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Well, Columbus himself didn't conquer much. He established a few settlement, but the real conquering was done by others.
More accurate comparison would be:
Describe Hernan Cortez in one word.
(GPT-4) Conquistador
Columbus and his men killed a lot of people brutally. He wasn't really a conqueror, more a murderer and a monster
He is far from distinguished in that endeavor. What makes him relevant to history is the part where he found people to brutalize, way the fuck elsewhere.
The Mongols just saw some towns out across the grasslands and said "I'll have that." Ad nauseum.
Technically, he didn't even find them first. Not only did Christopher Columbus never step foot on the NA continent, but Norsemen such as Leif Erikson were there before him centuries earlier. John Cabot made a much larger contribution to that.
Historical nitpicks and footnootes. The unambiguous inflection point for all of Europe going "holy shit, new lands" was that Italian schmuck and his three boats.
Leif and company went "hey look, more Greenland" and barely amounted to Discovery channel dramatization. The century after Columbus's return transformed three continents.
Yet they both committed atrocities (torture, murder, rape and god knows what else) and only one is being hailed as “explorer”.
Edit: I’m not saying we should hail Genghis Khan as an explorer, I’m saying that Christopher Columbus should be deplored as a murderer and a marauder, not praised as an explorer.
Being a murderer and explorer are not mutually exclusive. If ChatGPT said "Murderer" one might presume that he was simply a local killer, captured by the law, and convicted a la Ted Bundy. Explorer is a more appropriate title for Columbus, like "Dictator" is likely more appropriate than "Murderer" for Hitler. Murderer, sadly, is too commonplace for people of their evil.
For real. Name the worst serial killer you know, and Columbus was probably worse than that. It sickens me to read about it.
Why do we assume ‘explorer’ has a positive moral implication?
To me, looking through all of history, exploration has largely been a net negative to humanity. Modern day exploration isn’t terribly far off. The more we explore the ocean the more we strip it of resources. The more we explore space the more we look to exploit it for wealth.
Explorers are enablers of worse people at best.