Debunking Howard Zinn - By Dr. Mary Grabar(Christopher Columbus)

[Servant31]

Yeah I just read above that it’s being used in H.S… That concerns me some tbh. If it were part of ten required books, with say two being more openly understood as ideological perspectives, that would be one thing, but I’m skeptical that’s how it is being used. I don’t think it’s objective enough to be seen as a fact based history textbook.

 

[gam197]

Much of Zinn’s book, “The People’s History of America,” takes much of the information written by Bartolomé de Las Casas a Dominican Missionary who traveled with Columbus and was appalled by the treatment of the Native Americans. He was responsible for the Pope to issue a Papal Bull prohibiting the enslavement and abuse of the Natives.

Grabar would have to ignore Bartolomé de Las Casas writings in order to condemn Howard Zinn

Bartolomé de Las Casas was 8 years old when Christopher Columbus traveled in 1492. He did not even arrive in the Dominican Republic until 1502 when Christoper Columbus was in Spain and about to set on his last voyage. How could he known and traveled with Columbus?

Did no one ever question Zinn’s actual knowledge of history. Maybe Zinn should have checked with the catholic church on that knowledge.

 

[Peeps]

I’m not sure that it’s possible for history to be told in an un-biased way.

It would be so deadly dull to have to read history books that are “just the facts, ma’am.” I can’t see how this would hold anyone’s attention, and I can’t see how it would be “factual” because history is NOT just a series of events that occurred outside of human influence.

I think that history should be studied from the viewpoints of all involved. E.g., it’s interesting (and disturbing) to read about Hitler’s Third Reich from the point of view of the Germans who embraced it, and of course, it’s fascinating (and horrifying) to read Mein Kampf and see how Adolf Hitler’s mind worked and what his ultimate vision was.

That’s just one example. I can remember in middle and high school having to answer the essay test question, “Name and describe five events that eventually led to the Civil War.” One of the “answers” was the publication and popularity of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (or Life Among the Lowly).

My question to the teacher and other kids was, “Have you read it?” And most of them, including the teachers, had NOT.

So I did. And I have read it several times in my life, and I named my daughter after one of the characters (as a middle schooler, I actually wrote a note in my yearbook that someday I would do this!). I love the book, although it is obvious in reading it that Ms. Stowe would be considered a racist by today’s standards because it’s obvious that she did not consider African (Americans) “equal” to white people. They were inferiors, but still deserving of freedom from slavery and kind treatment from the white people.

And there were many people in the North who read her book and took up the cause of abolition and when the time came were willing to fight the Civil War in part because they opposed slavery after reading about it in Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

I think that a student who receives a good education will be challenged by GOOD teachers to read and study and listen to ALL sides of an historical issue and then be allowed to make their own determination of “right and wrong” in regards to history. And I’m not sure there is a “right” conclusion.

By the way, I also read Mein Kampf in middle school. I had some REALLY good teachers back then!

 

[JimR-OCDS]

Correct, he didn’t travel to the New World with Columbus, but with his father in 1502 expedition of Nicolás de Ovando. I had to look things up as it’s been a long time since I read Zinn’s book.

Las Casas certainly new of Columbus and experienced life in the New World that the Spanish had set up, of which he later wrote about in a memoirs of which Zinn used to describe what took place in that era. I believe Zinn wrote that the primary source for his information came from De Las Casas memoirs.

BTW, Columbus made more than one journey to the New World and even landed in South America where he was met by hostile head hunters.

Either way, as I posted earlier, what most people are surprised to learn is about the Papal Bull, “Sublimus Deus,” which Pope Paul III issued prohibiting the enslavement of the Natives in the New World.

It was because of the pleading to the Pope by Las Casas and other Dominican Missionaries who were opposed the Spanish treatment of the Natives, that this Papal Bull was issued.

The other thing is that Columbus being Italian wasn’t well liked by the Spanish crew members . It didn’t take long for other Spanish Captains to being sailing to the New World and even try to find a passage to the Pacific.

