Allen West reminds us of the relevant history on why Christopher Columbus set out to find a western route to China and the Indies.
The Islamic conquest of what is now Spain and Portugal began in 711 and lasted fully until 718 when the conquered land was renamed Al Andalusia — something which modern Islamo-fascists and jihadists use today. Between 728 and 732 AD, the Islamic armies sought to expand their reach beyond Spain into what is now France.
It was in 721 AD at the Battle of Toulouse where a victorious Christian army led by Duke Odo of Aquitaine over an Umayyad Islamic army checked the spread of Umayyad control. And 11 years later in 732 AD at the Battle of Tours it was Charles “The Hammer” Martel who gave the Umayyad caliphate a serious setback in its objective of conquering Europe from the east.
It also signaled the beginning of Islamic rule in the Iberian peninsula and what became known as the “Reconquista.” It took some 781 years for the Spanish to break the stranglehold of the Islamic occupation, but it finally came with the combined strength of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castille in 1492 — with the fall of Grenada — check out one of Charleston Heston’s great movies, “El Cid,” to gather an understanding of the conflicts on the Iberian peninsula at the time.
However, something happened before the success of Ferdinand and Isabella in Spain — Constantinople fell in 1453 to the Ottoman Turks and signaled a huge defeat for what had been known as the center of the Eastern Roman Catholic empire. It was the fulfillment of the letter which Mohammad had sent to the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius way back around 628 AD.
Most importantly, it cut off the eastward trade route to the Indies and China, critical for European commerce. Subsequently there would be two major engagements that were successful in checking the Islamic conquest of Europe: one was the naval battle of Lepanto in 1571 and the other was the Battle of Vienna in 1683 — of course Europe today still remains under siege from Islamo-fascism and jihadism.
So the man from Genoa, Christopher Columbus, stepped forward not only to challenge the belief that the world was flat, but to find a westward route by sea to the Indies and China. With the defeat of the Islamic armies, Columbus believed he could find favor with Ferdinand and Isabella, and indeed Isabella took a liking and supported Columbus’ endeavor. So we can thank Islamic conquest for inspiring Columbus to find a new trade route west.
Many condemn Columbus for his endeavor because of the clash of civilizations, which brought disease and death to the indigenous peoples of the New World. As well, with a completely warranted fear of the spread of Islam, the Spanish had adopted Roman Catholicism as a state-sponsored religion and hoped to spread it to the New World in order to counter Islam. […]
[T]oday we celebrate and remember this Italian explorer who realized the world needed a new trade route because of Islamic conquest — and just so you know, the Umayyad caliphate was followed by the Abbasid caliphate. And here we are today, some 1400 years later, still confronting Islamic conquest by violence, displacement of other indigenous religions by Islam, and the establishment of a caliphate.
We thank Christopher Columbus, but now the world needs another Charles Martel.
Greetings:
Islam is the millstone. It is nothing more than the globalization of 7th Century A.D. (if I may) predatory Arab tribal culture under a thin veneer of religion. And if your plan doesn’t include constraining, undermining, or eradicating Islam, you don’t have a plan. What you have is a hope.
As for Columbus himself, like I learned back in Catholic school in the Bronx of the ’50s and ’60s. with them Eye-ties, what isn’t a vendetta is an opera.
I’d settle for some muscatel and a good *burble*
. . . the letter which Mohammad had sent to the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius way back around 628 AD.
Take the posit of this “letter” with a truck-load of salt: it’s likely bogus. That is, there probably was no such thing (if only because there is no such thing), save in the imagination of some historian coming along 250 years after Mohammed died who made it up. Perhaps ambassadors were sent out. Maybe. But there is no letter. The letter is a story. Or bullshit. Pick ’em.
Too, here’s the wiki list of the Caliphates and their approximated dates. Some of that might help put Erdogan into his nasty context, which is just to say there’s a fight on, and many players in it.
Wait a minute. None of this can possibly be true. I was told that Islam was peaceful, and Muslims never did anything bad until the U.S. came into the middle east and started all of these wars, causing them to fight us. Now you’re telling me not only that this happened before the U.S. even existed, but Islam actually STARTED a war against Europe?
OK. Who’s lying to me?
No no no. The Islamic war against Europe was begun because those evil Europeans maliciously tried to reverse the Islamic conquest of what Europeans theocratically referred to as The Holy Land.
In trying to defend what they held sacred, the Europeans called down on their heads a millennium-plus of righteous Islamic enmity. The Euros have long since learned their lesson and will never defend anything they hold sacred ever again.
not only to challenge the belief that the world was flat
… which nobody believed, most especially sailors and navigators?
Come on, Mr. West. That one is old and hoary and ridiculous.
