Simon Mattacks
speaker
2,981 appearances
17 recordings
3 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard 13 Sep
Simon Mattacks’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 14 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 3.
Appearances
Columbus saw the indigenous people of the Americas as resources to be used and exploited.
At the time, slavery was common in many parts of the world.
But Columbus's later behavior
as we'll soon see, was controversial even for the time.
In February 1493, Columbus wrote a letter to Spain announcing the completion of his voyage and sharing details about his discoveries.
The contents of the letter caused a sensation.
Europeans were fascinated by Columbus's accounts of his travels in the Americas, though initially most people believed he was somewhere in the Indian Ocean.
Columbus described how he'd taken possession of numerous islands, large and wealthy lands, which were supposedly near China.
According to Columbus, some of the native people, the so-called Indians, were peaceful.
He believed they could be converted to Catholicism.
And while there were rumors of an island with cannibalistic tribes, on the whole, Columbus had a positive impression of the area.
His letter made it clear that this was only the beginning of his exploration.
There were lands rich in resources that Spain could take control of, and people too.
According to the traditional view, October 1492 is when Columbus discovered the Americas.
It's true that his arrival in this part of the world was a major historical event.
However, historians today would dispute the notion that the Americas were discovered by Columbus.
For a start, the Americas were already inhabited by the indigenous people and had been for thousands of years.
Of course, for Europeans at the time, this part of the world seemed new and exotic.
It must have felt like a genuine discovery.
But it's worth noting that technically, Columbus and his men weren't even the first Europeans to set foot in the Americas.
Showing 1861–1880 of 2,981 · page 94 of 150
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