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What is the true story of Christopher Columbus compared to the legend?

The legend of Christopher Columbus is that he believed, against everyone else in the world at the time, that the Earth was round.  He therefore believed that he could sail to Asia from Europe by going west.  He bravely set sail into the unknown and thereby discovered the New World.  For this reason, he is a hero of world history.


As to what is true, there is a great deal of controversy today and different...

The legend of Christopher Columbus is that he believed, against everyone else in the world at the time, that the Earth was round.  He therefore believed that he could sail to Asia from Europe by going west.  He bravely set sail into the unknown and thereby discovered the New World.  For this reason, he is a hero of world history.


As to what is true, there is a great deal of controversy today and different people will give you different versions of the truth about Columbus.  My own view is that Columbus was a brave man, but not necessarily a hero.  First, it is clearly not true that Columbus defied conventional wisdom to hold that the world was round.  This was a fact known by all educated Europeans.  What Columbus believed that was different was that the world was much smaller than it is.  He thought that it was a very short distance (relatively speaking) from Europe to the eastern shores of Asia.  He believed that he could easily reach Asia by sailing to the west.  He was clearly wrong about this.


Columbus did “discover” the New World for all practical purposes.  It is true that the Vikings got there before he did, but they did not stay and they did not pass down their discovery.  It is true that the Americas were populated and their people did not need to be discovered, but Columbus “discovered” them from a European perspective.  He was, therefore, clearly a man who made history.


Is Columbus a hero?  I would say not.  He was brave and ambitious.  He managed something that no one had done before.  However, bravery and ambition do not make heroes.  There are plenty of people who are brave, ambitious, and evil.  Moreover, Columbus did not even realize what he had done.  He died insisting that he had found Asia.  In short, he was a man who had a fortunate accident while bravely chasing his ambitions.  This does not, in my mind, make him the hero that legend says he is.


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