Ho Ho Ho Mary. Late summer. I'm Santa Claus. Normally I'd come to you from the North Pole, but due to a series of d A raids and Bobo Ho Gus Telny charges, I'm in hiding right now. My friend Robert Evans has agreed to help me with all of the charges against me, and its thanks to him. I've used some of my CHRISP mismagic to put together the perfect behind the Bastard script. But of course her perfect script needs a perfect guest, so I've used Santa's Luciferian hell Forge, powered by the bones of the Devil himself, to conjure up the greatest podcast guest in history, Michael Swam. All right, that's all from Santa until the holidays, kids, And remember those children were dead when Santa got there. Oh thank you, Sanna Ah. Robert Evans here the newly conjured Michael Swain. Michael, how does it feel to have been birthed from Santa's Luciferian hell Forge? What the fuck? What the funk was that he's an immortal, immortal North Pole man just told us, Robert, everything about my conception of metaphysics has shattered. Now, Michael, this is interesting. Is it true that you never existed prior to this point and all of the memories that people have of your many hours of content were created by the devil in the last several seconds. I come from the yes and school of improvs. So absolutely, that's my entire beast. Now, well, now that you exist and have an extensive backlog of content and projects in that have been well underway for several years at this point going on, why don't you tell the audience what what kind of stuff you do and where they can find you before we get into this this Yule Tide extravaganza of an episode. Thank you so much? River. Well, it's true I was busy in Santa's sack, and I don't mean it's attack. But when I was but a gleam in Santa's I I was Let's see where can I take the metaphor um cobbling together a brand new show about video games with my friend Adam Ganza right here on the I Heart Network. So check us out. We're called one Upsmanship. That's the number one, and then the word lit upsmanship. I used to say word, but Adam told me that that's bullshit. But I need people to know that it's the number one. So yeah, we deep dive into various video games and argue about whether they would be shown to aliens if we wanted to like impress them and not have them destroy humanity. But it seems like the windows closing on that opportunity. But let's put it this way, when they sift through the ruins of Earth, these are the video games we want them to encounter. Now, it's Michael, it's it's very appropriate. You just talked about what we would show aliens if they came to Earth, because today we're kind of talking about that kind of story. This is the story of essentially a group of aliens led by the most alien creature in all of the universe and Italian, who come upon a world filled with people who you know, are are going to have to endure the realities of their of their appearance in this world. Um, I am, of course talking about Christopher Columbus and his voyage to the quote unquote New World. Masterful sege, not plague, not not at all, not at all. Michael, what do you what do you what do you what do you know about? Oh, Chris Columbus, not the director but also the director. I assume they're guilty of the same crimes. So the angrier you get it this, Chris Columbus, if you have a chance to do harm to the other Chris Columbus, just take a swing man. It's fine. Yeah. They both are noted for their similar like rapport with children. Both Chris Columbus have um well, I know, of course the pat version, which I wonder if it's still taught an element free school. But I first imbibed like the classic Happy Thanksgiving, Everything's fine Christopher Columbus story, and my, uh, my eyes were ripped from the veil whatever, you know what I mean, probably middle of high school, where I learned a few let's say, fun facts about Christopher Columbus that I bet will come up over the course of this podcast. And then this all culminated for me personally when at Cracked. Among many many sketches, I got to portray Chris Columbus in a series we did called Dead Talks, which is an exhaustive like Chris Columbus bragging basically about the triangle trade and you know, putting it in sort of neo tech like we're going to change the world for the better terms is the premise of that sketch and I learned a lot through that actually, because cracked, as you know, it's very fact based, something you brought to it honestly before you were hired. I got to make shift up a lot more. And uh, then they are like, these kids really like the facts. Let's do the fact. I murdered the fun for you. That's right. We hybridized it. We got jokes in there. I know the feeling. He does murder the fun. I do murder the fun, just like Santa murdered those kids. According to the d e A there it is so Santa does not admit any wrongdoing in this case. So before we get into this episode, Mike, I think we should probably have a discussion about morality and the distant past, because whenever we talk particularly about dead, famous white guys who were once worshiped as heroes and are now being criticized for bad things they did, there's a cry that goes up from a certain corner that's like, you can't judge people from the past by modern moral standards. This is usually meant as a callow and cowardly attempt to stop all critical moral analysis of these people, but also the sentiment is not entirely without value, because things are different in the past, and if you are applying entirely modern standards to things, then you're going to like wind up just getting angry at ship and condemning people rather than kind of understanding their actual place in the moral universe of the time. And I think slavery is a good example of that, because viewing all slavery and all people who have owned slaves in history as the same as the worst slave owners in history, and I'm generally talking about the American Confederacy in this period of time or when I when I say that is kind of counterproductive because slavery has been the normal state of affairs in most society throughout human history. Most societies either had slaves or individuals in them were always at risk of being enslaved. This is a thing that has gone on basically forever. There have been some notable exceptions, like the Persian Empire and whatnot, were like there was no such thing as slavery, but there were generally structures within things like the Persian Empire or like structures like serfdom that, even though they were technically slavery, were worse off than slaves were in a lot of other Like you could compare a surf in the Russian step to like a slave in urban Rome, and slave in urban Rome has a lot more autonomy as a general rule, So like discussing all of these things as if they're kind of the same, I think does lose us some nuance. And so when we're talking about Christopher Columbus, I obviously none of this is set up in order to defend him or mitigate his bood. But yeah, I think if you want to actually understand what he did that was like super fucked up, it's important not to just kind of look at here's the things he did that we can say now in two are bad, But here is the things that he made worse. Here are the things that like he ways he changed the world in ways that made it more brutal and horrific than it had been, because he came into a pretty gnarly fucking world and he made it a lot worse. And I think that's the reason to condemn him, rather than being rather than stuff that he did that was like more or less in line with common morality at the time. So I think you do have to have an understanding of like what was accepted in his culture. You understand the things he did that were particularly fucked up. If that makes sense, Oh, it absolutely makes sense. Although I do want to say something that came to mind for me, uh was a trip to the Slavery Museum in New York that I where I encounter like a series of letters from people at the time when the Triangle trade was first like getting built and slave ships were coming to the shore. And what was really eye opening for me is several of the letters are and I'm paraphrasing here, holy sh it, these are human beings and they're enslaving them. They're doing this. Now, what the funk is going on? That's insane. We can't do that. What is this? It's so it's interesting that on and they it was on rare occasion, but there were people who saw it with modern eyes instinctively like you can't do that to a human being. Well, here's the thing, I will are you, we'll get into this more. They're not seeing it with modernized because most of those people accepted slavery in other forms, specifically the kind of slavery that Columbus instituted. They were like, oh my god, this is so much worse than anything we've seen. Like, everybody does a little bit of slave trading, but what he has introduced is like a new plague upon the world, and is is is so much worse than anything that had been seen before. I think that's part of what's interesting about him, because like some of the people who are condemning him, like day Las Casas, are people who like grew up with slave trading in their local in their own society, and like didn't really speak out about that being an issue. Yeah, and it's Las Casas. I I take the podcast wherever you want to steer it, but if you do get into the list of just like imagery, it's pretty it is a nightmare. But I do want to in order to actually, I think, in order to properly condemn Christopher Columbus to the with the most understanding that we can condemn him, we have to set the moral scene and and talk about the world he came into and like what was the norm in the society that he and his critics came into. So this is not just when we talk about the ship that was normal in Columbus's world. This is also the thing that the people who condemned him at the time, saw is normal, which gives you an idea of like, how fucked up what Columbus does later is um, because it's bad. But um, yeah, we will be talking about a number of different kind of historic defenses because we had this. So if you want to look at the broad sweep of how people have talked about Columbus, you had Columbus, great guy, hero, schoolhouse rock, you know, YadA, YadA, YadA, let's let's show him dancing, and then you have Columbus is was a monster and and a war criminal on a on a on a historic scale. And now you've got a pushback largely coming from conservatives. Um. If you want to go google Columbus Misunderstood or like