The Slavery Of Christopher Columbus

Jeantony Marte

Professor Young

U.S history/Essay2

Feb 16, 2014

Christopher Columbus was an intelligent and manipulative man who violated the liberties of the natives he encountered. During Columbus’s first voyage, in December of 1492, he reached the Americas to conquer the world. By the sixteenth century hundreds of thousands of natives living in the islands were enslaved and forced to work for the Europeans. In the early colonial days, authorities created a system which allowed the settlers to control the natives and strip them from their freedom. Slavery was permissible under the new laws of early modern Spain.

Between the 6th and 12th century there was a growing sentiment that slavery was not compatible with Christian conceptions of charity and justice; some argued against slavery while others, including the influential Thomas Aquinas, argued the case for slavery subject to certain restrictions. The Church did succeed almost entirely in enforcing that a free Christian could not be enslaved, for example when a captive in war, but this was not consistently applied throughout history, as in the case of Pope Paul III who sanctioned the enslavement of baptized Christians in Rome. Although some Catholic clergy, religious orders and Popes owned slaves, and the naval galleys of the Papal States were to use captured Muslim galley slaves. Roman Catholic teaching began to turn more strongly against "unjust" forms of slavery in general, beginning in 1435, prohibiting the enslavement of the recently baptized.

The first generation of Spanish explorers who followed Columbus into America carried with them the intuition of slavery . Christopher Columbus was notoriously known to be motivated by greed and in search of wealth. He ar...

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...nimous personality, Christopher Columbus. For Columbus his actions were justified because slavery was permissible by Spain. Christopher Columbus took advantage of what was presented to him and made a name for himself, bringing back gold, slaves and the discovery of a new world for his motherland. Along with this, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella promised him 10% of all newfound land. While slavery may not been seen permissible by many, this is how things were five centuries ago. Columbus had violated the rights of many innocent people for his own personal gain and that of his country. Ultimately pegging the Native Americans against him, the common result with most conquistadors and the Native Americans of the region they arrived on. As a consequence of European oppression, forced labor, starvation, and infections many of people they enslaved ended up dying.