What I’m seeing here is a political bias against Zinn, because he was a liberal and conservatives are jumping on what Mary Grabar is saying against him.

In other words it’s identity politics at play here.

 

[gam197]

Correct, he didn’t travel to the New World with Columbus, but with his father in 1502 expedition of Nicolás de Ovando. I had to look things up as it’s been a long time since I read Zinn’s book.

Las Casas certainly new of Columbus and experienced life in the New World that the Spanish had set up, of which he later wrote about in a memoirs of which Zinn used to describe what took place in that era. I believe Zinn wrote that the primary source for his information came from De Las Casas memoirs.

Yes I am sure he had heard of the name Columbus but he was 8 years old when Columbus made that initial trip. He did not even become a priest until 9 years after Columbus had died. He never knew Columbus. He had no contact with him at all and saw the later Spanish governors.

Why did Zinn choose Bartolome de la Cases because It fit what he wanted to put forth. He wanted to trash Columbus, because he landed in a foreign land that did not belong to him.

BTW, Columbus made more than one journey to the New World and even landed in South America where he was met by hostile head hunters.

Yes he made 4 voyages often losing ships and landing in various places although he only lived 14 years after the 1st voyage and was ridden with arthritis

Either way, as I posted earlier, what most people are surprised to learn is about the Papal Bull, “Sublimus Deus,” which Pope Paul III issued prohibiting the enslavement of the Natives in the New World.

It was because of the pleading to the Pope by Las Casas and other Dominican Missionaries who were opposed the Spanish treatment of the Natives, that this Papal Bull was issued.

That is what Catholic leaders do. Reminder that Bartolome deLas Casas who died in 1566 was also Catholic.and trying to correct the Spanish governors. King Ferdinand appointed the governors. Spain was still fighting the Moors.
The 1200 colonists he brought over in 1493 were also rebelling against Columbus. He had to return in 1496 to Spain to answer for those charges and was acquitted.

The other thing is that Columbus being Italian wasn’t well liked by the Spanish crew members . It didn’t take long for other Spanish Captains to being sailing to the New World and even try to find a passage to the Pacific.

That would be understandable.

What I’m seeing here is a political bias against Zinn, because he was a liberal and conservatives are jumping on what Mary Grabar is saying against him.

In other words it’s identity politics at play here.

There is a bias against Zinn because he doesn’t do his research and takes a well known Catholic figure and trashes him without ever reading his diaries or learning about his life. Catholic Church will allow historians to search all their historical records if they ask.

It was the Catholic Church that made up the Christopher Columbus medal for all travelers.

 

[buffalo]

Do you know who’s actually an accomplished author? Howard Zinn. Not that the target audience for debunking Zinn was going to read him anyway, but pretty depressing that this lady’s work exists. One can pretty easily understand Zinn’s biases and limitations by reading him and other historians. Zinn has a lot of good stuff.

Wineburg, one of the world’s top researchers in the field of history education, raises larger issues about how history should be taught. He says that Zinn’s desire to cast a light on what he saw as historic injustice was a crusade built on secondary sources of questionable provenance, omission of exculpatory evidence, leading questions and shaky connections between evidence and conclusions.

Home Page

news.stanford.edu

 

[buffalo]

Zinn utters perhaps the most honest words of A People’s History of the United States in the conclusion of the book’s 1995 edition, conceding that his work is “a biased account.” “I am not troubled by that,” he adds, “because the mountain of history books under which we all stand leans so heavily in the other direction—so tremblingly respectful of states and statesmen and so disrespectful, by inattention, to people’s movements—that we need some counterforce to avoid being crushed into submission.” Perhaps the reason they lean so heavily in the other direction is that they are based on facts, not leftwing prejudice.

