Article Review on "Sociological Concepts Stone, Edward T. "Columbus"

Article Review 4 pages (1170 words) Sources: 1

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Sociological Concepts

Stone, Edward T. "Columbus and Genocide." American Heritage (October 1975).

The author describes in painful detail the extent to which Christopher Columbus and his men were guilty of the forced enslavement, murder, and by even the most forgiving contemporary moral standards, genocide for their treatment of the native Indian populations of the Americas. According to the article, the fact that we celebrate Columbus and some of the other European explorers such as Cortez as "heroes" is a continual denial of the moral atrocities committed by the European explorers against the native peoples of the so-called "New World." The author regards those crimes as on par with those committed by the most notorious modern madmen such as Adolph Hitler because the total number of victims of European explorers during the Age of Exploration dwarfs even the millions of innocent civilians exterminated by the Nazis during Word War II.

Stone describes that the very first reaction of Columbus upon being greeted by the Arawak Indians was to note that they were timid and completely at the mercy of the superior firepower of the Europeans because they had no weapons of any consequence. He wrote that they were cowardly and that a single one of the Europeans could frighten hundreds or even thousands of the natives to flee. One of his first actions upon landing in 1492 was to invite five native men onto his ship under false pretenses of a greeting ceremony. They were immediately taken prisoner and shipped back to Spain for the purpose of using them to learn what riches might be available for plunder on their home islands.

Thereafter, Columbus's men systematically exploited the native Indians by forcing them to work searching for the gold that Columbus believed (erroneously) to be hidden in great quantities in the Americas. The Spaniards set out quotas of gold that all native males had to produce daily and they brutally murdered or mutilated those who failed to produce, typically by chopping off their hands. Columbus's men engaged in wanton brutality including rape and murder without any purpose, such as by testing the sharpness of their swords on people or using them for target practice for their weapons.

Eventually, Columbus realized that his expectations of finding material wealth on the American Islands were unrealistic.

To produce the wealth that he desperately needed to repay his investors and provide the queen with riches, Columbus turned to shipping back the natives in large numbers to be used as slaves in Spain. Initially, as many as half of them died during the voyage because the conditions of their confinement in the olds of his ships were so harsh.

Stone explains that the period that Europeans regard as the "Age of Exploration" was actually a time of homicidal genocide from the perspective of the victims of European imperialism in the Americas. Throughout the entire period, as many as 20 million or more individuals from the native populations originally encountered by the European explorers were killed and their entire societies wiped out.

1. When you look at a website on the internet, what steps do you go through to determine what the primary purpose of the site is? What do you look for? How can you tell if a website is a reliable source on that topic?

The first thing I look for is the publishing organization responsible for the material. I Google the organization to research them to determine whether they are a credible organization and a reliable source of objective… READ MORE

How to Reference "Sociological Concepts Stone, Edward T. "Columbus" Article Review in a Bibliography

Related Article Reviews:

Sociological Concepts Term Paper

Sociological Concepts

The Colombians -- the Dillingham Flaw

The term Dillingham Flaw, "coined by social thinker Vincent Parrillo, refers to the erroneous way of comparing people from one time period… read more

Term Paper 2 pages (614 words) Sources: 1 Topic: Latin America / Mexico / Caribbean

---

Same-Sex Marriage in Sociological Context Term Paper

Same-Sex Marriage in Sociological Context

Same-sex marriage has recently emerged as one of the more important and definitional issues in the current U.S. presidential race. In many respects, the emerging… read more

Term Paper 4 pages (1081 words) Sources: 1+ Topic: Sexuality / Gender

---

Columbus in Retrospect What's Your Gut Reaction Book Report

Columbus in Retrospect

What's your gut reaction to the reading?

My gut reaction to the reading is that it confirms the other literature detailing the brutality with which Western "explorers"… read more

Book Report 2 pages (545 words) Sources: 0 Topic: Latin America / Mexico / Caribbean

---

Columbus' Two Letters Regarding His Voyages Term Paper

Columbus Letters

THE LETTERS of COLUMBUS on HIS VOYAGES

Between 1492 and 1493, Christopher Columbus wrote two important letters pertaining to what he had discovered in the "New World" and… read more

Term Paper 2 pages (698 words) Sources: 3 Style: APA Topic: Latin America / Mexico / Caribbean

---

Sociological Imagination Essay

Sociological imagination is the capability to see beyond one's own daily life the reason for everyday successes and failures. While a person's sees beyond his everyday life as the cause… read more

Essay 2 pages (630 words) Sources: 1+ Topic: Sociology / Society

---

View 100+ more related papers  >>