How do cultural differences help us understand how Christopher Columbus and Zheng He described their encounters with unfamiliar societies? This is an easy question. Both of these men were from different places but both of them acted in similar ways. They saw what was valuable and pleasing to them that the natives had no interest in. They took over the foreign land for both divinity and for their leaders. Beyond that these two people knew they were superior to the natives of their time. Columbus describes how the natives treated him as a god, while Zheng He described the natives of his time as barbarians. None of this is strange to see because this is what happens when two completely different cultures come into contact.
First let us talk about how valuable these lands were to each of these men. Columbus is from a place of royalty. He has queens and kings, towns and cities, houses, and a stable economy. Where the natives did not most of these things. It is not so strange to see that Columbus would value things like gold and other materials. He had time to sit around and place value on these things because of his culture. The natives on the other hand placed more value in things that did not have to be processed or made because most of their time was spent surviving. Take for example in the article Letter to King Ferdinand of Spain, describing the results of the first voyage on the second page, bottom paragraph Christopher Columbus goes on to explain how “They [the natives] took even the pieces of the broken hoops of the wine barrels and, like savages, gave what they had, so that it seemed to me to be wrong and I forbade it.” Items Columbus found useless, the natives found fascinating and vice versa. Zheng He on the other hand put value in things that he could give to the gods. Take for example in the article Worlds of History He goes on to say “commanding the multitude on the fleet and being responsible for a quantity of money and valuables…how should we not dare to serve our dynasty with exertions of all our loyalty and the gods with the utmost sincerity.” His whole goal was to succeed and give to the gods while also, with this sentence, rallying the troops back home reading this leader. Home is what gave these two conquerors even more reason to carry on. In the previous article mentioned both of them are letterset they are sending back home about the new found land. Columbus is writing it to his queen. In Columbus’ culture, the queen was the highest power. To impress the …show more content…
Throughout the article Worlds of History we can get the overwhelming sense that Zheng He’s culture is big divinity. Scattered everywhere there is references to “sacred lord” and “goddesses.” Take for example this line by Zheng He “therefore we have made manifest the virtue of the goddess on stone and have moreover recorded the years and months of the voyages to the barbarian countries and the return in order to leave the memory forever.” Columbus and He saw everything form nobility and divinity. This would explain their encounters with natives. Columbus did not see any nobility in the natives while He did not see any divinity in his