The Shooting Gallery: Police Violence MEGATHREAD

[Sheilbh]

Apparently the Richmond statue was put up in 1927 - the first in the South.

I'd also agree Columbus is a bit different from those that Tamas noted. At least in my childhood, Columbus was taught to us to be this awesome guy that was doubted by everyone. Only in high school did they start to talk at all about a more rounded picture of him and his brothers.

This is also true in the UK. Slave trading and empire building were not uncontroversial at the time - and that is an airbrushed version of history. There's a reason the first statue of Clive of India only went up in 1912.

I don't see much case for memorialising Columbus, personally. But I could be wrong.

[The Brain]

It's a good thing he didn't make it to his planned destination. Imagine if smallpox had reached China.

Where do you think smallpox came from.

https://www.cdc.gov/smallpox/history/history.html

[Barrister]

I don't see much case for memorialising Columbus, personally. But I could be wrong.

There are very few individuals who have had such an impact on world history.  There's a reason 1492 is such a watershed event.

Now yes, a lot of negatives came from that, and Columbus himself had a lot of negatives about him.  But even when you point out that a lot of Columbus memorials came from the late 19th-early 20th Century by Italian-Americans as a way of connecting themselves to their new country - that history is worth remembering too.

[merithyn]

I don't see much case for memorialising Columbus, personally. But I could be wrong.

There are very few individuals who have had such an impact on world history.  There's a reason 1492 is such a watershed event.

Now yes, a lot of negatives came from that, and Columbus himself had a lot of negatives about him.  But even when you point out that a lot of Columbus memorials came from the late 19th-early 20th Century by Italian-Americans as a way of connecting themselves to their new country - that history is worth remembering too.

So tell those stories. Spread that history. Not the "Little Engine that Could" tale of the Great Explorer Columbus who refused to give up on his dream of proving the world is round.

In other words, stop making it about the man, and start making it about the impact. The entire impact, warts and all.

[Barrister]

I don't see much case for memorialising Columbus, personally. But I could be wrong.

There are very few individuals who have had such an impact on world history.  There's a reason 1492 is such a watershed event.

Now yes, a lot of negatives came from that, and Columbus himself had a lot of negatives about him.  But even when you point out that a lot of Columbus memorials came from the late 19th-early 20th Century by Italian-Americans as a way of connecting themselves to their new country - that history is worth remembering too.

So tell those stories. Spread that history. Not the "Little Engine that Could" tale of the Great Explorer Columbus who refused to give up on his dream of proving the world is round.

In other words, stop making it about the man, and start making it about the impact. The entire impact, warts and all.

Sure.  But the question is about the statues.

I say you put a plaque up explaining all that context, but leave the statues.

[grumbler]

All the court advisors (including the Spanish) who said it could not be done, based on the more or less correct numbers, were also wrong.

No, they were quite right.  Columbus's ships could never have reached China with anyone alive, even had they been able to pass by sea through the area that was actually occupied by the Americas.  China was something like 150 days away, and they didn't have water for more than about 100 days max.

[merithyn]

I don't see much case for memorialising Columbus, personally. But I could be wrong.

There are very few individuals who have had such an impact on world history.  There's a reason 1492 is such a watershed event.

Now yes, a lot of negatives came from that, and Columbus himself had a lot of negatives about him.  But even when you point out that a lot of Columbus memorials came from the late 19th-early 20th Century by Italian-Americans as a way of connecting themselves to their new country - that history is worth remembering too.

So tell those stories. Spread that history. Not the "Little Engine that Could" tale of the Great Explorer Columbus who refused to give up on his dream of proving the world is round.

In other words, stop making it about the man, and start making it about the impact. The entire impact, warts and all.

Sure.  But the question is about the statues.

I say you put a plaque up explaining all that context, but leave the statues.

The statues make it about the man.

[Tamas]

I don't see much case for memorialising Columbus, personally. But I could be wrong.

There are very few individuals who have had such an impact on world history.  There's a reason 1492 is such a watershed event.

Now yes, a lot of negatives came from that, and Columbus himself had a lot of negatives about him.  But even when you point out that a lot of Columbus memorials came from the late 19th-early 20th Century by Italian-Americans as a way of connecting themselves to their new country - that history is worth remembering too.

So tell those stories. Spread that history. Not the "Little Engine that Could" tale of the Great Explorer Columbus who refused to give up on his dream of proving the world is round.