Columbus, you know, revisiting or whatever, you'll find a bunch of daily wire fucking articles and ship about him, and a lot of them are going to quote one of the books that also is going to be a source of our in our episode today. UM. And it's a book by Carol Delaney, Um that is about It's called Columbus and the Quest for Jerusalem. Um. Now, this is a book that has some original research, and it will be quoting from it quite a bit, but we will also be quoting from other sources to point out how fucked up what Delaney is trying to do in rehabilitating Columbus is. Um. She is clear to note that she's trying to look at him quote from a contemporary perspective rather than from the values and practice or she's she's she complains that people try to judge him quote from a contemporary perspective rather than from the values and practices of his own time. Um. And then she goes ahead and leaves out all of the different judgments that people out at his own time made about him, and a whole bunch of other details too. It's just wild too. It was a different time, like stabbing pregnant people on their bellies, You're like different. That was always a problem, um, but it's interesting. I think part of the value of this episode is as we go through Columbus his life, we will be going through Delaney's book and pointing out all of the things she leaves out, because it's useful when you try to engage with people who are currently in the process of trying to rehabilitate Columbus, because that is like you may not have noticed it, and all of the other problems. But it's like a thing the right has been trying to do, particularly in the last two years. Um So, I think it's worth not just being like fuck that book, but also being like, here is why that's books fucked up in. Here is the things that it leaves out, and here's the holes in her research that other people have not had holes in. Um So, Yeah, Christopher Columbus was born not at long after the Black Death finished its last series of waves. Throughout his world, he's a he's a child of the Mediterranean. He's born on the Italian coast. Probably we don't know exactly, but there's a bunch of records of him as a young man in the city of Genoa, and he always claimed to be from Genoa, so it's pretty safe to say probably born somewhere around Genoa. Um and you know, Genoa is it's worth like again to kind of at the stage for like the kind of people who are around when he's a kid. The plague is still kind of in its last waves when he's born, and the Mediterranean is particularly like one of the places where the Black Plague does them. There's a lot of cities and towns, including Genoa, where it's not uncommon for like plague waves to kill fifty to se the population, whereas if you're looking at like England and stuff, it's often more like twenty, which is still devastating. Right, you think about how bad COVID has been and how much damage like a million dead has done in a country three million, and like you're talking about, you know, seventy five times that many people dying more or less in like or actually know, like a hundred and I don't know, I'm not great at math. A lot more as a percentage of your population, much more people. So number one. One of the things that this sets up understanding like the fact that an apocalypse has just occurred. When Christopher Columbus co and do he is going to cause an apocalypse, but he's also he is the child of an apocalypse. So he's born into a world where like a whole lot of ship got sucked up really hard, very recently in ways that are it would be difficult for us to put our heads, to put ourselves in the place of like people living in that world, because the collapse that they endured was like so much more severe than anything we've seen yet, you know, check back in in about a month and a half. But at the moment um, and obviously slavery was extremely common in the world. He grew up in the city of his birth, Genoa, was an influential Italian city state that made a significant amount of its income through slavery. Italy is not a thing, like it's a geographical thing, but like nobody would say that, like I'm an Italian. You'd say, like, I'm Genoese. You know, I'm from Venice, I'm a Roman. And they all hate each other, like they hate each other and they're yeah, they're city states and they're constantly murdering each other, and um, yeah, it's it's it's Italian's favorite thing in this period is killing each other. Um, it's like the thing that they do the most of um, other than make a shipload of money through trade, a lot of which is the slave trade. And the book is a good historic upgrade that rebrand in Genoa from slavery to Salamia, which I think and they're most associated with now major grad Yeah, no, it it sounds like Genoa was a fucking nightmare back in the day. And it is worth noting when we talk about this city there's about seventy five thousand people in Genoa when he's a kid, which makes it I think it's like in the top five or ten cities in Western Europe by population. It's one of the most I mean it's which makes it one of the most populous cities in the world at the time. Um, because there's not all that many people, you know. UM. Anyway, the book Columbus by Lawrence bear Green, who's a much better historian than Carol Delaney, I think, um ably describes the status quo in his home when he was born. R E slavery quote. Slavery was deeply woven into the fabric of the Genoese economy, especially traffic in girls who were only thirteen or fourteen years old. Every Genoese household, even modest ones, had one or two female slaves. Although Christianity prohibited bondage, an exception was made for these non Christian slaves. They were Russian, Arab, Mongol, Bulgarian, Bosnian, Albanian and Chinese slave traders and pirates sold them on a regular basis to Genoa. Occasionally, their wide net included a Christian girl whom they kidnapped and would return for a high ransom. The transactions were formal ordarized. Indeeded most slaves were sold as is. If others whose health had been guaranteed developed epilepsy or other health problems, the owner demanded an annulment of the contract. Some cautious buyers kept the girl of their choice on a trial basis to judge whether she would remain charming and adapt to a life of slavery. In Genoa, once acquired by a Genoese master, girls became mere property, bound to gratify his sexual wants, as well as those of his friends. Merchants able to afford a concubine, and many in this prosperous city could maintain them in households separate from their families. The master of the house specified the terms of the arrangement with the local note republic, especially concerning sensitive matters such as inheritance rights for children born out of wedlock. So a couple of things. You're number one, that's bad, Like it's bad to have your society based heavily around child sex trading. But also this is the norm, right, this is what he's born into. Right, It's yeah, it's just hard to put yourself truly in the mindset of an actual other time with truly different social morizes, in the sense that this is someone who's going, here's a fourteen year old girl I purchased, If you'd like to have sex with her, my friend, we're doing it. We're doing a society. This is civilization now. Uh, it's so inconceivable through modern eyes. And yeah, I totally get what you're saying in the opening about the contrast between what yes stept and what is normalized. And it is important. Again, obviously it is bad to sexually traffic children as slaves, but also this is not just the norm in Genoa in the fourteen hundreds. This was going on has been going on for a very long time, and you could argue the system is less shitty than it was, for example, like the height of the Roman Empire, because slaves in Genoa are primarily this kind of slave like how slaves who exist to satisfy like an old dude sexual whims, which is gross and bad, But a major factor of ancient Roman slavery was we are going to enslave these people and work them to death in a mind like in the worst conditions imaginable by the thousands, which is probably worse, and the fact that that's less common in the fourteen hundreds, you could say, is better. I don't think it's super useful to look at it that way, but like, yeah, it's important to note that, like all, like Italian wealth for the last three thousand years prior to this was built on the back of slavery on a massive scale, right, always had been, you know. Um, And that's that's the world Columbus comes into, not just a world in which the trade in girls is a major industry in his city, but also a world in which no one can remember a time in which Italians did not make did not base a significant portion of their economy on slavery. Right, And like the world pre taken one, there's not a singlely amazing no so nothing can free these people. Um and yeah, so by the standards of the time, Um, an individual who like accepts within this society that like, yeah, there's just gonna be slavery around me, that's pretty normal. Um. And it's worth noting, well, actually there's debates whether or not Columbus himself owned a slave. This is the kind of thing that you're not going to get a satisfying answer on Um, but it is probably fair to say that like if Columbus were just another Italian who existed within a slave owning society and perpetuated it, he would not get an episode on his own um, because there's like, like every Italian prior to this point in history was involved in the slave trade basically. UM So yeah, anyway, UM, what I think is important is kind of setting the scene because the thing that he creates is like, it's not just worse than slavery that exists in Genoa of his birth, It's something that the Roman Empire would have looked at and been like Jesus Christ, dude, like what the fuck? He yes? I mean he yes, he he literally would have. But also like not not only did people at the time judge him, but like if you could go back and talk to like fucking Cicero, he would have been like what the fuck man, this is like, this isn't how you treat people. Um. So yeah, Christopher Columbus was not, as I think he gets described a lot by people on the left, just an er capitalist who want to do enslaved people in like mind their society because he was personally greedy. What's interesting about him as a bastard. Is that the reason for everything he does is that he becomes a Messianic Christian holy warrior, and the genocide that he's going to commit, which heavily