“I wanted my writing of history and my teaching of history to be a part of social struggle,” Zinn remarks in an interview conducted long after the release of A People’s History of the United States . “I wanted to be a part of history and not just a recorder and teacher of history. So that kind of attitude towards history, history itself as a political act, has always informed my writing and my teaching.” Indeed it has. Only let’s not call it history. Howard Zinn is a master of cheap Marxist propaganda. His book is a dagger aimed at the heart the country that has given him more freedom than most of the writers who have ever written and made him a millionaire in the process.

Howard Zinn's Biased History

Who is the most influential historian in America? Could it be Pulitzer Prize winners Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. or Joseph Ellis or David McCullough, whose scholarly works have reached a broad literary public? The answer is none of the above. The accolade belongs instead to the unreconstructed...

historynewsnetwork.org

 

[JimR-OCDS]

The thing is, Zinn wasn’t writing about Columbus alone in his book, but the Spanish who came to the new world during and after Columbus.

Of course to me, the mistake Zinn made was portraying the natives that Columbus first encountered as being like the rest of the native populations of North and South America.

The natives of the North East, were brutal and had their own wars and savage practices before any Europeans ever knew of them.

I guess the main thing I got from Zinn was his experience in WWII as a bombardier and how his own experience at the end of the war is what influenced his opposition to the war in Vietnam.

 

[gam197]

The thing is, Zinn wasn’t writing about Columbus alone in his book, but the Spanish who came to the new world during and after Columbus.

Of course to me, the mistake Zinn made was portraying the natives that Columbus first encountered as being like the rest of the native populations of North and South America.

The natives of the North East, were brutal and had their own wars and savage practices before any Europeans ever knew of them.

Zinn history became the hostory of the American school system and all other history has been wiped out. According to Zinn, the natives were peacefilled bearers of gifts. Columbus was a genocide maniac who sought gold.(capital).

 

[JimR-OCDS]

Well lets be honest, Columbus wasn’t the nice guy I was taught about in school, nor were the Spanish that followed him. The natives were so nice either.

I’m not sure what they teach in school these days, I would think it’s not Howard Zinn’s book.

 

[gam197]

Well lets be honest, Columbus wasn’t the nice guy I was taught about in school, nor were the Spanish that followed him. The natives were so nice either.

I’m not sure what they teach in school these days, I would think it’s not Howard Zinn’s book.

Why would 100,00 teacher in 2019 be signed up for the Zinn history course if they were not interest?

Big News: 100,000 Educators Joined Zinn Education Project - Zinn Education Project

How do you know Columbus wasn’t a decent human being? He was a navigator and that is what he did. The governors were set up by Spain as were the rules for colonies. All the colonists were Spanish not Italian.

He abided by the rules of Spain and of the time period, allowing for slavery. Did Italy have a history of slavery?

This one man founded America(I know he landed elsewhere), no one else and yet he is marked as evil.

What about the Christopher Columbus medals given out by the Church. Who were we praying to?

 

[phil19034]

He owned no slaves but allowed slavery as it was common

But also, baptized Catholics were not allowed to be slaves (at least according to Spanish law). Columbus didn’t want enslavement, but when people disobeyed him, he picked his battles. But he surely didn’t allow them to keep a baptised slave.

The interview on Catholic Answers Focus with Dr. Carol Delaney is also great to listen to. She’s not a Catholic, but her research showed that Columbus wasn’t the evil man the anti-Columbus crowd makes him out to be.

I just bought her book.

Villain Columbus? | Catholic Answers Podcasts

 

[phil19034]

Is anyone suggesting that Columbus did not enslave virtually a whole people? Or that the outcome for that people was not extinction? Or that their land and property was taken?

Columbus himself did not do any of that. The people who were sent with him on his second voyage did.

Please listen to the interview I posted in the post directly above.

 

[FiveLinden]

Columbus himself did not do any of that. The people who were sent with him on his second voyage did

So he enabled it?

 

[phil19034]

Grabar would have to ignore Bartolomé de Las Casas writings in order to condemn Howard Zinn

Part of the problem here is that Dominicans and Franciscans were practically at war with one another in the Spanish colonies. Also, Queen Isabella didn’t send the best priests over to the new land.