In other words, stop making it about the man, and start making it about the impact. The entire impact, warts and all.

Sure.  But the question is about the statues.

I say you put a plaque up explaining all that context, but leave the statues.

The statues make it about the man.

Good point.

[Maladict]

All the court advisors (including the Spanish) who said it could not be done, based on the more or less correct numbers, were also wrong.

No, they were quite right.  Columbus's ships could never have reached China with anyone alive, even had they been able to pass by sea through the area that was actually occupied by the Americas.  China was something like 150 days away, and they didn't have water for more than about 100 days max.

Yes, of course. Brainfart   

[The Brain]

All the court advisors (including the Spanish) who said it could not be done, based on the more or less correct numbers, were also wrong.

No, they were quite right.  Columbus's ships could never have reached China with anyone alive, even had they been able to pass by sea through the area that was actually occupied by the Americas.  China was something like 150 days away, and they didn't have water for more than about 100 days max.

Have you ever been at sea? Do you know what it's made of?

[Sheilbh]

The statues make it about the man.

I mentioned in the Brexit thread that I agree but I sort of am slightly with BBoy. I actually prefer using other public art instead of plaques to contest the legacies of these men. Surround them with their victims, cover their plinth in bones - now this has happened and he is toppled and in the dock I'd consider an installation around that moment too.

I found the earlier installation for World Slavery Day a few years ago really impressive - and if this was permanent, I think I'd be happy with the statue staying because of how they interact and how we view them:


I'd like us to be more inventive around this than just pulling statues down or putting up small context plaques won't read. I would like us to actively contest the public space - to subvert and confront these statues and the men they represent.

It may not work in every situation with the exception of the hilarious one in Nashville - I struggle to see any justification for having a statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest, say. Clive of India is one I am very unsure about because of how awful he and his legacy are.

[alfred russel]

By modern day standards, basically every society was terribly oppressive until very recent times. The dudes that got statues tended to be leaders of their societies, which will link all of them to oppression...it seems odd to say, "statues from 3000 BCE to say 1450 CE are cool, after that we will evaluate based on how directly oppressive the people were to people now considered marginalized, unless they are women in which case the statues are still cool".

[The Brain]

I wish they had put up a Raoul Wallenberg statue in Stockholm. Instead they put up a monument to him colloquially known as "The Turds".

[The Larch]

With Columbus everything he did besides navigating was extremely shady (I mean, he was even imprisoned in Spain after his 3rd expedition because of his mismanagement of Hispaniola and the atrocities he ordered as its governor), but his achievements as a navigator are undeniable.

Fun fact:  Columbus was a shit navigator and only survived the consequences of his stupidity because the Americas prevented him from sailing beyond the point of no return.

The myth about everyone but him believing the world was flat is laughable, but still widely believed.  Columbus's genius was in believing that the world was much smaller than it was known, beyond a doubt, to be.  That's why no one would back him, until he got to Spain, where there was a temporary budget surplus and the crown decided that they could use some of it to send a bunch of fools and the sweepings of their jails off to a convenient death in the western ocean.

The man was lucky, but otherwise had no significant redeeming qualities.

IIRC besides thinking that the world was much smaller (he followed the calculations of Marinus of Tyre, who thought that Earth was 17% smaller), he was also counting on Japan (or rather Zipango) to be much larger, and further to the southwest than it really is. This is for instance the first globe map of that time, in which Japan appears to be only slightly further west than the Canary Islands:



There's also speculation about how much he might have known about the Atlantic trade winds and currents that make navigation between Europe and America much faster if properly exploited, that the Portuguese were already employing to move between their mainland and African and Atlantic posessions.

[The Larch]

Yeah he thought the world was like 1/2 to 2/3 smaller then it was. Portugal (so it is said anyway) said no because his calculations sucked (and they might have already known brazil was there, so why pay for an expedition to somewhere you know is there).

On the other side, he made it back home, so he had to at least be a decent navigator lol

He was also rejected by Portugal (twice) because Portugal was already deep into exploring the African coast and had already received a positive confirmation from Bartolomeu Dias that Africa could be circumnavigated as he had already crossed the Cape of Good Hope by then. Columbus' calculations were rejected in every court he visited, not just in Portugal, as they went against all the science of the time, in fact he was also rejected by Spain on that basis before he was finally approved on a hunch by the kings.