Cultural Differences Between Christopher Columbus And Zheng He

Culture differences
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 …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