Editing Christopher Columbus (section)

== Legacy ==
The voyages of Columbus are considered a turning point in human history,<ref name="BelloShaver2011">{{cite book |last1=Bello |first1=Manuel |last2=Shaver |first2=Annis N. |editor1-last=Provenzo |editor1-first=Eugene F. Jr. |editor2-last=Shaver |editor2-first=Annis N. |editor3-last=Bello |editor3-first=Manuel |title=The Textbook as Discourse: Sociocultural Dimensions of American Schoolbooks |date=2011 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-136-86063-8 |page=152 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=fxasAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA152 |chapter=Representation of Columbus in History Textbooks}}</ref> marking the beginning of [[globalization]] and accompanying demographic, commercial, economic, social, and political changes.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Boivin |first1=Nicole |last2=Fuller |first2=Dorian Q. |last3=Crowther |first3=Alison |title=Old World globalization and the Columbian exchange: comparison and contrast |journal=World Archaeology |date=September 2012 |volume=44 |issue=3 |pages=452–469 |doi=10.1080/00438243.2012.729404 |jstor=42003541 |s2cid=3285807}}</ref>
[[File:Landing of Columbus (2) (cropped).jpg|thumb|''Landing of Columbus at the Island of Guanahaní, West Indies'' (1846), by [[John Vanderlyn]]. The landing of Columbus became a powerful icon of American genesis in the 19th century.]]
His explorations resulted in permanent contact between the two hemispheres, and the term "[[pre-Columbian]]" is used to refer to the cultures of the Americas before the arrival of Columbus and his European successors.<ref name="McFarlane2004">{{cite book |author1=McFarlane, Anthony |editor1-last=King |editor1-first=John |title=The Cambridge Companion to Modern Latin American Culture |year=2004 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-0-521-63651-3 |page=9 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=BE30cHBvjM8C&pg=PA9 |chapter=Pre-Columbian and colonial Latin America}}</ref> The ensuing Columbian exchange saw the massive [[Columbian exchange|exchange]] of animals, plants, fungi, diseases, technologies, mineral wealth and ideas.<ref>{{Citation |last1=Nunn |first1=Nathan |last2=Qian |first2=Nancy |title=The Columbian Exchange: A History of Disease, Food, and Ideas |journal=Journal of Economic Perspectives |volume=24 |issue=2 |pages=163–188 |date=Spring 2010 |doi=10.1257/jep.24.2.163 |url=https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/nunn/files/nunn_qian_jep_2010.pdf}}</ref>

In the first century after his endeavors, Columbus's figure largely languished in the backwaters of history, and his reputation was beset by his failures as a colonial administrator. His legacy was somewhat rescued from oblivion when he began to appear as a character in Italian and Spanish plays and poems from the late 16th century onward.<ref name="noble">{{Cite journal |pages=79–80 |url=http://archive.wilsonquarterly.com/sites/default/files/articles/WQ_VOL15_A_1991_Article_03.pdf |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20221009/http://archive.wilsonquarterly.com/sites/default/files/articles/WQ_VOL15_A_1991_Article_03.pdf |archive-date=9 October 2022 |url-status=live |year=1991 |title=Columbus and the Labyrinth of History |first=John Noble |last=Wilford |journal=The Wilson Quarterly |volume=15 |issue=4}}</ref>

Columbus was subsumed into the Western narrative of colonization and empire building, which invoked notions of ''[[translatio imperii]]'' and ''[[translatio studii]]'' to underline who was considered "civilized" and who was not.<ref name="Bartosik-Vélez2014">{{Cite book |url=https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/id/fbb06e57-759f-43c2-bf3b-792cee697ee2/external_content.pdf |page=45 |chapter=The Incorporation of Columbus into the Story of Western Empire |isbn=978-0-8265-1953-5 |title=The Legacy of Christopher Columbus in the Americas. New Nations and a Transatlantic Discourse of Empire |first=Elise |last=Bartosik-Vélez |publisher=[[Vanderbilt University Press]] |location=Nashville |year=2014}}</ref>

[[File:Discovery-statue (cropped).JPG|thumb|left|upright=0.8|''[[The Discovery of America (sculpture)|The Discovery of America]]'' sculpture, depicting Columbus and a cowering Indian maiden, stood outside the [[U.S. Capitol]] from 1844 to 1958.]]
The Americanization of the figure of Columbus began in the latter decades of the 18th century, after the revolutionary period of the United States,<ref name="Heike2014">{{Cite book |url=http://oaresource.library.carleton.ca/oa-America9783839414859.pdf |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20221009/http://oaresource.library.carleton.ca/oa-America9783839414859.pdf |archive-date=9 October 2022 |url-status=live |pages=53, 59 |chapter=Christopher Columbus and the Myth of Discovery' |first=Heike |last=Paul |year=2014 |title=The Myths That Made America |publisher=transcript Verlag |isbn=978-3-8394-1485-9}}</ref> elevating the status of his reputation to a national myth, ''homo americanus''.{{Sfn|Paul|2014|pp=58; 60}} His landing became a powerful icon as an "image of American genesis".<ref name="Heike2014" /> ''[[The Discovery of America (sculpture)|The Discovery of America]]'' sculpture, depicting Columbus and a cowering Native maiden, was commissioned on 3 April 1837, when U.S. President [[Martin Van Buren]] sanctioned the engineering of [[Luigi Persico]]'s design. This representation of Columbus's triumph and the Native's recoil is a demonstration of supposed white superiority over savage, naive Natives.<ref name="Fryd2001">{{Cite book |last=Fryd |first=Vivienne |title=Art and Empire: The Politics of Ethnicity in the United States Capitol, 1815–1860 |publisher=Ohio University Press |year=2001 |location=Athens, OH |pages=37, 89, 91, 94, 99–100, 105}}</ref> As recorded during its unveiling in 1844, the sculpture extends to "represent the meeting of the two races", as Persico captures their first interaction, highlighting the "moral and intellectual inferiority" of Natives.<ref>{{Cite journal |date=November 1844 |title=Persico's Columbus |journal=The United States Magazine and Democratic Review |volume=15 |pages=95–97 |via=Google Books}}</ref> Placed outside the U.S. Capitol building where it remained until its removal in the mid-20th century, the sculpture reflected the contemporary view of whites in the U.S. toward the Natives; they are labeled "merciless Indian savages" in the [[United States Declaration of Independence]].<ref>{{cite book |title=Out West |date=2000 |publisher=University of Nebraska Press |page=96}}</ref> In 1836, Pennsylvania senator and future U.S. President [[James Buchanan]], who proposed the sculpture, described it as representing "the great discoverer when he first bounded with ecstasy upon the shore, ail his toils past, presenting a hemisphere to the astonished world, with the name America inscribed upon it. Whilst he is thus standing upon the shore, a female savage, with awe and wonder depicted in her countenance, is gazing upon him."<ref>Congressional Globe, 28 April 1836, p. 1316.</ref>

