Politics

In Europe. The abolitionistmovement started not long after slavery. Most of of the newspapers in England had articles portraying slavery as a positive pleasant enviroment. Purely to try and remove the political power of the abolitionist movement.

Not much has changed really.

Another fun quote: "Being taken as a slave is better than being killed, no?". Plenty to grab from that quote, but there are reports the indigenous people got so ~~depressed~~ excited to enter the kingdom of heaven they essentially did nothing for as long as they could, simply waiting to die.

Also I watched this full video, because I feel like it's important to get full context of these things. I learned some other stuff:

• Muslims blocked the route to China, India, etc. and Muslims were at war with Spain. No particular country, just "Muslims".
• The indigenous population ate people, and sure Europe wasn't great but at least they didn't EAT people. Plus, they worshiped false gods and not the GOD, so while the folks Columbus met were pretty nice the rest of them were pretty terrible. Still, he had to spread Christianity to the tribes he met too.
• Surprisingly, the tribes Columbus met were actually intelligent, and could even do stuff like copy the sounds/words Columbus made! Amazing what these primitive people could accomplish! It's like they're almost human.
• Everything needs context of their time. For example, slavery has been around forever so we can't really judge from our 500 years future perspective. We also can't use other people's opinions on Columbus at the time because they were competitors of Columbus. Thus, any criticism of Columbus (and perhaps, anyone in history) is just people not understanding that events in the past can't be judged from our lens of the present.

Columbus, slavery = forgiven!

There's a good 3-part Behind the Bastards episodes on Columbus. If anyone hasn't had a listen it's a great overview of what Columbus really was: a bastard.