While we like to think all priests, in every age were good, holy men; there were plenty of bad priests.

According to Msgr. Eduardo Chavez head of Institute of Guadalupan Studies & the Postulator of the Cause for St. Juan Diego (who I met in person a couple years ago) said that during the time of the early settlement of the new world by the Spanish, the Franciscans & Dominicans were fighting with one another and in the early 1500s one even attempted to kill the leader of the other group in Mexico City (I don’t remember which)

Point is: Columbus was a Third Order Franciscan, and after the Spanish started doing bad things to SOME of the native tribe (for an array of reasons), Columbus felt responsible that he couldn’t control his men and was upset about what was happening. This lead Columbus to start wearing a Franciscan habit at all times and eventually live out the rest of his life as a Franciscan Friar.

The Dominican Bartolomé de Las Casas knew Columbus was a Franciscan, and would have been motivated (at least politically) to tarnish Columbus’s name because the Dominicans wanted to replace the Franciscan power in New Spain. To make things worse, Columbus wasn’t Spanish, so many of the Spanish in the New World (even priests) did not like Columbus being in charge.

Columbus personally supported being allies to the natives he met on his first voyage against that tribe’s enemies (the Carib). There were some Spanish who felt that the Spanish Crown should NOT side with any of the tribes and should simply treat them all the same (and conquer them all). But Columbus recognized that not all native tribes/nations were the same and each group should be treated differently (no different than in Europe).

So there were many Spanish who felt the Crown should not defend and/or ally themselves with non-Christians, therefore they rebelled against Columbus and eventually sent him back in chains back to Spain.

Let’s remember, the Spanish were still in the middle of the Spanish Inquisition during the discovery of the Americas and had just freed all of Iberian Peninsula from the Moors in January 1492. Many of the Spanish (including the priests from Spain) felt that the Italian Columbus didn’t understand what it meant to be Spanish and they felt he was naive against non-Catholics.

Remember - at this time, most Spanish peasants & soldiers didn’t trust non-Catholics.

So things are FAR MORE complicated. After all, a few of Columbus’s best friends were natives he met during his first voyage, and his God son was a native.

God Bless

DISCLAIMER: I’m discerning a vocation as a Secular (Third Order) Dominican.

 

[phil19034]

phil19034:

Columbus himself did not do any of that. The people who were sent with him on his second voyage did

So he enabled it?

No, not really. Listen to the interview I posted.

On Columbus’ first voyage, he returned to Spain with 1 ship. He left the rest of them there & told them NOT to rape, pillage, etc the natives. So while he was gone, his men raped & pillaged the natives’ enemy tribe - the Carbe. Before Columbus returned with 17 ships over 1000 men.

When Columbus returned, he realized that the Carbe killed all the men he left from the first voyage.

The 1000 men he brought with him wanted revenge. At that moment, Columbus (not being Spanish) started to lose the respect of the of the Spanish soldiers.

Futherfore, Columbus was often not even with the men the majority of the time. While he was technically in charge of the colonies, Columbus’ primary mission was to find China, in order to gain allies to help the Indians (in India) fight the Muslims to eventually take back the Holy Land.

So Columbus often left other men in charge, and these Spanish men did not trust or like non-Catholics (again, the Moorish occupation ended in Jan 1492 - so it was VERY fresh).

For Columbus, it was always balancing act between maintaining discipline & mutiny. Remember, even on his first voyage, the men were ready to mutiny against him. As an outsider, he never really had respect from the Spanish soldiers.

 

[gam197]

Thanks for audio.

Over and over Columbus asked for priests not soldiers.

I did not realize that once his original 39 men got killed by the native tribe because of their raping while he was gone, he did nothing to the tribe and felt bad about the whole event. He returned to Spain and became a Franciscan monk.

The Spanish men did not like him, put Columbus in chains and sent him back to Spain to be tried and he was given a trial and acquitted.