(That said, blaming Columbus for disease indicates a lack of comprehension on the part of those who do it.
Before the germ theory of medicine, any visitor from the Old World** would have led to the inevitable decimation* of the old, even ones coming in complete peace with the intentions of saints. Columbus just happened to be the guy that started it.
* The Norse in Vinland didn’t seem to, but there were only a handful of them, they met far more sparsely-populated areas, they didn’t stay for very long, and they were centuries earlier, with that much less trade-and-population-multiplied disease load.
**Or, indeed, plural decimation, since smallpox and other ravages against a defenseless population with no immunity are going to kill far more than 10%.)
Sigivald
West only acknowledges that “many condemn” Columbus for disease. Columbus or any other European shouldn’t be condemned for what they had no knowledge of; yet regardless, disease did happen and did wipe out significant portions of the native populations.
Any time two (or more) civilizations clash, the less technological advanced one will suffer. Most times, in a devastating manner.
The theme of a great deal of science fiction.
Why does the colonization of the Americas demonized more than the colonization of Africa? Maybe they do but, it is a European thing. IDK.
not only to challenge the belief that the world was
flat, of a larger circumference than Columbus thought…FTFH.
Columbus was the one who set forth with incorrect assumptions. His calculations of the earth’s size put India as far away from Europe as the Americas actually are. He disproved his own theory but never lived to know it.
more than the colonization of Africa?
Trust me, they blame all of Africa’s ills on colonization. The Europeans broke up the tribes, which destroyed the social order, which prevented them from reconstituting in healthy ways after the colonists left.
Some of this is true: the tribes had, to a great extent, a pretty good hold on sexual mores, and now they’re promiscuous to the point of death (AIDS). However, tribal elders that are alive today are able to remember a time when promiscuity was the exception rather than the rule, so you can’t totally blame it on the Europeans.
Who, among other things, left behind English, French, and Portuguese as official languages, which helps those countries with international commerce and the like.
Syphilis, tobacco, cocaine…
Effects go both ways.
It is peculiar that a trait bequeathed to all mankind by the world-colonizing people’s from out of the continent Africa — whose stories we don’t know much, outside that they left that place for others — is condemned by the forgetful. For without those first colonizers, what of the world would be today? Nummuch. Besides, why condemn those early Africans? They’re not at fault for their aim to survive, for their wandering, for their curiosity what was beyond the desert or over the hill, but praiseworthy as preeminent bearers of humanness. Good on ’em, the world conquerors.
One thing that is different is that Africa is much more highly populated than The Americas ever were before colonization. It is easy to focus on “genocide” (intentional or not) when it does looks like you wiped out a whole continent of people.
The difference betwen Islam and the west. When DeGama circumnavigated Africa year after year painstakingly mapping the African coast. He eventually wound up in India. The Arab traders laughed in his face because he did not come to trade, but to know.
And then the Portuguese opened up with their carronades (or whatever those little canon are called), and the Arabs traders weren’t laughing anymore.
Columbus fuck yeah!
for chris
Risotto con Porcini
>No such dead-reckoning navigators exist today; no man alive, limited to the instruments and means at Columbus’s disposal, could obtain anything near the accuracy of his results.<
link
Greetings:
If I may inflict another of my bites at this apple you have so graciously served up, I would like to recommend my favorite Indigenous Americans book, “Comanches: The History of a People” by T.R. Fehrenbach. Apparently, the Comanches were having some inter-tribal problems long before the Euro-Caucasians began arriving and they all pretty much neglected their court-ordered anger management classes, if you know what I mean. If you don’t, just ask any Apaches you run into but please don’t pester any Tonkawas not that there’s any real chance of running into any of them primarily thanks to the aforementioned Comanches.
Author Fehrenbach also wrote a book about the Indigenous Peoples of México which for some racist, oppressive, patriarchal reason he entitled “Fire and Blood”. I haven’t had a chance to read it yet and I’ll bet dollars to donuts that no one on the Seattle City Council has read either one either.
On tonight’s “Democracy Now” screed on the local PBS station, the gray haired lady interviewed the Seattle City Council’s “only” socialist member about Indigenous Peoples” Day for way too many minutes but there was an interesting twist of fate. You see, the interviewed socialist city council lady was, get this, of South Asian Indian heritage. Bet you didn’t see that one coming now did ya ???
Hinderaker’s post was a good column about other columns, but let’s not overly sentimentalize Columbus. If they hadn’t blundered into Hispanola [? –I don’t remember where he made landfall] when they did, Columbus at least, wouldn’t have lived to return to Spain.
Assuming anyone did.
In fourteen hundred and ninety two
Columbus sailed the ocean blue
Raaaaacist!