if we jettison all that, why dump on the Nations who were here before we were? Why deny them their rightful place in America’s “tapestry”? And why use their own history against them while ignoring the suffering we as a nation have inflicted on them? That’s not a full historical analysis – that’s a political screed. And while you have every right to screed away – clothing that in “history” is an affront to historians.Report

    • InMD in reply to Philip H says:

      Your last paragraph is where I think the activism becomes misguided. I’d say there’s a fair comparison of the federal government adding Juneteenth as a holiday (a positive thing) versus crusades to get rid of statues of Thomas Jefferson (a profoundly nihilistic and destructive thing). To the extent they want to be Native Americans should be added and welcomed to the tapestry of the national fabric. Given the way tribal sovereignty works I’m not always sure they exactly want to be but the door should be open and we as a culture should be accomodating to it. But it doesn’t have to be some zero-sum game that tears out something else in the process.

      With the broader assimilation of Italians and Catholics more generally I think the constituency for Columbus day is probably mostly dwindled away. That doesn’t mean we need to engage in this bizarre revionism either, as if Catholics who still gather at a Knights of Columbus are actually in some way celebrating destruction of Native Americans because the Irish immigrants named their group after another Catholic important to European settlement of the Americas. It’s the same silliness we’ll have in a month and a half when we get a bunch of self-righteous nonsense based on the assertion that Americans carving up turkeys and watching football is really a sick, twisted celebration of the particulars of what happened in Massachusetts in the 1620s.Report

      • Philip H in reply to InMD says:

        we get a bunch of self-righteous nonsense based on the assertion that Americans carving up turkeys and watching football is really a sick, twisted celebration of the particulars of what happened in Massachusetts in the 1620s.

        Well it is a particularly twisted way to celebrate the colonists surviving conditions they didn’t expect, because of the benevolance of a Native American Nation whom white settlers would eventually chase away by force.

        To the extent they want to be Native Americans should be added and welcomed to the tapestry of the national fabric. Given the way tribal sovereignty works I’m not always sure they exactly want to be but the door should be open and we as a culture should be accomodating to it. But it doesn’t have to be some zero-sum game that tears out something else in the process.

        Members of those nations have proudly served us in our military, and now hold high cabinet offices in our government. so they very much want to be involved. They spent 100 plus years signing treaties with the US – only to see those treaties abrogated anytime their land – and its natural resources – became the interest of Americans of European descent. And in the modern era, Native Americans have higher poverty rates then any other minority, lower homeownership rates, lower incomes and vastly less familial wealth then any other ethnic group. So its not that we need to be “accommodating” its that we need to reverse trends and status inflicted on purpose by the US government on these proud independent nations within our midst.

        https://ncrc.org/racial-wealth-snapshot-native-americans/Report

    • Damon in reply to Philip H says:

      “See you are still doing history wrong. Columbus wasn’t first – the Vikings were”

      Yeah, but no one KNEW they did. There is also some evidence that the Han Chinese may have made it to the west coast of the Americas. Besides, do you really expect, assuming that the Spanish did know of the Viking arrival, that they would bow out of any “we were first” claims? Hell no. Claim belongs to who can back it up and has the political/military might to ensure that claim. The Vikings wouldn’t have stood a chance, and they were gone from the Americas for as much as 400 years before the Spanish arrived.
      Additionally, there is some evidence, which I saw years ago, that the existing tribes that were found in the continental US MAY not have been descendants of first the actual group or groups that did arrive first, so even the claims by the first nations is also suspect.Report

  2. Jaybird says:

    There was a funny story yesterday talking about Philadelphia covering its statue of Columbus with a plywood box.

    Well, some “activists” have painted the box the colors of the Italian flag.

    It contained an interesting paragraph:

    Mabel Negrete, executive director of Indigenous Peoples’ Day Philly Inc., told the Inquirer it was “unfortunate” that some Italian Americans in the city continued to celebrate Columbus. The painting of the box in colors of the Italian flag, she said, “undermines intentions to move forward.”

    Report

  3. Chip Daniels says:

    What’s interesting about the essay is that it offers no affirmative reason why Columbus, of all the European explorers, is deserving of a holiday. Plenty of tepid defenses (Columbus! Not nearly as bad as some others!).

    But what is being offered, is an affirmative proposal that a day be set aside to honor immigration and multiculturalism generally.Report

  4. Pinky says:

    As I understand it, the six most common workday holidays in the US are: New Year’s Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. (Easter is often a day off, but since it falls on a Sunday it’s not typically counted by people who make these kinds of lists.) The seventh most common workday holiday is Black Friday.Report

  5. DavidTC says:

    It sure is weird to talk about how we should have a day honoring Columbus without really talking about, uh, actual Columbus.

    This is because it is basically impossible to argue we should honor Columbus, who was a) an idiot who thought the world was much smaller than the commonly accepted and correct size, b) someone too dumb to figure out that it wasn’t, and c) such a complete manic that his own people said ‘WTF?’

    These campaigners accuse Columbus of perpetuating a deliberate genocide of native peoples and label the European interaction with the New World as irredeemably bad.

    Oh, look, you did mention him, but only to misstate a legitimate complaint about hm, glue it to some _other_ complaint that is maybe more defensible, and defend that other complaint instead.

    Columbus, again, was a violent religious lunatic (and also not particularly bright) who was extremely bad at literally everything he did. What he did reads as a comedy of errors. Whatever we think about European interaction with the Americans (and I almost completely disagree with this post) is irrelevant…Columbus Day does not honor ‘Europea interacting with America’, it honors an actual literal man with a specific history.

    Incidentally, it sure is weird when defending _Confederate_ generals it’s ‘Yes, what he defended was not good, but he was a personally honorable man’. Whereas with Columbus people are suddenly trying to defend…um…colonialism, which sounds absurd, but it’s somehow easier than defending the actual person, who is an incredibly crappy person _even in the context_ of the time period he lived in.Report

  6. Bart Las Casas says:

    This would be the Columbus who was arrested and sent back to Spain for his cruel atrocities as governor? That’s who we celebrate?

    The Columbus who proudly talked about sexual trafficking of children in his own journals? THAT Columbus?

    What’s there to celebrate? The man was evil by any standard.Report

  7. Chris says:

    This should be required reading in all high schools.Report