involves slavery, is done in the name of funding a war to retake the Holy City in Christendom, Jerusalem. Like, that's why he does it. And so his excesses that we're going to be covering are just because he's greedy, although he certainly is, but it's because he's a frenzied narcissist who believes he's chosen by God to bring about the apocalypse, which is a different story than the one I had heard even on the left for the most part. Um, Yeah, I've only heard the Chamber of Horror's version. I have not heard the Messianic cultist version. Yes he is. He is a Messianic apocalypse cultist, and that's why he does a genocide. So Christophero Colombo, which is his actual birth name, and it's ridiculous, so we're not going to call him that again, was born near Genoa in the summer of fourteen fifty one, quite possibly around July. We don't know the exact date or even month. But Carol Delaney notes that St. Christopher's Day was celebrated on July twenty and that his first name might be a hint as to win he was born. Um I have my issues with Carol, but this is not an unreasonable deduction. Um Any also notes quote the name given to a child at baptism was believed to have an influence on the child's character. So when Susannah that's his mom, selected the name Christopher Oh, she may well have been trying to affect his destiny. The name Christopher Oh. Christopher means Christ Bearer and is derived from the story of a pagan man, Reprobus, who once carried a small child across a river. As they crossed, the child became heavier and heavier, until he revealed to Reprobus that he was carrying the weight of the entire world. With that Reprobus, we realized that he was carrying the christ child. For his service, Reprobus became a saint known as Christopher. So that's the guy he's named after. And that's relevant because he is going to take that name that he gets super Literally, someone sold you a bag of rocks, dude, you've been scammed. History dude, Yeah, you have been scammed. And you know who else has been scammed? Michael, Oh, gosh me in the future. After I hear these great, wonderful products and services, I would say, the people who haven't her of these products and services have been scammed. But you know you can judge for yourselves. You really turned me around on that issue. Oh we're back. So Christopher is born just two years before one of the most critical events in Christian history, the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire. Now this is a really fascinating story in and of itself, but it's importance to our story is that this was both seen as a sign of the looming apocalypse. The enemy was quite literally at the gates, and it was a calamity for European access to global trade. Constantinople was one of the I mean it still is like one of the major If you just look at it on a map, you can see why it's an important port city. Right. It's you can't get shipped by sea from from Asia to the Mediterranean without sailing around a bunch of extra bullshit unless you cross through the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles, which Constantinople effectively allows you to guard Um, and prior to its fall, Christian control of the city gave Europe basically all of its access to spices and textiles from the Orient. Right, That's how you get stuff from China, That's how you get stuff from like even like Eastern you know, the Russian provinces, places like Kazakhstan. It flows to you through over the Black Sea, through fucking Constantinople. Constantinople falls, the Ottomans blest the ship out of it with some very cool canons um, and then suddenly Christians are like, oh no, we're We're fucked. And there's a fun little story here. They almost end the Eastern Orthodox Church as part of an agreement with the pope to like send reinforcements to save them, but it doesn't quite work out in time, and it falls anyway, and then I guess the Eastern Orthodox Church is like, well, why are we gonna? Yeah, fuck it? I guess yeah. Um, So when the Ottomans take Constantinople, which they call istanbul Um, there's a good song about this setting up defining my favorite bands A thousand years later. Whatever. Although you know, a lot of different ethnic groups in the region would say that it's quite a few other people's business. But the Turks, although under air to win, the Turks would say that there are only Turks in Anatolia. This is a whole contentious historical man hates man. Yeah, particle man hates universe man and recognizes the reality of the Armenian genocide. Um, that's what everyone knows about particle man. Um. So when the Ottomans take Constantinople, they get the ability to tax and control all trade throughout the city or that comes through the city, right and so and obviously, like you know, they're Muslim, Christians are Christians. There's some like bad blood there. So they don't have like the most interest in making it uh easy for Western Europe to like get goods from the East. Um. They want to make their fucking cut. They've spent a lot of time going to war in order to get the ability to do this. Um. And you know this is a problem for Europe. Um. There's attempts crusades. None of them really work out very well, which is generally what happens with crusades. Usually they go very badly. Um. And as Christopher goes grows up, he was probably a little too young, you know, when Constantinople falls to remember it. But a lot of his early memories are going to be adults talking about these attempted crusades, talking about the need to reconquer Constantinople and talking about fall in Jerusalem, right, and the fact that like that is a thing that Christians should be trying to reconquer. So Jerusalem it was believed. Again this is not like this is a belief at the time, but it's also a belief among a lot of Christians today that Jerusalem has to be in Christian hands, and particularly there's some fucking temple there that has to be returned to like being a Christian church or turned into a Christian church. I don't know if I ever, I'm not an expert on Jerusalem mystery. Don't yell at me, um, but like there's a Jerusalem has to be in control, like the Christians have to be in control of it so that God can end the world. Right, that's that's that's the idea word for work, Yes, yes, um. But the problem is that Jerusalem fell to Soladin in seven because again crusades bad idea what and and Saladin very cool guy, we'll talk about in one of these days. Um, But it's worth noting that like this is very recent. Number one, things move a little bit more slowly back then in terms of history. This is three years before his birth, But this is also very recent history to everybody in a lot of ways. Um. And to think about like the way in which like this might have been talked about the time. Remember, the founding of the United States is a political entity. Is about the same distance from you and me as the fall of Jerusalem was to Columbus as a young person. Think about the degree to which that period of time shapes all of our lives right now, the degree to which every people still talk about the quote unquote founders and ship. And that will give you an idea of like how immediate and relevant the fall of Jerusalem would have been to Christopher Columbus as a kid. Right. Yeah, you can still win any argument if you can prove that Thomas jeff Well, that's what Thomas Jefferson would have wanted, which is so and it cares about that and in his day, the Trump card is well, this will help us retake Jerusalem. Like, well, you're not focusing enough, right you know. Um, Yeah, so for young Christopher and for any good Catholic, it would have been taken as read that the chief goal of Christian civilization ought to be the reconquest of the Holy Land. Now, this was for some people an actual fervent belief that they devoted their lives too. For most people, this is kind of like the way old people today talk about the deficit, right, Like they'll say, like, well, of course I want to retake Jerusalem, but like, we gotta do this too first, and like we got all this other stuff to do, right, Like, it wasn't really on their front burner, you know, um, which is why it never gets retaken, among other reasons. Um. So, since there was no real hope of taking the city and most of the actual rulers were not going to burn all of their treasure and all of their armies, probably failing to retake Jerusalem, Christians at the time who were fanatics had to content themselves with fantasies in order to like feel like there was a chance of actually retaking the city. One of the most common fantasies was about a guy named Prester John, they believed, and who was this like mythical Christian warrior king he's supposed to have a powerful kingdom with a mighty army somewhere between Russia and China. A lot of times people would say it was like kind of where Tibet actually is. Um And basically the way people will talk about it is that like any day now, Prester John's gonna save us from the rampaging Muslim hordes. You know, he's gonna come down from somewhere in Asia and we'll we'll, we'll beat those devious Muslims, you know. Um. The other hope they had, and this may be surprising to people, was the Great Khan. Now they're generally talking about Genghis or um Or or uh Kubla Khan, right when they talk about the Great Khan, that none of those guys were around in Columbus's day. They were still talking about the Great Khan. The Western Khanate had ended, which is like Russia Ish had ended in thirteen seventy. In the Eastern Khannate was deep into declined by the late four hundreds, but news didn't really travel back then, right, So like people just knew that a couple hundred years ago the Mongolians had been unstoppable and assumed they still were. And one of the things that the Mongolians did was fucking absolutely curb stomp um a big Muslim empire, like they they fucking melt Baghdad. Basically, Um, it is gnarly shit. And so another thing is that, like you get these stories from Marco Polo, right, who's like a hundred and fifty two hundred years earlier than this period um, and still would have been very relevant in the day that Columbus is going up, in part because Columbus tells the story of like his magical journey to Asia while he is captured by Genoese soldiers and imprisoned in Genoa, right, Like he's another Italian and he like gets captured in a war, and he tells this fucking story that's at least the story about how the story comes out. Hey, everybody, I screwed up here at this