The American Columbus myth was reconfigured later in the century when he was enlisted as an ethnic hero by immigrants to the United States who were not of Anglo-Saxon stock, such as Jewish, Italian, and Irish people, who claimed Columbus as a sort of ethnic founding father.{{Sfn|Paul|2014|pp=63–64}}<ref name="Dennis2018">{{cite book |last1=Dennis |first1=Matthew |title=Red, White, and Blue Letter Days: An American Calendar |date=2018 |publisher=Cornell University Press |isbn=978-1-5017-2370-4 |pages=119–120 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=a6JhDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA119}}</ref> Catholics unsuccessfully tried to promote him for [[canonization]] in the 19th century.{{Sfn|Wilford|1991|p=80}}<ref>{{Cite journal |title=Who's Afraid of Columbus? |first=William J. |last=Connell |journal=Italian Americana |volume=31 |issue=2 |year=2013 |pages=136–147 |jstor=41933001}}</ref>

From the 1990s onward, a narrative of Columbus being responsible for the [[genocide of indigenous peoples]] and environmental destruction began to compete with the then predominant discourse of Columbus as Christ-bearer, scientist, or father of America.<ref>{{Cite journal |title=Christopher Columbus |url=https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/armitage/files/columbus.pdf |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20221009/https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/armitage/files/columbus.pdf |archive-date=9 October 2022 |url-status=live |year=1992 |page=55 |first=David |last=Armitage |journal=History Today |volume=42 |issue=5 |author-link=David Armitage (historian)}}</ref> This narrative features the negative effects of Columbus' conquests on native populations.<ref name="Stannard1993" /> Exposed to [[Old World]] diseases, the [[Population history of Indigenous peoples of the Americas|indigenous populations of the New World]] collapsed,<ref name="Axtell1992">{{cite journal |last1=Axtell |first1=James |title=Moral Reflections on the Columbian Legacy |journal=The History Teacher |date=1992 |volume=25 |issue=4 |pages=407–425 |jstor=494350 |issn=0018-2745 |quote=... Alfred Crosby, a scholar with the mind of a scientist and the heart of a humanist. He writes that "the major initial effect of the Columbian voyages was the transformation of America into a charnel house." The cataclysmic loss of native life, largely to imported diseases, "was surely the greatest tragedy in the history of the human species.}}</ref> and were largely replaced by Europeans and Africans,<ref name="Houbert2003">{{cite book |last1=Houbert |first1=Jean |editor1-last=Jayasuriya |editor1-first=Shihan de S. |editor2-last=Pankhurst |editor2-first=Richard |title=The African Diaspora in the Indian Ocean |year=2003 |publisher=Africa World Press |isbn=978-0-86543-980-1 |page=176 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mdpcgy_aopwC&pg=PA176 |chapter=Creolisation and Decolonisation}}</ref> who brought with them new methods of farming, business, governance, and religious worship.

=== Originality of discovery of America ===
{{Main|Pre-Columbian transoceanic contact theories|Norse colonization of North America}}
[[File:Faroe stamps 225-226 Discovery of America.jpg|thumb|''Discovery of America'', a postage stamp from the [[Faroe Islands]] commemorates the voyages of discovery of [[Leif Erikson]] ({{Circa|1000|lk=no}}) and Christopher Columbus (1492).]]

Though Christopher Columbus came to be considered the European discoverer of America in Western popular culture, his historical legacy is more nuanced.<ref name="Phillips2000">{{cite book |last1=Phillips |first1=William D. |title=Testimonies from the Columbian Lawsuits |year=2000 |publisher=Brepols |isbn=978-2-503-51028-6 |page=25 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=cz0LAAAAYAAJ&q=%22nuance%20of%20semantics%22 |quote=When we speak today of the "legacy" of Christopher Columbus, we usually refer to the broadly historic consequences of his famous voyages, meaning the subsequent European conquest and colonization of the Americas.}}</ref> After settling Iceland, the [[Norsemen|Norse]] settled the uninhabited southern part of [[Greenland]] beginning in the 10th century.<ref name="Nedkvitne2018">{{cite book |last1=Nedkvitne |first1=Arnved |title=Norse Greenland: Viking Peasants in the Arctic |year=2018 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-351-25958-3 |page=13 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Xs5wDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT13}}</ref> Norsemen are believed to have then set sail from Greenland and Iceland to become the first known Europeans to reach the North American mainland, nearly 500 years before Columbus reached the Caribbean.<ref name=":6">{{cite magazine |last=Little |first=Becky |date=11 October 2015 |title=Why Do We Celebrate Columbus Day and Not Leif Erikson Day? |url=https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2015/10/151011-columbus-day-leif-erikson-italian-americans-holiday-history/ |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190807004208/https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2015/10/151011-columbus-day-leif-erikson-italian-americans-holiday-history/ |archive-date=7 August 2019 |magazine=[[National Geographic]] |access-date=12 October 2015 |url-access=limited}}</ref> The 1960s discovery of a Norse settlement dating c.&nbsp;1000 at [[L'Anse aux Meadows]], [[Newfoundland]], partially corroborates accounts within the [[Icelandic sagas]] of [[Erik the Red]]'s colonization of Greenland and his son [[Leif Erikson]]'s subsequent exploration of a place he called [[Vinland]].<ref name=":1">{{cite web |title=History – Leif Erikson (11th century) |url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/erikson_leif.shtml |access-date=12 October 2015 |publisher=BBC}}</ref>

