https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/october-12-2025
"On October 9, President Donald J. Trump’s office issued an official
proclamation declaring Monday, October 13, “Columbus Day.” The proclamation
says that the day is one on which “our Nation honors the legendary Christopher
Columbus—the original American hero, a giant of Western civilization, and one
of the most gallant and visionary men to ever walk the face of the earth. This
Columbus Day, we honor his life with reverence and gratitude, and we pledge to
reclaim his extraordinary legacy of faith, courage, perseverance, and virtue
from the left-wing arsonists who have sought to destroy his name and dishonor
his memory.”
The proclamation goes on to present a white Christian nationalist version of
American history, with much more emphasis on Christianity than Trump’s
previous, similar proclamations. It claims that Columbus was guided by a “noble
mission: to discover a new trade route to Asia, bring glory to Spain, and
spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ to distant lands.” “Upon his arrival,” it
says, “he planted a majestic cross in a mighty act of devotion, dedicating the
land to God and setting in motion America’s proud birthright of faith.”
“Guided by steadfast prayer and unwavering fortitude and resolve,” it goes on,
“Columbus’s journey carried thousands of years of wisdom, philosophy, reason,
and culture across the Atlantic into the Americas—paving the way for the
ultimate triumph of Western civilization less than three centuries later on
July 4, 1776.”
Then the proclamation turns to MAGA’s complaints about modern revisions of this
triumphalist history, saying: “Outrageously, in recent years, Christopher
Columbus has been a prime target of a vicious and merciless campaign to erase
our history, slander our heroes, and attack our heritage.” Our nation, the
proclamation says, “will now abide by a simple truth: Christopher Columbus was
a true American hero, and every citizen is eternally indebted to his relentless
determination.”
This proclamation completely misunderstands the fifteenth-century world of
expanding European maritime routes that entirely reworked world trade—including
trade in human beings—and the role of Italian mariner Christopher Columbus, who
worked for Spain’s monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella, in that expansion.
It also misses what historians call the “Columbian Exchange”: the transfer of
plants and animals between the Americas and the “Old World”—Europe, Asia, and
Africa—after Columbus’s first landfall in the Bahamas in 1492. That exchange
went both ways and transformed the globe, but its effect on the Americas was
devastating. When Columbus and his sailors “discovered” the “New World,” they
brought with them both ideologies and germs that would decimate the peoples
living there.
Estimates of the number of Native people living in North America and South
America in 1490 vary widely, but there were at least as many as 50 million, and
possibly as many as 100 million. In the next 200 years, displacement,
enslavement, war, and especially disease would kill about 90% of those native
peoples. Most historians see the destruction of America’s Indigenous peoples as
the brutal triumph of European white men over those they perceived to be
inferior.
Historians are not denigrating historical actors or the nation when they
uncover sordid parts of our past. Historians study how and why societies
change. As we dig into the past, we see patterns that never entirely foreshadow
the present but that give us ideas about how people in the past have dealt with
circumstances that look similar to circumstances today. If we are going to get
an accurate picture of how a society works, historians must examine it
honestly, seeing the bad as well as the good. With luck, seeing those patterns
will help us make better decisions about our own lives, our communities, and
our nation in the present.
History is different from commemoration. History is about what happened in the
past, while commemoration is about the present. We put up statues and celebrate
holidays to honor figures from the past who embody some quality we admire."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