point, and at a couple of their points, I say Columbus us when I meant to say Marco Polo, makes a little bit confusing. I apologize for the error and will burn a city in penance. And Columbus one of the things he'd said in his purported voyage to like hang out with the Great con in Asia is that the con was really interested in Christianity, and if we could just get some guys to go talk to him about Jesus, he might convert, and then we'll be able to retake the Holy Land, right because the Mongols will do it for us once they're Christian, you know, um yeah, um, and so yeah, these are the stories people, and particularly people in young Columbus's orbit, would have been telling themselves. And we know from his own writings and from things he says later he grows up believing all this, both that there is a great con with a powerful army who's probably you can convert to Christianity if you can just he just is waiting for a guy to come talk to him, you know, he's just got to get the right dude, and he'll be like, all right, we're Christians, got him, But we ran out of pamphlets, we ran out of pamples. We tell we we got right up, we got right up to Jesus, but then we no one could tell what had happened after Jesus turned like thirty. And so he was like, well, I don't see why this is. Yeah, we forgot Bible, got wet, got smug, yeah, if only the pope had been there. None of us knew what Jesus did because we're not allowed to read the Bible in this period, which is actually not wildly far from the truth. So Clumbus grows up believing all this um, and so probably do most of the people around him. Because Jenoa is kind of people are pretty fanatically fucking Catholic there. His family is middle class, probably upper middle class, although again those terms and the fourteen hundreds not super useful for actually understanding for one thing, politics Even so, obviously all of the city states are constantly murdering each other, all of the different political factions in the cities are also constantly murdering each other, and so your ability to be like quote unquote middle class or whatever is heavily tied to, like you being friends with the people who are in power, and if they happen to get murdered, which happens constantly, ship can change very quickly for you because you're very much reliant upon them for like the right to sell or buy certain things or get this, you know, whatever government job. His father, Domenico, was a cloth weaver who does good enough. He makes friends with the people who are in charge of the city. When Columbus is a little kid, he gets a cushy job at one point, like is the gatekeeper, which is a pretty pretty sweet gig um. Now, as Columbus grows up, he goes to obviously he's he's attending church constantly. The cathedral that he would have gone to as a kid was most noted by this gigantic fresco. It has of the apocalypse, um, which he's probably spending a lot of time thinking about the end of the world is. Interestingly, it was the first thing he saw and he was gazing upon it as he lost his virginity. For some reason, he got like really into it. Yeah. It's his star wars, his whole personality. Yeah. Um. He he's got like all sorts of fucking what do you call them, funco pops of like Pagan's wailing as Christ burns them. Um. One of the most influential religious minds of his day or slightly before his day, would have been the Franciscan monk St. Bernardino, who had given famous sermons in Genoa about a generation or so before Christopher was born. Bernardino was an apocalyptic preacher. He warned evade an imminently coming end time, and he would screech that today's Christians had slipped into sin and we're in danger of damnation. God was angry at them because they weren't Christian enough. YadA YadA, YadA, San Bernardino, it's pretty apocalyptic, it is. It is. It's the end of days. That is how I feel. We got a nu kid, just like the Great Light. Anyway, we'll talk about that later. Carol Delaney writes, quote, people would gather in town squares day after day, sitting for hours listening, transfixed by this fascinating but horrific moral tales about the wages of sin. Bernardino focused especially on sins committed by witches, consorting with the devil, the sin of sodomy, and the sin of fraternizing with the Jews. You have to do that, it's the only way. Yeah. Specifically, you also are supposed to go out sodomy. Sodomy, Yeah, thank you. His sermons were important enough they were transcribed, copied, and distributed widely by the time Christopher was a kid. When he was nine, this fixation with sin and a need to fight for God would have been reinforced by the launching of a crusade by Pope Pious, the second being a port city. Genoa was a major rowling point for crusader, So as a little kid, he's probably seen a bunch of guys go off to do a crusade, which again doesn't go great because none of them do. It is noteworthy that young Christopher grows up knowing how to read and write. Um. This is not common at the time, and it is in fact widely agreed upon that his penmanship was gorgeous and that he could have made a solid living on the fact that he was really good at writing. Maybe done that, then maybe he gigs should have done that. We aren't certain where he learned to read and write. His family was friendly with a group of wealthy nobles, the decun Eos, who will be relevant later in the story. Um. It's also possible that he attended classes with them, just because like they're like, oh, yeah, you know, we've got a tutor for our rich kids. You're a friend of the family, come on, learn how to read. It's he also might have just gotten educated through the guild that his father belonged to. Guilds are kind of doing running a lot of civil society in Genoa, and they do provide educations kids of people who are in guilds. Sometimes. It's worth noting also that because Genoa's a port city and the economy focused entirely around maritime trade, the fall of Constantinople leads to like economic shit fuck for Genoa. To make matters worse, the French, who are allied with some of Genoa's enemy city states, are like in the period where he is a child and a young man, steadily raiding Genoa and shipping and dominating its economy. Um Lawrence Burgreen, author of Columbus the Four Voyages, notes that there are rumors that the Columbus family had once been half wealthy, but, like Jittewah, had fallen from their past glory by the time Christopher came into the picture. Burgreen proposes that he may have been motivated to regain that lost glory and build a legacy for himself because both his city and his family used to be doing good. You think a guy named christ Pharaoh might have grandiosity or like yes, yeah, well it doesn't. It does a little bit. It does a little bit. You're not that far from Egypt. So in late fourteen fifty nine. When Columbus was around eight, his family home was fifty yards from the Porta to San Andrea, where the doge, who's basically the mayor of the town, gets cornered by a gang of rivals who were backed by the French and like murdered in the street. Like he's beaten to death with iron rods and his corpses torn apart in front of everybody. This is fifty yards from Columbus's front door. There's a good chance he watches this, right, like a pretty good shot. He's just looking at this from his window or something. Um and his father is allied with the guy who gets torn apart in the streets. So this is this causes problems? Is good? Get a load of this. This is his This is his watching the Rugrats on Nickelodeon. You know, is seeing this man torn apart in front of his death? Is that an iron rod? That's pretty good? Yes, that's the Uh, that's the I don't know Simpson's season four of His Child, the iron Rod would be Angelica clearly. Oh okay, that's fair. I was gonna just I was going to compare that that man getting torn apart and beaten to death in front of his house to the Mono rail episode. But yeah, it's all so. I can't emphasize enough just how religious his upbringing would have been. The Genoese, for all of the fact that they're Italians and sailors, are a dour and joyless people. They are members of a fucking death cult, which is pre millennial Catholicism. And in order to make that point, I want to quote from Lawrence burg Green's book Now. Clothing worn by the Genoese was strictly regulated by the Office of Virtue. Beginning in thirty nine. The Office and forced a series of sumptuary laws to regulate morality by curbing luxury and excess, as well as prostitution. These laws limited the amount of money Genoese could spend on luxury items and even on weddings limited to fifty guests. They regulated the days on which prostitutes, a staple of Genoese nightlife, could roam the streets. They measured their time with clients by the half hour marked by a flickering candle. Girls with a candle, as the prostitutes were known, were forbidden to inter a cemetery or approach at shirts, and had to wear insignia indicating their profession. If caught out of bounds, the prostitutes were punished by having their noses amputated and their livelihood ruined. Holy shine again, not fun people, Um no, it It never surprises me when it's like and they were executed, But when it's so specific, when they're like and their left eye was plucked out and pins to their breast and they wore it for a week. Damn. Yeah, they really put a lot of put a lot of work on the back end the this. So these sumptuary laws mandated that men should wear only gray clothing. Red and purple were strictly forbidden. Women had limits on how much jewelry they could own and how much money they could spend on dresses. They were fined if they violated these limits. Adultery also had a series of fines, and a woman who failed to pay her adultery fine would be beheaded. Um. It is unclear if Columbus found these rules stifling, as he was a religious extremist himself, but he also spends most of his life in Lisbon, Spain, or like in Portugal in Spain, or at sea, so like maybe he kind of was like Jesus, fuck genous bullshit, he's living over them. But he does. He does get the funk out of there about as quickly as he can. Feels to love the city. So it feels like the dad from the Witch would get the funk out of there. Yeah, it does. It does feel like this is like, yeah, it's a little stern for me. We're going to live in the woods. Yeah. So we don't know when he goes sailing for the first time, but I say, Genoese boy, he would not have lacked opportunities to do so. Later in life, he wrote that