In the 19th century, amid [[Viking revival|a revival of interest in Norse culture]], [[Carl Christian Rafn]] and [[Benjamin Franklin DeCosta]] wrote works establishing that the Norse had preceded Columbus in colonizing the Americas.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Rafn, Carl Christian, 1795–1864 |url=http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/dictionary/index.asp?action=view&term_id=477&term_type_id=1&term_type_text=people&letter=R |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140226221116/http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/dictionary/index.asp?action=view&term_id=477&term_type_id=1&term_type_text=people&letter=R |archive-date=26 February 2014 |access-date=22 March 2022 |website=[[Wisconsin Historical Society]]}}</ref><ref name="EB1911">Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "[[s:1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/De Costa, Benjamin Franklin|De Costa, Benjamin Franklin]]". ''[[Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition|Encyclopædia Britannica]]''. Vol.&nbsp;7 (11th&nbsp;ed.). Cambridge University Press. p.&nbsp;915.</ref> Following this, in 1874 [[Rasmus B. Anderson|Rasmus Bjørn Anderson]] argued that Columbus must have known of the North American continent before he started his voyage of discovery.<ref name="Kolodny2012">{{cite book |last1=Kolodny |first1=Annette |title=In Search of First Contact: The Vikings of Vinland, the Peoples of the Dawnland, and the Anglo-American Anxiety of Discovery |date=2012 |publisher=Duke University Press |isbn=978-0-8223-5286-0 |pages=226–227 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=B2qpdOb8o4cC&pg=PA226}}</ref><ref name=":6" /> Most modern scholars doubt Columbus had knowledge of the Norse settlements in America, with his arrival to the continent being most likely an [[independent discovery]].<ref name="Enterline2003" /><ref name="PaolucciPaolucci1992" /><ref name="Kolodny2012" /><ref name=":7" /><ref name="Restall2021">{{cite book |last1=Restall |first1=Matthew |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=dXQjEAAAQBAJ&pg=PA4 |title=Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest: Updated Edition |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2021 |isbn=978-0-19-753729-9 |page=4}}</ref>

Europeans devised explanations for the [[Settlement of the Americas|origins of the Native Americans]] and their geographical distribution with narratives that often served to reinforce their own [[wikt:preconception|preconceptions]] built on ancient intellectual foundations.<ref name="Berkhofer1979">{{cite book |last1=Berkhofer |first1=Robert F. |title=The White Man's Indian: Images of the American Indian, from Columbus to the Present |date=1979 |publisher=Vintage Books |isbn=978-0-394-72794-3 |page=34 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HcGGDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA34}}</ref> In modern Latin America, the non-Native populations of some countries often demonstrate an ambiguous attitude toward the perspectives of indigenous peoples regarding the so-called "discovery" by Columbus and the era of [[colonialism]] that followed.<ref name="Coronil1989">{{cite journal |last1=Coronil |first1=Fernando |title=Discovering America Again: The Politics of Selfhood in the Age of Post-Colonial Empires |journal=Dispositio |date=1989 |volume=14 |issue=36/38 |pages=315–331 |publisher=Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor |jstor=41491365 |issn=0734-0591 |quote=When referring to the conquest, Venezuelans tend to side with the original "Indians" inhabiting the territory, even though "we" are generally careful to distinguish ourselves from them, and above all from their contemporary descendants. This tactical identification suggests that the force of this rejoinder comes not just from the hold of the familiar—Columbus already discovered America, so what's new—but from the appeal of a more exclusive familiarity evoked by a shift of location — he only "discovered" it for Europe, not for "us". It is as if we viewed Columbus's arrival from two perspectives, his own, and that of the natives. When we want to privilege "our" special viewpoint, we claim as ours the standpoint of the original Americans, the view not from the foreign ship but from our "native" land.}}</ref>
In his 1960 [[monograph]], Mexican philosopher and historian [[Edmundo O'Gorman]] explicitly rejects the Columbus discovery myth, arguing that the idea that Columbus discovered America was a misleading legend fixed in the public mind through the works of American author [[Washington Irving]] during the 19th century. O'Gorman argues that to assert Columbus "discovered America" is to shape the facts concerning the events of 1492 to make them conform to an interpretation that arose many years later.<ref name="Nuccetelli2020">{{cite book |last1=Nuccetelli |first1=Susana |chapter=Setting the Scene: The Iberian Conquest |title=An Introduction to Latin American Philosophy |date=31 October 2020 |pages=16–17 |doi=10.1017/9781107705562.002 |isbn=978-1-107-70556-2 |s2cid=234937836}}</ref> For him, the [[Eurocentric]] view of the discovery of America sustains systems of domination in ways that favor Europeans.<ref name="Lazo2013">{{cite journal |last1=Lazo |first1=Rodrigo |title=The Invention of America Again: On the Impossibility of an Archive |journal=American Literary History |date=1 December 2013 |volume=25 |issue=4 |page=755 |doi=10.1093/alh/ajt049}}</ref> In a 1992 article for ''[[The UNESCO Courier]]'', Félix Fernández-Shaw argues that the word "discovery" prioritizes European explorers as the "heroes" of the contact between the Old and New World. He suggests that the word "encounter" is more appropriate, being a more universal term which includes Native Americans in the narrative.<ref name="Fernández-Shaw1992">{{cite journal |last1=Fernández-Shaw |first1=Félix |title=Five hundred years from now {{!}} From Discovery to Encounter |journal=The UNESCO Courier |date=May 1992 |volume=45 |issue=5, Rediscovering 1492 |page=45 |url=https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000091221 |access-date=8 February 2022 |publisher=UNESCO Digital Library |quote=The encounter between two worlds is a fact that cannot be denied... The word ''discovery'' gives prominence to the heroes of the enterprise; the word ''encounter'' gives more emphasis to the peoples who actually "encountered" each other and gave substance to a New World. Whereas ''discovery'' marks a happening, an event, ''encounter'' conveys better the idea of the political journey that has brought us to the reality of today, spanning the five hundred years since 1492... These historical and political milestones are valuable because they relate the present to both the past and the future. It was inevitable that history written from a Eurocentric standpoint should speak in terms of discovery and it is equally inevitable that, as history has now come to be seen in universal terms, we should have adopted so evocative a term as encounter.}}</ref>

