We like to think of history as inevitable. Of course, we say, things were always going to work out that way because they did. But if that was true, then we could make a lot of money predicting the future on Kalshi or Polymarket. Obviously, history isn’t inevitable. It is the chaotic result of everything falling into place just so. Last Monday was either Columbus Day or Indigenous People’s Day, depending on who you ask. But what sometimes gets lost in the argument over whose perspective matters is the monumentality of the moment where two hemispheres became irrevocably connected.
Columbus, while an excellent sailor, was a terrible political administrator. There’s no debating the abject brutality of his rule on the island of Hispaniola. He engaged in human trafficking, established an early slave trade, and mutilated Native populations who failed to meet his strict gold quotas or committed minor infractions under his rule. Someone who engages in such egregiously cruel behavior does not warrant being honored with a day.
That being said, how do we recognize the importance of that moment without honoring the man who committed such atrocities? Obviously, Columbus didn’t “discover” America, there were millions of people living on the American continents prior to Columbus’s arrival in October of 1492. And there had perhaps been prior visitors who predate Columbus. There’s strong archeological evidence that the Viking Leif Erikson led a party to what is today Newfoundland in Canada and established the Vinland colony about 500 years before Columbus. But they didn’t remain and they didn’t establish a lasting connection between hemispheres. There’s also evidence that the great Chinese admiral Zeng He sailed to North America about 100 years before Columbus, but again no lasting ties were established.
It was Columbus who tore down the walls between the Eastern and Western Hemispheres. Sailing with a crew of 86 for 35 days on three boats, two of which were only 50-70 feet from bow to stern. His men were close to mutiny when at 2 a..m on October 12, 1492, the call went out that land had been sighted. There are so few moments that so completely and utterly change the course of human history as Columbus’ first voyage did. History classes are divided into the world before Columbus and after.
The end result would be tragic for Native populations who, being exposed to smallpox for the first time, would lose upwards of 90% of their populations, making them susceptible to conquer. With the vast majority of the Native population lost, European colonizers looked elsewhere for a labor force and established the triangular trade, including the Middle Passage, one of the most horrific human-created tragedies of all time, trafficking Africans across the Atlantic to work on plantations in the Americas under brutal conditions. The echoes of the tragedies experienced by African and Native populations in those first generations of colonization still linger with us today.
But when we ask anachronistic questions, like what would have happened had Columbus not made that voyage, it’s impossible to know how vastly different the world we live in today would be. Without the separation provided by the Atlantic, would British settlers in the Americas have played with the Enlightenment ideas of self-government and individual sovereignty? America’s revolution paved the way for others to follow suit, in France, in Latin America, and in Haiti. Would those revolutions have come to fruition if Americans wouldn’t have had the freedom and space to play with those ideas in the New World? Or would those revolutions just have been delayed, put off until the time was right to throw off the chains of monarchy in Europe?
We can never know what might have been or might not have been had things been different. And we certainly can’t change how history has played out. We can only learn from it. We have lost historical perspective in the course of our present-day arguments about history. We can both recognize the tragedy experienced by Native and African populations as a result of the Columbian expedition and realize the triumph of establishing permanent ties between peoples in different hemispheres and the resulting revolutions, both political and technological, that resulted from that connection. We can and should have frank conversations about what happened, both the triumph and the tragedy, and recognize that moment’s importance as well as its legacy. Columbus may not be deserving of a day of recognition, but the importance of the lasting connection between hemispheres cannot be ignored.