he started sailing at a young age and that he was particularly drawn to the art of navigation, which he said, quote incites those who pursue it to inquire into the secrets of the world. For whatever reason, I often find myself reiterating to the audience that from most of Western history fourteen counted as an adult, and so when Christopher was that age, he starts working full time as a sailor. Um he probably started out sailing on a caravel, which is a sail bearing merchant vessel mainly was supposed to like kind of stick either close to the rivers or to the coastline. Um. And he seems to have been good at this enough that he's signed on for several more trips. This is dangerous, backbreaking work. Young sailors are made to do the kind of tasks that older men with their ruined joints and off broken bones, could no longer handle. Um. As is always the case when young boys put to sea, there was a significant risk of being sodomized. UM. We have no information about this whatsoever, so I'm not gonna like belabor the point, but like, that's that. If that the fact of sea life. Yeah, UM. Refer to the Pogues album Rum Sodomy in the Lash for more information on that part of sailing. UM. In addition to the obvious dangers of the sea, in the fourteen hundreds, Italian sailors in the Mediterranean lived under constant threat of attack. Every city in Italy was always at war with every other city, and they can always like if you're always allowed to be a pirate to other Italians. UM. So Italians haven't changed all that much in the last couple hundred years. It is not unlikely that Christopher would have found himself in the midst of several small neighbors naval skirmishes in his early twenties. All we know for certain, though, is that by the time he was twenty one, he had mastered the skills of a sailor, and he had proven himself to be a particularly gifted navigator. He had also developed a talent for manipulation. I'm gonna quote from Carol Delaney here. He was commissioned by King Renee of Andrew, who would continue to oversee the government of Savona, to capture a galleus, a very large, three massive galley that included rowers as well as sales, off the coast of Tunas. En route, Columbus learned that in addition to the gallias, there were two ships and a carrick, which frightened my people, and they regard resolved to go no further but to return to Marseilles to pick up another ship and more men. I, seeing that I could do nothing against their wills without some ruse, agreed to their demand, and, changing the point of the compass, made it sail at nightfall, and at sunrise the next day we found ourselves off Cape Carthage. While all aboard were certain we will bound for Marseilles, so he like as the navigator secretly takes them into battle when they think they're going back for reinforcements because he doesn't want to like funk up this deal he's got going on with this king. And one of the things that saves him on this because this goes pretty well for them. Genoese are like the best sailors. They are famously good at fighting at sea. Um The first time we can confirm Christopher experienced ship to ship combat was in fourteen seventy six when he was twenty five and his convoy. So he's in a convoy of ships and they get accosted by a group of French privateers allied with an Italian city state, and they're outnumbered. I think it's something like two to one. Like this is a disastrous looking battle, but the Genoese lose three ships, including the boat that Columbus is on, and the attackers lose four hundreds and hundreds of minde And this is they have like rudimentary guns and cannons at this point. For the most part, they're slamming their boats into each other and beating each other to death with sticks and knives at close range and lighting each other on fire. With patrole. It is a nightmare like and he fights in this battle. He fights in this battle, very nearly dies. His ship sinks and he has to swim six miles to shore, clinging to an oar. Um like this is it is. It is very unlikely that he survives the circumstances he finds themselves in, but he manages to do it. Um and yes, um, he finds himself in Lagos in Portugal. Um. They take care of him because there's generally all the seafaring cities, like even if they're at war or and I like, well, if you're a sailor who like washes up, we have a duty to like take care of you, because that's just kind of good business, you know, for everybody. Um. So they take they they they patch him up, and he eventually gets back in the convoy which had survived the battle, and he finishes his voyage in London. Um. While he's in London, he takes on another gig and he actually sails as far north as Iceland, which at that point is known as Thule. I think it's actually pronounced tula um. Now it was during this far northern voyage that Christopher first felt the easterly currents of the Atlantic, which helped to inspire an idea in him. If he were to voyage far to the west, beyond the roots known to any European, he could probably count on those eastern currents to carry him back to Europe. It was also on this trip that he visited Galway, where several frozen dead bodies had washed up and they appeared. Columbus says that they're Asian people. He has never met anybody from that part of the world. He has read descriptions in Marco Polo, and these are water logged corpses. Who knows what dead people he encountered. Three John Wayne yea like, he has no idea who these people are. He decides they're probably from like China, um. And he concludes because of these waterlogged corpses that Asia is much closer to western Europe on the western side than previously guessed. Right, So he's like, look at these Yeah, so you can see things coming together based largely on like a mix of accurate things. Yes, those currents can in fact carry you back from you know, the West to to to Europe. Um. Just look at this bloated corpse. What do you mean why this dead body, dead ass motherfucker means that I'm gonna get rich. So in between his voyages, Christopher settles into a new life in Lisbon among the expat Genoese community there. Again, they're the best sailors pretty much in the Mediterranean, so like they're kind of in demand everywhere else that has sports. So they set up a lot of different like little little Lisbon. Everybody wears gray and traffics children ums video game. They are very super good at. Yes, the sex trafficking doesn't make it into syn I never unlocked that perk. See, that's why you're That's why you keep losing. Michael always um. So he gets married in fourteen seventy nine. She's going to dive right away, don't worry. And he has a child, Diego. In fourteen eighty um now his wife's father, participated in Portugal's first colonizing mission UM in Porto Santo between Europe and Africa. The island is Portugal's base of operations for their colonizing in Africa, which had started in this period. Portugal is starting to operate and it's not This is not colonization in the sense that you are going to see it later during the scrambled to Africa, where they are taking in and governing large land masses, they are setting up kind of trading missions on the African coast right um. And it's here that we're going to need to leave Carol Delaney's account of Columbus's life behind, because she leaves this part entirely out. This is the first major bit of whitewashing and her Columbus in Jerusalem book she Uh. She does talk a little bit about the time he spends on the African coast. She notes that in late fourteen eight one or early fourteen eighty two he participates in a trip to Portuguese controlled Ghana. Um. For a bunch of complicated reasons we don't need to get into, the Pope had given Portugal the right to handle all trade on the West African coast. Only Portugal gets to do that in this period. This comes with the rights to enslave any Pagans or Muslims they encounter. Now, again, this is slavery. This is not yet racial slavery, because if people convert to Christianity before they're enslaved, they cannot be enslaved. So this is religious slavery, right, like that is the basis for it, as opposed to what's going to be the basis for it in the future. Um, which is not on the night, but it's different. And hung up on the fact that it's the pope's call, decides he gets the right to go to spoil after Yeah, it's the and he said and he says Portugal. Um. So Delaney mentions this that like they have the right to enslave people that they encounter on their yeah. Um. But she spends most of her time just talking about like, so there's these series of beliefs that Europeans have about skin color in the equator. It is generally taken that people's skin gets darker closer to the equator. There are some attendant racial beliefs that are kind of like the early stirrings of the kind of white racial hierarchy that's going to be in place not that far in the future. This is where like those ideas are coming together. But there's this understanding that like, people near the equator have darker skin, they are very smart, but they can't control their emotions, whereas people who are like further north are are dumb but calm and then like people who were in people in Europe are the perfect balance of everything. So that's why they're the best. This is more or less their understanding of like. And they also at the same time, again because everyone's very dumb back then, they believe that all metal is the same thing, and that the closer you get to the equator, the more time metal has to like ripen and that's what makes it gold. So they there's this is valuable context for what comes next that Europeans of the time belief your skin gets darker closer to you to the equator, and all medalist metal and you find gold at the equator. Right. Um. This is again why he winds up because again you think about Columbus is trying to sail west to find land. Why wouldn't he start his voyage like from the coast of Iberi, you know, further north or further north in Europe as opposed to he sails to the Canary Islands and then he goes to the Caribbean. He goes down south because the equators where you find gold. Right Um. So it's because of these beliefs that he picks the route that he picks. Um. So this is valuable context for what comes next. But Carol Delaney, just when she talks about columbus time on the African coast, this is all she talks about, Like the geographical knowledge acquires, his growing understanding of winds and currents, the notes he makes in his log