President William Henry Harrison proclaimed Oct. 12 as Columbus Day in 1892, saying that the Italian navigator brought enlightenment and progress to the New World.
Fast forward to 1992, during a re-evaluation of Columbus’ significance, and the consensus seemed to be entirely different.
Instead of hailing the explorer as the bearer of new ideas and agriculture, Christopher Columbus was seen as the architect of genocide who brought oppression to a relatively innocent New World, said Geoffrey Symcox, a history professor.
Now, more than 500 years after Columbus sailed the ocean blue and landed in the present-day Bahamas, controversy still surrounds his entrance into the New World.
“Some people feel he should have stayed home,” said Cecilia Klein, a professor of art history who specializes in pre-Columbian art. “But some people think what he did was beneficial.”
In 1492, Columbus set sail from Spain, under the financial sponsorship of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain, in search of a faster trade route to Asia.
However, instead of landing in the coveted West Indies, Columbus arrived in the Americas, touching off a chain reaction of events that continues to have an effect on the modern-day world, said Teofilo Ruiz, a professor in the department of history.
“It was an encounter between the Old World and the New,” he said. “He was the first one to … link together the whole world.”
This linking of the world relates to the Columbian Exchange, a finding proposed in the 1970s that suggests that there was a mutual transfer of animals, crops, and diseases between the Old World and the New, Symcox said.
Symcox said that horses were among the most influential items that Columbus brought to the Americas, adding that the horse contributed to the culture of the Plains Indians, the rise of the cowboy and the Hollywood theatrics of John Wayne.
However, he said that Columbus’ voyage also unintentionally brought new European diseases to the Americas, leading to the decimation of the native population.
Likewise, Columbus was able to bring crops like maize, potatoes and sweet potatoes back from the New World, Symcox said. He added that eventually, these crops were taken to Japan and China, where they successfully grew in agricultural areas that could not be used by other plants.
Symcox emphasized that this exchange was completely unintentional.
“Columbus brought these things so that the colonists could have something to live on,” he said.
In addition to the Columbian Exchange, another major consequence of the voyage was the introduction of sugar cane to the Americas, which became the basis of the slave trade.
Although cotton is often thought of as the crop impetus of the slave trade, Symcox said that the successful cultivation of sugar cane led to the increased need for irrigation and labor. Since the native population died off too quickly to be used as workers, African slaves were used for field labor.
Thus, Symcox said that Columbus had an indirect impact on the creation of the Atlantic slave trade.
Ruiz echoed these comments, saying that the plantation systems that were introduced to the New World were previously found only in Europe.
Klein said that the art of the natives were also impacted by the landing.
By introducing new styles of European art to the native population, Klein said that there is a significant difference between pre- and post-Columbian art.
“You see pictures of the crucifixion, instead of their pre-Columbian deities,” she said, alluding to the efforts of the Europeans in converting the natives to Christianity.
She also mentioned the subsequent fusing of their art styles, with traditional feather pictures becoming a part of the decor of Christian churches.
But in spite of these major changes, professors emphasized the fact that these consequences are not specific to Columbus himself.
“If Columbus had not come, someone else would have come,” Ruiz said, adding that Portuguese sailors and other European explorers were also close in proximity to the New World at that time.
“It maybe have happened in a different form, but the main pattern of colonization would have been the same.”