=== America as a distinct land ===
[[File:Columbus Monument (New York City) - DSC05924.JPG|thumb|The [[Columbus Monument (New York City)|Columbus Monument]] in [[Columbus Circle]], New York City]]

Historians have traditionally argued that Columbus remained convinced until his death that his journeys had been along the east coast of Asia as he originally intended<ref>{{cite book |title=North America: The Historical Geography of a Changing Continent |first=Thomas F. |last=McIlwraith |first2=Edward K. |last2=Muller |publisher=Rowman & Littlefield |year=2001 |isbn=978-0-7425-0019-8 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8NS0OTXRlTMC&pg=PA35 |page=35}}</ref><ref name="Burmila20171009" /> (excluding arguments such as Anderson's).<ref name="Kolodny2012" /> On his third voyage he briefly referred to South America as a "hitherto unknown" continent,{{Efn|name=incognita}} while also rationalizing that it was the [[Earthly Paradise]] (Eden) located "at the end of the [[Orient]]".<ref name="Zeruvabel2003" /> Columbus continued to claim in his later writings that he had reached Asia; in a 1502 letter to [[Pope Alexander VI]], he asserts that Cuba is the east coast of Asia.{{sfn|Phillips|Phillips|1992|p=227}} On the other hand, in a document in the ''Book of Privileges'' (1502), Columbus refers to the New World as the ''Indias Occidentales'' ('West Indies'), which he says "were unknown to all the world".<ref>{{cite book |last=Sale |first=Kirkpatrick |author-link=Kirkpatrick Sale |url=https://archive.org/details/conquestofparadi00sale/page/204/mode/2up |title=The Conquest of Paradise: Christopher Columbus and the Columbian Legacy |publisher=Plume |year=1991 |orig-date=1990 |isbn=0-452-26669-6 |location=New York |pages=204–209}}</ref>

=== Shape of the Earth ===
{{further|Myth of the flat Earth}}
[[File:Faro colon.jpg|thumb|[[Columbus Lighthouse]], a Museum and [[Mausoleum]] in homage to Christopher Columbus in [[Santo Domingo]]]]

Washington Irving's 1828 biography of Columbus popularized the idea that Columbus had difficulty obtaining support for his plan because many Catholic theologians insisted that the [[Flat Earth|Earth was flat]],<ref name="book3">{{cite book |last=Boller |first=Paul F. |url=https://archive.org/details/notsopopularmyth00boll |title=Not So!: Popular Myths about America from Columbus to Clinton |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |location=New York |year=1995 |isbn=978-0-19-509186-1}}</ref> but this is a popular misconception which can be traced back to 17th-century Protestants campaigning against Catholicism.<ref>{{cite web |last=Hannam |first=James |date=18 May 2010 |title=Science Versus Christianity? |url=https://www.patheos.com/resources/additional-resources/2010/05/science-versus-christianity |access-date=5 September 2020 |website=[[Patheos.com]]}}</ref> In fact, the spherical shape of the Earth had been known to scholars since antiquity, and was common knowledge among sailors, including Columbus.{{Sfn|Bergreen|2011|p=244}} Coincidentally, the oldest surviving globe of the Earth, the [[Erdapfel]], was made in 1492, just before Columbus's return to Europe from his first voyage. As such it contains no sign of the Americas and yet demonstrates the common belief in a spherical Earth.<ref>{{Cite book |first=Jeffrey Burton |last=Russell |title=Inventing the Flat Earth: Columbus and modern historians |date=1991 |publisher=Praeger |isbn=978-0-275-95904-3 |location=New York |author-link=Jeffrey Burton Russell}}</ref>

In 1492, Columbus correctly measured [[Polaris]]'s [[diurnal motion]] around [[true north]] as having a diameter of almost 7°.{{Sfn|Morison|1942a|pp=241–242, 270–271}} In 1498, while sailing west through the [[doldrums]] 8° north in July and again in August sailing the trade winds 13° north, Columbus reported seeing Polaris with a diurnal motion of 10° in diameter. He accounted for the shift by concluding that Earth's [[Figure of the Earth#Pear shape|figure is pear-shaped]], with the 'stalk' portion (comparing this to a woman's [[breast]]) being nearest Heaven and upon which was centered the Earthly Paradise.<ref name="Randles2011">{{cite book |last1=Randles |first1=W. G. L. |title=European Images of the Americas and the Classical Tradition |publisher=Walter de Gruyter |year=2011 |isbn=978-3-11-087024-4 |editor1-last=Haase |editor1-first=Wolfgang |chapter=Classical Geography and Discovery of America |editor2-last=Meyer |editor2-first=Reinhold |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=cP3XT_vYgxsC&pg=PA48}}</ref>{{Sfn|Morison|1942b|pp=513–515, 517, 544–546}}<ref name="Willingham2015">{{cite book |last1=Willingham |first1=Elizabeth Moore |title=Mythical Indies and Columbus's Apocalyptic Letter: Imagining the Americas in the Late Middle Ages |year=2015 |publisher=Liverpool University Press |isbn=978-1-78284-037-4 |page=293 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=W1-VEAAAQBAJ&pg=RA1-PT293}}</ref> Although Columbus's later readings were incorrect, 20th-century satellite data happens to indicate that the Earth has a slight pear shape.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Tyson |first=Neil deGrasse |author-link=Neil deGrasse Tyson |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=0co_UQgNXacC&pg=PA52 |title=Death By Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries |publisher=W. W. Norton |year=2014 |isbn=978-0-393-06224-3 |edition=1st |location=New York |page=52 |oclc=70265574 |orig-date=2007}}</ref><ref>O'Keefe, J. A., Eckeis, A., and Squires, R. K. (1959). "Vanguard Measurements Give Pear-Shaped Component of Earth's Figure". ''Science'', 129 (3348), 565–566. {{DOI|10.1126/science.129.3348.565}}.</ref><ref>{{cite report |url=https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/citations/ADA142764 |title=Geodesy for the Layman |author=Defense Mapping Agency |date=1983 |publisher=United States Air Force |edition=4th}}</ref>