book, that's all the detail. Like this line here is about all of the detail you get about Columbus's time and Ghana. Quote. With a new information about winds and currents that Columbus absorbed on this trip, combined with his belief about the width of the ocean, he concluded that the ocean could be crossed and then on the far side of it, in the same climactic zone, there would be gold. Now again that's not useless context, But if you have an inquisitive mind, you might be going hmm, right now, he probably I bet he did other stuff when he was on the coast of Africa, because he spends eight years in Lisbon, and he makes a number of voyages for Portugal. And in order to talk about what he's doing in that period, I'm going to quote now from the book The Other Slavery by Andres Riscindez Andre Racinda. Sorry, the early Portuguese slave trade assumed several forms, from inherited slavery to indentured servitude forced labor for a fixed period of time, occasionally with modest wages. This was the form of slavery with which Columbus was familiar. He briefly wrote a about his experimenting with importing entire families from Guinea to Portugal, not just men, and his disappointment that the experiment did not ensure greater loyalty or cooperation among the slaves. The problem, as Columbus saw it, was the babble of tongues spoken in Guinea. Now, the fact that Columbus is importing entire enslaving and importing entire families from the African coast to Europe, Carol the Lady doesn't think that's worth talking about, because she makes a major the through line in her book is that he wasn't pro slavery, and he was horrified at the fact that people kept getting enslaved, like it's one of those like casablanga gambling occurring in this establishment moments um, but with you know, the ownership of human beings. She's like, we was there, he accrued people he didn't like slavery. She completely leaves out the fact that he is he is enslaving and importing entire families into Europe in this period of time. Um. Now, obviously this is again pretty normal behavior for a guy at the time. The slavery that the Portuguese are engaged in is not pretty. But again it's also not what it is going to become yet. Um. But he is enslaving people. He is in the business of being a slave trader way before he is sailing to the New World. So when we talk about what comes later, slavery is not something that does not come naturally to Christopher Columbus. But Michael, it's time for a word from our sponsors, and I want to talk about a special thing that we're supporting today. Michael, you love the environment, right, I'll think about it, big fan, big fan of Look, we'll see. I think we can all agree. Wastefulness one of the major problems that that our species. Right, we're waiting. Half of the food grown in the United States, you know, gets gets wasted. Um. You know, vampire drain, which is just the power we use on devices that no one is using, just completely unnecessary power drain multiple countries you know, could be powered by what we were very wasteful people, and nothing embodies that better than our nuclear weapons stockpiles. Michael. Did you know that the United States spent trillions of dollars building a nuclear arsenal, researching nuclear weapons from the time of the Cold Warp to the present day and we never use those weapons after nineteen forty five? Did you know that? Michael? Horrible? Wait, it occurs to me that that's a waste now, Michael, m in order to be environmentally friendly, I think we got to use those nukes, and nowhere makes more sense the nuking the Great Lakes now, Michael, I know this is a controversial thing. I'd like to make two points. Number one number one, Sophie number one, all of those cities basically Canadian right. Number two. Michael. Are you a fan? Are you yeah? Yeah, yeah exactly? Are you a fan of the song the Wreck of the Edmond Fitzgerald very much? Great song? Lake Superior is killing our sailors, killed our sailors. We wouldn't have that, We wouldn't have that song. Well, but we have the song, I mean, but it's such a sad nuke it Now, protect our Sailors nuke the Great Lakes. This has been sponsored especially here rock It Knows Why. This has been a podcast ad for Behind the Bastards, sponsored by the Committee to Nuke the Great Lakes. No Ah, We're back. So Columbus the slave trader comes along away from his time enslaving people in order to profit um for Portugal, convinced that he could sail west and reach Asia. This would allow him to avoid the Muslim blockade on trade. From that part of the word, it's not really a blockade, but it like it makes it a lot more expensive and difficult. Whenever you have political ship with the Ottoman Empire, they're not going to let you trade, so it's like a problem for the Christians. Um. So he sees this both as if we can get to Asia from the west, number one, we can get all their good ship. Number two, we can get all that gold, because if we can get down, if there's this landet, there's probably a funckload of gold there um, and we can convert all these goodwilled heathens, who, as we know from Marco Polo, are just waiting for a guy who likes Jesus enough, and then they're gonna they're all gonna give up whatever they've been doing, you know. Um, it's it's gonna be fine. Um. And yes, the Ottomans are an obstacle, as they so often are asked, Dick van Dyke, Oh, I'm sorry for that? Was that was good? That was not good? You go ahead, No, that was fine. That was fine because the only person who's committed more genocidean than Christopher Columbus is famously Dick Vandy. The walnuts that came out of closet each represented a village that he That's right, that's right, right, that's right. That's why I don't know how to continue this bit anyway, as one scholar Columbus exchanged letters with said quote. It will also be a voyage to kings and princes who are very eager to have friendly dealings in speech with the Christians of our countries because many of them are Christians. So again, they also believe that there's all these Christians stuck over in Asia who are like isolated from broader Christendom that they can like make deals with. This is not entirely There are like groups of Christians in the East that like are kind of separated from the main there's like a Storian Christians and stuff. So it's not this doesn't come out of nowhere, right, But obviously, like among other things there there there winds up. You may not know this, Michael. There's actually a couple of continents in between Europe and Asia and the West, Like, yeah, they're pretty big ones. Um. So much of the next bit of stuff is things you're going to remember from your time in middle school social studies class. Columbus spends years going all of the rich people, the nobles and kings that are listened to him. He tries to sell them on his grand scheme to cross the ocean. Uh. This brings us back to Carol Delaney because she is very much in the right by trying to return to a historic understanding of the fact that Christopher Columbus is not motivated primarily by a desire to explore or to some cap realistic urge to find new markets. He is a religious extremist and he wants to sail west in order to fund a holy war. Now, during this period he's living in Lisbon, he starts reading the Bible, and this is a weird thing for him to do. People don't read the Bible back then, Right, normal people do not. Most of them are illiterate for one thing. And there's also a strong understanding, sometimes enforced through law, that the Word of God is not supposed to be consumed directly by worshippers. It is supposed to be transmitted through the clergy to worshippers. Right. Um, But Columbus starts reading the Bible for himself, and it's only available in Latin. Right, You're not getting the Bible in other languages. It's considered kind of like sacrilege to translate the Bible. Um. So he starts reading the Bible, and he's he's he's starting to read the Bible primarily because he wants to calculate when the end of the world is coming, because he needs to he he knows that Christians have to reconquer Jerusalem, and he's trying to figure out, like how much time is on the clock? Right, how much time do we have to retake? This is he is the end of the world. He is the end of the world. Yes, um, quote, there were there were sev hundred and fifty nine years left, plenty of time for fifteenth century Christians to complete the necessary tasks before the end time. Twenty years later, however, Columbus revisited and revised his calculations and drastically reduced the number of years left to a hundred and fifty five. It his earlier vision had been focused primarily on wrestling Jerusalem from the Muslims, he was now beginning to see that it as an integral part of the world historical drama that would culminate in the end of the world. So again, his goal is to end all life on Earth. That that is, that is his motivation. What a fortunate coincidence that after revisiting the information, it turns out I'm the most important one to ever live and it's all gonna happen during my watch under my auspices. Yeah, I am the special boy who gets to end all life on Earth. Um, that's that's a pretty again shoot for those stars. So you land on the moon or whatever. He almost got there. There's a lot of people who are like, I want to sail to this place. People haven't been able as far as I'm aware of that, people have never sailed you before. And there's also a lot of people who are like, I'm fine with selling slaves. Not a lot of people are saying, I am taking personal responsibility for harolding the apocalypse. I would like the versus of the beast and leash the energy of God upon the people. And that's you know, it's quite a goal when you grow up. Yeah, the bringer of the end of all things. Wait, wait in a good way, in a good way. Yeah. Yeah. So, like many fanatics before and after, he saw himself as a key ingredient in God's plan, and he came to believe that his budding understanding of how he might sail west to Asia was a key aspect in God's design. Quote. He knew that another crusade would be necessary if Jerusalem was to be retaken from the Muslims. He knew that there was enough gold in the East to finance such a crusade. He also knew that if the Grand con and his people could be converted, as seemed likely, he could count on their support. Yeah. So, many of us probably did learn in school that Columbus believed the world was round and most people thought it was flat. I think this