Part One: Christopher Columbus: Bringer of the Apocalypse

Robert is joined by Michael Swaim to discuss Christopher Columbus

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
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

(00:23):
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.

(00:47):
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?

(01:09):
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

(01:30):
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

(01:51):
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

(02:13):
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

(02:34):
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

(02:56):
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,

(03:19):
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

(03:41):
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

(04:05):
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.

(04:29):
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,

(04:51):
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

(05:13):
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

(05:34):
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

(05:57):
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

(06:17):
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

(06:40):
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

(07:01):
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

(07:22):
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,

(07:43):
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,

(08:05):
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

(08:25):
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

(08:45):
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

(09:08):
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

(09:28):
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

(09:52):
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,

(10:14):
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

(10:37):
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

(10:58):
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

(11:21):
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

(11:42):
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

(12:03):
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.

(12:24):
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

(12:46):
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

(13:08):
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,

(13:29):
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

(13:51):
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

(14:14):
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,

(14:35):
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,

(14:57):
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,

(15:18):
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

(15:38):
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

(16:00):
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

(16:20):
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

(16:41):
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

(17:02):
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

(17:24):
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

(17:45):
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

(18:06):
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

(18:29):
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

(18:51):
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

(19:15):
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

(19:35):
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,

(20:00):
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

(20:20):
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

(20:40):
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,

(21:02):
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

(21:24):
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

(21:46):
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,

(22:09):
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

(22:30):
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,

(22:52):
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

(23:14):
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

(23:36):
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

(23:56):
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

(24:18):
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

(24:40):
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

(25:01):
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

(25:22):
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

(25:43):
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

(26:06):
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.

(26:29):
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

(26:51):
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,

(27:12):
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

(27:32):
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

(27:54):
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

(28:15):
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

(28:37):
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

(29:01):
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

(29:23):
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

(29:44):
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

(30:05):
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,

(30:26):
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

(30:48):
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

(31:10):
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,

(31:34):
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,

(31:56):
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.

(32:20):
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

(32:43):
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,

(33:05):
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

(33:28):
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

(33:50):
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

(34:12):
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

(34:33):
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,

(34:53):
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

(35:14):
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

(35:36):
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

(35:58):
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

(36:20):
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.

(36:42):
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

(37:03):
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

(37:26):
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

(37:48):
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

(38:09):
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

(38:31):
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

(38:52):
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.

(39:13):
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

(39:34):
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,

(39:56):
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

(40:17):
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

(40:40):
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

(41:02):
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

(41:22):
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

(41:45):
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

(42:07):
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.

(42:29):
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,

(42:51):
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

(43:13):
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

(43:35):
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

(43:56):
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

(44:18):
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

(44:41):
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,

(45:02):
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

(45:23):
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

(45:44):
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

(46:08):
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.

(46:29):
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

(46:52):
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

(47:14):
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

(47:36):
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

(47:59):
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

(48:22):
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

(48:43):
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

(49:06):
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

(49:28):
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

(49:49):
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.

(50:10):
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

(50:32):
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

(50:53):
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,

(51:14):
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

(51:35):
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.

(51:56):
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

(52:19):
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,

(52:40):
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

(53:00):
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

(53:22):
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(54:28):
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(54:49):
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No Ah, We're back. So Columbus the slave trader comes

(55:33):
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.

(55:56):
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

(56:16):
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

(56:37):
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

(56:58):
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

(57:19):
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

(57:41):
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

(58:02):
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

(58:24):
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

(58:44):
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,

(59:07):
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

(59:29):
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

(59:53):
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.

(01:00:14):
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,

(01:00:36):
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.

(01:00:58):
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

(01:01:19):
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

(01:01:41):
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

(01:02:03):
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

(01:02:23):
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

(01:02:45):
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

(01:03:07):
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

(01:03:29):
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

(01:03:49):
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

(01:04:10):
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

(01:04:30):
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,

(01:04:51):
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

(01:05:11):
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

(01:05:33):
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

(01:05:53):
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

(01:06:15):
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.

(01:06:36):
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

(01:06:57):
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

(01:07:18):
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,

(01:07:38):
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

(01:08:00):
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,

(01:08:20):
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

(01:08:40):
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

(01:09:03):
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

(01:09:26):
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

(01:09:46):
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

(01:10:07):
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,

(01:10:28):
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.

(01:10:50):
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

(01:11:10):
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

(01:11:30):
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

(01:11:53):
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

(01:12:16):
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.

(01:12:38):
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

(01:13:00):
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

(01:13:21):
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

(01:13:42):
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

(01:14:04):
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

(01:14:26):
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

(01:14:49):
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,

(01:15:12):
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,

(01:15:36):
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

(01:15:56):
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,

(01:16:17):
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,

(01:16:38):
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

(01:16:59):
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

(01:17:20):
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,

(01:17:41):
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,

(01:18:07):
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

(01:18:30):
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?

(01:18:53):
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

(01:19:14):
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

(01:19:35):
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?

(01:19:58):
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

(01:20:27):
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

(01:20:52):
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

(01:21:15):
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

(01:21:36):
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