=== Criticism and defense ===
Columbus has been criticized both for his brutality and for initiating the depopulation of the indigenous peoples of the Caribbean, whether by imported diseases or intentional violence. According to scholars of Native American history, [[George Tinker]] and Mark Freedman, Columbus was responsible for creating a cycle of "murder, violence, and slavery" to maximize exploitation of the Caribbean islands' resources, and that Native deaths on the scale at which they occurred would not have been caused by new diseases alone. Further, they describe the proposition that disease and not genocide caused these deaths as "American [[holocaust denial]]".<ref name="TinkerFreeland2008">{{cite journal |last1=Tinker |first1=George E. |last2=Freeland |first2=Mark |title=Thief, Slave Trader, Murderer: Christopher Columbus and Caribbean Population Decline |journal=Wíčazo Ša Review |date=2008 |volume=23 |issue=1 |doi=10.1353/wic.2008.0002 |url=https://cpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/u.osu.edu/dist/e/58600/files/2018/02/Tinker-Tink-Source-12j35s4.pdf |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20221009/https://cpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/u.osu.edu/dist/e/58600/files/2018/02/Tinker-Tink-Source-12j35s4.pdf |archive-date=9 October 2022 |url-status=live |quote=Colón was directly responsible for instituting this cycle of violence, murder, and slavery... This cycle of violence, intentionally created to maximize the extraction of wealth from the islands, in combination with the epidemic diseases that were running rampant through the Taino population, together promoted the genocide of the Taino people... Disease, only in combination with this cycle of brutal colonial violence, could produce the death toll that we see on the island of Española. Therefore, at best, the theory that disease did the business of killing and not the invaders can only be seen as a gratuitous colonizer apologetic designed to absolve the guilt of the continued occupation and exploitation of the indigenous people of this continent. However, the truth of the matter is much worse and should be called by its appropriate name: American holocaust denial. |page=37 |s2cid=159481939}}</ref> Historian [[Kris Lane]] disputes whether it is appropriate to use the term "genocide" when the atrocities were not Columbus's intent, but resulted from his decrees, family business goals, and negligence.<ref name=":0">{{cite news |last=Lane |first=Kris |date=8 October 2015 |title=Five myths about Christopher Columbus |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/five-myths-about-christopher-columbus/2015/10/08/3e80f358-6d23-11e5-b31c-d80d62b53e28_story.html |access-date=4 August 2018 |newspaper=The Washington Post}}</ref> Other scholars defend Columbus's actions or allege that the worst accusations against him are not based in fact while others claim that "he has been blamed for events far beyond his own reach or knowledge".<ref name=":5">{{Cite web |last=Flint |first=Valerie I.J. |author-link=Valerie Flint |date=26 July 1999 |title=Legacy of Christopher Columbus |url=https://www.britannica.com/biography/Christopher-Columbus/Legacy |access-date=9 January 2022 |website=[[Encyclopedia Britannica]]}}</ref>

As a result of the [[George Floyd protests|protests and riots]] that followed the [[murder of George Floyd]] in 2020, many public [[List of monuments and memorials removed during the George Floyd protests#Christopher Columbus|monuments of Christopher Columbus]] have been removed.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Brito |first=Christopher |date=25 September 2020 |title=Dozens of Christopher Columbus statues have been removed since June |url=https://www.cbsnews.com/news/christopher-columbus-statue-removed-cities/ |access-date=26 September 2020 |website=CBS News-US}}</ref>

==== Brutality ====
[[File:Pedestal base of Christopher Columbus statue 2.jpeg|thumb|The remains of the pedestal base of [[Statue of Christopher Columbus (Baltimore)|the Columbus statue]] in the Baltimore inner harbor area. The statue was thrown into the harbor on 4 July 2020, as part of the [[George Floyd protests]].]]

Some historians have criticized Columbus for initiating the widespread colonization of the Americas and for abusing its native population.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Bigelow |first1=Bill |date=1992 |title=Once upon a Genocide: Christopher Columbus in Children's Literature |journal=[[Social Justice (journal)|Social Justice]] |volume=19 |issue=2 |pages=106–121 |jstor=29766680}}.</ref><ref name="Zinn" /><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.hartford-hwp.com/Taino/docs/columbus.html |first=Jack |last=Weatherford |title=Examining the reputation of Christopher Columbus |website=Hartford-hwp.com |date=20 April 2001 |access-date=29 July 2009}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/43a/100.html |title=Pre-Columbian Hispaniola – Arawak/Taino Indians |website=Hartford-hwp.com |date=15 September 2001 |access-date=29 July 2009}}</ref> On [[St. Croix]], Columbus's friend Michele da Cuneo—according to his own account—kept an indigenous woman he captured, whom Columbus "gave to [him]", then brutally raped her.{{Sfn|Morison|1991|p=417}}{{efn|Cuneo wrote,
<blockquote>While I was in the boat, I captured a very beautiful Carib woman, whom the said Lord Admiral gave to me. When I had taken her to my cabin she was naked—as was their custom. I was filled with a desire to take my pleasure with her and attempted to satisfy my desire. She was unwilling, and so treated me with her nails that I wished I had never begun. But—to cut a long story short—I then took a piece of rope and whipped her soundly, and she let forth such incredible screams that you would not have believed your ears. Eventually we came to such terms, I assure you, that you would have thought that she had been brought up in a school for whores.<ref>{{cite book |last=Cohen |first=J.M. |title=The Four Voyages of Christopher Columbus |year=1969 |publisher=Penguin |location=NY |isbn=978-0-14-044217-5 |page=139}}</ref></blockquote>}}{{efn|Author [[Tony Horwitz]] notes that this is the first recorded instance of sexuality between a European and Native American.{{sfn|Horwitz|2008|p=69}}}}