has been debunked fairly well. Anyone who thought about it was probably true that a lot of people didn't think about the shape of the world because like there's plagues and stuff like you got shipped to do. But anybody who sailed and navigated knew that the earth was broadly spherical. Columbus was not a trailblazer here, and in fact his understanding in theories. But he's terrible at geography. Um. He felt that Asia was so huge that there was very little ocean between Europe and Asia, and generally he believed that like a sixth of the land's surface was ocean and the rest of it is all land. Um. He also ended his life thinking the earth was pear shaped rather than round. So again, not great at the stuff that everyone gave him credit for when we were kids. Um. Most of Columbus attempts to convince Royalty to back his plan failed. The King of Portugal is more interested in getting around the Horn of Africa. Um. He's also put off by Columbus's list of demands for carrying out the exploration, which are bug fuck and I'm gonna quote from Bear Green's book Columbus only Green Eminem's upon the ship. It's kind of worse than that. The personal demands that Columbus made of King Juo were far more onerous and unrealistic. He wanted a title preparably Night of the Golden Spurs that would permit him and his descendants to style themselves Dawn. He also wished for himself the grandest title he could think of, Admiral of the Ocean Sea, with all the privileges of rank, prerogatives, rights, revenue, and immunities enjoyed by the admirals of Castile. Even to Portuguese ears accustomed to overstatement, this description verged on the absurd. A tireless conversationalist and self promoter, Columbus never knew when to stop, and he demanded an appointment as viceroy and governor in perpetuity of all the lands and terra firma discovered either personally by him or as a result of his voyage, And he planned to award himself one tenth of all the money's accruing to the Crown in respective gold, silver, per jim's metal, spices, and other articles of value and merchandise of whatever kind, nature, or variety that should be purchased barter, discovered or won in battle through the length and breadth of the lands under his jurisdiction. So he doesn't just want to discover things. He wants to personally be the emperor of everything discovered under the King of Portugal, but he wants it to be his property whatever they find. Basically, he wants the elden ring and the iron throne. So that again it's not to say that he's not greedy, he's in this extraordinarily greedy man. It's also that his greed is focused on he wants to build riches so that he can contribute to the conquest of Jerusalem and in the world. Um So his demands are extreme and outlandish, and Burgery notes that he was basically trying to He was basically saying, Hey, if I do this, you have to make me almost as powerful as you, King of Portugal. Um. Now, the Portuguese king. For a little bit of context, this guy once stabbed his child nephew to death in a jealous rage. So this is like not a man you funk with. And in fact, a lot of historians are kind of surprised that Columbus doesn't just get murdered for saying this kind of ship to the King of Portugal. Well, they're in the middle of an iron rod shortage and this this dude, again, the king of Portugal is a crazed, violent narcissist, and he's like, Wow, this Christopher Columbus dude is a crazy narcissist. Yeah, Jesus, this guy needs therapy. Am I right? Oh? I stabbed you to death? Sorry? Um, So, Christopher, you know things don't work out. There's some back and forth with Portugal. We're not going to go into tremendous to dale about all this. Christopher tries with other sovereigns. He since his brother Bartholomew, who's like better at talking to England, to try and convince that king to fund the voyage. He doesn't have any luck with that. Eventually, at age forty and kind of feeling like because at forty you're kind of old to be a sea captain, he travels to Spain, which is kind of his last hope, right that like, maybe I can convince these fucking monarchs to fund my ship. Now again, he's an old man. He's starting to panic that, like he's never going to get to do these things that he think God wants him to do. Um. But over the course of several years, he manages to like wrangle an audience with Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand. A lot of this is because he's he gets in good with a bunch of monks, and like there's some like rich dude who visits the monks, and the rich dude is like, this is a good idea. I know the king and queen and it's a whole process. You can learn all of the history if you want by reading about it. I think it's kind of boring. Yeah, exactly, it worked right. And both of these Ferdinand and Isabella again for first off, not a love match. Um, not very similar people. Um. Both of them had just spent the last few years unifying Spain, which is a pretty violent process. Uh. They kick out all of the Muslims or force them to convert. They also force all of the Jewish people to convert or leave. Uh. They like ethnically cleanse all of the Jewish people who won't leave their religion, and those people have to sail to the Ottoman Empire, which is like the only place that will take them. Um, it's a pretty gnarly process. There's an inquisition, right that happened in this period. There's all these crimes against humanity. Maybe we'll talk about it one of these days. These are not nice people, which is fun because they're both going to be much more moral people than Christopher Columbus as the story goes on. Um, but I just want you to know, these are the Inquisition people. So when we're talking about them being outraged at Christopher Columbus's behavior, it's the people who started the Inquisition who are like, Wow, this guy is not very like very uh like bad person. Um. Anyway, Christopher manages to get a sit down meeting with the Queen and may have a six for the first time. Carol Delaney make sure to note that he's hot, which is a little weird, But then Bear Green also kind of says that he's hot, so maybe he was hot. Um. He is a charismatic dude obviously because he's he talks them into this eventually, so yeah, maybe he's hot. I don't know. Um. He does succeed in talking to King and Queen into funding his expedition, mainly the Queen. The King never really buys into Columbus, but like his whye is on board and he's like, what are you gonna do? You know? Gems this way some gems see what happened, and this is a law he has to follow. He's kind of like following the King and Queen for half a decade while they finish the series of battles to like unify their realm Um. He actually fights in a battle to take the city of Bassa in Granada in order to impress them, um, and apparently fights very well. Like yeah, like they He goes to war for them and stuff during this period to try to convince them to let him take a bunch of boats. Um, they conquered Granada. Uh. And despite the fact that a commission they convene to study his proposal is like, this is impossible, Queen Isabella decides to trust Columbus more than her advisors and she approved the expedition. Uh. Ferdinand again doesn't fight his wife on the matter. Now you know what comes next, right. In four ninety two, Columbus sails his ass across the Ocean Blue in three ships, the Nina, the Pinta, the Santa Maria. He set sail on August third, fourto um one bit of fun trivia. The Nina and the Pinta are assembled last minute by a Spanish town that had like piste off the King and Queen and owed them a bunch of money. So like two thirds of the fleet was built at the last minute as kind of a bribe. The ships are technically the property of these brothers who Columbus has going to have an issue with, But we'll talk about that in the next episode. Um, I'm not going we'll do even better than that. You'll see as they shook their fists at the diminishing boats and I almost figured it out. Um, So I'm not going to go into a lot of detail about the voyage. It's worth noting that Columbus was the thing that he's best at is navigating, not geography. He's constantly wrong and he gets into a lot of trouble and gets other people into trouble because he refuses to accept that he's terrible at like geography, but he's incredible at what's called dead reckoning. And this is I don't this sounds like magic to me. You're basically sitting in a dark room building charts and estimating distances based on compass readings that you've taken. And normally when people do dead reckoning, they have other data that, like other sailors have taken sailing the same route, so they're just kind of modifying it slightly in order to like optimize the route. No one has done this route before. So Christopher is flying purely on instinct and just like doing math in his cabin to figure out how to get from the Canary Islands to the Caribbean, and the route he picks is still to this day basically the best sail route between Europe and the Caribbean. Like, if you're sailing that distance, you more or less do just what Columbus figures out without any benefit of anything but like a compass, and like his ability to do math. It is an astounding achievement in navigation. Samuel Morrison, who's a Harvard sailor who recreated Colubus Voyage in nine nine wrote when he was analyzing, he did the whole bit he does he kills so many people. Yeah Harvard, uh quote, No such dead reckoning navigators exist today, No man alive limited to the instruments and means that Columbus's disposal could obtain anything near the accuracy of his results. Um so he's pretty good at this one thing, perfect pitch of navigating. