Matthew Restall (34:04)
Yeah. So. So when you realize that, like. Wait, wait. What do you mean, enslave people? It's like. Well, that's. That's how. That's how the whole thing keeps going through. Enslaving people. You're literally going island to island or on the coasts and going into villages, and you're rounding people up. And the people who are worth the most are the people who are the easiest to capture. So it's children and women. They're worth more than. Than men. And the men are the ones who are most likely to try and defend their families. And they can be. And then they're killed or. Or sometimes they. They managed to enslave them as well. So you. You. You're not purchasing them. I mean, mo. Most of the enslaved Africans who acquired during the transatlantic slave trade from Africa are purchased through trade because African kingdoms still have power. European colon colonial powers don't have the ability to destroy those African kingdoms and create colonies, large colonies in Africa. That doesn't happen until the 19th century. But indigenous peoples living in small city states or stateless communities on islands and on the coasts simply don't have the ability to resist when a ship pulls up with cannons and armed guys who are simply there, you know, to raid and seize people, and then they sell them in the. In the burgeoning slave markets on the islands. And then back in Spain, that. That brings the greatest amount of money, is the greatest source of income, and also encourages further credit. So, look, Columbus is part of this system. Does that, you know, make him some kind of hero? It's hard to see that, but. Absolutely. Absolutely not. But he also doesn't. In no way does he create this system, and he would be absolutely powerless to stop it. So, I mean, we all kind of go back and see what kind of guy is. Is Columbus. You know, what. What. What would it be like to have him on American history hotline? Right? To have him in a room talking to him. He. He would talk even more than I do. You would not be able to shut the guy up. He had a reputation for being incredibly garrulous. He talked and talked and talked. And now it sounds like I'm about to, like, insult myself now, which is totally fine. He talks and talks. He was incredible. Egoman, I think he was just astonishingly self centered. So I really investigated Columbus with an open mind. I mean the purpose of the book is not primarily it's not a biography. I mean it is a biography but it isn't. My concern was to answer not only questions that people might have about the historic Columbus but also let's just leap all the way to kind of the extreme end when people said to me why are there little memes on TikTok about Columbus raping manatees? Did he do that? There's also stuff on there about Columbus like raping wanting to have sex with goats and llamas and so on. And of course it's like there comes a point where you, it becomes funny, right? And absurd and ridiculous. But I felt like I needed to explain that know then there, there's an explanation but the explanation has to be kind of tapped into a larger explanation which is, which is the purpose of the book here. So I approached Columbus with an open mind. I had previously done the same in investigating Montezuma and Cortez on a different book which we'll talk about on. On another occasion, Bob and I my opinion of Cortez changed fairly dramatically. I thought he was probably a somewhat unpleasant character and by the time I got to the end of researching that. But this guy's just an absolute monster. I mean he's just horrific. I did not come to the conclusion that Columbus was a monster. Not in the same way I did. He, he's clearly very intelligent, kind of impressive in many ways. He had no education despite the kind of legends about that. So comes from very modest background, self taught. He teaches himself to read, he teaches himself to speak and read multiple languages. He never writes Spanish particularly, never really becomes fluent in writing it. He tries to write in Latin and it's pretty bad and so on but the fact is it's all self taught. And he's also teaching himself navigation that he must have learned from pilots when he went to sea when he was in his early 20s. But he's kind of an impressive guy in this sense. But he becomes so single mindedly self absorbed. It's all ultimately about him and then what he can do to ensure his legacy in founding a noble dynasty in Spain. Now we don't know when he gets this idea but it seems one would imagine that when he's in, he leaves Genoa when he's in his 20s and then in his 20s he spends most of his 20s in Lisbon or based in Portugal. And the evidence seems to suggest that that's where he got this idea that if you sail out into the ocean, into what they call the ocean sea, what we call the Atlantic, there are islands out there and you can find these islands and you can essentially make yourself kind of lord of these islands is kind of this chivalric dream. And then you can elevate yourself to the nobility. And you go back to the king of Portugal saying, you could be the king of the islands, but I'm going to be the lord, I'm the viceroy, I'm the ruler of it, and I will have all these titles and then they will be passed down to my son and his son and so on as a way of kind of erasing what he thought was embarrassing as his background. You know, his father was like a wool weaver, ran a tavern for a while. His grandfather was a cheese maker. You know, this is like modest people, modest working class people in, in, in Genoa in the, in the 15th century. And he was embarrassed by that background and he didn't want to pass that on to his sons. So there's a kind of a social mobility ambition that is absolutely all consuming and becomes more and more so during his lifetime. And the last thing I'll say is, well, does he achieve it? Yes, he does. So if you want to be impressed by that, that's fine, be impressed. He's a kind of a, you know, self made man and he, you know, he passes that title on. There is today in Spain a Don Cristobal Colon or Christopher Columbus, who is the 20th in line who holds the title Admiral of the Ocean Sea. And he's, you know, an, an aristocrat, a businessman, a sailor. He's had a, he was in the Spanish navy. Right. He's. Exactly. If Columbus could somehow have seen, you know, five centuries forward and seen his descendants, I think. Well, no, he was a guy who was never satisfied. I think you and I, Bob, will be satisfied with that. He would say, well, that's great, but why is he not Viceroy of Mexico?