According to some historians, the punishment for an indigenous person, aged 14 and older, failing to pay a hawk's bell, or ''cascabela'',<ref name="DeaganCruxent2002">{{cite book |last1=Deagan |first1=Kathleen A. |last2=Cruxent |first2=José María |title=Archaeology at La Isabela: America's First European Town |year=2002 |publisher=Yale University Press |isbn=978-0-300-09041-3 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=twI0PjfqdGYC&pg=PA201 |page=201}}</ref> worth of gold dust every six months (based on [[Bartolomé de las Casas]]'s account) was cutting off the hands of those without tokens, often leaving them to bleed to death.<ref name="TinkerFreeland2008" /><ref name="Zinn" /><ref name="Koning">{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Oxa-SjBh_cYC |title=Columbus |last=Koning |first=Hans |date=1976 |publisher=Monthly Review Press |isbn=978-0-85345-600-1 |page=86 |ref=Koning |access-date=1 May 2015}}</ref> Other historians dispute such accounts. For example, a study of [[National Archives of Spain|Spanish archival sources]] showed that the ''cascabela'' quotas were imposed by [[Guarionex]], not Columbus, and that there is no mention, in the primary sources, of punishment by cutting off hands for failing to pay.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Lynch |first=Lawrence Dixson |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=B93gAAAAMAAJ |title=Discovery in the Archives of Spain and Portugal: Quincentenary Essays, 1492–1992 |date=1993 |publisher=Haworth Press |isbn=978-1-56024-643-5 |editor-last=McCrank |editor-first=Lawrence J. |page=265 |chapter=Columbus in Myth and History |series=Primary Sources & Original Works |volume=2 |issue=1–2 |doi=10.1300/J269v02n01_09 |chapter-url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1300/J269v02n01_09}}</ref> Columbus had an economic interest in the enslavement of the Hispaniola natives and for that reason was not eager to baptize them, which attracted criticism from some churchmen.<ref name="varela">{{cite book |last1=Varela |first1=Consuelo |title=La caída de Cristóbal Colón: el juicio de Bobadilla |last2=Aguirre |first2=Isabel |date=2006 |publisher=Marcial Pons Historia |isbn=978-84-96467-28-6 |pages=111–118 |language=es |trans-title=The fall of Christopher Columbus: the Bobadilla trial |chapter=La venta de esclavos |trans-chapter=The sale of slaves |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=SwtMUtesSDEC&pg=PA111}}</ref> Consuelo Varela, a Spanish historian, stated that "Columbus's government was characterized by a form of tyranny. Even those who loved him had to admit the atrocities that had taken place."<ref name="newspaper1">{{Cite news |first=Giles |last=Tremlett |author-link=Giles Tremlett |date=7 August 2006 |title=Lost document reveals Columbus as tyrant of the Caribbean |work=[[The Guardian]] |url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/aug/07/books.spain |access-date=16 May 2013}}</ref> Other historians have argued that some of the accounts of the brutality of Columbus and his brothers have been exaggerated as part of the [[Black Legend]], a historical tendency towards anti-Spanish and anti-Catholic sentiment in historical sources dating as far back as the 16th century, which they speculate may continue to taint scholarship into the present day.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Hanke |first1=Lewis |date=1 February 1971 |title=A Modest Proposal for a Moratorium on Grand Generalizations: Some Thoughts on the Black Legend |journal=[[Hispanic American Historical Review]] |publisher=[[Duke University Press]] |location=Durham, North Carolina |volume=51 |issue=1 |pages=112–127 |doi=10.1215/00182168-51.1.112 |jstor=2512616 |doi-access=free |author-link1=Lewis Hanke}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Keen |first1=Benjamin |date=1 November 1969 |title=The Black Legend Revisited: Assumptions and Realities |journal=[[Hispanic American Historical Review]] |publisher=[[Duke University Press]] |location=Durham, North Carolina |volume=49 |issue=4 |pages=703–719 |doi=10.1215/00182168-49.4.703 |jstor=2511162 |doi-access=free |author-link1=Benjamin Keen}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Keen |first1=Benjamin |date=1 May 1971 |title=The White Legend Revisited: A Reply to Professor Hanke's 'Modest Proposal' |journal=[[Hispanic American Historical Review]] |publisher=[[Duke University Press]] |location=Durham, North Carolina |volume=51 |issue=2 |pages=336–355 |doi=10.1215/00182168-51.2.336 |jstor=2512479 |doi-access=free}}</ref>

According to historian Emily Berquist Soule, the immense Portuguese profits from the maritime trade in African slaves along the West African coast served as an inspiration for Columbus to create a counterpart of this apparatus in the New World using indigenous American slaves.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Soule |first1=Emily Berquist |date=23 April 2017 |title=From Africa to the Ocean Sea: Atlantic slavery in the origins of the Spanish Empire |url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14788810.2017.1315514 |journal=Atlantic Studies |volume=15 |issue=1 |pages=16–39 |doi=10.1080/14788810.2017.1315514 |s2cid=218620874 |access-date=29 March 2022}}</ref> Historian [[William J. Connell (historian)|William J. Connell]] has argued that while Columbus "brought the entrepreneurial form of slavery to the New World", this "was a phenomenon of the times", further arguing that "we have to be very careful about applying 20th-century understandings of morality to the morality of the 15th century."<ref>{{Cite news |last=Fusco |first=Mary Ann Castronovo |date=8 October 2000 |title=In Person; In Defense Of Columbus |work=[[The New York Times]] |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/08/nyregion/in-person-in-defense-of-columbus.html |access-date=9 August 2018}}</ref> In a less popular defense of colonization, Spanish ambassador {{Ill|María Jesús Figa|es}} has argued, "Normally we melded with the cultures in America, we stayed there, we spread our language and culture and religion."{{sfn|Horwitz|2008|p=84}}

British historian [[Basil Davidson]] has dubbed Columbus the "father of the [[Atlantic slave trade|slave trade]]",<ref>{{cite journal |first=Basil |last=Davidson |author-link=Basil Davidson |title=Columbus: the bones and blood of racism |journal=[[Race & Class]] |volume=33 |issue=3 |publisher=[[SAGE Publishers]] |location=Thousand Oaks, California |date=January 1992 |pages=17–25 |doi=10.1177/030639689203300303 |s2cid=145462012}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news |last=Bigelow |first=Bill |date=10 October 2015 |title=Columbus Day must be abolished |url=https://www.ottawaherald.com/article/20151010/OPINION/310109846 |access-date=16 July 2021 |newspaper=[[The Ottawa Herald]] |archive-date=24 May 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210524142025/https://www.ottawaherald.com/article/20151010/OPINION/310109846}}</ref> citing the fact that the first license to ship enslaved Africans to the Caribbean was issued by the Catholic Monarchs in 1501 to the first royal governor of Hispaniola, [[Nicolás de Ovando]].<ref name="Jennings2020">{{cite book |last1=Jennings |first1=Evelyn |title=Constructing the Spanish Empire in Havana: State Slavery in Defense and Development, 1762–1835 |date=2020 |publisher=LSU Press |isbn=978-0-8071-7464-7 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=kOHcDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA33}}</ref>

