Honestly his own journals and letters contain some of the most damning stuff to my eyes (pace that I have to read them in translation, not being fluent in 15th century Spanish) - he writes to the crown promising them as many Taino slaves as they like, describes blithely kidnapping Taino men he comes across initially, and while some of the worst stuff you'll see go around is a bit off*, when you're already at "enslaved over a thousand people and sent them back to Spain and half of them died" after delightedly noting that 50 armed men could totes conquer the whole area, etc, that's not saying much.
Occasionally proponents of his will attempt to point out that he expresses worry! and concern! for the Taino in the face of the Carib abduction/etc but to be honest the descriptions supposedly verbatim from him are appallingly dehumanizing and he mostly seems delighted that they're weaponless and appeasingly welcome and will be Xtianized easily; when they destroyed the Spanish colony his reprisals were brutal.
It can be hard to tell how much of either Bobadilla (who was his enemy) or de la Casas (who, while he loathed Spanish colonization broadly was pretty apologist for Columbus himself) to accept, but even de la Casas describes the kidnappings, while trying to paint them in the best light, and it's highly unlikely that Bobadilla had the clout to make up his accusations wholesale, so there's that.
Bergreen's book is a decent source - there are a few places where I side-eye his interpretation of the evidence presented, and I'm much less interested in Columbus as a person than he is, but he also doesn't actually obscure any of the shit Columbus either did or allowed his men to do, so.
*for instance, while he does describe the fact that slavers on Hispaniola were seeking out girls of 9 and 10 for sexual use in his letter to one of the queen's ladies in waiting, he does not at any point describe participating in it and at best appears to briefly lament his limited ability to deal with scoundrels/bad men as governor; there's no indication he participated in it, and he may have been theoretically opposed to it, but doesn't seem to have made much effort to do anything about it.
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Date: 2023-10-25 05:13 am (UTC)Occasionally proponents of his will attempt to point out that he expresses worry! and concern! for the Taino in the face of the Carib abduction/etc but to be honest the descriptions supposedly verbatim from him are appallingly dehumanizing and he mostly seems delighted that they're weaponless and appeasingly welcome and will be Xtianized easily; when they destroyed the Spanish colony his reprisals were brutal.
It can be hard to tell how much of either Bobadilla (who was his enemy) or de la Casas (who, while he loathed Spanish colonization broadly was pretty apologist for Columbus himself) to accept, but even de la Casas describes the kidnappings, while trying to paint them in the best light, and it's highly unlikely that Bobadilla had the clout to make up his accusations wholesale, so there's that.
Bergreen's book is a decent source - there are a few places where I side-eye his interpretation of the evidence presented, and I'm much less interested in Columbus as a person than he is, but he also doesn't actually obscure any of the shit Columbus either did or allowed his men to do, so.
*for instance, while he does describe the fact that slavers on Hispaniola were seeking out girls of 9 and 10 for sexual use in his letter to one of the queen's ladies in waiting, he does not at any point describe participating in it and at best appears to briefly lament his limited ability to deal with scoundrels/bad men as governor; there's no indication he participated in it, and he may have been theoretically opposed to it, but doesn't seem to have made much effort to do anything about it.