Payback was syphillis brought back to Europe.

 

[JimR-OCDS]

So in short, you’re saying Bartolomé de Las Casas wrote what he did in his memoirs because Columbus was a 3rd Order Franciscan ?

If so, what was he doing looking for gold in the New World and a route to the treasures in Asia ?

I don’t buy your explanation at all.

 

[phil19034]

If so, what was he doing looking for gold in the New World and a route to the treasures in Asia ?

Listen to the interview I posted from Catholic Answers by a non-Catholic anthropologist.

The goal of Columbus’ journey in 1492 and all of his later voyages was to reach China to raise money to support India in their war against the Muslims and to eventually take back the Holy Land from the Muslims.

Columbus believed that the world was about to end, and that the Second Coming was just around the corner. He was very motivated for Christians to take back the Holy Land before Christ’s Second Coming, which he thought would be in the year 1500.

Queen Isabella shared the same motivations. However, King Ferdinand II of Aragon did not share his wife’s concerns. After her death 1504, he ignored or got rid of all the rules that Columbus & Queen Isabella I of Castile put forth in regards to the natives.

Let’s also remember, that Spain was never a unified country until the marriage of Queen Isabella of Castile & King Ferdinand II.

Columbus was an Italian & picked by Queen Isabella (King Ferdinand was not really eager to sponsor Columbus’s first voyage). The King eventually told Queen Isabella that he would say yes only if the Spanish defeated the Moors. So, when the Spanish defeated the Moors in Jan 1492, Ferdinand agreed with his wife to finance Columbus’s mission to find the Western passage to China in order to fund the take back of the Holy Land.

When Columbus was arrested during his 3rd voyage, he was arrested by the Viceroy who was originally from the Kingdom of Aragon, and loyal to King Ferdinand, not to Queen Isabella.

Let’s remember, the soldiers & political officials from Aragon were loyal to Ferdinand only. They did not respect the Italian Admiral who appointed by & loyal to the Queen from Castile. Plus, the War of the Castilian Succession ended in only 1479, which was a war that named Queen Isabella as the Queen of Castile.

So even among the Castilian soldiers & politicians, there were men who were not loyal to Queen Isabella.

Columbus was exonerated and allowed to go on his forth & final voyage to find the passage to China. He was given instructions to stay away from the colony in Hispaniola because that’s where his friends (the natives he first met) were from and their enemy (the Carbe) were also from.

King Ferdinand wasn’t really as interested in the mission to save the Holy Land, which is why after Isabella’s death in 1504, he focused on colonizing the Americas.

Point is: things were VERY complicated. Columbus was a devout Catholic, a practicing Third Order Franciscan whose main goal was always to reach China in order to raise the money needed to liberate the Holy Land.

 

[phil19034]

So in short, you’re saying Bartolomé de Las Casas wrote what he did in his memoirs because Columbus was a 3rd Order Franciscan ?

BTW - Las Casas was only born in 1484. He was only 18 when he voyaged to the New World in 1502 & wasn’t a priest or a Dominican yet. He also owned Native American Slaves, something Columbus was 100% against.

When the Dominicans arrived in Santo Domingo in 1510, they were appalled at the Spanish enslaving the natives and would not allow absolution to anyone who owned slaves. Las Casas was one of the men not permitted to have his confession heard because he owned native slaves. Las Casas kept his slaves until 1515.

It wasn’t until 1522 that Las Casas became a Dominican novice.

Columbus’ final voyage was from May 1502 until June 1504, and he was tasked solely with the goal of finding Asia. Columbus wasn’t allowed on the Island of Hispaniola (where Las Casas lived). When Columbus returned to Spain in June 1504, Queen Isabella was dying & once she died, King Ferdinand tossed him aside.

So any testimonies Las Casas had against Columbus was not based on first hand knowledge, and very well could have been tainted by Dominican disgust for the way the Franciscans were handling the issues in the New World.