==== Depopulation ====
{{Further|Taino#Depopulation}}
{{See also|Population history of indigenous peoples of the Americas}}
Around the turn of the 21st century, estimates for the {{nowrap|pre-Columbian}} population of Hispaniola ranged between 250,000 and two million,{{sfn|Dyson|1991|pp=183, 190}}{{Sfn|Zinn|2003|p=5}}<ref name=Keegan>Keegan, William F., "Destruction of the Taino" in ''Archaeology''. January/February 1992, pp. 51–56.</ref>{{efn|[[Bartolomé de las Casas]] estimated that there were three to four million Taínos in Hispaniola, and said 500,000 Lucayans were killed in the Bahamas. Most modern historians reject his figures.<ref name=Keegan />}} but [[genetic analysis]] published in late 2020 suggests that smaller figures are more likely, perhaps as low as 10,000–50,000 for Hispaniola and Puerto Rico combined.<ref name="Fernandes">{{cite journal |last1=Fernandes |first1=D. M. |last2=Sirak |first2=K. A. |last3=Ringbauer |first3=H. |date=23 December 2020 |display-authors=etal |title=A genetic history of the pre-contact Caribbean |journal=[[Nature (journal)|Nature]] |volume=590 |issue=7844 |pages=103–110 |doi=10.1038/s41586-020-03053-2 |pmid=33361817 |pmc=7864882 |doi-access=free}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Dutchen |first=Stephanie |date=23 December 2020 |title=Ancient DNA shines light on Caribbean history, prehistory |url=https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/12/ancient-dna-shines-light-on-caribbean-history-prehistory/ |url-status=live |access-date=27 May 2021 |website=[[Harvard Gazette]]-US |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201223163004/https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/12/ancient-dna-shines-light-on-caribbean-history-prehistory/ |archive-date=23 December 2020}}</ref> Based on the previous figures of a few hundred thousand, some have estimated that a third or more of the natives in Haiti were dead within the first two years of Columbus's governorship.<ref name="Zinn" />{{sfn|Dyson|1991|pp=183, 190}} Contributors to depopulation included disease, warfare, and harsh enslavement.{{sfn|Horwitz|2008|p=}}<ref>{{cite book |first=Alfred W. |last=Crosby |author-link=Arthur W. Crosby |title=The Columbian Exchange |publisher=[[Greenwood Publishing Group]] |location=Westport, Connecticut |date=1972 |isbn=978-0-8371-7228-6 |page=47}}</ref> Indirect evidence suggests that some serious illness may have arrived with the 1,500 colonists who accompanied Columbus' second expedition in 1493.{{sfn|Horwitz|2008|p=}} [[Charles C. Mann]] writes that "It was as if the suffering these diseases had caused in [[Eurasia]] over the past millennia were concentrated into the span of decades."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Mann |first=Charles C. |title=1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created |publisher=[[Alfred A. Knopf]] |date=2011 |location=New York |isbn=978-0-307-27824-1 |page=12}}</ref> A third of the natives forced to work in gold and silver mines died every six months.<ref name="Hickel">{{cite book |last=Hickel |first=Jason |title=The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions |date=2018 |publisher=Windmill Books |location=London, England |isbn=978-1-78609-003-4 |page=70 |author-link=Jason Hickel}}</ref><ref name=":4" /> Within three to six decades, the surviving Arawak population numbered only in the hundreds.<ref name="Hickel" />{{sfn|Dyson|1991|pp=183, 190}}<ref>Crosby (1972) p. 45.</ref> The indigenous population of the Americas overall is thought to have been reduced by about 90% in the century after Columbus's arrival.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Koch |first1=Alexander |last2=Brierley |first2=Chris |last3=Maslin |first3=Mark |last4=Lewis |first4=Simon |date=1 March 2019 |title=Earth system impacts of the European arrival and Great Dying in the Americas after 1492 |journal=Quaternary Science Reviews |volume=207 |pages=13–36 |bibcode=2019QSRv..207...13K |doi=10.1016/j.quascirev.2018.12.004 |doi-access=free}}</ref> Among indigenous peoples, Columbus is often viewed as a key agent of genocide.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Schuman |first1=H. |last2=Schwartz |first2=B. |last3=D'Arcy |first3=H. |date=28 February 2005 |title=Elite Revisionists and Popular Beliefs: Christopher Columbus, Hero or Villain? |url=https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/c45b/6dae70b6f92891b09a99a0337cbf0235eb97.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200226064041/https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/c45b/6dae70b6f92891b09a99a0337cbf0235eb97.pdf |archive-date=26 February 2020 |journal=Public Opinion Quarterly |volume=69 |issue=1 |pages=2–29 |doi=10.1093/poq/nfi001 |s2cid=145447081}}</ref> [[Samuel Eliot Morison]], a [[Harvard University]] historian and author of a multivolume biography on Columbus, writes, "The cruel policy initiated by Columbus and pursued by his successors resulted in complete genocide."<ref name="Morison">{{cite book |last1=Morison |first1=Samuel Eliot |url=https://archive.org/details/christophercolum00mori |title=Christopher Columbus, Mariner |publisher=Little Brown & Co. |location=New York |year=1955 |isbn=978-0-316-58356-5 |url-access=registration}}</ref>