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's the thing that he's good at. Um. Credit where it's due. Now, as we're all aware again bad at actual geography. He sure knew his way around this old pair. Yeah, well a little bit of it. Um. So he lands eventually, after like thirty three days, on a little island off the coast of Hispaniola or modern day Haiti in the Dominican Republic Um. Here is how Carol Delaney describes the moment of their first landing quote as the anchors were dropped, the men stood on the decks and gazed at the green island, a soothing site after so long at sea with only gray, blue water and sky, and saw naked people. Columbus summoned the Pinzone brothers, the captains of the other two ships, donned his armor and went ashore in the launch, carrying the royal banner and two flags emblazoned with a green cross and the initials of Ferdinand and Isabella. Now the Spanish sailors, they're relieved, first of all the fact that these natives, you know, they're naked, they have paint that's not familiar. They look peculiar, but they also look like normal humans, which is a huge relief because at the time, all of these guys believe what Pliny the Elder wrote about geography, which is that these other islands are like there's these things called anthropophagi, which are like headless monsters with like torso men that like are cannibals and stuff. So it's normal people great like that. That is kind of like the first overwhelming reaction is like, oh, thank god, they're not They're not monsters. Oh cool, we were really worried about that, all right. Well, yeah, Columbus never believed there were monsters. On his part. Um, he is moved to comment on how attractive they are, which everyone does in this period. Um he names the island which had been inhabited basically forever San Salvador quote. He called for the Escravano Scribe, and as protocol dictated, he had him record as witness that he took possession of it in the name of the Catholic Sovereigns, with appropriate ceremony. In words, taking possession of lands hitherto unknown or undiscovered was primarily a signal to other European nations to keep off, a sign that whoever took possession first had the pre eminent right to discover, explore, and established trading posts. It did not automatically imply conquest or ownership now that's what Carol writes, and it's really interesting to me that she's trying to push this claim that like, well, he wasn't really he was just this is just a warning to other Europeans. He wasn't really saying we own this now. Obviously that's not what this means necessarily, which is very silly because that's exactly what it means and exactly what he's done. And she later writes about the process of him conquering and like taking and governing these islands for Spain. It's extremely funny that she even now has to like pretend that that he's not just seeing islands inhabited by people and immediately being like, we own a ship. Now I'm governor, which is exactly what he actually is doing. Um. So he writes excitedly about the resources on the islands. He keeps finding, like we'll talk more about this in episode two, but he keeps seeing people like little gold pieces of jewelry, and he spends a lot of the next couple of weeks eagerly searching to go for gold, trying to find minds that Splain can exploit, because that's really everything to him, right, he has promised the sovereigns. I'm gonna find gold and we're gonna use that to fund an army that we can use to bring about the apocalypse. Everything very ripe here, Yes, the medal, the medal is ripe. Um. More to the point, though, he writes very enthusiastically and positively about the local culture, and in fact, it's probably worth noting that there's elements of what he writes that are not terrible, um, diminishing their culture or reductive. No, he's he's super there are elements of that he's but he's also there's like a lot of like one of the things that's noted is that he's one of the few guys in these voyages who's like all about trying out the native foods and stuff. Um. And he writes earlier there's there's things that he does minimize and stuff. It's worth noting that, like Carol points out a lot about how enthusiative, enthusiastic and positive he is about them, um. But also she kind of again among the other things she ignores is that he's enthusiastic about them because of what good subjects they're going to make for the Spanish crown, right that's the thing he's most excited about. Um Delaney gives Columbus great credit for the fact that his immediate thing is like, oh, these people are if you want to talk about diminishing. He decides, based on a couple of days of communicating with them through hand signals, that they don't have a real religion. Now what he means by that, And Carol's like, well, all he means by that is that they're not Muslim or or you know, some other kind of clear pagan religion. They don't have strict beliefs, so he thinks that they'll take to Christianity. He's literally saying, based on hand gestures, I'm pretty sure they don't believe in anything, so we can make up christian real easy, right. The other thing that Carol, but this is where we're really getting into the ship about her, that's fucked up. She's like, look, the fact that he thinks the natives will be easy to convert to Christianity, Well, it's not just that it's a compliment. It means that he doesn't want to enslave them, because you can't enslave Christians. You can enslave someone and then they can convert to being Christian and that doesn't free them. But if you convert them into Christianity, they cannot be enslaved. Right. So she's like, look, Christopher Columbus clearly didn't want anything bad for these people because he wanted to convert them. Um. This is again very fucked up of her, very manipulative, and and and sketchy. Um, it's also fucking nonsense. Lawrence bear Green describes things rather differently. Quote, the Spanish should come all this way across the ocean sea expecting to confront the superior civilization. How disconcerting to be confronted with naked people who were very poor in everything. Columbus and his men would have to be careful not to hurt them, rather than the other way around. I saw some who had marks of wounds on their bodies and made signs for them to ask what it was, and they showed me that people of other islands which are near came there and was to capture them, and they defended themselves. And I believe that people do come here from the mainland to take them as slaves. Slaves the idea enslaves. Yeah, The idea instantly struck Columbus as plausible, even desirable. They ought to be good servants, he continued, and of good skill. For I see they repeat quickly everything that is said to them. So Delaney is like, of course he doesn't want to enslave him. He wants to convert them. And fucking Lawrence bear Green just points out the first thing he writes about these people is they're going to be great slaves, Like that's like servants, right servants. But what happens is they all get enslaved. So I think it's clear what he means. So he has he has discovered quote unquote new people and thought number one is like, oh man, number one, these people are not as good at fighting as at us. And number two, it's going to be really easy as ship to enslave them, hot dog um. And we're going to talk about what comes next and everything Christopher Columbus does, and we will we will try to give some insight into these people that he has found. Two, because they go extinct very quickly, and so there's not as much known about them as is ideal, but there there is some There are some people trying to do decent anthropology in this period, including delas Casas, to try to like save something of like these folks. Um, so we'll talk. We will be talking about that, and we will be talking about everything else that Christopher Columbus is about to do, which is much worse. It gets a lot worse after episode one. I know, he's been a very likable guy up to this point. Yeah, as another famous Columbo once said, one more thing and then genocide and then genocide. So, Michael, how are you feeling at the end of part one? Has this changed your mind on Christopher Columbus. I'll tell you I thought Amerigo Vespucci was a piece of ship this guy. Yeah, No, I'm uneasy Robert leaning puns for my own comfort. Yeah, I mean Amerigos Gucci, Christopher Columbus. Look, do we need to figure out what's going on with Italians? You know, maybe shut down immigration from that, from that perfidious our isthmus, I don't understand geographic turns like Columbus. I'd broaden it to all humanity. I mean, we're all just metal ripening in the wind. We're all just metal ripening in the wind. That's right, That's right. Until to next time, find the director Chris Columbus and just huck a beer. Bottle at him, like really really brain him hard right in the side of the head him. At least pull your arm back in anticipation of a huck, and then tune in for the next episode. Yeah, yeah, what is he? What is he directed? What are his movies? Oh? He did the Harry Potter's movie. Well, there you go, that's reason enough. Yeah. Uh, screw that turf. I guess by association, even though there's I've heard nothing but fine things about Chris Columbus, literally never heard anything about it. Yeah, he has the name of the other guy. Um, I don't know. He looks like a guy who would enslave an entire people. You know what I say, screw people who have the same name as someone else, right, Robert Evans, Hey, all my namesake ever did was a hell of a lot of cocaine. Yeah he's a great Yeah, there's nothing wrong with either. Robert Evans. Nope, not going to read into that anymore. Um So, Michael, you got any plug doubles to plug? Oh? Sure, I'll do a second plug. Thank you so much. Uh. Specifically, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention one upsmanship. If you like hearing about video games as an art form and sort of the whole medium and the ongoing dialectic of what games are real? Good Me and my the Adam Ganzer discussed that at length every week on One Upsmanship. That's the number one ups Manship. Check us out now, Michael m hmm, I just learned something funked up about Christopher Columbus, the director oh his production company Pictures Oh. Does this mean that the Harry Potter movies were created as part of an occult right to in the world because our Christopher Columbus also views himself as an agent of the apocalypse. Harry has to re establish the Promised Land, as like the magical Kingdom needs to take over the world. Perhaps this Christopher Columbus is gathering gold to himself by making movies in order to retake Jerusalem. And you said he was hot, and but we don't. We're not sure exactly what he looks like. I'm going to assume he has just slits for a nose and it is basically a Baltimore test. I'm saying, is it took Robert I don't know twenty seconds to turn a man into a bastards anyway, Hunt him down, folks, bring him to justice. Oh he directed the Home Alone films. Yeah, and Mrs down Fire. No call off your dogs, no, no, no hunting, no, no hunting. This is the greatest mortal quandary and behind the Bastard's history. We'll have to crack that next time. Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media. 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