Happy Columbus day all. Since we are celebrating the guy that sailed out from Spain, looking for India and China, and landed in the Bahamas, where he introduced smallpox, used slavery on the natives, and then took some of them home as slaves along with some of their gold, what are you going to do to celebrate?
I thought I'd roam around the neighborhood up the road from me. Stop at the first house I see. Take a shit in their yard. Give them my chest cold. Help myself to a beer in the garage. Bring their kids back to my place and have them rake up my leaves. That should about to do it.
I've always been curious what the alternative to Columbus and western exploration is. I can come up with three scenarios.
1. China or some Asian country eventually explores and colonizes. (Outcomes: same as today, but with Asians.)
2. Somehow everyone leaves the natives alone as sovereign nations and trades with them. (Outcome: same outbreak of massive disease and we likely end up with either an Africa-style third world in North America, or the natives adopt technology and eventually become a sparsely populated Finland-type country. I guess the natives would be rich, right? Actually, now that I think about it, the natives would be the equivalent of Saudi Arabia because they'd sell resources to Europe in massive quantities.)
3. Everyone treats the western hemisphere like a big national park or like the Sentinel Islands? No contact, no use of resources, etc., and the Natives continue to build wigwams and hunt buffalo, and maybe discover iron at some point. (Outcomes: Yeah, I guess it would be cool, but I don't see it happening. We do it with Antarctica, but Antarctica is not exactly colonization-ready.)
If you don't like Columbus, what do you think would've happened if he had not shown up, or if Isabella had not wanted gold or ginger or more catholics? I think our timeline was more or less inevitable. And I also think we should've done the same thing to Saudi Arabia. [Reply]