According to Noble David Cook, "There were too few Spaniards to have killed the millions who were reported to have died in the first century after Old and New World contact." He instead estimates that the death toll was caused by [[smallpox]],<ref name="Cook1998">{{cite book |last=Cook |first=Noble David |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=dvjNyZTFrS4C&pg=PA9 |title=Born to Die: Disease and New World Conquest, 1492–1650 |year=1998 |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |location=Cambridge, England |isbn=978-0-521-62730-6 |pages=9–14}}</ref> which may have caused a pandemic only after the arrival of [[Hernán Cortés]] in 1519.<ref>{{cite book |title=Smallpox and its eradication |vauthors=Fenner F, Henderson DA, Arita I, Ježek Z, Ladnyi ID |date=1988 |publisher=World Health Organization |isbn=978-92-4-156110-5 |series=History of International Public Health |volume=6 |location=Geneva |page=236 |chapter=The History of Smallpox and its Spread Around the World |hdl=10665/39485 |access-date=29 April 2021 |chapter-url=https://biotech.law.lsu.edu/blaw/bt/smallpox/who/red-book/9241561106_chp5.pdf |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20221009/https://biotech.law.lsu.edu/blaw/bt/smallpox/who/red-book/9241561106_chp5.pdf |archive-date=9 October 2022 |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Oliver |first1=José R. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=nkYAMSusYKkC&q=hispaniola+pandemic+1519&pg=PA192 |title=Caciques and Cemí idols: the web spun by Taíno rulers between Hispaniola and Puerto Rico |date=2009 |publisher=[[University of Alabama Press]] |isbn=978-0-8173-5515-9 |edition=[Online-Ausg.]. |location=Tuscaloosa |page=192 |access-date=25 December 2017}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |title=Deadly Diseases: Epidemics throughout history |website=CNN |url=https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2014/10/health/epidemics-through-history/ |access-date=25 December 2017}}</ref> According to some estimates, smallpox had an 80–90% fatality rate in Native American populations.<ref>{{cite book |first1=Arthur C. |last1=Aufderheide |first2=Conrado |last2=Rodríguez-Martín |first3=Odin |last3=Langsjoen |date=1998 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=qubTdDk1H3IC&pg=PA205 |title=The Cambridge encyclopedia of human paleopathology |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |location=Cambridge, England |page=205 |isbn=0-521-55203-6}}</ref> The natives had no [[acquired immunity]] to these new diseases and suffered high fatalities. There is also evidence that they had poor diets and were overworked.<ref name="Austin-Alchon2003" /><ref>Crosby (1972) pp. 39, 47</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Martin |first1=Debra L. |last2=Goodman |first2=Alan H. |date=2002 |title=Health conditions before Columbus: paleopathology of native North Americans |journal=[[Western Journal of Medicine]] |publisher=[[BMJ (company)|BMJ]] |location=London, England |volume=176 |issue=1 |pages=65–68 |doi=10.1136/ewjm.176.1.65 |pmc=1071659 |pmid=11788545}}</ref> Historian [[Andrés Reséndez]] of [[University of California, Davis]], says the available evidence suggests "slavery has emerged as major killer" of the indigenous populations of the Caribbean between 1492 and 1550 more so than diseases such as smallpox, influenza and malaria.<ref>{{cite book |last=Reséndez |first=Andrés |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Z2gpCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA17 |title=The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America |date=2016 |publisher=[[Houghton Mifflin Harcourt]] |isbn=978-0-547-64098-3 |page=17 |author-link=Andrés Reséndez}}</ref> He says that indigenous populations did not experience a rebound like European populations did following the [[Black Death]] because unlike the latter, a large portion of the former were subjected to deadly forced labor in the mines.<ref name=":4">{{cite news |last=Treuer |first=David |date=13 May 2016 |title=The new book 'The Other Slavery' will make you rethink American history |newspaper=[[Los Angeles Times]] |url=https://latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-ca-jc-native-american-slavery-20160505-snap-story.html |access-date=21 June 2019}}</ref>

The diseases that devastated the Native Americans came in multiple waves at different times, sometimes as much as centuries apart, which would mean that survivors of one disease may have been killed by others, preventing the population from recovering.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Koch |first1=Alexander |last2=Brierley |first2=Chris |last3=Maslin |first3=Mark |last4=Lewis |first4=Simon |title=Earth system impacts of the European arrival and Great Dying in the Americas after 1492 |journal=[[Quaternary Science Reviews]] |publisher=[[Elsevier]] |location=Wollongong, New South Wales |date=1 March 2019 |volume=207 |pages=13–36 |doi=10.1016/j.quascirev.2018.12.004 |bibcode=2019QSRv..207...13K |quote=While most of the other epidemics in history however were confined to a single pathogen and typically lasted for less than a decade, the Americas differed in that multiple pathogens caused multiple waves of virgin soil epidemics over more than a century. Those who survived influenza, may later have succumbed to smallpox, while those who survived both, may then have caught a later wave of measles. Hence, there were documented disease outbreaks in the Americas that killed 30% of the remaining indigenous population over 50 years after initial contact, i.e. between 1568 CE and 1605 CE |doi-access=free}}</ref> Historian [[David Stannard]] describes the depopulation of the indigenous Americans as "neither inadvertent nor inevitable", saying it was the result of both disease and intentional genocide.<ref name="Stannard1993xii">{{cite book |last1=Stannard |first1=David E. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=RzFsODcGjfcC&pg=PR12 |title=American Holocaust: The Conquest of the New World |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=1993 |isbn=978-0-19-983898-1 |location=Oxford, England |page=xii |author-link=David Stannard}}</ref>

==== Navigational expertise ====
Biographers and historians have a wide range of opinions about Columbus's expertise and experience navigating and captaining ships. One scholar lists some European works ranging from the 1890s to 1980s that support Columbus's experience and skill as among the best in Genoa, while listing some American works over a similar timeframe that portray the explorer as an untrained entrepreneur, having only minor crew or passenger experience prior to his noted journeys.<ref name="Peck">{{cite journal |title=The Controversial Skill of Columbus as a Navigator: An Enduring Historical Enigma |first=Douglas T. |last=Peck |journal=The Journal of Navigation |volume=62 |year=2009 |issue=3 |pages=417–425 |doi=10.1017/S0373463309005359 |bibcode=2009JNav...62..417P |s2cid=59570444 |url=https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/3bcb/6e3fb8c43f27099b9b0cbab75585ac12cdc5.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200705003711/https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/3bcb/6e3fb8c43f27099b9b0cbab75585ac12cdc5.pdf |archive-date=5 July 2020 |access-date=4 July 2020}}</ref> According to Morison, Columbus's success in utilizing the trade winds might owe significantly to luck.{{Sfn|Morison|1991|pp=59, 198–199}}