Christopher Columbus Considered A Genocide

In the accounts of Christopher Columbus’s journey, historians depict him as any European other explorer during the same era, someone who is very religious and patriotic. The West was a new territory that the Europeans never thought of venturing to, but once discovering the West Indies and all that it has to offer, more explorers started to claim the land and settle there in the name of their respective Kings and Queens. Since the explorers at the time sought to colonize and spread the religion rather than to wipe out the natives, structuralism better explains the actions of early European explorers of the Americas. Even though the explorers did not intend to wipe out the native population, it is still considered a genocide because they essentially …show more content…
Even though the other European explorers did not directly kill the natives, they still did some form of killing by preventing the natives from reproducing, from carrying on their culture and history, and tried to force another way of life onto them. While these cases count as genocides, the Spanish did it in terms of structuralism rather than intentionalism. The Spanish kingdom wanted to find a way to gain more economic power, so the King sent explorers to scope out the unsearched lands of the West Indies. After Columbus reported that there was good soil and bountiful riches, the King resolved to pillage the land of its goods and to colonize the area. By colonizing in the New Land, the Spanish Kingdom would gain land, power, and more wealth. At this time, the European countries cared about the livelihood of their own people, not so much the lives of the natives. They saw the native lives as something effervescent, thinking that the natives will not survive long because of the way they are living. Since the Europeans saw how the natives do not maximize the benefits of their own lands, they thought it right to take over the natives’ lands since the Europeans knew how to best reap its goods. Because the European countries wanted to gain more power, they saw the natives as an obstacle in the way of their goal. These accounts of genocide are not intentional because the Europeans did not have the intention of killing a targeted group of people, but had the intention of gaining power and wealth by any